Sermons on the Christian Ecumenical Creed of 381 AD “We (I) believe in one God, the Father, the almighty …” Psalm 93 and 23; Matth 6:25-33

The patient word “God”

The Word “God” is a patient word. “O God” – said the house wife when she burned the dinner. “God be with you” – we say in farewelling friends. “God with us” – the soldier read on his buckle. “God damn it” is not only spoken in the gutter, but also in the Executive Suite. “God told me so” has provided the religious justification for many a questionable deed. Indeed, the word “God” is a part of our everyday language.

But what does it stand for? Is God a slave owner – since slavery was justified with the word ãGodä? Is God a racist – since racism and apartheid has been justified with the word ãGodä? Is God a warlord – since many a war was justified with reference to Godâs will and Godâs plan. Is God a Christian – since one leading church man pronounced that God can not or does not hear the prayer of a Jew?

Does the word “God” stand for a definite and understandable reality, or can anyone make ãGodä in his or her image?

“We believe in one God, the Father, the almighty …” is the resounding opening of the Ecumenical Creed. After affirming that the creed is rooted in the experience of faith in Christ – we spoke of that last Sunday – it now gives content to the word “God”. It wants to lift the word “God” out of the ambiguity of our life; away from our tendency to misuse it, or to use it carelessly and thoughtlessly. It wants to speak of God not on our, but on God’s terms. It wants to find words that are adequate to spell the reality “God” into our life.

ãoneä

The ancient world was full of gods. The apostle Paul says in his letter to Corinth, trying to interpret the religious scene, says: ã… even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth – as in fact there are many gods and many lords.ä But then he insists: ã… for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.ä (1 Cor 8:4-6).

Today the tendency is either to believe in one God or in no God. But listen to how Martin Luther, the great reformer of the 16th century, understands the meaning of the word ãGodä: ãWhere your heart is, there is your Godä (Larger Catechism). This asks us where and what the motor for our life is. What is the central determining reality of our life? Are there things for which we are willing to suffer and die? What moves us deep within? Indeed, there are many ãgodsä that call for our allegiance. There are many things to which we can attach our hearts: the nation, the land, my race, my family. What determines us at the depth and at the center of our existence? Who is master in our conscience.

Could we think of the conscience – that is what the Bible means by ãheartä – as a large house in which we live our life. The house has many rooms: there is a kitchen and a dining room and a wine cellar for festive dinner parties; there is a ball room to dance and celebrate; there is a billiard room and a swimming pool for relaxation; there is a library for study, thought and conversation; there is a garden for the enjoyment of nature. So there are many rooms and many diversions. Decisive is, however, the ethos and the attitude of the owner of the house! Are the decorations light or dark. Is there inviting beauty or is there coldness. Is the atmosphere inviting or inhibiting. The ethos of the house with all its variety depends on the nature of the owner.

The Bible emphasises that God is ãoneä, because in the midst of the great varieties of life, we must know who determines the ethos in our conscience. When all else around us is becoming uncertain and fragile, is God really in charge?

When Israel shaped its national identity, their focus was on one God:

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me (Exod 20:2-5).

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. (Deut 6:4f.)

When Israel found itself in exile and was tempted to change masters, they were reminded of their identity:

There is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Saviour; there is no one besides me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. (Isaiah 45:21f.)

In the midst of the great variety of life we can only maintain our identity and our freedom if we know where we stand. Our conscience can only have one God. Then all the rest of life looses its threat and becomes interesting to us.

If the one God is creator of heaven and earth then we see ourselves as part of life and we begin to share Godâs concern for the protection of what God has created.

ãFatherä

This one God is a good God. God is not a slave owner. God is not a racists. God is not a warlord. God is a good God. The biblical message is summarised in one little sentence: ãGod is loveä (1 John 4). That is the reason why the trinity is so important for us. We cannot separate the word ãGodä from the story of Jesus and the power of the Spirit. It is Jesus who gives content to the word ãGodä. Because he loved sinners and healed the sick and proclaimed the year of liberation for the poor and oppressed, therefore we can believe in a good God, who comes to us in the power of the Spirit.

