I Believe in the Holy Ghost...                        Acts 2:41-47 & Jer. 31:31-34

This morning we are going to look at half of the last article of the Apostles’ Creed.

        When I started writing this, I realized that if I tried to do the whole thing in one morning, it would be a very long sermon - so we will look at three articles this week and three next.

        We first have to begin by recognizing why creeds are written in the first place.  Creeds are written to delineate what the church believes - but more often than not, they were also written to specify what the church does not believe.

        In Germany, in the late 1930's, the Confessing Church, the church that had not capitulated to Hitler and his ideas about an Aryan race, wrote a creed that is called the Barmen Declaration.  This creed clearly states, in every article, that Jesus Christ alone is Lord of the conscience - the church was clearly telling Hitler that his dogma would not have a place in their church - they would not capitulate - and it cost many their lives.  Creeds often clearly state what the church believes to be true - over against what the culture or false teachers are saying is true.

        The Apostles’ Creed was not written by the apostles of Jesus.  It carries their name out of honor for all that they taught the early church and much of what is included are things the disciples and Paul would have been teaching as basic doctrine.  The creed had its earliest beginnings in the second century and came to its final form in about 700 AD.

        Along the way different pieces were added to the creed as different heresies grew in the early church.  Each time someone taught something that the church thought to be false, it came up with a simple way to let people know what the church believed.  Most people at this time could not read and even if they could, they had little access to books - a church might have one gospel and maybe a few of Paul’s letters, but most did not have a full New Testament.  The way to pass on the faith was to teach people a confession that was easy to memorize and contained the crucial elements of belief.  The Apostles’ Creed served this purpose well.  It was short, but contained the essential tenets of the faith.  People could learn it by saying it over and over again in worship.

          Those who were to be baptized learned the creed and the theology behind it.  The creed is Trinitarian, meaning it contains an affirmation that God is three in one.  The same words we use to baptize Christians, we use to remember what we believe.  The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - three in one. 

            Today we look at the third person in the trinity, the Holy Spirit, or as the creed says the Holy Ghost, and the doctrines that proceed from our belief in the Holy Spirit.  You might want to open your hymn book to page 14 as we consider each line of the Creed in its turn.

1) “I believe in the Holy Ghost..” - we usually don’t say “Ghost” anymore, instead we say Holy Spirit, everywhere but in this creed.  Many denominations do say Holy Spirit in the creed, but we have retained the older version.  I’m not sure how it got translated this way, because the Latin version of the creed that exists from the 4^th century, and all late versions in Latin, say “Holy Spirit.”  Nevertheless, what we believe in is the empowering Spirit of God - Jesus promised the disciples in the gospel of John that he would not leave them alone, he would send them an advocate - the Holy Spirit.  Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that moved across the waters at creation, the same Spirit that enlivened the people in the wilderness after they left Egypt, the same Spirit who descended like a dove at Jesus’ baptism.  Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit and then sent the Spirit to the disciples so that they could continue God’s work after his death and resurrection.  Jesus continues to send the Holy Spirit to believers today.  As Presbyterians we don’t talk very much about the Holy Spirit - but we do believe that God continues to send us the Spirit to help us know the love of God in Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit helps us to believe even when we cannot believe - the Spirit prays for us when we cannot pray - the Spirit intercedes on our behalf with God.

        Our whole understanding of the Christian church comes out of what we believe about God’s Spirit in our midst.  We are able to be about God’s work because of the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, corporately and individually.

2) “the holy, catholic church...” - notice that the words here are not capitalized.  I get asked why we say we believe this, more often than anything else - that is because this is a word that has lost its original meaning.  We hear the word catholic and think Roman Catholic - but that is not what we mean in this creed.  The word “catholic” means universal  - we believe in the universal church.  We believe that everyone who calls themselves Christian is part of Christ’s church - no matter what denomination they worship with - no matter whether they call themselves Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Assemblies of God or any other name - we believe that we are all part of Christ’s church and are all about God’s work.  We also believe that the church is holy.

          That doesn’t mean that we believe that we are perfect - Holy means “set apart” - different than the rest of the world.  The church is called to witness to something different than the world - we are called to point to Jesus Christ in all that we do.  We are called to be inclusive, but at the same time we are called to encourage people to live into a higher standard of behavior.  In the early church, people had to study for a year before they were baptized and joined the church.  Being part of the holy, catholic church sets one apart from the world and so a Christian is expected to live a life of faithful witness.

3) “the communion of saints...” - Here we have to consider the words that are used.  We tend to think of “saints” as people who have done wonderful, faithful things with their lives - people like Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, Jr.  But when Paul addresses the churches to which he writes, he always calls the people who are part of the church, “saints.”  Even in churches like Corinth, where people were not behaving well, Paul greets all the saints who make up the church.  In the sense in which we use it in the creed, saints means all those who are part of the church of Jesus Christ - all of us who are trying to live faithful lives.  When we say “the communion of saints,” we mean the community of all those who follow Jesus Christ - past, present and future. 

        Someone asked me after the sermon about what happens when we die, whether I thought we would see the people we loved when we died.  Believing in the communion of saints means to me that we will see all those who have been important in our lives, those we loved, those who influenced us, even if we didn’t ever get to meet them.  The word communion also reminds us of the Table of our Lord, where the saints gather to be fed and restored for work in the world.  We gather for communion, all who are saints - to me that means that closed communion is not possible - the saints, no matter what they call themselves, gather at the Table because that is what we believe we are called to do.  That is a powerful image, all the saints gathered at the Lord’s Table.

One of my favorite movies of all time is Places in the Heart.

        Sally Field plays a young woman who is widowed in the opening scenes of the movie.  Her husband was the sheriff and he is shot by a young black man.  All that she has left is the farm, which she works hard to keep, with help from a black farmhand and a blind boarder.  The banker tries to get her to sell the farm and then she is threatened with losing it to the bank.  Throughout the movie, we see life in Texas in the 1930s - much of it the evil side of life - lynchings, infidelity, racism, greed - all at work in the people of the town.  The movie ends with a communion service in the little church in town.  You see the people you might expect to see, the good people in town receiving communion.  The camera moves with the tray of communion and you begin to see some of the people who have behaved less than wonderfully - but we can accept that.  Then the camera moves along and we see the banker, who did everything possible to take away the family farm. Then we see, in what had to be a “white” church, the farmhand who helped save the farm and the blind boarder, the widow and her children.  Then we suddenly see the dead sheriff sitting next to his wife, receiving communion and then next to him, the man who shot him.  They receive communion and share the peace of Christ with one another.  Suddenly we have a glimpse of the kingdom of God, of what the communion of saints might really be like.  This is the church through God’s eyes, not human eyes.  Through Jesus Christ, God has made it possible for everyone to find their way to shared communion.