I Believe; Help Thou My Unbelief
Thankful for the beauty of books and art, love and prayer. The gift of being alive in this broken time.
“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.” (Anne Lamott)
“By faith, we understand, if we are to understand it at all, that the madness and lostness we see all around us and within us are not the last truth about the world but only the next to the last truth… It is God who made us and not we ourselves, made us out of God's peace to live in peace, out of God's light to dwell in light, out of God's love to be above all things loved and loving. That is the last truth about the world.”(Frederick Buechner)
I was recently asked to cobble together a one page affirmation of faith—to put into words what is really beyond words. Faith in real life is not so much about agreeing with doctrine but a dynamic, active, seeking, questioning, living trust in God.
Yet when you are an ordained minister of the word and sacrament, it is sometimes necessary to use words.
I decided to include something here on prayer. For without fresh springs of prayer—and just love—faith is dead.
As we say in the twelve step movement, “take what you like and leave the rest.” Life on earth is a moveable feast.
What is Prayer?
Deep calls to deep. Prayer is a way of life, including embodiment, sometimes using words. Prayer is adoration, gratitude, intercession, anguish, song, for loved ones and the afflicted, as the Spirit leads. Prayer is waking in the middle of the night, early morning, and turning towards the Light; praying for forgiveness and healing; sometimes for enemies.
“I am talking about prayer—prayer not as speaking to God, which in a scattered way I do many times a day because I cannot help doing it, but prayer as being deeply silent, as watching and listening for God to speak.” (Frederick Buechner).
“All prayer is communion, not only between God and me, but between everybody in beloved community and myself. All prayer takes us into the communion of saints. Perhaps it would be helpful to think that when I am praying I am closely united with everybody who ever prayed and everybody now praying.” (Thomas Merton).
Affirmation of Faith
I believe in the one triune God— Infinite Creator, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit. I believe the created world is good and each person made in the image of God. Yet there is brokenness in the world—flesh, sin and demonic—on both personal and collective levels. Jesus Christ is the victor, our redemption, liberator, and living hope for all people, especially the poor.
The gospel of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is an offense, a “permanent revolution” for humanity in its deadly hubris and idolatries. It particularly disturbs the parts of selves and societies that pretend to include God's ways when they do not. How can God's love be free and gracious? Nevertheless, through the offense of God’s Word made flesh in Christ crucified we are freed from bondage to self, hatred, and death and begin to live in transforming metanoia, faith, hope, and love.
God empowers the church to witness in its whole life to the word and promise of the risen Christ. By the Spirit we are being reconciled as God’s diverse people; guided in our understanding of scripture; witnesses in hope to Christ’s moveable feast; strengthened to do the work of love, joy, and justice; to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
I believe the holy scriptures are the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ. They reveal different angles on the One who came to seek and save the lost. As Kierkegaard suggests, the Bible is a letter from God with our address on it.
The sacraments of Communion and Baptism are visible signs of God’s prevenient grace. Baptism marks our initiation into the family of God and the new life made possible through Christ. In Holy Communion, the church is reminded of God’s mysterious presence with us and our hope and solidarity in the Spirit. As the Communion bread is broken and wine poured out, we are reminded together of Jesus’ life broken and poured out for us and all people.
Worship is a new way of life experienced when people gather to affirm the worth of God, sing, pray, hear the Word proclaimed, receive the sacraments—and when they are disbursed in humility and audacity to be salt and light in the world. I believe the community of faith has an awesome responsibility to witness to God's saving grace in culture, politics, ecology, and society—reformed always reforming—even at the risk of its life. Every moment has to do with God.
I believe we are called through the Spirit to do justice and love mercy in everyday life—increase the love of God and neighbor in the world—in eschatological anticipation of God’s Reign, “what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love God.”
“I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)