Trinity Athanasian Creed 18

The Athanasian Creed  Book of Concord  Tappert translation from Latin, 1959, pp 19-20.
   Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all else, hold the true Catholic faith. Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will without doubt perish for eternity.
   This is the true Christian faith, that we worship one God in three persons and three persons in one God
   without confusing the persons, nor dividing the divine substance.
   For the Father is one person of the Father, the Son is another, and the Holy Spirit is still another,
   but there is one Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, equal in glory, and co-equal in Majesty. .
   What the Father is, that is the Son, and that is the Holy Spirit.
   the Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, the Holy Spirit is uncreated;
   the Father is unlimited, the Son is unlimited, the Holy Spirit is unlimited;
   the Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, the Holy Spirit is eternal,
   and yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal,
   just as there are not three who are uncreated and who are unlimited, but there is one who is uncreated, and unlimited.
   Likewise the Father is almighty, the Son is almighty, the Holy Spirit is almighty,
   and yet they are not three who are almighties, but there is one who is almighty.
   So the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God.
   and yet they are not three Gods, but one God.
   So the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is Lord
   and yet they are not three Lords, but one Lord.
   For just as we are compelled by Catholic truth to acknowledge each person by himself to be God and Lord,
   so are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say that there are three Gods, or three Lords.
   The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten by anybody.
   The Son was not made or created, but was begotten by the Father.
   The Holy Spirit was not made or created or begotten, but proceeds from the Father and the Son
   Accordingly there is one Father and not three Fathers; one Son and not three Sons;  one Holy Spirit and not three Holy Spirits.
   And among these three persons none is before or after another; none is greater or less than another;
   but all three persons are coequal and coeternal, and accordingly, as has been stated above, three persons are to be worshipped in one Godhead and one God is to be worshipped in three persons.
   Whoever wants to be saved must think thus about the Trinity.

   It is also necessary for everlasting salvation that one faithfully believe that our Lord Jesus Christ became man,

   for this is the right faith, that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is at once God and Man;
   he is God, begotten before the ages of the substance of the Father, and he is man, born in the world of the substance of his mother,
   perfect God and perfect man, with reasonable soul and human flesh,
   equal to the Father with respect to his Godhead; and inferior to the Father with respect to his manhood.
   Although he is God and Man, he is not two Christs but one Christ;
   one, that is to say, not by changing the Godhead into flesh but by taking on the humanity into God;
   one, indeed, not by confusion of substance, but by unity in one person.
   For just as the reasonable soul and the flesh are one man, so God and man are one Christ;
   who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose from the dead,
   ascended into heaven, is seated on the right hand of the Father, whence he shall come to judge the quick and the  dead.
  At his coming all men shall rise with their bodies and give an account of their own deeds.
   Those who have done good will enter eternal life, and those who have done evil will go into everlasting fire.
   This is the true Catholic Faith. Unless a man believe this firmly and faithfully, he cannot be saved. 

Sermon:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The Bible tells us that God loves us and that Jesus death and resurrection save to eternal life all who will believe in him.  Jesus saves, and that is fact.  How Jesus saves is theology, human faith seeking understanding of God’s love. Some theology leads to life-giving truth, but some bad theology leads us to error in faith and to bad behavior in life.

On Trinity Sunday we celebrate God’s love in creation; we celebrate Jesus’ saving grace, and we celebrate the power and truth of the Holy Spirit. 

Let me begin with some history: For almost 300 years it was dangerous to believe in Jesus. From the time of Emperor Nero in 65 to Emperor Decius in 250 persecution was local and sporadic, something like the persecution Christians face today in the Middle East, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Indonesia. But in 250 Decius tried to fix increasing conflict and division in the Roman Empire by an empire-wide loyalty oath. In the governor’s office a small fire burned before a statue of the emperor as a god. You were to buy a pinch of incense and put it on the fire and get a certificate you had done so. When many Christian leaders refused to accept the emperor as divine they were executed, and for the next 50 years a hot political issue was how to deal with Christians – persecute or tolerate? The last persecution was by Diocletian in 303.  Diocletian tried with some success to destroy all copies of the New Testament. That was too much. The social and political situation flipped. Christianity became popular. People came to faith and sought to understand. Lots of questions: “Who is God?”  “How does Jesus save?”

