Gathering for May 28

There was a flood...no, a hurricane...no, a swarm of locusts, or was it just another class that needed a teacher? OK, it was the latter, so please accept my apologies for combining our class with the Faith & Friendship class on such short notice (short notice meaning the last-minute-sticky-note on the door of our class). To spark some discussion this week visit National Public Radio's "Speaking of Faith" website for a conversation on creeds called Need for Creeds. Download it as a podcast! Listen to it online! It talks about why we have creeds. Last week I mentioned the Nicene Creed, of recent Da Vinci Code fame, and "Need for Creeds" talks about this creed (as well as offering some notes on the Apostles' Creed). One of the interesting points that comes out of the discussion (at least for me) is the fact that there are so few creeds in Judaism (the Shema, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God") and Islam (There is no deity worthy of worship other than God [Allah] and Muhammad is the messenger of God [Allah]."), but that there are so many in Christianity. Why is this? Furthermore, the majority of lines in most of our creeds are devoted to detailing the identity of Jesus. Why is this? Oh yeah, here is a link to this week's reading. The image posted with this week's entry is an illuminated version of the Nicene Creed (this one is in Latin, but you can read it in English any Sunday in our Hymnal...it is #880)

Gathering on May 21

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. "Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. "I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up." The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves." So punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death. (This story is from Lynne Truss' book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.)

The wrong turn of a phrase may seem like nothing to get upset over. Yet, with theology it can be a matter of life or death. Especially, when we are talking about our understanding of Jesus. The Nicene Creed (THE Early Church's expression of belief) states this about Jesus, "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 man." Two things jump out. One, Jesus is fully God. Two, Jesus is fully human. How can this be? I don't know. However, remember that theology is our embracing a mystery! Why all this concern that we get it straight in our heads that Jesus was fully human and fully God? To think otherwise would be a heresy, and most of the Church's heresies are connected to a misunderstanding of Christ's nature.

If Jesus is not begotten meaning he was made or created then there was a time when Jesus was not. He cannot be God because God is without beginning or ending. If he is not God then he cannot save us! Even if we lived without sin, that would be us only doing our duty to God. What could we do to repay the offense of sinning in the first place? Only God could go beyond the call of duty. However, God didn't owe the debt, humanity did...so humanity had to repay it! Ah-ha, what we need is a God-Man! Jesus. If he was not human he could not save us! (The Church didn't just invent this God-Man notion, it is in the Scriptures.) For an even more detailed explanation, click here.