During worship this day we again engaged in that most wonderous practice of communal recitation of the Nicence Creed (yeah, I know, it’s technically the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed with the filoque but that’s a lot to go in the bulletin). I was reminded of the words of Luke Timothy Johnson in his book The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters (Doubleday, 2003) concerning the power of the recited creeds to shape our world and offer resistance to the corrosive patterns of the modern world. A few quotations from Johnson to provoke thought and reinforce thoughtful participation in the recitation of the Nicene Creed.
The creed is remarkable for its concise rendering of the Christian story and the structure of the Christian vision of reality. It is an instrument that can at once define the community of faith and challenge alternative stories and visions of reality. (p. viii)
I think that the Christian creed enunciates a powerful and provocative understanding of the world, one that ought to scandalize a world that runs on the accepted truths of Modernity. There is something in the creed to offend virtually every contemporary sensibility. At the same time, it communicates a compelling vision of the world’s destiny and humanity’s role that challenges the accustomed idolatries and the weary platitudes of current worldly wisdom. Christians who say these words should know what they are doing when they say them and what they are saying when they mean them. This is the precondition to their celebrating a specifically Christian conception of reality, and the presupposition for their challenging the dominant conceptions of the world where they should be challenged. (p. 7)
Every Sunday millions of Christians recite the creed. Some sleepwalk through it thinking of other things, some puzzle over the strange language, some find offense in what it seems to say. Perhaps few of them fully appreciate what a remarkable thing they are doing. Would they keep on doing it if they grasped how different it made them in today’s world? Would they keep on saying these words if they really knew what they implied?
In a world that celebrates individuality, they are actually doing something together. In an age that avoids commitment, they pledge themselves to a set of convictions and thereby to each other. In a culture that rewards novelty and creativity, they use words written by others long ago. In a society where accepted wisdom changes by the minute, they claim that some truths are so critical that them must be repeated over and over again. In a throwaway, consumerist world, they accept, preserve , and continue tradition. Reciting the creed at worship is thus a counter-cultural act. (pp. 40-41)
So much is bound up in the creed and in the very act of communal recitation. Next Sunday when the time comes to recite the creed together don’t forget the counter-cultural implications!
For Christ and His Kingdom,
Richard Klaus