Statements of Faith ~ Week 3

 

Holy Wisdom of God, firstborn of creation, you emptied yourself of power, and became foolishness for our sake. You laboured with us upon the cross, and have brought us forth to the hope of resurrection. We commit ourselves to struggle against evil and to choose life.

 

One of the profound and powerful truths of the Holy is that there are many ways the Sacred shows up in our lives.  God is both Creator and found in creation, including humans.  God is both Holy Other and the intimate Animator of our life in ways we can sense.  God is both wisdom and foolishness, or at least what seems like foolishness from our human vantage point and so-called intelligence.  I so appreciate this creed’s reminder of God on the cross.  The question of why God/Christ/Spirit died on the cross is one that has confounded and confused generations.  Usually, our explanations are bound by the limitations of our human minds/experiences.

Fun theology nerd fact: we call these theories or explanations of why God died by the word: atonement.  It is a fancy word to toss around in a conversation today.  If you break that word down, we get a clue about what we are talking about.  Atonement is really at-one-ment.  God on the cross is seeking to be at one with us, especially in our suffering, which is the exact moment so many feel God as distant and disconnected.  Unfortunately, I think our human explanations of God/Christ/Spirit dying on the cross seem too neat and tidy.  For example, one very human explanation is that humans had a debt that we couldn’t repay, so God sent Jesus to die.  Of course, that raises the question: how could killing God’s son settle a bill?  How could us killing God be a positive to right a negative?  I wonder if God is really an accountant who has trouble with a balance sheet?  Another explanation or theory of atonement is that God was playing a trick on the devil.  The devil thought he had won by killing Jesus, but nope, Easter Sunday is a sacred surprise of the not-finished-ness of our God.  Another human explanation of why God died is that God is showing us sacrificial love on the cross.  Another is that God is showing us that meeting violence with violence will only lead to more violence on the cross.  In other words, trying to right a wrong with power or death will only keep the broken sacrificial system of demanding more blood going.  Dallas Willard once said most of our talk about Jesus on the cross makes us sound like vampire Christians only interested in Jesus’ blood.  And, heartbreakingly, so many of our Christian songs reinforce this message.  Why did God/Christ/Spirit die on the cross?  I don’t know.  I know that God’s ways are not my ways.  I trust that when I am suffering, I trust God has suffered too, not just on a cross but in the brokenness of humans who keep using our free will to hurt, harm, marginalize, and oppress each other.  We keep worshipping at the altars of money, fame, power, and bullying rather than at the altar of vulnerable, sacrificial servant love for all.  How might God’s laboring with us on the cross meet you in the places where you are struggling, stressed out, and aching today?  Let God in that place with a light of hope that Good Friday is not the last word, for Easter Sunday is coming for us to choose life.  Amen. 

Statements of Faith ~ Week 3

 

O God, embodied in a human life, we believe and trust in you. Jesus our brother, born of the woman Mary, you confronted the proud and the powerful, and welcomed as your friends those of no account.

 

Talking about God is riskier than walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon, because beneath our confident words is the inconvenient question: do we really know God’s actions in this world?  It isn’t like ChatGPT or some AI program can definitively tell us what God is up to in the world.  Rather, we are given glimpses, traces, of God’s grace.  Like footprints left in the sand where the Sacred has already been.  Then, we let loose our inner Sherlock Holmes meet Jessica Fletcher in the great mystery of faith.  What is God up to today?  I don’t know.  So, I search for the clues in scripture, past experiences of the holy in my life, moments of quiet, and movements of my soul to open to God in the present.  The words above claim that God’s love could not be contained, but came to us in flesh, breath, and bone of Jesus the Christ.  Jesus, born a vulnerable infant, is so counterintuitive to the brash bullying of the world today that values only prestige, power, and privilege.  Jesus welcomed the least, lost, lonely, and left out both because that was his experience as a baby and what Scripture commanded (see Exodus 22:21, Leviticus 19:33-34, and Deuteronomy 10:18-19).  Jesus walked prophetically with one foot just inside the religious system and one foot outside to reach the marginalized.  Jesus could confront the religious with love and then extend God’s love to all who felt forgotten by religion.  This is true not only then and there, but here and now.  We are called to both stand alongside the immigrant, oppressed, hurting, and forgotten and stay open to God’s work inside the body of Christ called “the church”.  The church is a very human institution.  We have foibles and failings.  God is reforming, refashioning, and re-storying the church again and again.  We claim our brokenness of the past.  The harmful, even hateful, actions of agism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, and silence on mental health.  Yet, these problems will take more than throwing money at them to fully reconcile and restore right relationships.  I take heart that Jesus didn’t change everyone’s heart.  It wasn’t like on Easter Sunday everyone realized what God was up to.  Truth is, I often miss God in my life.  Yet, I prayerfully seek to love God with all my mind, heart, soul, and strength; to love my neighbor as myself…knowing there is no finish line for this work, but it is the holy calling of my whole life.  Amen.  

