Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth
Trinity Sunday
June 3, 2007
I BELIEVE
Scripture: Mark
9:14-29
INTRODUCTION
Sunday after Sunday, as we
gather to worship God in this sacred place, toward the end of the service we
stand to confess our faith, and this is what we say:
I
believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus
Christ His only Son our Lord:
Who was
conceived by the Holy Ghost,
Suffered
under Pontius Pilate,
Was
crucified, dead and buried.
He
descended into hell.
The
third day He rose again from the dead;
He
ascended into heaven,
And
sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from then He shall come
to judge the quick and the dead.
I
believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of the
saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life
everlasting. Amen.
As most of you know, those
words from The Apostles’ Creed did not just appear the year Jesus was
crucified, resurrected from the grave and ascended into heaven. The Creed actually began with the affirmation
of faith from those first disciples who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and
decided to follow Him.
Simon Peter said at Caesarea
Philippi, You are the Christ, the Son of
the living God! (Mark 8:29, Matthew 16:16).
And one by one, as those disciples became apostles (that is, witnesses
to the resurrection), they proclaimed the name of Jesus as Lord and Savior of
their lives.
When the Holy Spirit came
upon those early believers at Pentecost, the church began to grow and to move
out across the Mediterranean world. As
more and more people, both Jews and Gentiles, came into the faith, they
recognized the need to write down in words what they knew in their hearts was
true. Those statements were called
“creeds,” from the Latin word “credo” which means “I believe.”
By the second century, local
congregations had developed three questions which were essential for baptism:
1.
Do you believe in
God the Father?
2.
And in His Son Jesus
Christ?
3.
And in the Holy
Spirit?
Those believers also had to
deal with heresies which challenged the divinity and humanity of Jesus. And although it was impossible to contain all
of the mystery of the Divine Trinity in any language, Christian leaders were
called together from different parts of the world to debate theological issues
and create written forms of their faith tradition.
Beginning with the Council of
Nicea in 325 A.D. which developed the Nicean Creed, most familiar to the
Eastern Orthodox Church, six major conferences were held over the course of the
next 300 years.
Gradually, word by word,
phrase by phrase, the text we know today as The Apostles’ Creed took
shape. By A.D. 390, a letter written to
I
Now that’s the abbreviated
history, the Cliff Notes version of how The Apostles’ Creed came into
being. But on this Trinity Sunday, the
real question is: “What does it mean for us to say I Believe”?
For many Christians, it means
giving assent to a set of Biblical and theological beliefs which we hold to be
true. In the Protestant Tradition, going
back to the Reformation, our list includes:
The
Sovereignty of God
The
Centrality of Jesus Christ as the Lord of life
The
Authority of the Bible, and
The
Priesthood of All Believers
For Presbyterians, those beliefs
are non-negotiable, and even though we may disagree about some of the nuances
of each statement, those four affirmations are the core of our faith tradition.
There are other Christians
who have a more extended list of beliefs: believing literally in the Genesis
account of creation rather than the theory of evolution; believing in adult
baptism instead of infant baptism; believing in purgatory as an intermediate
place between earth and heaven; believing that when the rapture happens toward
the end of time, Christians will be taken up to be with the Lord while
non-believers will be left behind. And
the list of beliefs goes on and on and on…
During my first year at
Princeton Seminary, I got caught in the cross-fire of a dormitory room debate
that went late into the night. We were
talking about what we believed, and one student who had his Schofield Reference
Bible in hand started to talk rather emphatically in a language I did not
understand. He said to several of us
that he was a dispensationalist who leaned more toward pre-millennialism than
post-millennialism and he wanted to know where I stood.
Having never heard those
words before, I decided to stand up … and told everybody I was going to
sleep. Heading back to my room, I
wondered that night if I might have chosen the wrong profession. But years later, I heard a preacher tell a
legend that helped me put things into perspective.
The legend was about Jesus
coming into a room full of theologians and asking the question, “Who do you say that I am”? One of them stood up and replied with an air
of academic self-assurance, “You are the ground of all being, the revelation of
the imago dei, the ontological essence of divinity and the eschatological hope
of humanity.” Jesus looked back at him
and said “What”?
