The Creed: I Believe in Jesus Christ
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
February 22, 2004
Isaiah 53:1-9; Luke 9:28-36

We continue in our sermon series on the Apostle’s Creed. Last Sunday, we talked about what it means to confess belief in “God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.” Today we continue with the second article of the Creed…

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, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

INTRODUCTION

I don’t look like anyone in my family. In fact, I don’t think that any of us looks like any other member of the family. We look like a TV family, where there is no obvious resemblance between any of the members. This of course, led to all of the obvious jokes about milkmen and so on, especially since my sister and I in our youth had bright auburn hair, and our parents had black and brown/blonde hair respectively. The upshot is that I have never thought that I resembled my father in any real way.

Well, I guess on some level, the older I get the more I resemble my dad. The more I hear myself saying the things he used to say. The more I tell the same dumb jokes that he used to tell to my sister and me when we were kids. (You can ask Roza about those). And in many ways, I share with my dad a certain philosophical outlook, a basic attitude toward life. In my more self-charitable moments, I imagine that I might actually be able to become a man as good as my father is. Sometimes, I may not see the obvious physical resemblances, but if I think about it, I can often see in me the image of my father and can affirm that I am my father’s son.

THE CREED

It is the relationship between Father and Son that we encounter in the second section of the Apostle’s Creed.

"Jesus Christ"

The Creed continues in the second paragraph: “I believe in… Jesus Christ…” With this very first phrase we have an important confession of faith. Contrary to the way most people use the term, “Christ” is not a surname, it’s not Jesus’ last name. It’s a title. It comes from the Greek CristoV Christos which means “the anointed one”. The Greek is itself a translation of the Hebrew Mashiach, from which we get the word “Messiah.” When we use the name Jesus Christ, we are proclaiming Jesus as the Christ, as the Messiah, the Anointed One of God. The kings of Israel and Judah were anointed when they began their reigns. It was the ancient world’s equivalent of a coronation—the anointing with oil was a sign of God’s favor and approval and signified the anointed one’s authority to rule.

In this is a very powerful affirmation. We affirm that God did not abandon the hope of Israel. That Israel’s hope for a messianic redeemer is being fulfilled. Therefore, when we Christians confess Jesus as “Christ” we are confirming the fidelity of God to the people of Israel, and that we expect Jesus in his coming to fulfill all the hopes of Israel and now of the Church. It is a confession of God’s constancy and dependability.

"His only Son"

But what does it mean when we confess Jesus as “God’s Only Son”?

Historically, the title “Son of [Insert Name of Deity Here]” was conferred on all the kings of the ancient world. The Egyptian name “Ramses “ means “son of Ra” and therefore, is likely not the name he was born with, but is a coronation name. So it was in Israel. The kings of Israel and Judah were considered to be “Sons of God” and there are passages in the Psalms and the Prophets that confirm this usage. So, first and foremost, it is a royal title, confirming our proclamation of Jesus as deliverer-king. The anointed king of Israel, the son of God.

But, Jesus never sat on the throne of Israel. Jesus never took the throne of David as his own, never rose to earthly kingship. And yet the church did not abandon the title. They kept the title.

The early Christians started to perceive a meaning beyond the merely symbolic, royalist sense of the word. Because Jesus himself had provided them with a new way to interpret the word. For Jesus had taught them to pray using the word “Abba” which we always translate as “father” but would be more accurately rendered as “dad” or “papa.” A term of relation and of great intimacy.
While Jesus’ favorite self-designation was “Son of Man” the Church quickly settled on “Son of God” as its favored term, because they perceived between Jesus and God a relationship, and an intimate, personal one at that. They believed that in someway, to encounter Jesus was to encounter God. To behold the Son was to behold the Father.

Now, the Church has spent the past 2,000 years working out the implications of that, trying to figure out what it meant to say that Jesus was the Son of God. At various points there would be creedal formulations, like that of the Nicene Creed, which would say:

the only-begotten Son of God,
Begotten of the Father before all worlds;
God of God, Light of Light,
Very God of very God,
Begotten, not made,
Being of one substance with the Father;

And others would have more symbolic understandings of Son-ship, that did not agree on the metaphysics of the Nicene formulation. The Unitarians, the 19th Century Liberal Protestants, saw Jesus as an exemplar, one whom we follow.

But the essential fact of all these proclamations is this: that when we encounter Jesus the Son, we in some way, mysterious, encounter God the Father. So, as with the term “God the Father” Jesus as God’s only “Son” is a term of relationship. It is describing to us a perfect relationship between the one we encounter as Jesus of Nazareth and the eternal God.

"Our Lord"

How many of you have lords? Anyone? No? I guess lords aren’t that common in America. A lawyer friend of mine told me that one of his clients addressed a judge as “M’lord” once, to the amusement of the judge and everyone else in the court. We don’t really call each other “lord” or “lady.”

In the medieval and ancient worlds, the designation ‘lord’ was much more common—and much more meaningful. Even in England, where they do call their judges “m’lord” or in European countries where the form of address, like signor or Herr, the word has lost a lot of its meaning. In former days, one’s lord was one’s master. One’s protector and guardian. The one to whom you owed your allegiance. In the medieval era, your lord was the one who owned all the land that you worked. (In fact, the English word ‘lord’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon words meaning “the one who keeps the bread”). You worked his lands for his benefit, and in return, you got protection from him and his troops during a time of war. Of course, those same troops were there to keep you in line, too. In the ancient world, your ‘lord’ was the governing authority, the local chieftain or warlord. The one to whom you pledged your allegiance. In Jesus’ time, your lord would be either the local potentate like Herod, or his lord: Caesar.

