Communion Meditation by Dr. George Bryant Wirth
The First Sunday in Lent
February 10, 2008
THE APOSTLES’ CREED:
I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY
Scripture: Mark
1:9-11 (Matthew 3:13-17; Luke 3:21-22; John 1:29-34)
INTRODUCTION
Sixteen years ago, not long
after arriving here from Pittsburgh as the new pastor of this church, I
preached a series of sermons during the Lenten season entitled “The Apostles’
Creed: What We Believe.”
You may remember back then in
1992 that these things were true: we were emerging from a war in Iraq, the
stock market took a nose dive, a Republican president, George Bush, was in the
White House, and a Democrat named Clinton was campaigning to move into that
residence, telling everybody who would listen, “It’s all about the economy.”
It was Yogi Berra who once
said “Déjà vu seems to be happening all over again,” and the old adage “What
goes around, comes around” appears to describe what we are living through in
this nation today.
But there are at least two
things in this country which are radically different now from sixteen years
ago, and I’m thinking about how violent terrorism, having hijacked the name of
religion, has shaken our foundations since September 11, 2001…and about the
resurgence of atheism which has challenged our Judeo-Christian tradition in
America with increased intensity. No
less than seven books, some of which have become New York Times best sellers,
have been published in the past five years, attacking our faith in God,
claiming that God doesn’t exist, and that those who believe in Him are
responsible for a long list of wrong and despicable deeds which lead to the
conclusion that we are either misguided at best or evil people at worst.
Neither of those shots across
the bow had been fired back in 1992 when I preached about The Apostles’
Creed. But so it is now, and that’s why
I want us to explore more deeply than before what we believe and the great
difference the Christian faith makes in our lives and in this world today.
I
So listen again to the
familiar words we stand to say Sunday after Sunday: “I believe in God the
Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”
That is a theological
mouthful, and it begins with our affirmation that God exists and we believe it
is so. The Bible makes that claim from
the get-go in the very first verse of Genesis: “In the beginning, God…”
All these eons later, the
Gallup Poll in
But we go on to say in the
Creed that we believe in “God the Father,” which takes us even deeper into a
personal relationship with Him. That
profound theological image develops gradually in the Hebrew Scriptures, our
Christian Old Testament, surfacing in I and II Chronicles during the reign of
King David, and then again in the Psalms and Book of Proverbs, and more clearly
in the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, totaling just 11 times that God is
called “Father” by the people of
Then a dramatic shift occurs
as we turn to the pages of our New Testament.
In the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, our text for today tells us
that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River by John, and as He emerged out of
the water, a voice spoke from heaven, saying “You are my Son, the Beloved; with
you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:9011).
And from that moment on,
Jesus begins to speak about God as His Father and as our Father in heaven – 62
times in Matthew, Mark and Luke, 108 verses in the Gospel of John, three more
in the Book of Acts, 65 additional lines in the Epistles and four more in the
Book of Revelation, adding up to nearly 250 references to God as a personal and
heavenly Father for all who believe in Him.
Jesus taught us to pray to
God that way, saying “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy
name.” So you see, we are not, in the
words of the scientist Loren Eisley, “Cosmic Orphans,” drifting aimlessly
through life. To the contrary, we who
believe in God the Father through Jesus Christ are called His children, made in
His image with a capacity to love Him and to be loved by Him… even though as
Creator of the universe, He sometimes seems so far away.
A little girl and her father
were sitting on the beach one evening, watching together as the sun slipped
over the horizon. The sky turned gold,
red and then purple, and when the sun finally disappeared, the father pointed
his finger toward that spectacular scene and said “Going, going, gone!” The girl was overwhelmed, and with childlike
trust and a sense of awe, she shouted out “Do it again, Daddy! Do it again!”
Jesus spoke to and with His
Father-God in that same fashion, using the name “Abba” which literally means
“Daddy” or “Papa” …and so can we, so can we.
Because God wants a personal relationship with each one of us, which He
has made possible for all of us through the love and grace of His Son our
Savior Jesus.
II
And that leads us to the
second section of this opening affirmation in The Apostles’ Creed: “I believe
in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”
Those words come directly
from the first verse in the Bible, Genesis Chapter 1: “In the beginning, God
made the heavens and the earth.” What
follows, as most of you know, is the creation story which is told in two
versions that don’t completely agree in sequence or in substance, but are
rather like a description of a painter working with a wide open canvas, adding
a variety of colors, a diversity of subjects and a grand and glorious design
over the course of time until the masterpiece is done.
