When we are preparing to do a baptism, sometimes somebody asks what it means – a perfectly reasonable question! And there are libraries full of writing about what baptism is and does and means. But the ultimate answer is that we baptize because Jesus told us to baptize.
There’s something about what John was doing, in his ministry of baptism for repentance and amendment of life, that was important enough that Jesus himself chose to undergo it. And then when Jesus sends his followers out to preach the Gospel and start churches, he tells them to baptize people, by water and the holy spirit, in the name of the Trinity.
So, early on, baptism becomes the Christian rite of initiation, the way somebody is welcomed into the assembly of the faithful. And likewise early on, baptism becomes connected with reciting the core teachings of the church, as a way to remind us all what the church believes, and to make sure that those being baptized are prepared to be part of a body that believes that stuff.
In the baptismal liturgy of the Episcopal Church, we say something called the Apostles Creed. It’s a little shorter than the creed we use most Sundays, but pretty similar. The creed we use most Sundays in Eucharistic liturgy is called the Nicene Creed – though technically it’s the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. That’s because the Creed took more or less the form we use today at a church council in Constantinople in 381, but those were only minor changes to the Creed agreed upon by church leaders gathered in the city of Nicaea – now in Turkey – in the year 325.
Our bishop, Matt Gunter, recently wrote a reflection on the Nicene Creed that begins with concise explanation of why the Council of Nicaea was held.
He writes, “[Jesus’] followers were convinced that his death and resurrection had reconfigured everything, bringing salvation from sin, death, and decay with the promise of a hitherto unimagined transformation of [humanity] and the world. Finding language to express that in ways that enabled people to experience that salvation and transformation was important. Was Jesus some sort of divine being sent by God at the mysterious heart of all reality? Was he something more? They had the scriptures, they had the church’s language of prayer and worship, and they had the baptismal formulae that were already the seeds of a creed… With all of that, theologians of the church struggled for decades – centuries – to make sense of and find a satisfactory way to articulate who [Jesus] was and why he mattered. Some ways of articulating that were deemed unsatisfactory, misguided, or even dangerous. This struggle and the debates it provoked became more public and more intense once Christianity was declared legal… [in the year] 313. Things came to a head with a priest in the city of Alexandria named Arius, who taught that, while Jesus was in some sense divine, he was still a… creature of God, [and that God] would surely not deign to be identified with the messy, chaotic material world by taking on mortal flesh. But his bishop, Alexander, preached otherwise – that Jesus was indeed the [earthly] incarnation of… God… This set up an intense controversy. The Council of Nicaea was called by the Roman Emperor Constantine to address disputes about how to understand the person of Jesus and, thus, God, creation, humanity, and salvation.”
Astute listeners may be thinking: Wow, 325! The Creed just had its 1700th birthday last year! How did you celebrate?…
I celebrated by listening to a talk on the Creed by Kathryn Tanner, one of the greatest theologians of our church, back in November. I really liked what she had to say; it made the Creed more interesting and more alive, for me. And I thought, I should turn this into a sermon sometime! And – because the Creed is kind of front and center in the baptismal liturgy – today is your lucky day.
There’s some tiny little text above the Creed in our Epiphany booklets – because I’ve long felt that the Creed needed some explaining. Among other things, it says, “Many faithful people wonder about, or question, parts of the Creed – or all of it! If you have questions, know you’re in good company, and let’s talk.” I don’t get a lot of those questions, to be honest, but here are some questions I think people might have about the Creed.
Question one might be: Am I supposed to know what all of this means? Because I don’t. Begotten, not made? Light from light? Of one being with the Father? There are a lot of terms and phrases in the Creed that I’ve always vaguely assumed had some specific technical or theological meaning. Like “true god from from true god” and “eternally begotten”. I figured they meant something specific and I just didn’t know what.
Tanner says: Nope. This is just what happens when you create an important theological document by committee. The Council of Nicaea gathered church leaders from across the Christian world to try to come to consensus about core issues of diversity and dispute – especially, though not only, questions about the divinity of Jesus. The resulting statement is called a Creed because of the Latin word credere, meaning, to believe; it’s a statement of the Church’s consensus beliefs on these big issues.
I’m sure many of us have had the experience of trying to craft a document – a statement, a report, a resolution – with a group of people with different views. It can be a real pain, right? Often the result doesn’t end up saying exactly what you wanted it to say, or as much as you wanted it to say, because other people had other opinions and priorities. What you end up with says less than everybody hoped it would say, in order to say something that everybody is willing to say.
That’s what the Nicene Creed is. Tanner said: The Creed is vague and underspecified so that a group of people with diverse and emphatic theological views could all come to the table and sign off on it. If it got any more specific, then people would have started storming out of the room. The Creed’s language is poetic and open-ended in order to allow a variety of understandings to come together under its umbrella. It’s the most they could say, together.
The Creed is vague and metaphorical on purpose. It’s not that we’re missing something. And Tanner says that open-endedness is good, because it spurs further theological thinking and debate, in the centuries and millennia that follow. We keep wondering what it all means, what can we work out and what’s simply beyond human comprehension.