In response the church developed the creeds.  These use Greek and Roman philosophical language to state a paradox. God is one God in three persons – the Father who creates, Jesus the Son who redeems, the Holy Spirit of power and truth who works in us and the world to bring us to new and eternal life in God. Jesus saves because he is fully and completely God and at the same time fully and completely human.

It was complicated and messy. In 325 Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria led a church council to adopt the Nicene Creed. About 150 years later in southern France his teaching was restated. In your bulletin is Pastor Theodore Tappert’s 1969 translation from Latin of the Athanasian Creed. This theological political statement is part of our heritage this Trinity Sunday.

Lutheran princes and city representatives presented the Augsburg Confession to Emperor Charles V in 1530. Fifty years later, in 1580, Lutheran theologians, princes and cities agreed on a Book of Concord - the Augsburg Confession and the commentaries on it. The Book of Concord says the Athanasian Creed is one of “the three chief symbols or Creeds of the Christian Faith which are commonly used in the church.”

God has chosen to reveal himself to us. The Bible is a trustworthy record of God’s revelation. At the bush that burned and was not consumed, God told Moses, “I am that I am.” The fundamental assertion is in Hebrew Shema, Israel, Adonai elohenu, Adonai ehad, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

God is one, and we are one. In a world that tries to divide and conquer, we struggle for integrity. We are created to be one person, a unity of body and soul, one person committed to one truth in one God. We play many roles, but dividing ourselves up into pieces leads eventually to madness. Spiritually healthy people are at unity and peace with ourselves and with the one God.

So the Athanasian Creed teaches that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are equal in glory, co-equal in Majesty, uncreated, unlimited, and eternal, and one. It teaches that Jesus is the Son of God, at once God and Man, perfect God and perfect man, by taking the humanity into God, unity in one person, God and man one Christ.

The Creed ends, when Jesus comes in the last day, “all men shall rise with their bodies and give an account of their own deeds. Those who have done good will enter eternal life, and those who have done evil will go into everlasting fire.”

As Reformation Christians we know that the only good deed we can do is to receive the faith offered us by God’s grace. Romans 3:23-25 “²³ since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”  

So this Trinity Sunday, we open ourselves to God’s gift of grace and receive by faith the gift of salvation to eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Thanks be to God! Amen.  

Pentecost 18

At Pentecost we remember God’s gift of his Holy Spirit to Jesus’ spiritual body the church. We are baptized in God’s Holy Spirit to become God’s holy people and to proclaim Jesus’ salvation to Avery County and to the world. God grant the world may say of us, “we hear them tell in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.”

Pentecost is the Greek word for the Jewish feast of Shavuot - 50 days after Passover. In Judea the barley harvest began in April at Passover, the winter wheat harvest began in late May at Shavout or Pentecost.  The Exodus is remembered at Passover, and God’s giving the Law on Sinai is remembered at Shavout or Pentecost. God has blessed the people of the Law, both Jews and Christians, with knowledge of God’s perfect will eternally expressed in his unchanged and unchanging Law, knowledge and power received by God’s grace through the faith God gives.

On Pentecost in Jesus’ time and now devout  Jewish men spend the night studying the Bible and eating dairy foods - lots of cheesecake – to remember the manna in the desert while the women prepare a feast for family and visitors. The Passover seder meal ends, “Next year in Jerusalem!” Devout Jews in the many countries to which the people of Israel have been dispersed dream of celebrating Passover in Jerusalem. In Jesus’ time it was a long, expensive, difficult trip: people came in March for Passover and stayed the 7 weeks visiting family, worshipping in the Temple, seeing the sights, until the weather got hot. Then they ate the Pentecost feast and headed home.

