This morning we get to continue in our look at the Apostles Creed, the ancient confession of the church that uses 110 words to summarize the biblical story, and that was used from the earliest time to prepare people for their baptism.

The Creed is broken down first of all into a Trinitarian structure. That is, as it begins to describe God, it does so

• first as God the Father,
• second (this morning) as God the Son, and
• then (next week) as God the Holy Spirit.

The interesting thing about the creed is that although it is indeed Trinitarian, and includes other things about the church and people, over half of the creed is about one thing: Jesus Christ. You can see this well if you glance at the front of your bulletin. All of the dark, bold print is the section about Jesus. This will tell us a couple of things. First, it will be virtually impossible for me to talk about all this in one week! I feel like Jeff Van Duzer trying to summarize Luke in 15 minutes! But we’re going to do it anyway. But second, it should make us ask the question: why?

Have you ever noticed that sometimes in life, particularly when God is trying to teach you something…all roads lead to the same place? That’s what happened to me this week. Last Sunday we looked at the part of the Apostles’ Creed which says

I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of Heaven and Earth.

Partly, we talked about the many things that become gods in our life, like technology or individualism or things. We also talked about how terms for God like

• Father,
• Almighty,
• Maker

…help to distinguish the personal, living God from the god that our culture often puts forth…a god I described as vague and distant and mostly concerned with our happiness.

So on Wednesday I went down to SPU to listen to a guest speaker, Dr. Christian Smith. Smith was the co-author of a book our elders read on racism called Divided by Faith. He is a sociologist at North Carolina. His latest work is a large-scale national study about the religious beliefs and attitudes of American teens between the ages of 13-17. Through his extensive research, Smith has come up with an acronym to describe the vague, distant, happiness-producing God that I mentioned last week…because so many teenagers listed it as the content of their faith. He calls it “MTD.” That stands for
“Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” In general it sounds like this:

1. There is a God.
2. God basically wants us to be nice people (that’s the M, Moralistic part).
3. God’s major purpose is to make us be happy and feel good about ourselves (that’s the T, Therapeutic part).
4. God is basically distant…only needed if there’s a problem (that’s a version of the D, Deistic part which Thomas Jefferson would have been proud of).
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

Now, in general, this is the same type of faith which I mentioned last week as prevalent in our culture as vague and fuzzy. But here was Smith’s point, and it applied to an awful lot of teens whether from Christian backgrounds or not: Smith contends that teens do not make this stuff up. They don’t sit around and invent their faith beliefs. Rather, they receive them from (a) the culture, and (b) us. Parents, family.

It’s easy to see how kids pick this up from our culture. God has gradually moved to a backseat in much of America, to be filed away or periodically dragged out like a manger scene at Christmas. It’s okay to be religious, just don’t overdo it. Anyone who believes in God basically believes in the same thing, it’s all one big happy family, you just go to the supermarket and pick out whatever you like about various beliefs. Our society defines the word pluralistic.

The scary part about Dr. Smith’s research is this thought…what are young people receiving from us? Their parents, family, church? What do our kids, or nieces, or neighborhood kids get from us about God? Is Jesus Christ ever talked about? It’s comfortable to talk about God, spirituality or faith. It’s harder to use the name of Jesus Christ. Would they even know how we felt? Are we, perhaps by our very silence, reinforcing the same vague view of God that they can get in the public schools, on television or across the Internet?

When the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Colossians, he once again was writing into a culture swamped with gods. At least six deities and countless worship practices were present in this area of Asia Minor. And as sort of a large umbrella over everything, there was this “Gnostic” orientation to the world that rejected the physical as having any validity, and claimed that a person’s spiritual, mystical experiences (using stringent discipline) was the only way to unlock the secrets of God.

This is why Paul wrote what he did in Colossians 1, to set the record straight for followers as to the identity of Christ and their accessibility to God: “HE is the image of the invisible God,” the exact representation or manifestation of God actually come to earth. Colossians, as much as any book in the Bible, says,

“If you want to know what God is really like…look at Jesus Christ.”

And this is exactly what the Apostles Creed does. In fact, it looks for a long time at Jesus. Over half the Creed is about Jesus. Why is that? It’s because for the young church in those early centuries, most of the heresies, most of the bad theology, most of the errant religious thoughts centered around the identity (life, death, resurrection) of Jesus. It’s the exact same today. It was critical for Paul to proclaim the Jesus that the church had come to know. It’s the exact same today. Every word about Jesus in the creed is important. It was put there for a reason. Hold it in front of you, and I’m going to try to just fly through this large section, and then tell you a story that puts concrete life to it.

