clean my hands of what i need to clean my hands of
and all for free by mayoral decree
Today we begin our series through the Creed. And with the opening words of the Creed, the Church places a premium on belief of all things. “I believe,” goes the opening salvo.
And I chose that word, salvo, intentionally. A salvo, as you may know, is a military term. It’s a tactic. A way to coordinate the artillery fire to maximize impact and cut off opportunities for return fire. Because the truth is, we have an aversion to the Creed. A deep-seated resistance to it! One that goes all the way back to Eden.
What was it the serpent dangled before Eve and Adam that got them in trouble at the Garden? And I’m not talking about the fruit. I’m talking about what the fruit represented. What did the serpent tell Eve and Adam they’d gain by eating the fruit?
…That’s right! The serpent said they would be like God.
The biggest problem we have with the Creed, you see, isn’t wrapping our minds around it. It’s not even that tired, old debate about proving God’s existence. No, what’s really hard for us about the Creed is just God. Full stop.
Specifically a God you can believe in. A God you can trust. The Creed isn’t talking about God as a theory or first principle. No, the Creed is talking about God as a God you can talk to, NOT about. The kind of belief the Creed puts forward isn’t belief in God as a conclusion you come to. It’s a belief that’s the starting point to life!
And that’s the rub. Isn’t it? In the trenches of life, we tend to think, and are often explicitly told, that it’s up to us. That we have to be God for ourselves. The logic goes that if we don’t look out for number one, no one else will. “God helps those who help themselves," says the old adage. You won’t find that in the Holy Writ, by the way. Benjamin Franklin didn’t come up with that turn of phrase, but he did help popularize it.
Now, like all good sayings, there is a kernel of truth to it. However, the trouble starts when we take that kernel of truth for the whole thing! When we focus on the one bit of wisdom to the exclusion of the rest.
On this side of heaven, we all do have God-given vocations. And God uses these vocations to help keep the world running. The thing, though, is that we don’t run the world. God does! And when we forget that, all sorts of bedlam is unleashed!
When we think it’s all up to us, our vocations flatten out. Instead of our work being a duty and delight, our careers become mere duty. And not God-given duty, either. But just duty. *And yes, smirks from the double entendre are welcome.
When we think it all hangs on our shoulders, work ceases to be part of how we serve God and our neighbor and even find meaning in life. Instead, our work becomes solely the way we eke out an existence for ourselves. Or, if it’s not so self-focused, it becomes the work the world itself needs US to do on its behalf. Either way, though, the outcome is the same. Our God-given vocations become nothing more than drudgery. And impossible drudgery at that.
The Creed, though, helps put everything back in place! And it does so with one little word; “Credo!” Or “I believe” in English. The God the Creed presents is the biblical God. In other words, the God you can believe in. The God you can trust. The God you can talk to!
And when you have this God, all of creation itself comes back to you! Only, not as an obligation to manage, but as a gift to receive! God intends to give you more than was lost in the fall! God intends to give you the delight of your vocation back to you and the rest of your life right along with it! Existence itself is another part of the bounty your Creator has set before you from the foundation of the earth!
That’s what’s behind all those other specifications of the First Article of the Creed, by the way! God isn’t just God. No, God is the Creator. In other words, every breath and heartbeat of yours does not run by their own steam! No, they pump and pulse by the very will of God! Creation is not a one-and-done kind of thing! Creation is God’s ongoing miracle! God, the Creator, is right now sustaining you out of the vast nothingness that lurks around the edges of creation! You have your being at this very moment because God is loving you into existence right now! Look around! This is the miracle of creation happening before your very eyes!
What’s more, this God isn’t any ol’ creator! No, this God who creates is the Father Almighty! Now, we say “Father” not because God is male or because being a male is particularly godly. No, we call this God “Father” because that’s who this God is to Jesus. And that’s the God Jesus gives to you!
What matters, you see, isn’t the gender but the relationship that proves it! On account of Christ, you have the relationship of intimacy and trust Jesus himself had with God! You can call the God who stretched forth the sky and set the stars in their courses father, papa, abba, just as Jesus did! You can do this because, on account of Jesus, that’s who God is to YOU!
God the Creator is simply a matter of course. And even if you could prove this God’s existence, it would do you no good. God the Creator is just that, creator. Perhaps you’d owe your existence to this God, but you could never love this God. So, in Jesus Christ, God the Creator gets so close God’s skin smokes, as Luther said!
And this God doesn’t get close just because! No, this God gets close to be handed over to you for you! God gives God’s very self over to you so you can have this God! So you can know this God! So you can love this God. Love this God because this God first loved you! Love this God because this God called you into existence out of nothing! Love this God because this God gives you creation and all its fruits! (And the rest of God’s creation, too.)
With all this, suddenly, creation becomes not one more fact of existence. No, creation becomes another marker of God’s incredible love! The love by which we can confess God. Trust God. Believe God. Know God. Or, as Luther puts it, “For all this, we owe it to God to thank and praise, serve and obey him!” Which is to say, in a manner of speaking, love God. As if, with a God like this, you could do anything else.
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