Let me just look at you! It is so good to be back here! I was last in this place on June 19th…a long time ago. Let me just say briefly that my sabbatical was just fabulous. It far exceeded anything I ever hoped it might be. If you are interested, I’ve put out on the table in the Lobby and Joleen has already put on the website: a summary of our time, a few comments on worship experiences we had, and my reading list from these last few months…you knew I would read a lot!

Let me say just three quick things regarding the sabbatical.

First, lots of people have said,

“How would you describe your time away?”

If I had just one word, I’d say

“Long.”

A long trip with our family, long weeks on Whidbey Island, long bike rides, long runs, long spaces for time with Anne and kids, long days to write or read, long walks to pray and reflect. Just such a contrast to my normal life, which is usually chopped into 30-minute or 60-minute blocks. Lovely.

Second, I want to say “Thank You” to all of you for allowing me, encouraging me to take this time. Everywhere I went, I’d end up in conversations and explaining to people about my sabbatical, and inevitably from both Christians and non-Christians, their mouths would fall open a bit and they’d say something like, “Wow, your church is really concerned about taking care of you! That’s remarkable!” And I just couldn’t agree more. So thank you, Bethany…congregation, staff…thanks for this huge gift.

Thirdly, I want to say…I missed you! Really, and deeply. We missed being here in worship, missed our Bethany family. I missed you all, missed the staff, the ensemble, the choir.

Choir, I especially thought of you one day when I was in Westminster Abbey in London, that great old historic cathedral. I was looking around in the part near Poet’s Corner, where there are some graves and some plaques of famous literary people right there in the floor and walls, and so I waved at Chaucer, stepped across TS Eliot and tried not to walk on Charles Dickens. And then I came across one small, old plaque that simply said:

“Robert Hawle Knight, murdered in the choir, Aug 11, 1378.”

Now there’s a choir that didn’t get along! We missed you a great deal, and it’s great to be back.

This morning we start a new series on the Apostles Creed, and I’m very, very excited about it. It’s printed on the front of your bulletin, and I want to invite you to use this bulletin cover not only later on this morning, but to take it home and put it on your fridge or your dining room table or your bathroom mirror and memorize it over these next seven weeks. Why would you want to do that? We’ll talk about that this morning.

Mark 8:27-30

The Monday Night Football game ends, the television reporter grabs the star running back who scored three touchdowns as the poor guy is trying to head to the locker room for a shower, shoves a microphone in front of him and says,

“Wow, three touchdowns…how did you do it?”

And the star player looks at the camera and says.

“I just want to say Thank You to my Lord Jesus Christ, who loves me and I want to honor him, He made this possible.”

And off he runs to the shower, leaving the interviewer absolutely gasping for a transition.

I have to confess, I’ve always squirmed watching these. For one thing, I’m pretty sure that God Almighty does not care whether the Seahawks beat the Rams, or whether the Angels beat the Yankees…well, maybe He cares about the Yankees getting beat! And I’ve always felt like those little interview blurbs were sort of formulaic little recitations that were totally out of context, so I’ve never liked them.

But I might be changing my mind. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to confess our faith. I think it’s important. Partly because the people of God seem to have done it from the earliest times, and partly because I believe it is perhaps more critical in our day than it has ever been.

Jesus asks the disciples,

“Who do people say I am?”

and they give him some pretty predictable answers: John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the other prophets. Great people, heroes of the faith come back to life. Good answers.

“But what about you?”

Jesus says, and the you is over-emphasized, literally

"But YOU, who do YOU say that I am?”

Very personal. He’s asking what they believe.

I don’t know what went through Peter’s mind. Maybe he was aware of the crowd of the other disciples around him, no one saying anything.

Maybe his mind was spinning back through things he had seen in recent months: Jesus healing people from all sorts of things, Jesus casting out spiritual demons, Jesus calming a storm, Jesus arguing with the religious leaders, crowds beginning to follow him, Jesus raising a little girl from the dead.

Maybe Peter thought about the first day he had seen Jesus, when he was fishing with his brother and when Jesus said,

“Come and follow me!”

much to Peter’s surprise, he found himself leaving his nets and following.

I wonder what would go through your mind if Jesus said,

“You, who do you say I am?”

Whatever it was, what came blurting out of Peter’s mouth was one of the first, and shortest confessional statements ever:

“You are the Christ!”

This is what he believed, that God had sent Christ: Messiah, Anointed one, a savior who would change everything. When Peter said this, it provides a missing piece of sorts. You see, to believe something includes a couple of components:

• One is being intellectually convinced, or at least convinced enough, that it is true.
• The other is a statement of personal trust and commitment.

