I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER;
Our Almighty Grandfather, The Kind, Generous, Just , Loving and all-Aware God.
MAKER (AND THE ON-GOING RE-MAKER) OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
An artist and craftsmen; the one who cares and nurtures all creation as a mother cares for her own.
AND I BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST GOD'S ONLY SON AND LORD OF LIFE;
The Savior from both the common and the uncommon; the redeemer from evil and the deliverer from sin and evil and our own weaknesses.
I BELIEVE THAT JESUS WAS BORN MIRACULOUSLY OF THE VIRGIN MARY;
Miraculously born in poverty and rejected among humanity as a child; exiled to Africa at age 2 he returned from there after His formative childhood years and then he grew in wisdom and in stature; from the very beginning he was a traveler and a wanderer, a poor man surrounded by a loving community.
I BELIEVE THAT JESUS WAS CONCEIVED OF THE HOLY SPIRIT;
He came from God and in purity. His conception was pure and His conceptions are always pure. He is God of very God and the Light of the world and the Hope of the Nations. He is God's incarnate pacifist: the promise of peace to the brokenhearted. He is the conceived answer of God to wickedness, abuse, injustice, evil, loneliness, alienation, lust, fear, division, racism, sexism, classism, pride and loss.
BORN OF A VIRGIN NAMED MARY;
He was not anonymous. He came into a specific place and time and to a specific mother and family so that all places and times and peoples could feel His specific touch. He was born in small town Gallilee and grew up as a skilled tradesman in Nazareth among the unfamous but the honest and the hard-working. He spoke Aramaic and Hebrew with a Gallilean accent and also picked up a few words of Greek and Latin. His name was Jesus and he remembers our names and understands our accents.
JESUS SUFFERED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE;
The Christ of God bleeds, suffers and tastes pain and hurt for all of us. Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate who was a insignificant dictator and abuser of power and manipulator of weak people and yet he will stand again one day before Jesus. Nowhere is Jesus' Divinity or His humanity more intertwined than in this court of human rights abuse.
WAS CRUCIFIED;
What else can be said other than to just state this fact. He took nails in His wrists and in His feet. He was lynched as a slave among two men accused of crimes. It was on a garbage dump outside the city. His lungs collapsed and could no longer breathe. After the long hours he literally died of a broken heart.
DEAD AND BURIED;
Gone. He tasted the end. The extinction of desire and of hope. The end of dreaming and striving and wanting and hoping and needing.
THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE FROM THE DEAD;
After the darkness, He came back to us because His love for us was stronger than our hatred and fear and weakness. His love was stronger than death and in His live we live and move and have our identity. He is alive! And because He lives we live in an abundant and full life of freedom, expectation and peace.
Life now is harbored in the Dunamos power of God. In rising from the dead he brings that which is dead in us to life and gives meaning to our lives. If this were all just some fiction then we are only sad fools to be pittied lost in some comforting hope. But with Peter we are in a footrace to the empty tomb with warm hearts and conviction that it must be true! The emptiness of the tomb is the emptiness at the heart of all Christianity. Now we are "after people." Now every tragedy confronts His resurrection victory - After Easter, something so good has happened to us that nothing really bad can ever happen again.
HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN AND SITS AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD ALMIGHTY;
Christ is seated with God Almighty where He sees us and hears us and prepares for us a place to rest with Him. Scriptures say that He stands when His friend Stephen calls out to him for evil people to be forgiven and today He still stands when the righteous suffer unjustly and are abused for His sake. He ascended. Sometimes our ascent seems so steep in life and stony the road we trod. But Jesus ascended and invites us to ascend through all of the swirl of confusion and strife and suffering of this road.
FROM THERE HE SHALL RETURN TO JUDGE THE QUICK AND THE DEAD;
Will not the judge of all the earth do right? We are free from the need to solve every mystery or judge every heart because we are following a God of love. He does not mete out justice from afar but all women and men will stand close before Him. All of us who fail and stumble wait to be judged but our Creator who knows us and loves us is our judge and not the fashion or fears of those around us! We come before Him with the shards of our lives. Those who are faithful will hear His voice say to them: "Well done good and faithful servant, enter into the rest prepared" and it is our hope to hear those words. We have such a bold hope even knowing that we deserve hell and death but still we wait for His grace and cast ourselves on His mercy.
