....and in Jesus Christ... continuing our series on the Apostles' Creed

(the latest in our series breaking down the Christian Apostles' Creed for further thought, by one of our members)

…"and in Jesus Christ", one anointed by God

It is very telling that at this point in the Apostles’ Creed we find a narrative; and this narrative not only forms the heart of the whole creed, but also it takes up just over half of the whole text. 

It is not surprising that the heart of a Christian Creed is the story that the life and work of Jesus is the focus of everything. Traditional Christianity’s central teaching has always been that God is revealed in a special way in the person of Jesus. It isn’t its metaphysics, its moral teachings. or its rituals that sets the traditional Christian faith apart from those of other faith systems: it is the faith that the tales passed on about one peculiar and unique man, the story of Jesus, give us the ultimate insight into the very nature of God. Traditional Christianity doesn’t just make the claim there is a teacher bringing us wisdom or instruction about or even from God, it claims that in gazing on the Jesus of the gospels we are in a mysterious way gazing on God. 

Let that sink in. 

The Creed here isn’t about outlining things a traditional Christian has to accept about Jesus, or highlighting the parts of the story that matter.  Rather, it is a community reminiscing over some of its favourite moments in a narrative they all know well. They are saying, “Do you remember when Jesus did this?”, or “Wasn’t it amazing when Jesus said that?” In reciting their creed, the community is not listing a prescription of being Christian but is continually reminding itself of that shared experience of God in and through the person of Jesus. The communities saying this with and to each other have a shared collection of stories, poems, and letters, to draw on.  And, held most dear and used as their key to read all the others with, they have their stories about Jesus. They can shorthand, and part-quote, and bounce off each other, because they have this shared foundation, this shared treasury to draw from.

We call this treasure the Bible today, but most of the New Testament of the Bible wasn’t originally thought of as sacred.  It was just a collection of letters between Christians, such as the sort of letters people might write between each other today.

So we share much of the Bible with those who first used the words of this Creed. But look how short the Creed is, and how bald.  The community isn’t united by this short, fixed set of words; nor by any other list of ideas and expounded principles.  Those alone are lifeless, and never amount to the Living Word that enlivens the traditional Christian communities.

So much for traditional Christians.  How does this relate to Unitarians?  Well, for all we Unitarians have gained, and we have gained much, in our openness to the literature of other faiths and cultures, we have lost a willingness to hold something in common — to not always be needing something different, something new.  Yet let us not be naïve: it is a modern thing for Christians to hold a Bible in their hands as we do.  During most of history the average person could not read, let alone dream of having the resources to own their own very expensive copy of a text. The Bible as we know it has taken time to come together, and even today there are many different versions and translations. But what early communities did have was a tradition, passed on in songs, artwork, plays, rituals, stories told.  The Bible was never a set text; it is and has always been a collection passed on and kept alive in that re-telling and reinterpretation in new times and places. Those of us not in traditional Christian settings may not be familiar with the injunction that is given out again and again, that each generation must reinterpret the Bible anew.  We may instead imagine that such Churches have one fixed meaning that has to be accepted dogmatically.

The Bible is not a book, nor even a set of books.  It instead constitutes a community reminding itself of what matters, singing its songs, telling its stories. Valuing that — and living in that community — isn’t to disparage what another community has, or to be closed-minded to what we can learn from each other, but it is a brilliantly helpful start point.  This is a shared basis to talk with one another, a shared place to reflect on things in the light of news brought in from elsewhere. Having that shared narrative at the heart of a community doesn’t exclude other narratives, but it protects a community from becoming a collection of individuals each having to grind through telling their own stories and explaining their own references.

Why do we as Unitarians have to throw that out, because we don’t view Jesus as the traditional Christians do?

We all long to share and be close to others.  Sometimes our desire to be closer to those far away, and the new and the exotic, can blind us to how we push away those closer to home, and the well-used, the old and familiar.  That Truth in which we all live and move and have our being isn’t shattered and found in shards amongst all the peoples of the earth: it is present to all, in its wholeness.  It may be hard to hear, but the task is not to find new truths and insights (there aren’t any new ones) but to unlearn the lies we have told ourselves and to be healed of the blindnesses that afflict us all.  

Seeing things differently, as we do when confronted by other cultures and other ways of doing and saying things, may well help jar us from the slumber and numbness the familiar can hold; and in any case not everyone will remain within the communities they were born into.  Further, it is possible to belong to more than one community at a time.  But we cannot truly value what any community has to offer unless we value those actual communities, and not just the pieces of them we personally enjoy. The dialogue within the community that this Creed represents has at its heart a shared narrative, a shared story and experience precisely because it is a community and not a collection of consumers of interesting ephemeral ideas and colourful images.

Jesus of the Gospels, the Word made Flesh, invisible God seen in physical Man. The shared narrative, which brings a community together and which in that community helps people to experience and to make present God in the world. Yes, I believe in that Jesus; I believe telling that story is worthwhile; I believe a community that has that Jesus at its heart can transform and enlighten. 

There are those who say Paul’s letter to the Christians in Corinth (Corinthians 1:13) is a description of the Jesus of the Gospels.  I do believe I see God in Jesus, however dimly, and that we can make God present when others can see that Jesus in our Unitarian communities too.