This is part of a series of reflections on the Apostles’ Creed

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 Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary;
suffered under Pontius Pilate
was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended into hell,
The third day, He rose from the dead.
He ascended into heaven,
And sitting 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 Spirit,
The holy catholic Church
The communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body
and the life everlasting.  Amen.

In John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany, the title character states, "Anyone can be sentimental about the nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer."  On Easter Sunday, it is easy to go through the motions.  But let us imagine what it was like that first morning.  There were plenty of things to be done, but everything was turned upside down by one event.

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. (John 20:1)

It was the first day of the week, and it was time to mourn.  Anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows how this would feel.  There was that initial shock and sadness at the time of death, but now a few days later, it is time to mourn.  They were going to prepare the body and mourn.

In order to mourn properly, they needed things to go as planned.  Their main concern was how they would get that big heavy stone moved from the tomb.  However, when they arrive the notice two things.  The stone is already moved, and the body is not there.  Jesus was not in the tomb
This throws everything off.  Now they will have to find the body before they can get on with the process of mourning.

Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.”(John 20:2)

The women go to get Simon.  They needed to tell the others that something was wrong.  No one knows where the body is.  We do not know what Peter was thinking.  Did he remember that Jesus had promised to raise from the grave?  He may have remembered this and it probably terrified him.  Peter had last seen Jesus as he was telling everyone that he did not know Him.  Now, if it were true that he could rise from the dead, what will that mean for Peter?

3 Peter therefore went out, and the other disciple, and were going to the tomb. 4 So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. (John 20:3-4)
So Peter runs.  John runs too, and makes a point to tell us that he outran Peter.
Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there,7 and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. (John 20:6-8)

They go in the tomb.  That’s when they see what is going on.  The body is not there, for sure, but what is there is startling.  The grave clothes are wrapped neatly in its place.  This isn’t the work of someone moving the body.  They would have taken the body still wrapped up.  This is not the work of a grave robber.  Anyone trying to steal the body (as hard as that would be) would not have taken the time to fold the clothes.  It becomes clear:  Jesus is alive.  They see this before them and believe.

For as yet they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. (John 20:9)

Scripture teaches that Jesus must rise from the grave. 

They did not understand everything yet, but they knew Jesus was alive.  They knew this would change everything.  They would later understand that this was always part of the plan for God’s glory, but now, they just knew that Jesus was alive and that changed everything.

Then the disciples went away again to their own homes. (John 20:10)

They didn’t stay at the empty tomb.  They had to return to their lives, but their lives were never the same again.  No one could have imagined what lay ahead.

Just like Mary, John, and Peter, we have our own expectations.  Many of the concepts of this story have become just an expression for a holiday.  We approach Jesus as though He was just an idea in our head, a wild hope for something else.  When we really take time to consider the death and resurrection of Christ, we react with confusion, some with fear, but face to face with a risen Lord, the reaction is belief.

Since Jesus is alive, believe!  

When you hear of resurrection, you may be confused.  When you think of death and meeting Jesus, you may be afraid.  Yet, when you see the reality of a risen Lord, you will believe.  Today, you can go through the motions of celebrating Easter.  You can do the church thing, you can visit family.  And tomorrow you can be the same.  Or, you can come to terms with the fact that Jesus is alive and never be the same again.  See your risen Lord and believe!

​

This is part of a series of reflections on the Apostles’ Creed

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 Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary;
suffered under Pontius Pilate
was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended into hell,
The third day, He rose from the dead.
He ascended into heaven,
And sitting 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 Spirit,
The holy catholic Church
The communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body
and the life everlasting.  Amen.

​Isaiah made many prophesies about the Messiah.  One however, is particularly alarming:

“Yet, It was the will of the Lord to crush him
  he has put him to grief”

This causes us to wonder why.  Why does the Lord send the Christ and then “crush him?”

The answer goes all the way back to the beginning.  Well, almost the beginning.  It goes back to that moment when humanity determined that we wanted to know what God knows, rather than to rely on God.  Let us see for ourselves!  We liked what we saw.  We saw and took.