Statements of Faith ~ Week 3

 

O God, the source of our being and the goal of all our longing, we believe and trust in you. The whole earth is alive with your glory and all that has life is sustained by you. We commit ourselves to cherish your world and to seek your face.  Creed used by Women in Theology group from Eastwood, Australia

 

Creeds, like hymns and scripture, are one of the tools we have to encourage and engage in theology.  Theology is what we say about God.  Theology is impacted and influenced by your encounters, experiences, words you’ve heard, and reactions you’ve had to others.  For example, you may have heard growing up that God is a white male with a long flowing robe and beard.  In response, you may continue to hold that image tight as the only image that is right.  Or, when you hear God referred to as “Father,” it might be like nails on a chalkboard to your soul.  Or, you may be somewhere in between.  All theology is a very human attempt to define the undefinable, to speak the ineffable, to hold what is beyond our capacity.  All theology is autobiographical.  Rather than hang our heads or stomp our feet as if we have it all figured out, I believe that what we say about God is a snapshot of where we are at that moment, with open curiosity that God is not finished with any of us yet.  When the Creed above speaks about God, the writer directs our attention and intentions toward the earth/creation.  Our Creator, still creating, is woven into all that is around us ~ both seen and unseen.  Unlike people who see God as a clockmaker who made creation and then stepped back to let it unfold without interaction, this creed is saying that God is intimately involved in tending all life.  God is not in some galaxy light-years away, but as close as our next breath.  God is there in the food we eat to sustain us, in relationships that cause laughter, and in moments when we feel fully alive.  This part of the creed reminds me of a poem by Mary Oliver, which also reads like a creed and theological statement.  Slowly savor these words with me:

 

Who made the world? 
Who made the swan, and the black bear? 
Who made the grasshopper? 
This grasshopper, I mean— 
the one who has flung herself out of the grass, 
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, 
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— 
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. 
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. 
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. 
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. 
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, 
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, 
which is what I have been doing all day. 
Tell me, what else should I have done? 
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? 
Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?

 

May this awaken your imagination to sense God’s sustaining presence in you, through you, around you, and beyond you today.  Amen.

Statements of Faith ~ Week 3

 

We continue to lean in, listen to, and learn from the creeds of the church.  We’ve explored the UCC Statement of Faith two weeks ago; last week we let the words of the New Creed from the United Church of Canada spark our imaginations and stir our souls.  This week, we turn to a Creed created by a Women in Theology group in Eastwood, Australia.  I invite you to slowly savor these thoughtful words, noticing where your soul is drawn and where you find yourself questioning, or with curiosity bubbling up to know more.

 

Creed used by Women in Theology group from Eastwood, Australia

​O God, the source of our being and the goal of all our longing, we believe and trust in you. The whole earth is alive with your glory and all that has life is sustained by you. We commit ourselves to cherish your world and to seek your face.

O God, embodied in a human life, we believe and trust in you. Jesus, our brother, born of the woman Mary, you confronted the proud and the powerful, and welcomed as your friends those of no account.

Holy Wisdom of God, firstborn of creation, you emptied yourself of power, and became foolishness for our sake.

You laboured with us upon the cross, and have brought us forth to the hope of resurrection.

We commit ourselves to struggle against evil and to choose life.

O God, life-giving Spirit, Spirit of healing and comfort, of integrity and truth, we believe and trust in you.

Warm-winged Spirit, brooding over creation, rushing wind and Pentecostal fire, we commit ourselves to work with you and renew our world. Amen.

 

Consider the descriptions of God above.  What does it mean that God is the source of your being and goal of your longing?  What does that look like, feel like, and sound like?  Connect this to the passage from yesterday in Mark 12 about loving God with all your head, heart, hands, and every fiber of your being.  How might you live these words?  Where is your trust level in God today, realizing that the gauge can go up and down?  How are you turning toward and tuning into God’s wisdom?  What does it mean that God labored with us on the cross?  Or we could say, God suffers with us when we find ourselves weighted down with the crosses of injustice and inequality today?  How can you be awake and aware of the warm-winged Spirit that is brooding, surfing, hovering, and humming amid your life and all that has breath in creation?  Take just one of the questions above to let this Creed rummage and roam around your life today.  Amen.

Prayer

 

God in the mystery of the Trinity, You are in relationship with Yourself.  You connect with the flesh, breath, bone, and embodied Love of Jesus.  You connect/cultivate a relationship with the energy of Spirit.  Your love is so deep and wide, expansive and evolving. You show us this in the holy dance of Creator, Christ, and Sustainer.  You call us into relationships with ourselves, others, all creation, and with You.  You call us to explore, because we can never exhaust our ever-changing connections.  We are not the same person who hung up the new calendar in January.  Our bodies have changed, our minds have encountered new experiences, and our souls are slowly/quietly ripening like fruit on a tree.  Our family and friends are not the same, even though we miss the subtle shifts in others, ourselves, and in You.  The church is constantly changing, yet the firm foundation is the call to be Your people in service to all.  Pause to consider: how have you changed, what is changing, and what might change in the days to come?  Help us continue to live our faith through parties, praise, prayers, part-taking in response to You.  Help us stay open to “other duties as assigned” in our job description.  Wake us up to the theologies we practice and preach, and how what we believe about You is shaping how we live with You and Your world.  Let the Creeds be more than words on paper, but an invitation to the ideas that are continually shaped by You.  We are not alone; thanks be to God.  Amen.  

