Why creeds? [Wednesday Lent 2; St. Luke 6:27-49]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

This evening, we hear Jesus speak from His Gospel and our Creeds as we continue to ponder the modern usefulness of catechesis and our Catechism in general.

There is a legend from the 4^th century that tells of the time when the Apostles were preparing to part from each other, go out into the whole world, and spread the Gospel. In order that their preaching and teaching be uniform, they each contributed what they thought was best and ended up with the 12 articles of the Apostles Creed.

Now, this may be a true story, it may not be. Regardless, the thrust of the legend is to solidify the hearer’s belief that, in the creeds, he is intimately connected to the Apostles and what they believed. This is one wonder that the gift of the creeds are for us today.

Yet, even with this significance, all 3 creeds are fruits of Faith, ways to express our faith in words, not Faith itself. This is because the Creeds came into existence during the life of faith that the Church was living with the Apostles. Meaning, that because Church life and faith is centered around Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the Creeds naturally flowed out of that. In fact, this is how we receive all of the writings of the New Testament, as well.

In the act of His Baptism, Jesus becomes sacramentally involved with sinners. That is, that in Jesus, God unites Himself with humanity, taking on their sin in a very real sense. Such a sense that He can refer to His death as His Baptism and that we can share in that Baptism as well.

This then becomes the practice of the Church: that in the midst of Baptizing and Communing, She, and all those who believe, confess Who it is that is Baptizing them and Communing with them. And so, during the baptismal rite, we confess the creed in the form of questions, asking about belief, asking “Do you believe…?”

Answering in the positive establishes that fact that you are being joined to the Church catholic; the universal Church. In essence, confessing the Creed was a statement that Baptism still determined the parameters, foundation, and content of the believer’s life.

Let me stress that point: confessing the Creed is a statement that Baptism still determines the parameters, foundation, and content of your life. Behind the public confession of faith is the idea that the believer not only accepts as true what God reveals, but also that he remains in his baptism.

I always tell the catechumens that they’re not taking catechism class to learn the right answers. There will be no test. We study, memorize, and recite in order to declare that we agree with God and that we agree with His Church. We study, memorize, and recite in order to prove to ourselves that we believe.

If we were to lessen the importance of the creeds or tamper with or remove them from the Divine Service completely, then we would be declaring first, that the doctrine preserved in the creeds is not appreciated or wanted, and second that the present significance of Baptism in our life is lost.

Because we are not just finding a preference for what we like, regarding God. And we are not trying to determine “what works for us” in Bible Study. What we are determining is whether or not we agree with God, because it is His Church and His Church’s creed.

There is a story about a young priest who told his spiritual advisor that he was having difficulties with some of the statements of the creed. “Recite it anyhow”, the advisor replied.

After a few days, the young priest again voices his misgivings saying that he can not in good conscience claim to believe all that the creed says. Recite it anyhow, was the only reply.

After several weeks of this, the young priest is thoroughly exasperated and confused and asks, “Why do you insist I repeat the creed when you know there are in it some phrases I don’t really believe?”

To which the advisor replied, “Because it is not your creed. It is the creed of the Church. When you recite it you are not directly saying what you believe. You are declaring what the Church believes. And you are declaring yourself part of that Church, no matter whether you believe every point of doctrine or not.”

This is the universality of the creeds. That , regardless of where life has taken us and regardless of the temptations and sins we are facing, God has given us such a gracious gift of mercy so as to place us in the midst of His Church, without any merit or worthiness within us.

So it is that Joshua can stand in the midst of a stubborn and stiff-necked people, confess Who God is, and demand allegiance from Israel because of the power of confessing the God Who Brought Them Out Of Egypt. So it is that Abel, Noah, and Abraham can face enemies, sterility, and even death and still come through temptation with faith, because God is confessed as the God Who Keeps His Promises.

So it is that Jesus can give us this lengthy laundry list of things that we have not done or left undone to God and our neighbor in St. Luke’s gospel, and still call us “those who hear”, “those who are loved”, and “those who confess and are baptized”.