And the fall of man, brought the curse of sin.  All manner of nature became broken, and what was created for our pleasure became wrought with grief.
Right then and there, God announced that He would set things right.

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, 
and between your offspring and her offspring; 
he shall bruise your head, 
and you shall bruise his heel.” 

In other words, someone would be born into the world that would destroy sin and its curse.  That redemption would come through suffering.

The rest of the Old Testament points to this.  At the passover, a beloved lamb dies but the people in the house are spared.  In the tabernacle, an offering is made every year for atonement, and that offering is death.  Jesus even told them that he was manna; food from heaven.  His followers must live at his expense.
​
When the time came, the tragedy of injustice caused even nature itself to react.  Yet, it was God’s will for this tragedy to take place.  It was indeed unfair, for in that moment on the cross, all of my sin was placed on someone else.  At the cross I find that I do not get what I deserve.  I trade my sin for Christ’s righteousness.  It was not just the Christ, but every transgression I ever committed or will commit was crucified.  That sin was dead, buried, setting the stage for creation to begin anew.

This is part of a series of reflections on the Apostles’ Creed

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 Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary;
suffered under Pontius Pilate
was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended into hell,
The third day, He rose from the dead.
He ascended into heaven,
And sitting 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 Spirit,
The holy catholic Church
The communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body
and the life everlasting.  Amen.

There are two lines in the Apostles’ Creed that deal with the Virgin Birth.  This is an aspect of the Christian faith that causes many to be embarrassed, after all, how can someone in modern times believe in a virgin birth?

However, it is important that we remember that in this creed we have already affirmed that God is the maker of all things.  (the Nicene creed will go even further, following the first chapter of John in the claim that all things were made through Jesus).  If God exists, and if he is the maker of all things, including humanity, then it is logical that such a God may create a human being apart from sexual reproduction.  This is exactly the claim that is made when Christians affirm that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

The virgin birth was part of the prophesy of a coming messiah, or Christ.  Isaiah made the prophesy to King Ahaz:

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14 ESV)

The prophecy given to Ahaz is vast.  It includes his own undoing, but then reaches far out into the future and proclaims that a virgin will give birth to a son, and that son may be called “God With Us” (translation of Immanuel)

There are some that point to the vagueness of the Hebrew ‘almah as perhaps only meaning a young woman and thus reducing this claim to perhaps any child.  However, where the Hebrew may mean “virgin” or “young woman” it is clear from he Septuagint (parthenos) that the understanding here was of a miraculous, virgin birth.

However, all of the linguistic and theological wrangling over the notion of a virgin birth can cause us to miss the even greater miracle foreseen here:  God with us!

The promise of messiah is more than just a righteous ruler, but rather God joining his creation in order to reconcile and restore it.  The coming of the Christ would not just be miraculous for the sake of proof, but miraculous for the sake of His mission.

In the birth of Jesus something was set in motion: a plan to reconcile God’s people to himself.  It is a miracle wider than the very division stuck between God and Humanity.  Now the end of the division is in sight, for the promised one is born!

This is part of a series of reflections on the Apostles’ Creed

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 Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary;
suffered under Pontius Pilate
was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended into hell,
The third day, He rose from the dead.
He ascended into heaven,
And sitting 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 Spirit,
The holy catholic Church
The communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body
and the life everlasting.  Amen.

Having accepted Jesus as the only begotten of the Father and as such the Christ, we now come to another fact about the Jesus:  the virgin birth, and more precisely, that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

I will not get bogged down at this point by questioning miracles in general.  The assumption that a God exists that created the world is an assumption that God can work miracles.  It is however important to fully understand what exactly this miracle was and what it was not.

 There are many myths in which gods have sex with humans.  This is not that kind of story.  Attempts to paint it as such will completely misunderstand the significance of what happened.  In fact, none of the words used to describe the event are references to sexual reproduction.

Instead, the notion of being conceived by the Holy Spirit is more akin to the creation of Adam with God breathing life into this new creation.

