APOSTLES CREED DEVOTIONAL 1
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” We begin our journey through the Baptismal Covenant with these words shared by millions of Christians every day as we gather for prayer. It’s a simple, straightforward statement, and not a bad place for a Christian to start a summary of their faith. I believe in God. Sure. Of course. The question of belief itself, though, is less straightforward. More and more people are finding reasons not to believe in God, and every day it seems there are more and more reasons to question just what we think God is up to. I often encounter people who want to discuss the intellectual basis for belief. What is the evidence for a supernatural entity who is pulling the strings of human affairs? In the face of the evil we see thriving all around us, why should such a being be considered good? What do spirituality and science have to do with each other?
Those are all worthy questions, but I’m not sure that they are the kind that the Apostles’ Creed is trying to answer. In our own day, when belief has been popularly reduced to what we find reasonable based on evidence and emotions, the “I believe” statements of the Creed might be better rendered as “I trust.” As Christians, what do we fundamentally trust in when deciding how to order our lives? How have the generations of faithful before us answered that question?
I trust in God, the Father Almighty;
I trust in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord;
I trust in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, and the communion of saints.
Rather than framing the Creed as a statement of intellectual proposals, how does it sound as a statement of what we are building our lives around? We will spend the next several weeks reflecting on the Episcopal Church’s core summary of what Christian living means, and we begin with a statement of trust. The promises that follow provide a pattern of how we, with God’s help, let that trust play out in concrete ways. Seeing the Creed this way emphasizes the dynamic, relational nature of Christian faith. Now and then we will need to check in and see how we are letting that trust shape our lives, and where that trust needs to be healed. In her memoir Still, Lauren Winner relates the story of a friend who was approaching the end of her confirmation class and feeling unsure about publicly affirming her belief in the words of the Creed. Her father assured her, "What you promise when you are confirmed… is not that you will believe this forever. What you promise when you are confirmed is that that is the story you will wrestle with forever.”* Let this Lenten season be one of a holy wrestling, a close encounter with the Creator of heaven and earth who desires to earn your trust.
*Still: Notes on a Mid-faith Crisis, Lauren Winner, 172.