And here’s the point – what
we believe about God is important. Our
Creator has given us the intellectual capacity to comprehend enough of His
great mystery so that we can actually know Him personally – through the revelation
of His Son our Savior Jesus, through the inspiration of His Holy Spirit,
through the reading and interpretation of the Bible, through the writing and
teaching of Biblical scholars and theologians, through our quiet moments of
meditation and prayer, through the worship and tradition of the church, and in
so many other ways.
What we believe about God is
important. Through our minds He has
enabled us to know who He is and to find out how He is at work in this
world. And that kind of recognition calls
for humility instead of intellectual pride, as we fall down on our knees with
an attitude of gratitude and awe, rather than standing up to fight to prove
that we are right and others are wrong.
II
In fact, that was the
attitude which one man had deep in his heart as he came to Jesus asking for
help. The story is told in the ninth
chapter of Mark, where we learn that Jesus’ disciples and some religious
leaders were arguing about a boy who was sick with an evil spirit. As the Bible describes it, more than likely
the illness was epilepsy, and when Jesus arrived, He asked the man “How long
has this been happening?” “From
childhood,” the father answered…”but if you are able to do anything, have pity
on us and help us.”
Jesus looked him in the eye
and replied “All things can be done for one who believes,” and in my
imagination, I can see that man falling down on his knees and crying out “I
believe! Help my unbelief!” So Jesus commanded the evil spirit – the
sickness – to come out of his son, and He healed him.
Notice please, that what this
man believed was not only an affirmation in his mind, it was also a conviction
deep down in his heart. With profound
humility, forged in the crucible of all those years he suffered alongside his
tormented son, that father was ready to trust both of their lives to the only
One who could help them.
And when all is said and
done, I think that’s the lesson we can learn today. If belief is nothing more than holding onto a
set of core values and spiritual truths in our minds, then we’re going to find,
when we hit the hard times and painful realities of life, that we come up
short.
What we need, said Joseph
Fort Newton, is not only a “belief in our minds – we need the fire of faith
burning in our hearts.” It’s the kind of
faith that can enable us to face a serious diagnosis of illness with hope
instead of fear…a deep and abiding faith that can give us the courage to walk
through the valley of the shadow and go on, instead of giving up…a strong faith
which can help us endure our suffering and overcome our addictions…a faith that
can heal our bodies, minds and souls and make us whole again…and at the end, a
faith that can lead us to the Father in heaven who is waiting to welcome us
home.
“Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!” That was the cry of a faithful man who needed
healing for himself and his suffering son.
And he entrusted both of their lives to the only One who could help
them.
If there is anyone here in
this sanctuary, or worshipping with us through radio or television, who needs
that same kind of help and healing and hope, then listen again to what Jesus
said to that man long ago, words which still speak to us today: “All things can be done for the one who
believes.”
CONCLUSION
Dr. Francis Collins believes
that is true. He’s the doctor and
scientist who directs the human genome project and led the multinational team
of researchers that discovered the map of DNA back in 2003.
In his best selling book,
“The Language of God,” Dr. Collins tells this closing story about how he, once
an atheist, came into the Christian faith:
As a resident in medical school at
North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill, “I found the relationships
that developed with sick and dying patients almost overwhelming … What struck
me profoundly about my bedside conversations with these good North Carolina
people was the spiritual aspect of what many of them were going through. I witnessed numerous cases of individuals
whose faith provided them with a strong reassurance of ultimate peace, be it in
this world or the next, despite terrible suffering that in most instances they
had done nothing to bring on themselves.
If faith was a psychological crutch, I concluded, it must be a powerful
one.”
In the book he describes how one day,
an elderly lady – a devout Christian with painful angina – asked Collins about
his own spiritual beliefs. He admitted
he wasn’t sure, and his embarrassment at her surprised reaction prompted a
wrestling match with the question that lasted many years … until, and Francis
Collins describes it personally: “I
(knew) I had to make a choice. A full
year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was
being called to account. On a beautiful
fall day, as I was hiking in the
Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief! That is the kind of faith that anyone can
seek, and my friends, that kind of faith is available to all of us today!
In the name of the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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