The Biblical word for “believe” contains this rich variety of meanings that all have to do with faith, trust, belief and commitment, things that are personal and not just ideas.

If I tell Anne

“Honey, I believe in you,”

it doesn’t just mean that I understand that the evidence shows her heart is beating and she is breathing and so technically alive. I mean,

“Honey, I trust you, I’ll back you, I’m with you.”

Believing in Jesus is not just believing that a guy named Jesus who happened to be a carpenter drew breath in the first century. Believing in Jesus means having personal trust and commitment to Him. Peter trusted Jesus enough to follow, and now here he confesses who he is. Belief includes both.

This morning, I want to take you on a very quick historical tour of a Christian confession of faith. The earliest confessions, like Peter’s, are embedded in the New Testament.

In Philippians 2:11, the Apostle Paul says,

Every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord.

In I Corinthians 15:3, Paul passes on good news he’d come to know:

Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures
he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, he appeared…

Romans 10:9. Paul again,

If you confess with your mouth “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

It’s easy for us to read “Jesus is Lord” and just keep reading. Not so if you lived around 160 AD. As the persecution of Christians heightened in the Roman empire, an elderly and highly respected bishop in the early church named Polycarp was arrested and taken to the stadium, which was filled with thousands of people, and lions who would rip him to shreds at a moment’s notice. When they got to the gate, the old man was given a chance by the officer who arrested him:

“Swear by Caesar and I will release you. Say Caesar is Lord and renounce Christ.”

To which Polycarp answered,

“Eighty-six years I have served him, and he never once wronged me; how then shall I renounce my King, who has saved me?”

That was Polycarp’s final confession.

The early church felt a growing need to specify what Christians believed. Religions were a dime a dozen. Spirituality was rampant. Confusion was everywhere. What did people who were coming to faith in Jesus need to believe, understand, trust? What was the message?

As early as the 1st or second century AD, the Christians began to articulate what eventually came to be called the Apostles Creed. At first, it was apparently not written down, but memorized and passed verbally from a teacher to a new Christian, because of the threat of persecution.

By the second century, there were documents that summarized Christian teaching, a sort of summary of the scriptural story. By the 2nd or 3rd century, there is clear documentation that Christians used something very, very similar to the Apostles Creed to prepare people for baptism. When a person came to faith in Jesus, they went through a long (1-3 year) process of study and initiation which culminated in their baptism. During those two years they would study the components of the Creed, and just before they were baptized they would confess it in question and answer form:

Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?

I believe.

Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, etc.?

I believe.

Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy church, and the resurrection of the flesh?

I believe.

The first time we can find this summary of scripture actually called the Apostles Creed is in the 4th century. It received its final form in the 8th century. Always, from the very earliest time, the Apostles Creed was attributed to the apostles, the twelve who followed Jesus. Most people today don’t think the apostles actually wrote it, but that the Creed reflects the teaching of the apostles as a summary of what scripture says.

In fact, there is a great story which circulated in the church in the 5th century, generally believed to be legend, but it goes like this:

After Pentecost, the apostles knew they would be disbursing into all the world. The story says,

“As they were therefore on the point of taking leave of each other, they first settled on an agreed norm for their future preaching…”

And the way they did this, the story says, was that they gathered together and each of the twelve contributed one clause that they felt just had to be included. The result was the Apostles Creed.

I love this story! Can’t you just imagine them, huddled together…
Peter, Peter who betrayed Jesus three times and then was reinstated by Him says quietly,

“Forgiveness. We HAVE to put forgiveness in here.”

Or Thomas, Doubting Thomas who wouldn’t believe in Jesus’ resurrection until he saw him with his own eyes, heard Jesus tell him, “Stop doubting and believe,” says,

“Don’t forget the resurrection. It makes all the difference.”

Well, the history goes on. Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor in the 9th century, was worried about whether the teaching of priests in different places across the empire would hold true to scripture. So he writes to the Bishop, Garibaldus, and tells him of his concern. And we actually have the letter from the Bishop back to the Emperor, assuring him that all of the priests in the land knew and used…the Apostles Creed.

In 16th century England, Thomas Cranmer was the very influential Archbishop of Canturbury. For you history buffs, this was the time when King Henry VIII was taking the Church of England out of the Catholic church, and away from the authority of the pope, and Cranmer was caught up in the severe political turmoil going on.

Cranmer was a Protestant on most issues and so long as Henry and his son Edward VI were in power things were fine. After their deaths, however, the tide in England turned against Protestantism and Cranmer fell out of favor. He was coerced into recanting many of his beliefs in writing, much to his own regret.

He was brought from prison to a church in Oxford called St. Mary’s. The idea of the regime was that before they burned him at the stake they would hear his recantation publicly in church. He was put on a small platform which was intentionally lower than the pulpit, as a way of shaming him…he was no longer worthy to speak from a pulpit.