That is what the word ãfatherä wants to express! There can be other words, of course which point in the same direction: In the prophet Isaiah we read: “… thus says the Lord: …. As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you;” (Isa 66:13). And Psalm 23 reminded us this morning of the beautiful picture in which God is described as the shepherd. But in the ancient world it was important to use the word ãfatherä and then give to it a Christian content. ãFatherä means ãthe father of Jesusä. What ãfatherhoodä with relation to God means comes to expression in the story of Jesus.

Problems with the word ãfatherä. We all know, of course, that many people have problems today with calling God ãfatherä. There are personal problems of women who have been sexually abused by their human father – and now they are supposed to call God, the central determining reality of their life, ãfatherä. There are many whose authoritarian father is hovering like a dark shadow over their life and keeps their soul in chains. Can ãfatherä become a liberating word for them? And what about those who have never seen their father, or experienced the protection and care of a father? Can these people call God – the centre of their life, the one to whom they entrust their ãheartä – ãfatherä? Is not their soul, their fabric of life so coloured by their human experience of “father” that “God” would be cast into the form of the human father, and consequently God ends up being a dark shadow, a punitive deity, and an unpleasant reality.

But there are not only personal experiences related to the word ãfatherä. There is a whole social and political arena in which dictators, oppressors and exploiters have been called “father”. “Papa Doc” he was called in Haiti; and there are many other so-called “fathers of the nation”. Is not “God” then misunderstood as the authoritarian ruler who quenches human freedom and creativity, and presses the believers into the straight bed of legalism and dogmatism? And even worse: does not the use of the word “father” for God validate oppression and exploitation in our world?

Retrieving the word ãfatherä. There is no way around it. When we want to speak of God we must try to speak of God on Godâs terms. We must recognise that the great human attempt to create our own gods, or to make ourselves God, has been a massive failure.

Speaking of God on Godâs terms means recognising and acknowledging that God has made known to us what God is like in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus:

No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. (John 1:18)

What does “father” mean? So, if it is not our experience of ãfathersä in this world, but if it is Jesus, who lived ãclose to the fatherâs heartä, who makes known to us what it means to call God ãfatherä what can we learn from that? We can learn from it – and we must let it sink in! – that God is a good God.

That means, first of all, that God is a personal God. God is not the God of the philosophers, living somewhere in splendid isolation, a being greater than which cannot be thought. No, God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God leads his people from slavery, through a stony wilderness, into to a promised land.

Calling God “father” means, secondly, that God cares for us. He saves us when sin destroys us. He guides us when we get lost in the turmoils of life. He sustains us when life becomes a heavy burden. How often have I heard the sigh from the depth: ãwithout God I would not have made it!ä There are many people who became living testimonies to the confession: ãAs a father has compassion for his children, so the LORD has compassion for those who fear himä (Ps 103:13).

Thirdly, God is a God to whom we can pray. We can thank God in times of joy and we can complain to God when frustration overtakes us. Jesus prayed to God and invites us all to join him as we do every Sunday in our worship service: “Our Father …ä The early Christians, being touched by the Spirit of God, and being assured that they are “children of God”, raised their hearts and voices to shout: “Abba, Father …” (Rom 8:15f.; Gal 4:6).

Calling God “father” leads you, fourthly, to the discovery that all human beings are your brothers and sisters! The word “father” must therefore not be used to validate structures of oppression and exploitation. Quite the opposite. By calling God “father” we show our solidarity with all who struggle for dignity and liberation. Each society must ask where the ãfatherhoodä of God is at stake. In the Germany under Hitler it was the Jews and the communists and the gipsies and the disabled. In America of the 50âs it was the communists. In South Africa it was the black people. In Bangladesh it is the Christians. In China and India it is the girl children. We must ask in our society, in our hearts, whom we marginalise, who we are sceptical about, because by questioning the brotherhood and the sisterhood of all people, we are questioning the ãfatherhoodä of God. Calling God “father” therefore contains some social explosive that makes us sensitive for the needs of others and engage ourselves for truth and justice.