The Bible says that God the
Creator brought it all into being, and down through the centuries, people of
faith simply accepted the majesty and mystery of those stories. But then came the Enlightenment, that period
in the 1600’s and 1700’s also called the Age Of Reason, an Era Of Rationalism,
when philosophers and scientists began to look at the world from a more objective
and critical point of view, eventually questioning the validity of the creation
accounts in Genesis 1 and 2, and raising doubts about whether other parts of
the Bible, like the miracles, were true.
The gradual and controversial
result over the past one hundred and fifty years has been the emergence of a
battle between those described as “secular humanists” and now the “new
atheists” on one side who reject and attack the scriptures and the Christian
faith, together with other religions…and those on the other side described as
“fundamentalists” or “creationists” or “the religious right” who have dug in to
fight for Biblical truth, family values and the Christian way of life.
The Scopes trial back in 1925
which debated evolution vs. the literal interpretation of the Genesis creation
stories, was one of the major skirmishes in this long-standing conflict. And as all of us know, that struggle is still
being fought out in public school systems and in municipal, state and federal
courtrooms across this nation.
Now, the reason I have gotten
into this controversy is not to raise your blood pressure, nor to make a
political statement. The reason I have
raised this subject is to ask the question, “Do we as Christians really mean
what we say in The Apostles’ Creed?” “I
believe in the God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” Either we believe that God is the creator of
this world and everything that lives and moves and has being, or we don’t.
If we do believe it, then how
can we say the words of this ancient creed with integrity today? And how can we find a way to reconcile this
battle which has lasted far too long between Biblical interpretation and
scientific exploration related to God’s glorious creation?
III
Two summers ago, in July of
2006, I read an article in Time Magazine entitled “Reconciling God and
Science.” It’s about Dr. Francis
Collins, who headed the human genome project that discovered the map of our DNA
and unlocked what Collins called in his book, “The Language of God.”
I was intrigued by the
article, bought and read the book and was surprised to find that Francis
Collins is a graduate of the medical school at the University of North
Carolina, and is an evangelical Christian who “Surrendered his life to Jesus
Christ in 1978,” largely through the influence of reading many of the books
written by C.S. Lewis.
Now all of that is good to
know, but what is most important is that Francis Collins has devoted the rest
of his life to helping Christians and scientists and all those who have been on
opposite sides of this debate, find common ground and discover a way to honor
the truth of the Bible and to accept dimensions of evolution as God-made
and therefore reliable.
Collins has written these
words which I find remarkable: “I don’t think God intended (the book of)
Genesis to teach science,” stating that “the evidence in favor of evolution is
utterly compelling.” So the synthesis he
offers is this: that God preplanned the process of mutation and selection at
the beginning of time, knowing it would produce humanity…and create a being
with whom He could develop an ongoing relationship through prayer, scripture
and what Collins cheerfully acknowledges as a scientifically inexplicable
“divine invasion of the natural world” in the saving person of Jesus Christ.
One more quote from Collins
and it’s time to conclude: “If God is truly almighty, He will hardly be
threatened by our puny efforts to understand the workings of His natural
world. As seekers, we may well discover
from science many interesting answers to the question ‘How does life
work?’ What we cannot discover, through
science alone, are the answers to the questions ‘Why is there life anyway?’ and
‘Why am I here?’ (Those are matters of faith).”
(Quotes taken from Time Magazine article (ibid) and “The Language of
God” by Francis S. Collins, Free Press, a Division of Simon and Schuster, Inc.,
2006, page 88)
CONCLUSION
In closing, I want to commend
this book to you with the suggestion that you order a copy from our bookstore
and read it all the way through. At some
point, perhaps we can invite Dr. Collins to come speak to our congregation,
because I have a conviction that we Christians who are Presbyterian need to pay
more attention to this issue which is so divisive all across our nation.
And personally, I hope all of
us will desire and decide to explore more deeply than ever before what we mean
when we say every Sunday in this church: “I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth.” With that
fervent hope and prayer, I invite you to stand and confess what we believe as
we say The Apostles’ Creed today:
I
believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth;
And in
Jesus Chris His only son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of
the Virgin Mary, 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 thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I
believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life
everlasting. Amen.
In the name of the Father,
and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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