Christians are not united by very specific theological positions, because those early, defining ecumenical Councils didn’t arrive at very specific theological positions. If they had tried to do that, they would have failed. Rather, says Tanner, Christians are united through processes of wondering and arguing. And that’s a good thing. You could almost say that some freedom of thought and conscience and practice is one of the core values at the heart of historic Christianity.
Question two: Is this a checklist of things I’m supposed to believe?
The Creed was not written to be a test of right belief for ordinary church members. It was written to get a bunch of bishops vaguely on the same page in the fourth century. It was also not created to be recited in worship every Sunday. Marion Hatchett, one of the core figures behind our current Book of Common Prayer, writes that in the early centuries, the Eucharistic Prayer functioned as a creed – the statement of faith shared every time the church gathered, to which people responded with a great AMEN.
The Nicene or Apostle’s Creed have been used in baptismal liturgies and on feast days for a long time, but saying a creed every week seems have developed over the past few centuries. I found a statement from the Liturgical Commission of our sister church, the Church of England, arguing that using the Creed regularly in worship helps hand down the faith to subsequent generations, encourage theological exploration, and affirm unity with churches around the world. Sure. The thing is: I’m pretty sure there are more effective ways to do all of those things. For most of us, most of the time, the Creed is just something we march through on our way to the next more interesting part.
In her talk, Tanner described the Creed as being like the Pledge of Allegiance. When we say it together in church, there isn’t time or space – any more than there is at the beginning of a school day – to unpack what it means or ask questions. Instead, it functions as a declaration of shared allegiance: we’re committing to something together – something that this set of ancient words gestures towards.
Ultimately: Why do we say the Creed together in our Eucharistic services? Basically, because the rubrics – the instructions in the Book of Common Prayer – say that we have to.
And maybe there’s something significant lurking there. Because the weekly recitation reminds us what kind of church this is. We are part of a church rooted in the teachings and practices of the early centuries of Christianity – which is what the Creed means when it says “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church”; that’s catholic with a small c, meaning, universal. As a church, we do the things that all churches did for the first millennium of Christianity. We have deep roots, even as we make many things new. And that rootedness is important, as ballast and belonging.
Question three – or really more of a comment: The Creed doesn’t say the things that are important to me about church/God/faith.
Tanner points out that the ecumenical councils were gathered around matters of division and dispute. The Creeds address and… somewhat settle… those core issues. But there were many, many things over which early Christianity was not divided. In his essay on the Creed, Bishop Matt lists some examples of matters on which the early church was pretty united: “The early church already took the teaching and example of Jesus seriously. They were contained in the scriptures, which were already read in worship every week. The church put love and compassion at the heart of its life and teaching. It organized social services for the poor, hungry, and needy. It founded hospitals. Its teaching reflected the example of Jesus in critiquing wealth, and violence. It advocated for hospitality to the stranger and foreigner. The dignity of traditionally marginalized groups like women, children, and the poor [and I would add, sexual & gender minorities] was honored in a way unprecedented in the ancient world… The church surely did not practice all of this perfectly, always, and everywhere. But none of the above was particularly controversial.”
I wish we had a Creed, a statement of faith, that reminded us of all that stuff week by week, The baptismal covenant, created for the most recent Book of Common Prayer, that we’ll say together in a few moments does some of this work, but I think there’s more we could say about the essentials of the Christian way, as our earliest faith-ancestors knew it and as we continue to strive to practice it today.
Like: that there’s a Power greater than ourselves, that we call God, that works for good in the world, and that knows and loves us.
That God came among us as Jesus, fully human and fully divine, and that something about his living and dying and rising among us extends salvation, rescue, healing, restoration, transformation, to us and the world.
That Christians should try to live good lives. That much in our lives is unmanageable; that individually and together we get ourselves into messes that we need the help of a Higher Power to get out of. And that when we fall short of our intentions, we should repent, seek forgiveness from God and make amends with those we have harmed, and try to become people who will cause less harm in the future.
That God doesn’t have a favorite kind of people, and neither should Christians. That we are obligated by our faith to welcome and honor and respond in love to everyone, regardless of gender, race, wealth or poverty, national origin or immigration status, health, illness or disability, criminal record, and so on.
That God loves Creation and so should we.
That we are called to help restore what is broken in the human and natural world, in the diverse ways given to each of us. To grapple with the the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God, in the words of the baptismal liturgy.
That living like this is hard, and so it’s best for us to do it together, provoking one another to love and good deeds, in that line from the letter to the Hebrews that I love so much. Supporting one another; sharing resources with each other, and pooling our resources to do good for others.
That being beloved by God, and living rightly in God’s ways, doesn’t mean we’ll always be wealthy or happy or safe. That there are things that are more important that death, things worth dying for. That we’re called to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, and that there’s no greater love than laying down life for a friend.
That Love is as strong as death, and stronger.
That more can be mended than we know, and that one day, God will wipe away all tears.
Although churches always live out these convictions imperfectly, that’s a project to which I’m wiling to pledge my allegiance.
That’s an endeavor into which I’m glad to welcome Asher and Ezra today.
We’ll continue with the baptismal liturgy.
Some sources:
https://www.diowis.org/bishop-teachings/nicenecreed1700anniversary