Now, we were in Oxford this summer, and in St. Mary’s church there is a mark still on the pillar where Cranmer’s platform was built. He stood there to speak, but he surprised his enemies. Instead of recanting, he proclaimed his faith, beginning with these words:

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth…”

then refused to recant and was burned.

One more picture. In Germany in 1933, in many Protestant churches, the pastor alone would recite the Apostles Creed during the Sunday services. However, after 1933 the congregation members began to join in. Why? The skies were darkening in Germany, the Nazis and Hitler were beginning to seek control over the church and the people wanted the chance to publicly confess their faith, to confess that they believed in something far bigger than the state.

Well, that’s all great, and hopefully you can see the place of the Apostles’ Creed down through the history of the Christian faith. But most of us aren’t under threat to be burned at the stake. Why drag it out today? Why use it in 2005? Friends, I believe we live in a time and place where Christians are in great danger, and where there is great opportunity.

There is great danger because we too live in a culture where spirituality describes everything from new age crystals to devil worship to dianetics. Everything is true for somebody, nothing is right or wrong, and Christianity is often lumped in with things that are radically different than faith in Christ. It gets fuzzier and fuzzier.

We live in a culture which has tried to gradually reduce Christianity to a conservative political action group, or an antiquated philosophy which, if it has any value at all, just helps people to be nice people.

We live in a world confused about a lot of things, and particularly about faith. But that’s also the opportunity we have…to speak personally about Jesus into our world.

One of the many books I had a chance to read this summer was a novel by Douglas Coupland from a couple of years ago called Girlfriend in a Coma. It’s about…well, it’s about a guy whose girlfriend goes into a coma! And as the book unfolds, when the girlfriend wakes up it is near the end of the world, and only a handful of their friends survive. As the only people left on earth, they immediately resort to squabbling, arson, drugs, video games and destructive behavior of all sorts.

And Coupland does this great job of asking a lot of hard questions about life and faith and friendship and decency, but in the end (this killed me), in the end he has nothing but the questions. The book ends with

“We’ll be begging (people) to see the need to question and question and question and never stop questioning until the world stops spinning.”

That’s it. He takes the searching reader right up to the brink of God, looks over the edge and says,

“Whatever you do, don’t jump.”

G.K. Chesterton once said,

“We have asked all the questions that can be asked. It is time we gave up asking questions and started looking for answers.”

The Apostles Creed is not perfect. I wish there were a couple other things in it, and I wouldn’t have chosen to put another in…but The Apostles Creed is an effort to encapsulate the scripture, to set us on the road with an answer rather than just more questions. It is a statement of our identity. It is a chance for us to say with Paul,

“I know in whom I believe,”

and to say with Peter,

“You are the Christ!”

All week long we have been asked to confess our faith in other things, sometimes when we know it and sometimes when we do not. We go to a ballgame and may be asked to pledge our allegiance to our country. We are asked through a vast and complex media system to consume more and more things to keep the economy going.

Achievement, education level and test scores request top billing on our priority list. The philosophy that says “the way to a more peaceful world, or a happier life is through more power, more influence” demands our affirmation. The chance to be self-made people, and the status of over-the-top-busy schedules calls to us. The temptation to call “wrong,” “right” in our business dealings rings in our ears. All week long, whether we say yes or not, whether we are even aware of it or not, we are asked to believe in things we may actually not.

But this morning…and each Sunday morning for awhile, I want to invite you, to give you the opportunity, to intentionally say what you believe…in whom you trust. Doesn’t that sound kind of good? Reciting the Apostles Creed together can be one time during the week when you stand up and tell God, tell yourself, tell your family who and what you believe in.

Before we do that together, just one more thing. You’ll notice from the bulletin cover that we are using the traditional version of the Apostle’s Creed, and that it has some words we’re not used to: old words, like “sitteth,” and “thence” and “quick” (instead of living) and catholic with a small c (for universal).

Why use the old language? Don’t we have a modern day version that’s easier? We do, actually. But I intentionally chose to use this one to remind us that we’re just one small part of a worldwide family with centuries of history.

When we stand and proclaim our faith, our voices join with Peter’s and Paul’s, with people coming for baptism in the second century, with Charlemagne’s priests in the 9th century, with Thomas Cranmer’s, with the church in Germany in the 1930s, and yes, with the athlete who looks at the TV and says, “I just want to give glory to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” One church, one voice, to proclaim our faith in God revealed in Christ.

Let’s stand together and confess our faith, using the Apostles’ Creed:

I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;
he descended into hell;
the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost;
the holy catholic Church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body;
and the life everlasting.
Amen.