October 17th, 2024
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video. I’m conscious that a series of talks on the creed is not going to float everyone’s boat. It can all too easily become an arid intellectual exercise with few apparent connections to everyday life. The approach I’ve tried to take is primarily a psychological one. Creedal statements give a framework to reality as it is with God at the centre of it. Making those connections is especially important with the next group of statements about Jesus: on the third day he rose again from the dead, he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead. This is a grand historical vision spanning thousands of years of history and on into an indeterminate future. Such a vast perspective is easily side-lined in the nitty-gritty of day-to-day experience.
It's hard not to be overwhelmed at the moment, with the vast scale of human suffering. Russia tries to bomb Ukraine back into the medieval era. Mr Putin can apparently authorise nerve gas attacks on opponents in the UK with impunity. There is daily carnage in Palestine, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Kurdistan, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Myanmar, Sudan, Afghanistan and these are the ones that make an occasional headline. The six million people who have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo over the last few years of conflict scarcely get a mention. The perpetrators of many of these crimes will sleep easily in their beds, enjoying ill-gotten gains, their money laundered through compliant banks. Their victims will not get justice or redress.
It is such unfairness, or God’s apparent indifference, that is such an obstacle to faith for many people. Even those of us who have been Christians for many years encounter personal injustices or what feels like pointless suffering, and find our faith tested, certainly a faith in a God who is loving.
Jesus frequently argued with the Pharisees who were blind to their own faults but were quick to judge the faults of others. They hadn’t recognised the old adage that every time you point the finger, you find three pointing back at you. If we think of judgement at all, we reserve it for Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and probably Putin. We don’t consider that it could apply to ourselves as well. No-one is without fault, and if Jesus’ instruction to be perfect as his Father in heaven was perfect holds true we will all have to give an account of ourselves. If God is truly just then all human wrongdoing, however minor, even our own, should be exposed and dealt with. If I want God to be truly just and fair, I am asking not just for a reckoning for every petty autocrat and scammer, but for my own negligence, selfishness, unkindness and lack of care. The vile emperors of the Old Testament who invaded and destroyed Israel could be both the instruments of God’s judgement but also subject to judgement themselves for their crimes against humanity.
Our creedal framework weaves this mysterious operation of divine sovereignty into the great story of grace and forgiveness that the Bible is telling us. All sin will be judged, but God has chosen to express that judgement in himself on the cross. The benefits of that are now available for those who will lay hold of them. The efficacy of that is vindicated by the Resurrection. Evil didn’t win the day but was overcome. Our sins are not the last word; forgiveness is. Recognising we have been found, and received such a forgiveness, is a great generator of humility.
You can see the Wye behind me in full spate following the recent heavy rains. I am standing on solid ground. Throughout the centuries, our persecuted brothers and sisters have stood on the solid ground of God’s revealed truth, even in the face of suffering. I’m recording this on the day we remember the martyr St. Ignatius, one of the generation of Christians after the first apostles. He was a disciple of John. They went to death, confident in the authority of the ascended Christ and their safe passage through the judgement to come. Whatever life throws at us, we are encouraged to do the same.
+Richard