Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
We live in an age where attacking
the Christian faith is not only acceptable, but encouraged. Listen to the way
people talk around you. Now, it may not be as bad out here in Mission Valley or
in Victoria or Goliad or Cuero as in Austin, or Houston, or Dallas, or in New
York or Sacramento or Las Vegas, but people openly use Jesus, the Church, and
Christians for verbal target practice. You may have experienced this yourself
as people grill you about the faith you confess with very pointed and direct
questions. Sometimes, those honest questions searching for answers; sometimes,
those are questions set up as “gotcha” questions to poke holes in your faith. I
hate to say this, but I suspect those questions will only increase in the years
ahead. The Lord will place people in your path who desperately need to hear the
truth of Jesus, whether they want to or not; and the devil will also cause
people to enter your path to tempt you and lead you away from the power of the
Gospel.
When that happens – when people
ask you questions about our Triune God, no matter what their motivation might
be; or even if you have questions about your own faith, we are called to
confess what it is we believe, to stand firm and be prepared to answer those
who question us. But where do you begin? The Catechism is a pretty big book;
the Bible even moreso. This is one of the beauty of the Creeds.
We know the Apostle’s Creed and Nicene
Creeds. The Apostle’s Creed is the oldest Creed, based on what the Apostle’s
taught from the Scriptures. It was the original Baptismal Creed allowing the candidate to confess, "I believe what the Church teaches" - thus, it begins, "I believe..." It teaches the simple Trinitarian truth of the
Father as Creator, the Son as Redeemer, the Holy Spirit as Sanctifier. The
Apostle’s Creed particularly focuses on the human nature of Jesus. Consider the
verbs: conceived, born, suffered, died, buried, rose, ascended, lives and
reigns. These are human words. In the early 300s, the question was raised
whether Jesus was really God. So, the Church gathered together and prepared the Nicene Creed, building on the teaching of the
Apostles. Because it was the Church's confession, it confesses "We believe," again going back to the Scriptures, confessing the Trinitarian
Godhead. The Nicene Creed particularly focuses on the Divine nature of Jesus. Again, notice
the language: God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not
made, being of one substance with the Father. We know these Creeds and can
confess them from memory. There is the Athanasian Creed as well, lengthy and
complex, an intricate defense of the Trinity in a time when some within the Church began to teach and argue there
was no such thing as a Three-In-One God and that Jesus was just a great teacher. It also stands as a defense of Jesus Christ
as both God and Man when others argued this was an impossibility. Those are
wonderful tools to keep in the brain to use as short-cuts to speak of the
faith.
But, perhaps the person you are
speaking to wants more. They want to go back to the Bible. They want the words,
they want The Word. So, where do you go? Begin in the beginning. This morning’s
Old Testament lesson, Genesis 1:1 – 2:4 tells the story of creation and it
begins with one of the most incredible sentences in the Bible: “In the beginning,
God…” God has always existed. To human minds, who only understand the limits of
time, that is literally mind-blowing. God has ALWAYS been and ALWAYS will be!
Yet one day, out of His love, He began a 7-day process of creating all that
exists out of nothing. With only the words, “Let there be,” all came into
being. To be sure, we have questions about creation – What about dinosaurs? Did
Adam have a belly-button? Where did all the other people come from? – but these
questions do not take away from the power of God’s strength and might. Stay
focused; stay on task; stay on message to point to Jesus.
Into this perfect world, He
placed the pinnacle of His creation: Adam and Eve, created in His image of
holiness and sinlessness. Everything was at their fingertips – they were to
care for and enjoy God’s creation with only one stipulation: do not eat from
the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But that is exactly what they did,
eating from the forbidden tree. We know God is a righteous and just judge – the
wages of sin is death and we deserve nothing but punishment for those sins.
Adam and Eve and all their descendants, including you and the person to whom
you are speaking, deserve the eternal damnation of hell.
So, in the fullness of time, God
sent His only-begotten Son into the world to take our punishment upon Himself.
In another miracle of time that we can only begin to understand, Jesus – who,
as fully God, was present at creation; the Voice (the Word) of Creation, if you
will – entered our human world in human time as a human baby. He lived a
perfect life (what we were supposed to do) without sinning (what we cannot do)
so that we could again have peace with God (what we could never hope to do on
our own). His death paid the price for our sins. And His resurrection means
that God has accepted His death as this payment, and guarantees us the promise
of heaven.
It is into this death and
resurrection that you were Baptized. The same Holy Spirit – the Spirit of God
that hovered upon the tohu wabohu –
the chaos – of pre-creation – hovered upon your heart as the pastor poured
three handfuls of water over your head and spoke that wonderful sentence: I
baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In
those powerful words, coupled with the out-pouring of water, the Holy Spirit
plants the seed of faith in your heart. You are united to the Father through the death and resurrection of the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in Water and Word. Your sins are washed away; you become a
child of God; heaven is yours. The Father sent the Son who sent the Spirit who
leads us to faith in Jesus who leads us to the Father. It’s a rainbow of sending
and leading and sending and leading. The rainbow; a reminder of the saving work
of God through the flood. The rainbow; a reminder of the baptismal flood that
washed your sins and united you to the Triune God.
Your Triune God – Father, Son,
Holy Spirit – remains active in you. Not only has He created you, He provides
for you in abundant ways. Not only has He died for you, He continues to forgive
you and pray for you. Not only has He begun the work of faith in you, He
continues to strengthen you by gathering You into His Church to receive those very gifts given in His Triune name.
And now, especially now, as the
temptations of the world continue to work against you, as the grey and latter
days weigh against you, as satan uses the questions and unfaithfulness of
others to lure you away from faith in the Triune God, the same Lord invites you
to His table to eat and drink His body and blood, in, with and under the bread
and wine. Ah, another mystery! Again, we cannot fully understand how this takes
place. Don’t question it. Believe it. Why? Because Jesus says so. He invites us
to this table where He is both the meal and the host. This is spiritual food to
strengthen faith that can be made weak by the weariness of the world.
Then, when you are asked, by
someone, anyone, about this God in whom your faith rests, stop and start anew: “In
the beginning, God…” And then say, “This
I believe. Amen.”
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