Do you believe in God the Father?
Do you believe in Jesus Christ,
the Son of God?
Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?
These three questions —
not whether we will continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship
in the prayers and the breaking of the bread
are how our Baptismal Covenant begins.
The answers to these questions
are all in the affirmative.
Not only are they in the affirmative
but they are all of us together —
not just the candidates —
professing again the faith of our baptisms
professing the Apostles’ Creed
putting our heart and trust in on God:
the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The Apostles’ Creed’s dating
is somewhere in the third to fourth centuries.
The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed
didn’t start to be articulated
until 325.
Meanwhile, this baptismal formula
which Matthew gives us in Jesus’ words
was the norm by around 85.
“Baptize them in the name of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.”
As the church muddles through,
not unlike we do today,
there may not have been specific understandings
of God-in-Three-Persons
but that is how the church
was already understanding God.
Three Persons, One God,
a mystical dance of union and unity
a mystical dance of wholeness and division
between the creator of all things
who broke into time to redeem all things
who sent themself to draw us
into their work of reconciliation.
This is the Good News of the faith we profess
and admonition Jesus gives to the eleven today.
Our passage from Matthew
is the only one he has
where the eleven remaining disciples —
other than the women who’d gone to the tomb —
encounter the resurrected Jesus.
There has been no entry
through the locked door
then doing it again a week later.
There has been no walking journey
with Jesus being revealed
in the breaking of bread.
Jesus told the women to tell the disciples
to go to Galilee as he had told them.
They meet him on the mountain,
a new Moses to them yet again,
close to God physically
and where he’d taught them how to live
in the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus then gives the fledgling church
their charge.
“As you go through the world,
teach all kinds of people —
regardless of their background —
how to follow me.
Teach them what I’ve taught you
about loving one another
and loving your enemy.
Teach them what I’ve taught you
about judging one another
and how you should judge yourself.
Teach them what I’ve taught you
about who God prioritizes
and what matters to God.
Disciple them about how to follow me.
Then pull them into this work!
Baptize them in the name of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.
Your charge becomes their charge.
I will be with you in this work
until the end of time.”
This is a promise Jesus makes to his disciples,
his disciples through all of time,
that he won’t leave them.
In John’s gospel we heard two weeks ago
Jesus promising to send a helper,
an advocate,
to the church.
Last week we celebrated
the arrival of the Holy Spirit.
In directing the eleven to baptize,
Jesus is admonishing us
to share the work
to draw people in.
We are baptized in the name
of the creator of all things
who broke into time to redeem all things
who sent themself to draw us
into their work of reconciliation.
In these baptisms in the name
of the Holy and Undivided Trinity
we profess individually
our faith in the Triune God.
The God in whose name we are baptized
is the God in whom we have just confessed
our belief.
This is not checking boxes
of what we do accept
as the sole way God can be understood
and the church having final authority.
That’s not what belief in God
or the work of the Creeds is.
Rather than simply intellectual assent,
belief in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit
is placing one’s heart, hope, and trust in God
and living a life that is changed
as a result.
The week before last
the Rev. Caitlyn Keith tweeted beautifully,
“Our creeds are not a litmus strip
for who is in and who should be out.
They are a statement
of the hope that is in us.
A reminder of the promises
made to humankind.”
A statement
of the hope that is in us.
A reminder of the promises
made to humankind.
“Remember,
I am with you always,
to the end of the age.”
Joined to God in baptism,
joined to Jesus’ death and resurrection
as we are born by water and the Spirit,
we are made part of the community
that professes Jesus the Christ crucified
and resurrected.
Joined to God in baptism
we are joined to a God who is One
and who is Three
a God who is in community and communion
with Godself.
Our creeds are not tests for who is in
and who is out.
They’re promises of the God
who created all things in love
and stepped into time in love
to fix what we had broken
and dwells with us
that through God
we might be
repairers of the breach.
This is the faith of the Church
belief in the Holy and Triune God
in whom we put our hearts, hope, trust,
and by whom we live lives that are changed.
As we go through the world,
we teach all kinds of people —
regardless of their background —
how to follow Jesus.
We teach them what Jesus has taught us
about loving one another
and loving your enemy.
Then we pull them into the work too.
We baptize them in the name
of the Father and
of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit,
the Holy and Triune God who is with us always
even until the end of the ages.