Statements of Faith ~ Week 2

 

We are called to be the Church: to celebrate God’s presence, to live with respect in Creation, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope.  New Creed from the United Church of Canada. 

 

Yesterday, we talked about God’s job description; today, the New Creed says you have a role and responsibility too.  But not just you as an isolated individual. Rather, this is for all of us who gather as the church.  We are called to celebrate, live with respect, love, serve, seek justice, resist evil, and proclaim Christ.  Eek, that is a lot.  Sometimes, like the church in Corinth (see 1 Corinthians 12) that loved to rate and rank spiritual gifts, we can end up emphasizing one of the above verbs over/at the expense of the others.  Or we are drawn to one of the above verbs and think it better than the others.  For example, I know folks who are so passionate about seeking justice that they can’t understand why everyone doesn’t pour every ounce of energy into this verb.  How can some people plan a party or go for a hike when there is so much suffering in the world?  Others believe that there is only one “right” way to serve and you must follow that path.  Make no mistake, there can be fundamentalism in the most progressive congregations.  Often, we proclaim our love of diversity only to offer a narrow path of how we can show/display/preach that love.  I wonder which of the above verbs leaps off the page for you?  As Paul says in 1 Corinthians, there are many gifts but the same spirit…all gifts are for the building up of the body of Christ.  We need people who bring the gift of celebration, stewardship, love, justice, preaching, praying, and pulling weeds out in the Memorial Garden.  No gift is better; no one way of serving should be honored more than others. You live your baptismal claim uniquely and in unity with others.  This has been and will continue to be the greatest invitation and challenge of the church from the beginning to this 8^th day of October.  Find the verb you feel pulled toward, and talk to someone about which verb s/he/they are drawn toward.  Do this with openness and curiosity; see how the Spirit can awaken someone who loves to make coffee for fellowship as a way of welcoming others, or how someone offers a gift of holding a friend's hand as vital for the vibrant church of Jesus, just as someone else sees signing a petition as important.  All gifts are welcome, and the call is to not just say this, but live, breathe, and embody this truth each day with God’s grace.  Finally, if you’d like, take the above list of verbs and compare to the United Church of Christ’s Statement of Faith.  Last Tuesday, we studied how our denomination says God calls, creates, sets, seeks, saves, judges.  Those are the six verbs used above to describe and define God’s activity ~ who God is and what God is up to in the world.  How might that list of verbs interact, intersect, or contradict/complicate each other?  May our pondering be moved to living our faith this day.  Amen.

Statement of Faith ~ Week 2

 

We believe in God: who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit.  We trust in God. 

 

What is God’s job description?  I mean this to be a jarring, jolting question.  Part of me wants to object.  Who am I to tell God what to do?  Then, part of me realizes I do this all the time!  I am constantly demanding God to be God.  Usually this means I want God to swoop in like a superhero or shero to save me, please, because I have made some boneheaded mistake or I am exhausted by people being so human!  Seriously, people can be so fascinatingly frustrating and creative in the ways they keep coming up with new ways to cause brokenness.  It is heartbreaking.  Creeds are our very human-sized attempts to say what is in the shy corners of our souls.  Who is God?  As I said on Monday, often what I say about God reflects my own beliefs and biases.  When I talk about God, I am really talking about me.  As theologians have said, God forms us in God’s image and we in turn form God in our image.  God is mystery and marvel beyond words.  God is energy.  Life.  Poetry.  Song.  Quiet.  Laughter.  Tears honestly shed and shared with another.  And so much more.  The New Creed describes God’s activity animating our world through creation.  We can take this literally, as in trees, turtles, and tigers ~ oh my!  Or creating, as in a piece of artwork that draws us closer to the Holy Other and each other.  The New Creed declares God’s creativity coming to us in Jesus, whose birth, life, death, and resurrection taught us a way to live each day.  It is by following the Christ way we part-take in God’s on-going work.  We open to God’s mysterious movement and ~ like gas in the tank of a car ~ the Spirit infuses us.  I am taken by the last sentence above ~ we trust God.  This begs the question: do I?  Or do I trust in money ~ ironic that we print “In God We Trust” on all our currency as a country and then act like it is money that will save us.  Do we trust God, especially when God is so elusive and evasive of all our attempts to control and confine God?  Hold this question today, twisting and turning it like a kaleidoscope to see different shades and shapes taking life.  Live this question today, to notice where you trust God and where you say, “I’ve got it from here, God.”  Finally, find someone to talk about the question: what does it mean to trust God?  You might have to start with defining or describing the word “trust”, which is complicated in our current climate.  Who do we trust, and how do we know if we trust?  Let’s sit with this invitation alongside the One who is creating and still coming to us in the flesh/form of others, and calling us to share and shine our lights with others.  Amen.