I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth, (last weeks’ sermon)
and in Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the One whose very name means Savior, as the angel said to Joseph, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins,” and Anointed or Messiah or special One of God.

His ONLY Son.

Jesus was not one of a group of superheroes or godly or even godlike people. He was God’s only Son. And he was God’s only Son, the one with the unique, personal connection of close intimacy with God.

Our Lord.

Jesus is described as God’s Son, but our Lord, the Lord of the world. Even though the creed starts out I believe, by the fourth line we confess him as our Lord. I love that it is written this way. We confess Christ’s place in our lives together. In front of other people. In our community. We push and challenge and support one another to find out more of how to give all of life over to God, to follow him with everything we have.

I thought about places I’ve seen this lately. A home group was asked by a couple in the group to pray and talk about whether they should accept a job change and move away. That doesn’t happen in society, you know. You do what you want to do, do whatever seems best to you. Only in the faith community do you dare go to other people to say, “Help me be faithful to letting Jesus be Lord of my life. Help me listen.”

I heard it in a phone call from a friend, a man who is constantly tempted towards surfing the Internet for websites that are pornographic, calling in the people of faith around him to walk with him as he tries to walk with Jesus in this area of his life. Our faith is lived out, as one writer says “personally, but not privately.”

Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.

This is one of the hardest phrases for some people. The idea that Jesus’ mother was a virgin has been disputed linguistically and theologically for centuries. It’s presence here in the Creed, at the very least, is drawing attention to the uniqueness of Jesus. Even in his very entry to the world, he was unique and special, God’s only Son.

And these phrases together are bearing witness to a crucial Christian belief: that Jesus Christ was both fully God (conceived by the Holy Ghost), and fully human (born of a human mother). Great mystery. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, neither God merely masquerading as a human…nor as a really, really good man. When we proclaim our faith in Christ, it is in a God who knows exactly what it is to experience life and death on earth, a God who knows exactly what it is like to lose a loved one.

Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate.

The creed mainly drops this word “suffering” as hint to why Jesus came and suffered…for us . Later we will confess that we believe in the forgiveness of sin, provided for us in Christ.

Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate. It’s interesting that the relatively minor Roman administrator Pilate, who in fact lost his job not long after acquiescing to flogging and crucifying Jesus, is the only other human mentioned in the creed. But the fact that he is there allows Jesus Christ to be placed accurately as a real, historical person. Whatever else might be said or speculated, historians (inside the church and outside the church) understand and agree that Jesus did exist, in a time and place. Jesus had chronology and geography. He suffered under Pontius Pilate.

Jesus was crucified, dead and buried.

The real person, Jesus,…died. As Christianity began to explode in numbers, theories began to arise that he hadn’t really died, that he had only been asleep or in shock, that he had only appeared to die, that his body had been disposed of. To all of these, the historical record, the scripture and the creed say: ridiculous.

He descended into hell.

This is the most controversial segment of the creed, and it was the last component added to it. It might have the least scriptural backing, with a couple of rather murky verses in 1Peter 3 and 4. But it is very interesting.

The word used here for “hell,” (Hades, Sheol) as far as we can tell, has more to do with a place of the dead than the eternal punishment of the damned. In that case, “he descended into hell” might just be another way of saying…he was really and truly dead. But the verses in 1 Peter seem to give a glimpse of Jesus going and preaching to the spirits of those already dead. Could the love of God continue to offer opportunity even to those who never knew it in life? If that was the case, it provides some help with the problem often, “If Christ is the only way to heaven, what about those who died before? What about those who never heard?”

So at the least, it is the emphatic “Jesus is really dead.” And at the most it could be a glimpse, a hint, a question: What if the grace of God is bigger than we know?

The third day he rose again from the dead.

The resurrection, of course, is the point of departure for Christians. Easter means everything. Jesus’ teaching and ministry and life and death are vindicated, the kingdom of God really has broken into the world.

We are free to live as God desires because death will not end the story. As the novelist John Irving’s wonderful character Owen Meany says, “If you don't believe in Easter, don't kid yourself—don't call yourself a Christian." And because he ascended into heaven, he wasn’t raised only so he could die again (Lazarus, etc.) but he has defeated death. And offers the same to those who follow him.

And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick (the living, not the fast!) and the dead.