But what about slavery and colonialism and war and injustice? What about Auschwitz? What about Goree Island and Robben Island? What about Wounded Knee and Sand Creek? What about Selma's Bridge or Fort Pillow and the battlefields of this world? What about Ottoman Armenia or the junta's Argentina? What about Nanjing and Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Tian An Men and My Lai or Pol Pot's Cambodia? Where is justice? We can rest only because the "judge of all the earth will do right."
I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY SPIRIT;
Jesus told us that it was better for us if He leaves us! How can this be? He who had been with us will now live within us. He who in His full humanity could never stay with us will now, in His full divinity never leave us. Now our rabbi, our teacher, will teach and guide us today and tomorrow. Now the good shepherd who hugged us in His living will comfort us in the Ruach wind of Holy nurture. Now the friend who once boomed out to us: "Be of good cheer! It is I! Is aflame inside us to encourage us. Yes, I believe in the Holy Spirit because He continues to change me and recreate me and renew me day by day. The Ruach Wind brings the distant hiddenness of God into my heart and into my hope.
I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH; THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS;
Our communion is Holy. We have been rescued from the sinking ship called human need. The Bible encourages us to have a song to sing and a word to share and a rescue to celebrate whenever we meet together. The Bible calls the Church the "bride of Christ" and as a bride we have to make ourselves ready to meet our love. We are a universal, catholic church united in our common weaknesses and strengths. We share our joys and laughter as well as our tears and shouts of anguish. We are united as one people in one race- the human race- and with one faith and one hope.
THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS;
Forgiveness changes weakness into progress. Now we have convictions because we have been convicted. The debt that all of us owed was too decisive for any one life to pay but God the Father delivered us from a life of bankruptcy and bondage. I am still a beggar but now I can tell other beggars where to find bread. To be a forgiven person is to be a rich person and to be contented, satisfied, grateful, aware, alive and able.
THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY;
Sisters and brothers of mine further along this pilgrimage tell me that it means a lot to them that the body will be renewed. Maybe they feel that when the feet that used to dance now can only ache and the hand that held their love is now cold and frail. I think of friends in wheel-chairs or bed-ridden after many long years and I want to remind them of this hope. This promise shows us a God who is good and who does heal and will heal; if not now then eventually in the life to come. God created our bodies and cares for them and they are good. It is good to know that they come with an extended warranty!
AND THE LIFE EVERLASTING;
Eternity is a long time! Jesus told us that our lives are like vapors that only appear for a moment and then flee like the morning mist. It is no tragedy to die. The tragedy is not to have ever lived. We live this brevity free from anxiety because life is everlasting. Physics tells us that everything eventually transforms itself and nothing is lost. The human soul surely will go on forever then! God has made us in His image the book of Genesis tells us and that also points to us being eternal. We are free from the tyranny of the urgent and the demand to be immediate and the rush to significance and the need to be important. Why? Because life is a marathon and not a 100 meter dash. We can seize the day and make our lives extraordinary because God is the "I AM" present tense God of creation and time is a gift without measure when expressed in eternity. Time is not our enemy anymore because it has met with an awareness of eternity. We live now in the life everlasting and even death will have no sting and the grave will have no victory. We are eternal. Let's live like it!
AMEN!
Amen means "So be it!" So whether you are saying this "Amen" in a house church in China or in a seminary in Atlanta or atop Ularu in Australia or on a beach in Sao Paolo, Mombassa, Inishbofin Ireland, Tahiti or beside a lake in Pennsylvania say it strong and free with me. Take your place in our choir and sing out. Join your brothers and sisters in the celebration! Shake the tambourine in Bilouxi, Beat the drum in the Black Hills of South Dakota, beat the Bodhran in Ireland, Sound the Shofar in Jerusalem, and proclaim it with whatever you have wherever you are whenever you can! Whisper it with the Anglicans or shout it with the Pentecostals or chant it with the Yoruba but whatever you do let every breath praise the Lord! Most of all join with us in the dance and in the music. Join all of life in Africa and the Americas and Asia and Europe and the islands and let all of your life be the "Amen" to God's heart of love towards your life! Amen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!