Credo Ergo Sum

Genesis 15:1-6 and Mark 11:20-25

 

            I believe Descartes had it wrong: “Cogito ergo sum,” he taught, “I think, therefore, I am.”  But it is not our thoughts that give us our personhood.  Apes can be taught rudimentary sign language; dolphins are said to be highly intelligent with their squeaks and clicks indicating a language beyond our ability to comprehend; even my old dog can learn new tricks; indeed, even mice being trained via reinforcement to work their way through a maze have been shown to use thought and learning throughout the process.

 

No, it is not our thoughts but our beliefs that make humankind different and unique on this planet. We alone worship; we alone discern that life and death are great mysteries beyond our logical and scientific capacity to comprehend fully; we alone can trust in One greater than ourselves in whose hands we may place the very essence of our living, our souls; we alone believe. From the very beginning of human history, back into the cave drawings of 34,000 years ago, and into all civilizations in every time and place, even our postmodern global village in which we currently live, it always has been the same: Credo ergo sum; I believe, therefore, I am.

 

            The earliest Christians understood the importance of one’s faith, of one’s believing.  The earliest known creed of Christians is this: “Jesus is Lord.”  We can learn much from the early Christians’ use of this creed, for to say, “Jesus is Lord,” was no mere intellectual assent.  Sometimes in our modern, English language use of the term “belief” we pervert its true meaning; we think belief about thinking, that to believe means to consider that something exists and we recognize its existence.  “I believe the sky is blue,” we might say.  “I believe in God, but I don’t believe in Santa,” we might say.  To believe, then, in this usage, is to assent to an intellectual notion that may or may not have any real significance; such belief is trivial, mere drivel to be rejected or accepted without much consequence.

 

            No, for the early Christians to say, “Jesus is Lord,” was to make a political statement that Jesus is Lord and not Caesar.  To say, “Jesus is Lord,” was to make a social statement rejecting the Roman ways of interacting with both government and neighbor, ways that were highly racist and stratified.  To say, “Jesus is Lord,” was to make a religious statement that the One God of Heaven and earth had come in human flesh to turn back the tide of sin and death by overcoming the powers and principalities of this world. To say, “Jesus is Lord,” was to take a stand. To say, “Jesus is Lord,” was – and is – to make a life commitment.

 

            As the earliest Christians expanded their communion throughout the Roman world, a set of core beliefs was articulated.  Those core beliefs are what we know as the Apostle’s Creed.  They are the beliefs shared by Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, by the most wild-eyed Pentecostal and the most dour Calvinist, by affluent Americans as well as the poorest of the poor in developing countries.  And the Apostle’s Creed begins: “I believe.” 

 

Let us be clear: the Creed is not to be played with as merely an intellectual toy for Christians, as if to give our assent to the Creed’s three brief paragraphs could make us a true disciple of the Lord Christ.  No, we must be very careful here.  The way the Apostle’s Creed begins is a warning that we who dare to submit to these words are making a political statement about who is really in charge of this world. We who dare submit to these words are making a social statement about how we will interact with both state and neighbor.  We who dare submit to these words are making a religious statement about the basis of our hope and our true longing. To say the Creed is to take a stand; say it only if you are willing to make a life commitment. 

 

Credo ergo sum.

 

*****

 

As we begin our exploration of the Apostle’s Creed and its first statement, “I believe,” we would do well to ask ourselves about the nature of Christian faith and how the Creed relates to our faith.  The confirmation class answer is this: Creeds tell us 1) what we believe and 2) what we are to do. Okay, that’s fine as far as it goes, but it still begs several questions: do we have to believe everything in the Creed to be a Christian?  What if we aren’t sure about one article, or two articles, or eight of the thirteen articles of the Creed, can we still call ourselves Christian?  Does it really make much difference in my life if I believe any or all of this stuff?

 

Let me respond to these questions with a couple of images for how I view Christian doctrine in general and especially the Apostle’s Creed. 

 

Ø      Learning the Creed is like learning how to craft a good story.  It is said that all stories share three things in common: a beginning, a middle and an end.  But all good stories also share this in common: they weave their narrative together in such a way as to open within us insight into the passions and possibilities of life, its triumphs and tribulations, its glory and its horror.  In a similar way, the Creed deepens our awareness of the possibilities for our life with God.

 

Ø      Or again: learning the Creed is like being tutored by a good piano teacher.  Anyone can sit down at a piano and bang out noise; my goodness, even a toddler can play chopsticks.  But a good piano teacher can teach one to turn the noise into notes and the notes into music. In a similar way, the Creed directs our faith attention toward that which makes music for the soul.