This is what must be, for Jesus did not come just to show us a new way, but rather to be a way.  As such, He must be a new creation, uncorrupted by sin.  He is the second Adam.

Some are tempted to dismiss the virgin birth, embarrassed by such a story in modern times.  Yet, the ancient Christians devoted two lines of the Apostles’ Creed to it.  They did so because it points to the very nature of what Christ would do.

It is not enough that a person could come along and obey the Old Testament law.  This would not make a person righteous or sinless.  Sin existed before the law, and the law does not exist to show righteousness, but rather to expose sin.  The law exists for sinners.  Consider what Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:3-4 ESV)

Jesus came to do what we could not:  fulfill the law.  He came to do what the law could not: restore righteousness.  In sending Jesus, God gave humanity a do-over.  This time, however, sin is defeated in Christ, and new creation that we may also become new creations.

This is part 4 of Reflections on the Apostles' Creed.  You can find previous parts here: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Even though it takes an active faith to believe that God exists, let alone who He then is in relation to ourselves, it is not enough.  It is said that even demons believe in God and they tremble.  So the choice cannot simply be, “Am I a theist or an atheist?”  Now comes the moment that pulls the Christian out of the vast world of theism.  For the Christian is not just a believer in God but also a believer in Jesus, with some very particular beliefs about who Jesus is.
In the Apostles’ Creed, we state three things right off as to who Jesus is.

1. He is Christ
2. He is God’s only son.
3. He is our Lord

​It is important to understand the uniqueness of these claims.  First, to claim that Jesus is the Christ is to say that He is the Messiah, that long awaited promised one of the Old Testament.  The Old Testament prophesies are so numerous regarding the Messiah that it quickly dispatches what the Messiah is not.  He must be a priest, but not only a priest.  He must be a prophet, but not only a prophet.  He must be a King, but not only a King.

It is common to think of Jesus as just a teacher, much like Buddha is to Buddhists or Muhammad is to Islam.  It is true that he taught, but Jesus cannot just be a teacher and fill the role of Christ.  Jesus claimed to be God.  Such a claim fits within the role of Christ.  C.S. Lewis famously points out that such a claim makes him one of three things:  a liar, a lunatic, or Lord.

If He is the Christ, then He is certainly different from any key figure of other religions, for He is God’s only son.  It is common to think of all people as God’s children but such a claim is not biblical.  There is a difference between being God’s creation and being God’s begotten.  Just like the claims of a Christ, the claims of being God’s begotten separates Jesus from other religious leaders.  In most world religions, the key figure is someone who knows much about God.  In Christianity, the key figure is someone who is God.

Which brings about the next claim, He is our Lord.  He is the one to whom we submit our will.  To call Jesus lord is to claim his authority over our lives, an authority that is only matched by God the Father.

There was a moment in Jesus’ earthly ministry when the multitudes quit following.  They enjoyed the miracles.  They enjoyed the teachings of mercy.  Perhaps they even enjoyed seeing the religious leaders of the day scolded for their heavy burden of laws and offerings.  However, when Jesus began to make peculiar claims about being God, specifically being the actual bread of heaven on which they may live, the crowds left.

We reach this moment in the Apostles’ Creed.  Is it enough to believe in God?  Is it enough to acknowledge God as an Almighty father, who has created all things, myself included.  Why take this next step from theism to Christianity?

Consider the words of Simon Peter as the multitudes walked away:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” John 6:68-69 ESV

Peter knew that no one else had answers like Jesus.  For many claimed to know the way, but Jesus claimed to be the way.  This profound difference led Peter to believe that Jesus was the Christ, the promised Messiah.

Once again, we are at a point where active faith must be employed.  We must choose to believe and we do this because no other choice offers all that Jesus offers.  There is no other choice offered that claims to be the way.  No other choice can justify us completely before God.

We actively choose that Jesus is the Holy One of God, and we submit ourselves to His Lordship.

This is part 3 of Reflections on the Apostle's Creed.  Be sure to also see Part 1 and Part 2

Having made the brave choice to believe in God, and then acknoweledged him as that Father of all Fathers, that One who may know me more intimately than anyone else possibly is able, I now must consider another atributre of God.  Now I must consider that He is the Creator.

