I Believe – The Son (The Apostles’ Creed)
Sycamore Creek Church
March 13, 2011
Tom Arthur
Peace, Friends!
I’ve been finding my journal particularly helpful this past week. It is a great place to write down what’s on my mind, and how I see the world. If I gave it to you to read, you’d see the world differently than you see it now. You’d see it through my eyes. You’d see things you hadn’t seen before. And you’d see the same things you see but in a different light. The Apostles’ Creed is like the journal of the early church. It is a description of how they saw the world. When we read the Apostles’ Creed we see the world differently. We see it through the eyes and experience of so many Christians before us.
C.S. Lewis had this kind of an understanding of Christian beliefs, theology, and creeds like the Apostles’ Creed. In his book, Mere Christianity, he says:
In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, ‘I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!’
Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.
I asked on Facebook this past week about when or how the Apostles’ Creed was meaningful to you. One friend wrote, “When he was killed by the Russian, Ivan Drago, in Rocky IV, it was the first time I recall crying as a young man. I was with my father.” Umm…That’s Apollo Creed. Not the Apostles’ Creed. Krissy Brokenshire from our church said, “I like being able to vocalize exactly what I believe in. People ask me ‘what does it mean to be a Christian?’ or ‘what makes Christians different from people of other religions?’ I like that I don’t have to resort to vague descriptions or long references to verses.” Marilyn Mannino wrote, “When I prayed it with my Dad & Father-in-law this afternoon at Sparrow Hospital CICU. My Dad does not have long to live.” Another friend wrote, “I can tell you that what hasn’t been helpful is listening to it ritually repeated by a congregation in dead, passionless voices.”
So as we continue exploring the Apostles’ Creed this week, let’s begin by praying it together and not doing so with “dead, passionless voices.”
I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day He rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen.
Trinity
Once again we begin by noting the three-fold structure of the creed. I believe in the Father…I believe in the Son…I believe in the Holy Spirit. This is what Christians have called the Trinity. The word “Trinity” does not show up in the Bible, but the idea of the Trinity is found in many places. One such place is Jesus’ last words to his disciples in the book of Matthew. He says, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19, NRSV). Here we see Jesus equating the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together as one. When Christians say we worship the Trinitarian God, we mean that we worship the God who is eternally one God in three persons. A commUNITY exists within God, Godself, a community of love.
It is hard to wrap our minds around how something can be three and one at the same time. There have been over the years weak and strong metaphors for describing the Trinity. One weak metaphor is an apple. Sometimes you will hear it said that the Trinity is like an apple. An apple is made up of seeds, flesh, and skin and yet it is one apple. Well, this may get us going in the right direction, but its more like seeds, flesh, and skin are just three different parts of an apple. Whereas the Son is not just part of God and the Father is another part and the Holy Spirit another part still. Not to mention that you can take away one of the parts of the apple and still have a pretty functional apple.
A stronger metaphor for the Trinity is speech. Speech always includes at least three things: the speaker, wind/breath, and words. If you take away one of those three you no longer have speech. Speech is eternally three and one. Maybe with the metaphor we can even connect each of those “persons” of speech with a person of the Trinity. The speaker is God the Father. The words are God the Son. And the wind or breath is God the Spirit. Of course, all analogies break down at some point and this one does too. That’s why I’m saying there are weaker and stronger metaphors. Some metaphors for God break down quicker than others!
Fully God and Fully Human
Last week we discovered that when we say “I believe” in the Apostles’ Creed, we aren’t just making a statement about knowledge or fact. We are saying “I trust…” Last week we looked at what it means to believe and/or trust in “the Father” and today we look at believing and trusting in “the Son.”
When we look closely at the Apostles’ Creed we realize that this Son, Jesus Christ, is an odd kind of fellow. He is a unique kind of person. He is fully God and fully human. The Bible makes a lot of claims like this about Jesus.
Jesus says: The Father and I are one. John 10:30 (NRSV)
Paul says: Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. Colossians 1:15 (NRSV)
John says: In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God, and he was God. John 1:1 (NRSV)
The Bible regularly equates Jesus with God. The creed points to both Jesus’ divinity and his humanity. He is both fully God and fully human. In the Apostles’ Creed we confess that Jesus was “conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit born of the Virgin Mary.” We read this same claim in the Bible. Mary asked the angel, “But how can I have a baby? I am a virgin” (Luke 1:34, NRSV). Christians believe and trust that Jesus is fully God.
We also confess a belief and trust that Jesus is fully human saying, “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” Hmmm…He was fully God but we don’t usually think of God as suffering and dying. So we’re claiming a paradox here. Jesus was fully God but also fully human. He suffered like any of the rest of us. We read in Mark that as Jesus hung on the cross he “uttered another loud cry and breathed his last” (Mark 15:37, NRSV). He really died. We tend to have a hard time today believing that Jesus was fully God. But many early Christians had a hard time believing that Jesus was fully human. So this confession that Jesus really did suffer and die was scandalous. How can God be like us?!
Paul puts these two things together in a very early Creed-like statement. He says, “I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me — that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, as the Scriptures said” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4, NRSV).