ãalmightyä

Why “almighty” alongside “father”? Is this not another of those words that raises our suspicion? Almighty!? When we think of might, don’t we think of power, and then have in mind an army, or a strong and authoritarian father, or a multi-national co-operation? Would “all- mighty” not suggest God to be the great warrior, the powerful king, the authoritarian monarch, the moral judge? Indeed, that God has been thought and experienced in these terms no one can deny.

Again we face the problem that we have mentioned before: will we understand “might” and “almighty” in terms of our human, historical and worldly ideas. Then indeed it seems to be the case that only the fit can survive and only the strong can be free. Then words like “power”, “nuclear deterrence”, “flexible response”, “star wars” express what we believe and whom we trust. Or will we understand “might” and “almighty” on the basis of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. He was certainly no sentimental weakling or romantic dreamer. And yet: he fleshed out a new reality, the possibility of a new vision, the content for a new dream.

There is Pilate the representative of the greatest political power in the world of Jesus: I have power! power to release you, and power to crucify you, he says to Jesus in the Johannine passion story (John 19:10)! And there is Jesus, the silent stranger from Galilee. The power of weakness confronting the weakness of power. Yes, Jesus was nailed to the cross – but no one can read the story of Pilate and Jesus without knowing in his or her heart where the power of God was manifest.

May I tell you the story of Rosa Parks? Mrs. Rosa Parks was the name of a Negro woman in Montgomery, Alabama. It was December 2, 1955. She had worked all day in the tailor shop. Then she had to do some shopping; and now she was on the way home. Tired. She entered the bus and sat down. When all seats in the white section were taken, and a white man entered, the bus driver, with all the power and authority of the law and the dominant culture behind him, commanded Mrs. Parks to stand up, so that the white man could sit down. She said: “No!” What a powerful “no” from a black woman who had no power – no power at all. She wanted no trouble. She was no revolutionary. But she was tired. All her life she had made life comfortable for white people, and now they would not even let her sit in a bus. “No”. What a “NO”! It led to a bus boycott and gave a decisive impulse to the black struggle for equality.

Ten years later 500 African Americans wanted to march from Selma to Montgomery, the capital city of Alabama, to make a petition to the then Governor Wallace, claiming the rights of American Citizens. At the bridge to Highway 80, Wallace’s storm troopers met them with hard hats, clubs, gas masks and dogs. When the Negroes refused to turn back, the troopers charged into them, letting the dogs bite, throwing tear gas, and beating people down. They even entered the Baptist church, hurling a Negro boy through a stained glass window which pictured Jesus as the good shepherd. Power against weakness. But what a powerful and effective weakness!

Three weeks later Martin Luther King, Jr. led a march from Selma to Montgomery without major interference. They had overcome!

ãThe father, the almightyä. So when we confess God as ãfatherä and as ãalmightyä we want to say that at the center of life there is the power of love. ãGod is loveä – that is what the word ãfatherä points to. This, Godâs love, will outlast selfishness and hatred and torture and war, that is what we confess when we call God ãalmightyä.

“Father” like ãloveä can be seen in sentimental and romantic terms. The gracious senile old patriarch who smiles to everything that we do. God is not like that. It does not please God that we have not yet learned to melt swords into plough shares. It does not please God that we are better in building walls between people than tearing them down. It does not please God when people destroy their lives with drugs, and when we with self righteous indignation push the fixer to the margin of life. ãfaith, hope, and loveä are abiding realities, but ãthe greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13:13)

Invitation

There is only ãoneä God and this God is “the father, the almighty”. You can know this in your own life as you open yourself to God, if you tune into the relationship which he has established with us. Then this confession will leave the creed that was shaped long ago and will come into our heart and heal us, and comfort us, and sustain. Then indeed God will have reached his aim: the father, the almighty, will become our Father. He will not misuse his power by encroaching into our life against our will, because Godâs power is the power of love. But if in faith we raise our hearts to him, then he who can do everything, cannot close his heart to us.

And if at the heart of reality there is love; if we really believe that, then we can become bearers of that love. In a world of Pilate we can become followers of Jesus. In a world of racism we can become brothers and sisters of Rosa Parks.

Indeed: “God” is a good word; we can make room for God in our conscience; God will not misuse the space that we give to him, but he will grant us surprises of joy and meaning.

Thorvald Lorenzen: Canberra