A New Christian Creed

Yesterday was the last class that my church offered on a book entitled Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus by Robin Meyers.  I have mixed feelings about the book, but overall I believe in its core message, namely that the church should focus more on engaging the world, imitating what Jesus himself did, rather than concentrate on prayers and rituals meant to secure personal salvation in the afterlife.

In fact, the church dwells so much on the meaning of Jesus’ death that it often forgets that he ever lived.  Meyers makes a telling observation:

“The earliest creed, the Apostles’ Creed, had already eliminated the life and message of Jesus.  Countless Christians have mouthed these lines in worship for centuries: ‘Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate...’ Look carefully at what separates the birth of Christ from his death.  The world’s greatest life is reduced to a comma.” (p. 207)

I wrestled last night with the thought of what a new Apostles’ Creed might sound like.  It wouldn’t just highlight Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection, as if he had been a kind of “alien invader who swoops out of heaven and back again to recruit and claim believers” (p. 207), but it would also remember what Jesus did with his life.

This creed would be the start of a new belief system.  And by ‘belief’, I mean what the original Latin and Greek words (credo, pistis) describe: not thinking something is true, but placing your trust in something.

Originally I wanted to write it using more inclusive, gender-neutral language, or to at least balance masculine and feminine language.  However, I found that doing this removed some of the intimacy I feel when referring to the Deity, for example, calling God “Father”, instead of “Parent”.  Some sentences became a little too cumbersome by repeating “Jesus” or “Christ” where the simple pronoun “he” suffices.  All in all, I am in favor of inclusive language but not where it becomes an obstacle to simplicity and natural rhythm.  Moreover, our inherited Christian faith has handed down to us a masculine-person understanding of the Trinity, not because God is male, but because we need to think of God as a person.

Here, then, is what I came up with:

I place my trust in God,

the Father almighty,

Creator of heaven and earth,

who called creation good.

I place my trust in Jesus Christ,

his only Son, our Lord,

the Word and Wisdom of God,

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

and born of the Virgin Mary.

On earth he healed the sick,

fed the hungry,

broke bread with the outcasts,

and taught the seekers.

He brought good news to the oppressed,

comforted the brokenhearted,

and proclaimed to the captives

God’s realm of peace and liberty to all.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He breathed into his followers

the spirit to continue his work.

He ascended into heaven,

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He is with us even now until the end of time

when he will come again

to judge the living and the dead

with the fire of God’s love.

I place my trust in the Holy Spirit,

the Giver of life,

in whom we live, and move, and have our being.

I place my trust in the holy Christian church,

in the communion of holy persons, living and departed,

in the forgiveness of sins and flaws,

the resurrection of the body,

and life that is longer and stronger than death.

Amen.