Jesus has taken his place once again, the pre-eminent Son making way for the ongoing ministry of the Holy Spirit on the earth, until the Second Coming and judgment of the living and the dead. But notice that the judgment will now be handled by a God who has been among us, knows us, knows life and death and sorrow and disappointment, a God of mercy and of compassion.

So here it is, all in one place, written down in eleven lines, confessed by the church around the world for century after century. Lived out sometimes better and sometimes worse, sometimes misunderstood. But at the very least, it would seem, the Apostles Creed will never ever allow us to approach the MTD faith, the vague and fuzzy gods of our pluralistic culture.

We confess Jesus, this Jesus Christ.

Now, I told you already that sometimes there is a week when all roads lead to the same place, how after thinking with you last Sunday about the vagueness of the god of our culture, I had the experience of Christian Smith putting a name (acronym) to this very thought. That was on Wednesday.

So let me tell you about my Friday, if I can. On Friday, I met Gary Kyle up in Mountlake Terrace. Gary enthusiastically told me I could tell you this story. Gary and his family are longtime Bethany folks. Gary’s mom, Audrey, is 86 years old, and most likely in the last weeks of her life. Her lungs and body are failing rapidly, but her mind is still sharp. Gary asked if I would come and visit Audrey. He worried that his mom had never met the Lord. I had met Audrey in passing once or twice over the years.

So we met at the house where Audrey is being cared for up in Mountake Terrace, and went in Audrey’s room and sat on either side of the bed. She has an oxygen tube and is pretty weak. We sat and chatted for a while about Audrey’s life and her family and her history. And then I said, “And now you’re sick…,” and she told me what was wrong and that the doctors were calling it terminal.

And she was scared about the future. She cried. Gary and I held her hands. And Gary said to her, “Mom, you know Carol and I met the Lord many years ago…and we just want to know that someday we’ll all be together again.” You see, Gary was confessing his faith that morning.

Audrey said she thought she’d always believed in God, but she’d never been part of a church. The way she’d grown up, she thought that you had to be a certain level of "good" to be in a church, and she’d never felt like she was good enough, never felt like she deserved it. [Good Lord, is that what we communicate to people? God forgive us.] We talked for awhile about how grace was the exact opposite. That right in the middle of us not deserving it and not being good, Christ acted on our behalf. At great cost.

I said, “Audrey, have you ever had the chance to actually invite God into your life, to intentionally say the words, pray the words and turn towards Jesus?”

She said, “No…I haven’t.”

I said, “Would you like to right now?”

And she sighed and said, “Yes!”

We talked for a few moments about Jesus, about what it meant that Jesus is Savior…and what it meant that Jesus is Lord…the very kinds of thing that we affirm each time we say this Apostles Creed!

And I said, “Audrey, why don’t we pray? Will you want to pray these things out loud?” She didn’t think she had the lung capacity to do it, so I said, “Well, Gary and I will pray what we’ve been talking about. And if you want to pray or nod, you just do that.”

And so we prayed. And somewhere along the road I came to a part where I said,

“And Lord, Audrey wants to invite you into her life as her Savior and Lord…”

and I paused for a second and Audrey leaned forward and said,

“Yes, I do.”

Audrey was confessing her faith that morning.

And we looked at the scripture in Isaiah 43 where God says,

“when you pass through deep water and hot fire, you won’t drown or be burned because I’ll be with you. You’re precious in my sight.”

And we read in John 14 where Jesus promises that he will be leaving, and going to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house. And I drove off, and the weak fall sun was shining through the colored leaves and I cried half the way home.

So why do I tell you this story? Because everything we affirm from the scriptures in the Apostles Creed bears weight. Audrey began to lean on not a man, but God’s Son, to understand that his suffering was for her, to know that God had held nothing back from her, and would be her Lord forever and ever. It’s not just words on a page.

And I also tell you this story because I wonder…in your life:

Who is there? Who is there that is perhaps ready to embrace Jesus Christ, and unbeknownst to you is just waiting for someone to give them the opportunity?

I thought about people in my own life, I thought about my own dad. We have no idea how much time we have to be with people, whether they are 13 or 75.

Will we putz around with some vague and fuzzy feel-good sort of theology…or confess Jesus Christ?

Will we hope that in the end it will all work out, or invite someone to know how God really feels about them, invite them to experience a taste right now of the life Jesus called “abundant?”

Will we proclaim Jesus with our lives as well as our mouths?

Let’s stand and proclaim our faith together, using the Apostles Creed.