Gathering Growing Going
We must keep remembering that The Apostles’ Creed speaks to the world we live in. And the world we live in is marked, defined, by restlessness. This is the absence of rest – and the dominance of searching for rest – in work, in leisure, in experience, in self-discovery. It is against this backdrop that we must understand the next part of The Apostles’ Creed – ‘I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary…’. The Incarnation – the birth of Jesus as THE God-man – is the only answer for the restlessness of our world. And this is because our restless lives are the expression of sin, and its judgement… and only someone who is both fully God and fully man can deal with our sin.
Each week, we publicly state what we believe, as we gather as God’s mob. Each week, we publicly state that we believe certain truths about God – about His nature, about His actions, about His community, about His interactions with this world. In fact, as an Anglican Church, we are part of a denomination that states we hold to three ‘creeds’, three summary statements about what we believe about God – the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicaean Creed and the Athanasian Creed. Each creed emerged in response to certain questions – about the nature of God, about the nature of the Trinity. But the earliest was the Apostles’ Creed, a summary of the truth of the apostles, originally created for baptisms. In fact, to have such a creed – a summary – is following in the footsteps of God’s word – just look at Deuteronomy 6:4, or Romans 10:8-9, or Philippians 2:5-11.
2024 is finishing, 2025 is looming – how will we finish… how will we start… how will we go on? Psalm 92 is the only psalm designated ‘for the Sabbath’ in the whole Psalter: it is a good way to finish one week, and to start the next, gathered as God’s mob. As the week’s flow into each other, this one truth remains every day: ‘You, LORD are exalted forever’ (vs.8). It lies at the heart of this psalm – and it helps us understand where we are plated so we know what we will proclaim and practice. God’s mob are planted in His presence, in His eternal presence. This gives them a certain perspective on life, on the temporal things that surround. This gives them a unique difference to so much they see, which looks flourishing but is destined to destruction. This gives them a grasp of how they came to be here – by God’s grace. This, then, shapes how they proclaim and practice life, daily, weekly, yearly: ‘The LORD is magnificent – just look at Him, and His constant faithful love’. Jesus grasped this – remember how He prayed even as He approached His death? God’s mob – us! – can finish one year, and face the next, knowing where we are planted, so that we know what to proclaim and practice: ‘Look at how magnificent the LORD is!’
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