 

Ø      Or again: learning the Creed is like learning to dance.  Now anyone can get out on the dance floor at a wedding and shake some serious booty, as, indeed, some of you have witnessed me doing a time or two.  But much more elegant and wondrous is the couple who actually knows how to twist and twirl together in time to the tune; such a couple knows how to dance.  In a similar way, the Creed draws our attention toward the dance of faith.

 

Now notice, please, what is not a part of these images. None of these images has a spiritual equivalent to Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi” – “No soup for you!” – what we might call a “Faith Fascist” – “No salvation for you!”  This might be surprising because we have been trained to think otherwise by people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.  We have been trained to think that unless we say the “sinner’s prayer” and “ask Jesus into our heart” then we cannot be saved.  We have been trained to think this way by misunderstanding verses such as Romans 10:9 which says: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  We hear this and say to ourselves, “Think it, say it, I’m good to go!”  But remember what it meant to believe for the earliest Christians; remember that belief is an action as much as an assent, that belief is a way of life open to allowing the Word to form and transform our very essence.  As the saying goes: “What you live is what you believe.”

 

            I like the way William Sloane Coffin puts it:

 

I think we know far more of God’s heart than we do of God’s mind.  It’s God’s heart that Christ on the cross lays bare for the whole world to see…A relationship with God provides more spiritual certitude than intellectual certainty.  Faith is not believing without proof; it is trusting without reservation.  I think all belief systems that rest on absolute intellectual certainty – be that certainty the doctrine of papal infallibility or the doctrine of the verbal inerrancy of Scripture – all such belief systems…have no proper place in church.  They induce Christians to sharpen their minds by narrowing them.  They make Christians doctrinaire, dogmatic, mindlessly militant, “Jihadis for Jesus” but jihadis nonetheless.

 

            “Well, Brad,” you might be wondering, “if I don’t have to believe certain things, what am I supposed to do?  What then is the alternative?”  The alternative is to listen to the way the Creed crafts a narrative of God’s love for his creation that helps us discover the amazing possibilities of life with God.  The alternative is to allow the Creed to teach your heart to make beautiful music for the soul.  The alternative is to allow the Creed to teach you how to dance with God.  The alternative is to allow the Creed to train you in living by teaching you about believing. 

 

Credo ergo sum.

 

*****

 

            Do we have any NPR listeners in the congregation this morning?  NPR has been running a fascinating series called “This I Believe” in which they have solicited personal stories of believe from a variety of Americans from diverse backgrounds be it religious, ethnic, economic, vocational or any other kind of background.  Each segment of “This I Believe” is a first-person essay on what one believes, but what is meaningful to me is to hear how one’s beliefs, true beliefs, impact the way one lives.

 

Ø      John Fountain, a Chicago journalist, talked about how the formative experience of his childhood, seeing his father arrested for domestic violence, was transformed when he came to know his true Father, the God of Jesus Christ, the one he now calls Abba.

 

Ø      Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller magician fame, spoke eloquently about how his belief that there is no god drives him to seek goodness, beauty, truth and love in this world, for, according to his belief, this world is all we have.

 

Ø      Kathleen Dahlen, a freelance writer from Washington state, spoke poignantly about her experience of witnessing an autopsy in a college anatomy class and her revelation that the beauty of human life must consist of more than “only one’s biology” and that there was a “holy core that whispers to me of God.” 

 

Credo ergo sum.

 

*****

 

What would you say if you were asked to confess your core beliefs?  How would you articulate your own personal “This I Believe”?  Kevin Costner’s character in the movie Bull Durham answered the question this way:

 

I believe in the soul…the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curveball, high fives, good scotch and that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent garbage.  I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.  I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter.  I believe…that you should open your presents on Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve…and I believe in long, slow, soft kisses that last three days.

 

Inspired by Costner’s character, I took a stab at writing my own, brief credo:

 

I believe Love is at the core of the Universe and that without God’s grace nothing else matters.  I believe sometimes God’s judgment is necessary, but it is never merely punishment even when God’s judgment is to love us with a love so terrible that he never lets us go.  I believe not everything happens for a reason but God is there when it does.  I prefer the beliefs of conservatives but the faith of liberals. I believe my children are precious and gifted, imps sent from God to frustrate me into humility, angels sent to make glad my soul.  I believe God is more majestic and mysterious than we can ever imagine.  And as much as I love the novels of C.S. Lewis, I believe Madeline L’Engel is a more winsome author.  This I believe.

 

Credo ergo sum.

 

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