Jesus’ disciples gathered for the Pentecost feast with the many new believers in Jesus. They talked about Jesus and his free and freeing teaching about the Law. Traditional interpretation had made the Law complicated and difficult to observe. The disciples remembered that Jesus had quoting the summary of the Law, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ (Deuteronomy 6:5) This is the first and great commandment And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Leviticus 19:18) On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

We confess that we do not keep even these two commandments, nor the 10 commandments of Sinai, nor the 613 commandments the Jewish scholars found in scripture. We know that our efforts to obey the Law do not save us from sin and spiritual death. We are saved by God’s grace in the death and resurrection of Jesus, grace received in faith. We are justified by God in Jesus without the Law, and then God the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth shows us how to return thanks to God for the gifts of justification and salvation. We return thanks as we seek to obey the law and to become the holy people God calls us to be. We cannot obey God in our own spiritual strength, but with God’s power and God’s strength given by his Holy Spirit we can grow in faith to love God and obey him.

On the first Pentecost the disciples remembered that Jesus had promised them the Spirit of Truth. They had come to know the truth of Jesus. They remembered Jesus had promised them the Spirit of Power. They knew Jesus’ power because he had defeated the great enemy death by rising from the dead. And at the Pentecost feast they remembered the giving of the law at Sinai, Moses on the mountain top, the fire lighting up the sky, the powerful wind almost blowing the people away.

They remembered Jesus teaching at the Ascension 10 days before when Jesus “opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”   They remembered Jesus’ teaching and so on that first Pentecost they studied Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit. What was this Spirit going to be like? How would life be different with Jesus no longer physically present with them?

Then suddenly came a sound from heaven like a mighty rushing wind, . . . tongues as of fire appeared among them, and “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” From Iran in the east to Lybia in north Africa, from the north coast of Turkey to south Yemen and all the places in between, “we hear them tell in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.”

Professor Bruce Rigdon tells of being in Russia to make a movie about the Christian church under Communism. Mikael was their minder, arranging interviews, getting churches opened, making the project possible. After the last night’s farewell party Mikael told Rigdon, “You showed me parts of my Russian heritage I never knew; I had never been in a church until you came to make this movie.” He fell silent. Rigdon moved toward the door, tired and ready for bed. Mikael stopped him and said, “You are a Christian?” He knew Rigdon was ordained and a seminary professor, but he had to ask, “You are a Christian?” Rigdon said, “Yes, I am a Christian.” Mikael said, “It was not true when I said I’ve never been in a church. I was once but I don’t remember it. My parents are atheists and party members, but my grandmother was a Christian. One day when I was an infant she took me to church and I was baptized. Tell me now, I’m just curious, you understand, but for curiosity’s sake, tell me, do you think anything happened when I was baptized?” 

The Jewish custom is to spend the night of Pentecost in study of the bible and prayer. Rigdon and Mikael spent that Pentecost night in study of the bible and prayer. An American Christian in Russia with a young man raised in Communist atheism, “We hear them tell in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

The same Holy Spirit who came to the disciples at Pentecost comes to us when we are baptized and believe.

St. Paul wrote to the contentious church at Corinth that the Holy Spirit gives many gifts, but they are given in the one body of Jesus Christ.

We are all baptized into one body, filled with one Holy Spirit just as the disciples were on that first Pentecost.   

We are filled with the Holy Spirit to remember Jesus’ teaching, “Love God, love neighbor.”  

We are filled with the Holy Spirit to keep the commandments and grow into the holy people God calls us to be. We are filled with the Holy Spirit to know the truth of Jesus and witness to that truth in the world Jesus redeemed by his death and resurrection.

We are filled with the Holy Spirit to witness to the power of Jesus who defeated death and gives us new life.

We are filled with the Holy Spirit so that the whole world, and everyone we know may truly say, “we hear them tell in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” Amen.