Christians say “Credo” and tell a story of God’s work on earth and in heaven. I tell the story again with the help of the Christian Creed.
Credo, I believe, in One God, Father and Mother and blessed by many other names,
who calls into being lands and peoples with all their strengths and beauty,
who walks with us through joy and suffering on our pilgrim journey,
faithful through our unfaithfulness and the tragedies of sin and death,
schooling, disciplining us difficult children with constant love,
and who in ages past, with particular care, gave birth to the ancestors of the Jews,
making of this beloved people a blessing to all the families of the world,
then bore them and bore with them through persecution, captivity,
and their frequent turning to other gods, as their Scriptures testify.
Credo, I believe, in God’s anointed one, Jesus, promised rescuer of sin’s captive people,
divine Son of God and heir of all that can ever be through God’s self-giving love,
eternally offering Love’s gift back to Love,
yet formed in time of the flesh of this world in the womb of the Virgin Mary,
born a child of a laborer at carpentry, a Jew, a member of an oppressed tribe,
even a Nazorean, from where, as we liked to say, “What good can come?”
In such low estate and obedient to the one he taught us to call Father,
he made his own the concerns of all he met, whether friend or enemy,
rich or destitute, high-society or rebel, oppressor or oppressed.
Rejected for placing the Reign of God on earth above all our passing concerns,
tried for blasphemy, for dethroning our idols, our false gods, our favorite rulers,
for calling sinners forgiven and those we reject blessed,
abandoned by friends, and left alone by God, owning nothing at the end,
only a cross (on which to conquer),
in fulfillment of the Scriptures,
he suffered in our place under Pontius Pilate the punishment for traitors,
was crucified, died, and was buried,
descending to the place due to us sinners;
and God raised him up, seen again by many, touching and being touched,
glorified, the first of a restored family of God;
and — God’s love for us made tangible — he ascended bodily to his father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead and claim for the father
a renewed creation with all who, in humility and hope, will accept mercy
and disown idols of pride in or despair under the powers aiming to rule our world.
Credo, I believe, in the Holy Spirit, with the Father and the Son equally divine,
Life and Fire blowing in the play and passion of Father and Son’s love,
who is accomplishing love’s purpose
within the three-person God,
among the creatures of God’s world,
and between this world and God,
embracing the many in one, yet blessing each one’s unique story;
who inspires the Scriptures of Jews and Christians,
who can be heard in the sacred stories of many peoples,
who speaks through prophets of each age,
who gives us new life as he did to Jesus’ friends in their bereavement and shame,
who leads people to the Father along many different paths, all in Jesus’ arms.
I believe with the promptings of that Spirit
and with the Communion of Saints on earth and in heaven, the catholic church,
with apostles, martyrs, teachers, and all who encourage me by word and example,
and with the ones who gave me life, Dave, Rose Marie, and all my forebears.
Wounded by sin, they felt Jesus’ healing touch in daily life and sacrament,
and in their flesh they became Jesus’ touch for their world.
I believe, in the mission Jesus gave us when he breathed his Spirit upon us,
to immerse all peoples into the love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
to tell the story where every good, of nature or human artifice, is blessing;
to call our own only our needs and those of our human and natural companions
and the unmerited grace that bears us up through trials and stumbling
and the fleeting, gracious foretastes of a more perefect world;
to do everything for the greater glory of God and the love of family, friend,
stranger, and enemy, in whose faces God’s glory hidees or shines;
to face powers that oppress with the armor of God and the weapons of the weak;
and to look forward, past joys and griefs, successes and failures, to God’s reign
over all the powers of nature and humanity, heaven and earth.
I believe, that God is always doing something new in heaven and on earth,
that there is, finally, not fate or karma, but forgiving and being forgiven,
resurrection of the body in an age to come — earth’s promise of beauth fulfilled,
her peoples freed, her powers redeemed, her tragedy vanished away —
and life with God and sisters and brothers forever growing in love and delight.
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