How are we to understand that Jesus had two natures? How can he be fully human and fully God at the same time? This is kind of like the Trinity. How can God be three and one at the same time? In the same way that metaphors help us wrap our imaginations around God, so too can we use a metaphor to help us understand Jesus’ two natures. If you take a piece of iron and put it in the fire, it will become hot. The heat will fully penetrate the iron. You can even take the hot iron out and pound it into the shape you want to pound it into. In that way you change the iron, but you do not touch the heat. The iron “suffers” but the heat does not. Jesus’ two natures are like heated iron. His human nature is like the iron. It can suffer and change. Jesus’ divine nature is like the heat. It permeates all throughout the iron, but it cannot suffer or change.
Rescue Mission
As we continue on in the creed we read that Jesus descended to the dead. In one sense this can simply be an extension of our confession that Jesus really did die. He really was human. The old way of saying this in the Apostles’ Creed was to say that “he descended into hell.” The early Christians believed that this meant more than just that Jesus died. Rather, their imaginations guided by the Bible understood this as a brief description of an amazing rescue mission that Jesus staged. He descended into hell, the place of the dead, and preached to all those who were there, past, present, and future, so that anyone who wanted to be rescued from hell had the chance to do so.
This idea of rescue mission shows up several places in the Bible. Paul says, “Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again” (2 Corinthians 1:9-10, NRSV).
I imagine a kind of Chilean mining rescue scene where Jesus goes down in the rescue pod to save those who are buried under ground. He cares so much for these trapped miners that he even dies in the process of rescuing them. He gives up his own life so that they might be given Life!
Defeated Death
Ah…but this whole rescue mission and death thing is not the end of the story. For we also confess that “on the third day he rose again.” I’ve been to a lot of funerals in my work at churches. One thing I know with about as much certainty as I know anything: once you’re dead and in the coffin you don’t get back out. People who are dead don’t come back to life. But Jesus did! Jesus conquered death.
We read in Paul’s letter to the Romans that in our baptism we participate in this death and resurrection of Jesus: “For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised as he was” (Romans 6:4-5, NLT). Jesus conquered death and we confess and trust that in Jesus’ death and resurrection we too will conquer death!
Jesus is King!
Jesus didn’t just rise from the dead, but we also confess that he “ascended into heaven where he is seated at the right hand of the Father.” This seems so strange. One part of me is always a little skeptical about the Christian story at this point. Isn’t it convenient that this resurrected person ascended into heaven so that the rest of us couldn’t actually see him?! Yes…but. The early church understood this ascension very differently than we do now. For us we think it is strange that Jesus isn’t around any more if he resurrected from the dead, but they would have understood that Jesus’ resurrection meant he was king and the rightful place for the king would have been reigning from the throne room of heaven. It would have been weird for them had Jesus the king not ascended into heaven! It is hard for us Americans to fully grasp the rightful place of a king.
Recently an improv group in New York called Improv Everywhere set a prank at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They had a 400 year-old king show up to sign autographs next to his portrait. The Americans didn’t quite know what to do. We’re not used to interacting with kings.
In Jesus the kingdom of heaven has radically broken into our world. We read John the Baptist making this claim about Jesus, “Turn from your sins and turn to God, because the Kingdom of Heaven is near” (Matthew 3:2, NLT). In Jesus, God’s kingdom breaks into this world in a totally radical and unique way. The kingdom is not yet full, but it is already present.
Second Coming
As we continue in the Apostles’ Creed we confess that Jesus “will come again to judge the living and the dead” or some of you may have grown up saying “the quick and the dead.” This is a reference to the time when Jesus will come back and while the kingdom of God is already present but not yet fully present, at that time, Christians claim, it will be made fully present. What exactly will this look like? We catch a glimpse of it in Revelation: He will remove all of their sorrows, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. For the old world and its evils are gone forever. And the one sitting on the throne said, ‘Look, I am making all things new!’” (Revelation 21:4-5, NLT). There will be a new heaven and a new earth, but I don’t want to go fully into that, because later this fall we’ll be diving into a series on the book of Revelation.
So What?
So this is all grand and everything to write this stuff down and say it out loud, but what does it mean for me today? Why should I care about belief and trust in the Son? The question at stake here is salvation. In Jesus, the kingdom of God has radically broken into the world. The brokenness and sin that currently exists in this world has been dealt a mortal blow. In the person of Jesus we see what this looks like. He is the first fruit of your garden in the spring season. You see what is yet to come for you and me.
I’d like to unpack this idea of salvation a bit more. Because we confess that Jesus was both fully God and fully human we trust that in Jesus, God took on the character of flesh that flesh might take on the character of God. Gregory of Nazianzus, a 4th century church leader said, “That which Christ did not assume he did not redeem.” In other words, if Christ had not been fully human, then he would not have been able to redeem fully our flesh. As C.S. Lewis liked to say, “The Son of God became man so that men might become sons of God.”
St. Anselm, an 11th century church leader, wrote a book titled Why God Became Man. He said that only humanity needed to be saved, but only God could save; therefore, a God-human needed to save. When we say that Jesus was fully human and fully God we are saying that he was the only one who could build a bridge that would extend to both ends of the chasm that existed between God and humanity.
Jesus’ two natures mean both salvation now and salvation later. It means that we are transformed now and that we have hope for a good and meaningful life after death in the presence of God. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again. They are given eternal life for believing in me and will never perish. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26, NLT). The question is still posed to you today. You need not do anything first to earn this salvation. You need only trust right now. Jesus = salvation. Salvation = eternal life. Eternal life begins right now.
Join me in the Apostles’ Creed but let us insert the word “trust” in the place of “believe.”
I trust in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.
I trust in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day He rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I trust in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen.
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