A few years ago, I visited the Chicago Art Institute.  I have never been the kind of person that spend a lot of time in Art museums.  I appreciate art, yes, but it has never captured my attention.  At least is had not until that day.  The Van Gogh room changed everything for me.  To see his work in person made a profound impact.  Much has been said of Van Gogh.  Some say he was a madman.  Others say he forsook the powerful life of a clergyman in order to live among the poor.  All I know of him is what I see in his work.  There is passion there.  That is evident by the sheer amount of pain on the canvas.  I cannot fathom that he ever considered a work finished.  I imagine that he painted and painted, always creating, always striving for that perfect image he had in his mind.  Such it is to be a creator.

It is easy enough to believe that God is creative.  If I bear even a broken image of him, then the fact that I want to create things, to write songs, to tell stories, to share poetry suggests something about his nature.  All humanity has this innate love of creating.  There is a satisfaction like no other than to be able to say, "I imade this."  I cannot help but to think I inherited this creative nature.

However, it is not enough to suggest that God is creative.  In the Apostles' Creed, I now come to a place where I affirm that not only has He created, but that He is the creator of all things.  For there is nothing that exisits outside of Heaven and Earth except for God Himself.  The natural world, all I know of it, all I do not know, and all that is unknowable is within his handiwork.

"I made the earth    
and created man on it;
it was my hands that stretched out the heavens,
and I commanded all their host." Isaiah 45:12, ESV

Consider this claim.  As far as the heavens stretch (infinite), God has created and commanded.  This claim is made in the context of the the LORD using for all accounts, an unbeliever, to deliver His people.  God reminds his prophet Isaiah that no one is outside of his creation that He cannot command and use.

This claim that God created Heaven and Earth, is far more than just a creation myth.  All religions have creation myths and most are satisfied with the notion that "my god created me, and your god created you."  But this claim is larger.  This claim is that God created all things.  He created the known, the unknown, and even the unkowable.  He created those who do not claim Him.  Nothing is beyond his inherint authority as Creator.

And yet, in all this, He created man on it.  The Father Almighty has chosen to place me in his creation.  Not at its center.  There is enough narcisism in the world without me thinking that God has made everything for me.  No, He created for His own purpose, but it is enough to realize that in a work that encompasses all things, He found a place for me.

This is part 2 of reflections on the Apostles Creed.  See Part 1 here.

It is not enough to claim belief in the existence of God.  Such a claim will naturally hold a belief in the nature of God as well.  That brings the next three words, "The Father Almighty."

The idea suggests both a relationship and an ability.  The concept of God as father is a difficult one these days.  There are attempts to side-step this with notions of friend, lover, brother, and even mother.  While there may be elements of truth in each, the fact remains that biblically, and historically, God has first been known as Father.

This is difficult for many because in our modern times we have a desperate lack of fatherhood.  Abandonment, abuse, and all manner of dissapointment may be wrapped up in our definition of the word Father.  As a pastor, I would frequently see people bristle at the notion that God was their Father.

Now it could be that in ancient times, calling God, "father" was merely a means of saying that He was the creator, the first cause.  I think, however, that there is something in the relationship aspect.  And this something is magnified when we get the next word: Almighty.

Jeremiah considered this in this passage:

"Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord." Jeremiah 23:23-24 ESV

God is near, present.  He is present even in the most secret places.  He fills both heaven and earth, thus no place exists that He is not there.

Such power, knowledge, and presence allows us to bring any dissapointment with earthly fathers to the Fatherhood of God.  For God is able to know us more intimately than any person possibly can.  No one may know our thoughts, no matter how much they desire or even how much we desire it of them.  They cannot know what goes on in the most secret or places, our thought-life.  Yet God is there.  God is there, and he still desires to call us his own.

The great songwriter, Bill Mallonee spoke of this in his song, Every Father Knows.  When I hear this song, I'm reminded of all the places I wander and how far away from God I may think I am, and yet He is always there and still calling me His.