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 powers and beauties,
who walks with us through joy and suffering,
staying with us even in the tragedies of sin and death,
disciplining us with constant love,
guiding us toward fullness of life, toward God’s own being,
and who in ages past, with particular care, gave birth to the Jews,
making of this one people a blessing to all the families of the world,
then bore them and bore with them through persecution and their own sin,
as Jewish Scriptures testify.
Credo, I believe, in God’s anointed one, Jesus,
Son of God, heir of all that being can be through God’s self-giving love,
eternally offering that gift back to the Father,
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 the saying went, “What good can come?”
In such low estate and obedient to the one he called 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 heralding the Reign of God on earth over all those partial concerns,
tried for blasphemy, for dethroning our favorite idols,
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 and the weakness of God,
in fulfillment of the Scriptures,
he suffered in our place under Pontius Pilate the punishment for rebellion,
was crucified, died, and was buried,
even descending to the hell due to us sinners;
and God raised him up, glorified, the first of a recreated family of God;
and he was taken up bodily to his place with the all-loving God.
From there he will come again to preside over a renewed creation
with all who, in humility and hope, will accept mercy and disown idols
of pride in or despair under the powers of this fallen world.
Credo, I believe, in the Holy Spirit,
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 and blessing each one’s unique story;
who inspires the Scriptures of Jews and Christians,
who can be heard within the sacred stories of many peoples,
who speaks through prophets of each age,
who gives us new life as he did to Jesus’ once despairing followers,
who leads people to the Father in their different ways, all in Jesus’ arms.
Credo, 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.
Credo, I believe, in the mission Jesus gave us when he breathed his Spirit upon us,
to be part of his story through baptism in the name of the Three-in-One,
to call nothing our own but the concerns of our human and natural families
and the grace that bears us up,
to look forward, past our griefs and failures, to God’s reign over all the
powers of nature and humanity, heaven and earth.
Credo, I believe, that God is always doing something new on earth and in heaven,
that there is, not fate, but forgiving and being forgiven,
resurrection of the body in a world, renewed and transformed,
and life with God and sisters and brothers forever growing in love and delight.
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