March 3, 2005 — 12:25 AM
Credo - My statement of faith
God is a loving parent, a welcoming sibling, and the Spirit that gives all of creation new life. God is the creator, the redeemer, and sustainer of all that is; without God, there would be nothing. God is all of this and yet, God is bigger than any description we may use. This God who is unfathomable, desires communion with each and every part of God's creation.
The love of God that brings about this desire for communion with creation is evident in God's very being - the Trinity. God lives in a loving community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Father is God over us. The Father creates all that is and calls us into covenant. God the Son is God among us. Jesus Christ came to live among us in solidarity with us. Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine offering humanity a taste of what it is truly like to live in communion with the loving God. God the Holy Spirit is God within us. God wants to dwell within each of us to bring us closely into the communion that is the Trinity. It is only through our knowledge of this triune God that we can know of God's love for creation and have confidence that we are invited to be a part of God's loving communion.
Humanity is but one part of God's whole creation. And yet, it is the one part that God made in God's own image. It is also the only part to which was given the responsibility for the rest of the creation - to care for and to be stewards of all that God made. Humanity is the part of God's creation to which God gave the ability to choose or refuse communion with God. With this very choice, sin and evil entered into God's perfect creation. Because God wants humanity to willingly choose to be a part of God's loving community, God allowed for the possibility that humanity would refuse God. Sin's hold on humanity is only broken by the grace of God who continues to reach out to us even though we turn away. Through Jesus' life, death and resurrection, sin and its effects were conquered for all of humanity.
We are able to know about God, God's nature and God's desire to be in communion with humanity because of the Holy Spirit working inside of us. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, we are able to see the Holy Scriptures as God's special revelation of God's self to us. As such they have unique authority in shaping the faith of the Church. The Hebrew Scriptures reveal the beginning of God's covenant with humanity. Through these Scriptures we learn of God's steadfast love for all of creation. In the New Testament we learn anew of God's covenant as it was embodied in the life of Jesus Christ, God's Son. Through his life, work, death, and resurrection we have the supreme example of what it means to be a child of God.
The Church is to be an earthly mirror of the loving community of the Trinity. In order to be such, it must be a community that seeks to better know God and God's will for all of creation. The Church is to follow Christ's example in speaking out for those who have no voice and lifting up those who are often overlooked. By loving God and neighbor, the Church should seek to share God's love with all who do not know it.
As the Church seeks to further God's kingdom on earth, it seeks to set itself apart through the administration of the Sacraments that Christ instituted in his ministry on earth. Through baptism humans experience God's grace as shown in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This seal is a mark of God's love that welcomes the person being baptized into God's community. We believe that through infant baptism we show that it is God who takes the initiative in welcoming us as God's own. Through participation in the Lord's Supper, all who believe in Jesus Christ are participating in the most intimate act of God's loving community - a shared meal around a table. All who partake of this meal are fortified by God's Spirit to continue the work that Christ began.
As God loves and cares for God's creation, so Christians are called to do the same. Christian ministry means sharing God's love with all whom we encounter in our daily lives. God's love requires that we seek justice and wholeness for all of God's creation. Christians, through the working of God's Spirit within them, are to work to build God's kingdom here on earth, with the blessed hope that one day God's kingdom will be realized. God will bring a new heaven and a new earth and then all will know of God's love. This will be a time of true communion with the Triune God; a time when sin and death will no longer have power over creation.