Therefore, we understand that when we confess Jesus as our “lord” we are being in some ways seditious. We are being defiant. We have no king but God, no Lord but Christ. That is, there is no one to whom we are more loyal, there is no one else in whom we place our allegiance. And there is no one else ultimately whom we serve. This is a dangerous little confession. We are declaring ourselves to be citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, loyal subjects of Jesus, the Anointed King and Son of God; whoever the local powers might be. And that means that we are confessing that we will act out of that loyalty, putting our allegiance to Christ first before allegiance to king and country. You can start to understand why the early Christians might have been persecuted for saying something that sounds so innocuous to us: Jesus Christ is Lord.

I believe… in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord…

“Conceived by the Holy Spirit”

Meaning that we confess that Jesus is son of God in more than symbolic terms. We believe that Jesus’ life, from the very beginning is the work of the Holy Spirit, that is, the result of God’s own handiwork. We do not confess a Christ who was declared ‘son of God’ at his coronation—but as one whose life was foreknown as a life in God, a manifestation of God’s own being in our midst.

"Born of the Virgin Mary,"

This might be a statement about the Virgin Birth, and it might not. Strange as it may seem to us, one of the early controversies in the Church centered around not whether Jesus was divine, but whether he had really been human. The Gnostic heretics believed a number of things about Jesus. The relevant ones here were that he was not human, but only appeared to be human, and therefore was not actually crucified. That Simon of Cyrene was made to resemble Jesus and was crucified instead, the divine Jesus being unscathed by the Crucifixion. “Born of the Virgin Mary” may very well be meant to remind us that Jesus did come in the flesh—whatever those crazy Gnostics might say. He was born of a woman—you know, the Virgin Mary—and lived our life.

"Suffered under Pontius Pilate,"

Jesus’ suffering was the centerpiece of early Christian theology. The disciples tried to make sense of Jesus’ death as part of God’s plan. How did it make sense? The first thing they did was crack open their Bibles and search for understanding. Now, of course, the Bibles they had didn’t yet have the New Testament in them, but that didn’t matter, because they came across a number of passages in Scripture that spoke to their experience of Jesus, like the one we heard from Isaiah earlier:

Is. 53:4 ¶ Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. Is. 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. Is. 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

The Christians understood Jesus’ suffering as a redemptive act, in the manner of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah. This suffering—this Passion—was not immaterial or coincidental with God’s purposes, it was part of it.

And lest we think that this suffering was some mythical event or an event that happened in some vague pre-history or age, we remind ourselves: he suffered under Pontius Pilate—under a real person, a Roman official we all know, a verifiable person tied to a particular time, and a particular place.

Christ’s work did not happen outside of space and time, but was wrapped up in a real individual, born of a woman, who truly suffered, and who did so at a particular time in history. God acts within our history.

"Was crucified, died, and was buried;"

He suffered unto death. Not an imaginary death. Not a deep sleep. Death. Christ took on our death, no less real for Christ than it is for us.

"He descended to the dead."

He shared in the death of all those who had died before, from the beginning of the world. In traditional language, this line reads “he descended into hell”, which confuses us when we think of our current conception of hell. What the original language likely meant, was not hell as in a place of eternal torment, but Sheol, the Hebrew realm of the dead, the shadowy afterlife for all the dead. Now, an entire sermon would be required on the difference between the Hebrew Sheol, the Greek Hades, and our own modern Hell alone. It is not necessary for us to have that all worked out for our purposes here. It is enough to say that Christ shared in our death and in the deaths of all those who had died before him.

"On the third day he rose again;"

But that death could not contain him. In fulfillment of the promise made to the children of Israel, God raised Jesus to new life in the Resurrection. We confess faith in a Jesus Christ who conquered death, who suffered death for our sake, who took death onto himself and thus into the very heart of God, that it might be overcome and destroyed. And so we do not worship a dead messiah, but a living one. “I know that my redeemer liveth”

"He ascended into heaven,"

We believe that he has passed beyond the ordinary circles of this world, that his life is now enveloped in the very presence of God. He was not simply resuscitated, but resurrected, given a glorious and redeemed body, and shares in the life of God the Father.

"Is seated at the right hand of the Father,"

His life is thoroughly in God, seated at his right hand. This latter part is ancient language meaning, he is vested with power and authority.

"And will come again to judge the living and the dead."

Nor has Christ abandoned us, but will return to usher in the Kingdom of God. This reminds us, too, that the work of the Kingdom is still unfinished. Christ’s work as messiah is a work in process, a process into which we are invited.

CONCLUSION

Peter, James, and John encountered a glorified Christ on the mountaintop. They saw him in conversation with the great figures of the Old Testament: Moses, Giver of the Law, the Torah, and Elijah, greatest of the Prophets. They are bewildered by all of this, yet in the midst of their bewilderment, the voice of God is heard to say, “This is my Son, my Chosen—listen to him!”

Not all human sons resemble their fathers. Either in appearance, behavior, or attitude. When God speaks from heaven saying to the poor clueless disciples: “This is my Son, my Chosen—listen to him!” he is doing more than snapping the disciples out of their bewilderment. He is saying, ‘This is my Son, if you would listen to me, listen to him. If you would know me, know him. If you would see me, see him.” To behold the Son is to behold the Father.

And what do we behold when we behold the Son? We behold one who took on our life, wholly. We behold one who took on our sufferings, completely. Who lived our life, died our death. For us and for our salvation. And we see in the Son the Father who created us in love, who fashioned us to love. In the self-sacrifice of the Son, we behold the love and grace of the Father.

I believe … in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified died and was buried, he descended into hell. On the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.