Pastor John Wright

This morning, following the Prayers of the People, we confessed together the Nicene Creed before sharing in the Peace. This will not be the last time the we do so. A brief explanation for why we began this practice is in the extended entry. But more important, the Creed itself:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

On Confessing Together the Nicene Creed

When God gathers us to worship, what God is it that gathers us? That seems a curious question – after all, God is God, right? Yet when we gather, we gather in the name of the true and living God, not in the name of an idol.

God, as Creator of all that is from nothing, would be an utter mystery to us if God had not revealed God’s own Self to us. Given especially the distortion of our understanding that has come from sin, idolatry constantly tempts us – creating god in our image, a god that we can use. The Creed helps guide our way to true worship.
God in God’s mercy has revealed God’s own Life to us in Jesus Christ through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

The Nicene Creed is a summary of God’s own revelation. Written in 325 CE at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea, the Creed expands upon our baptismal confession of faith, the Apostle’s Creed. In language drawn from the language and imagery of the Scriptures, the Creed ensures that we avoid idolatry in our worship by understanding that in worshiping God the Father through Jesus Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are worshipping One God, a One-in-Three God who is Love.

The Creed was written to clarify confusion that had arisen from some prominent leaders denying that the Son was eternally God in the same way as the Father. The Creed affirms that in Jesus, God has fully made God’s own Self known to us by becoming human, without diminishing or losing God’s divinity. The Word in Jesus is not some lesser god that we worship, but fully God. The Nicene Creed summarizes the mystery of the Holy Trinity Who stands at the center of true worship.

The Creed therefore emphasizes the relationship between the Father and the Son. We should not hear the Creed, however, as making a statement about God’s gender – that God is male. Male and female are equally together in God, as humanity was made in God’s image, male and female. But God in God’s own Life is Beyond Male and Female – categories drawn from creation not to be attributed to God. The language of the Father and the Son is about relationship – the eternal begetting of the Divine Word from the Divine Source. Father and Son are the linguistic analogies often used in the Scriptures to describe this relationship of the Divine Persons that is God.

We recognize the limitations of human language to speak of God. Language, after all, takes place as part of creation, and God is not part of creation, but Creator. Yet in confessing the Creed together, we join the voices of the faithful who have come before us, and who will follow us, until that day when the Triune God will bring forth God’s kingdom, the kingdom of the eternal peace of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, One God, on earth as it is in heaven.