....and in the community that is the Church.... concluding our look at the Apostles' Creed

That all might be one (John 17:21)

‘… the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting..’

That movement of the Spirit, that flow of call and answer where the God we cannot see breaks into the world we can, like breath upon the waters. That God, which cannot be approached as a thing to be held in the mind, any more than in the hands.  That God we can look towards, but not at.  That God we can tell of, where God broke through and how that God promises to break through again but that God we can never pin down in any given moment, always just beyond, always just outside.  It is of that, which this final part of the Apostles’ Creed speaks, as surely as the Creed speaks in every other part.

The Church, or Gathering, or Community, is holy because it is a place where the Spirit moves, and it is ‘catholic’, meaning ‘universal’, because it encompasses everyone.  It is the community of all people. Each and every one of us that place where the water ripples.  What we experience as our congregations, or our families, or our neighbourhoods, is just one part of that wider Community that we can never wholly encompass, not because others are deep down ‘the same’ as us but rather because in all our diversity we are nevertheless united as the place where the waters ripple. That which we experience in the name of God is experienced within this Community.

The communion of saints and the forgiveness of sins are flipsides of the same dynamic.  We rise and fall together; our choices are made within the warp and weft of the choices of others.  We build each other up and we tear each other down; no single heroic act or act of villainy is the final word in this tale we tell together.  As the ripples on the water spread out and mingle with other ripples just as new movements begin and others fade, there is always God’s Might, Maybe, Perhaps, that opens the space for a new beginning, a new better. 

The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting reaffirm that ripple on the waters, that movement of the Spirit.  Just as there is no knowing anything of any one of us apart from through our physicality, through what we do in a physical world, so there is no knowing anything of that which we call God save through the divine breaking through into our actual everyday reality.  The body, the flesh and blood and bone, is not lost in our discovery and celebration of God.  No, it is raised up, exalted as the essential element or condition of that discovery and celebration.  I do not make claims about special knowledge of what lies beyond the horizon of the life that we know.  But as the God we have explored through this reflection on the Apostles’ Creed is that which is beyond the horizon; that call that we move towards; that More, which opens up a space for different and other; that Might which could be, which may be; then I dare to say “Perhaps.”  And while there could be nothing, I will embrace the risk, and live like the ripples on the water of a pool I cannot see the end of.

I believe.  I believe.  Not because I hold certain ideas, and not because I hope for certain things.  I believe because I live a life in Community, striving to listen to that call to let the Might (the Maybe, ‘may be’) of God break into the ‘is here now’ of our everyday life.

13 May 2020 - In the Beginning, I believe 

16 June 2020 - We believe

28 June 2020 - In God

7 August 2020 - The Father

11 December 2020 - The Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth

27 March 2021 - And in Jesus Christ

28 March 2021 - In the Holy Spirit

28 March 2021 (this post) - the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting

I began looking at the Apostles’ Creed as a loving, excited dialogue that brings out but never encompasses the whole of what is going on.  And that is where I have come back to, and I’m grateful you stayed with me for the journey.