The final section of the Creed has two parts, a brief statement of belief in the third person of the Trinity, God the Holy Spirit, and five statements of belief.
With the understanding of the Holy Spirit not only being sent by God the Father with the Son, but that the Holy Spirit is an active part of the Holy Trinity, Christianity has a unique faith in the Trinitarian Godhead, with three persons with three distinct roles, yet all united as one God in their divinity and purpose. I’m not going to elaborate further on Trinitarian theology, I have thrown out enough heresies already in trying to illustrate the Trinity!
Five statements of faith follow to complete the Creed:
Faith in the “holy catholic Church”, that is, the worldwide body and bride of Christ defined by faith in Jesus Christ, and distinct from all who profess unbelief and heresy.
“Communion of saints” refers to the unity of the followers of Jesus made righteous through His blood on the cross, all who have turned to Jesus in faith throughout history to this day. We are in communion with these saints, as the Body of Christ.
“Forgiveness of sins” is recognition that we are in fact sinners, and only reconciled to God the Father because our sins are forgiven by Him through Jesus. We are assured of this because Jesus is risen, ascended, and sent the Holy Spirit as the seal and guarantee of His promise that this is so.
“Resurrection of the body” reminds us of the future promise of life in a perfectly formed body that has no infirmity, disease, pain or disability, and yet is as recognisable to the Lord and to one-another as we are now. How? It is an article of faith, but the Apostle Paul outlines his thoughts on it really well in 1 Corinthians 15.
“the life everlasting”… doesn’t have the same punch in our understanding as it did to the early Church. A better understanding is “life to the uttermost and fullest, always”. The emphasis is not on the length of time, but the closeness and intimacy of such time. The example used on Sunday was to contrast an hour on a cold, drizzly day alone waiting for a bus that never arrives, with an hour with the closest of friends or partner. The cold hour feels like ‘forever’ and not in a good way. The hour with our nearest and dearest feels like a moment of treasure, never enough and yet always remembered. Such will be “life everlasting”… everlasting closeness that we desire to never end.
“Amen”. We don’t say this lightly, as it affirms our agreement to all these beliefs. It is our “Yes”, “I say that these things are true”. But we do say ‘Amen’ because these are the life-changing and world-changing beliefs the Christian faith stands on.
To do as Jesus commanded and fulfil the Great Commission, it is time we took the Creed seriously. So take it seriously. Memorise it. Challenge it. Study it. Teach it.

After the brief affirmation of the belief in one God, the God of the Jews, the Creed moves into the longest section, outlining the historical events of God the Son, known to us as Jesus of Nazareth. He is the ‘Christ’, the long-promised Saviour who would usher into human history the first stage of the kingdom of God. He is “the only Son of God”, unique in His relationship with God the Father. He is “the Lord”, holding a unique authority in creation, within whom is all the power and glory of God.
This is a considerable disconnect to the Jewish understanding of God, and separates Christian faith from Jewish faith.
The key historical events of Jesus’ earthly life are highlighted, His supernatural conception by the creative will of God through the Holy Spirit, His trial at the hands of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, His humiliating crucifixion, death and resurrection.
Then we remember that while His death on the cross was physical, His work continued as He ‘descended to the dead’. A common interpretation of this is that Jesus asserted His authority over death and the realm of the dead, so that no place or power would be exempt from His sovereignty – ever or anywhere. His resurrection is proof of this authority, and the power given to Him “to judge the living and the dead” upon His return.
In between His ascension, and return, the Creed affirms that Jesus “is seated at the right hand of the Father”, where He rules the heaven and earth, jealously watches over His beloved bride, the Church, and actively intercedes with the Father on our behalf.
The emphasis of the Creed is that Jesus was a man who lived within human history, and He is so much more, and all will be revealed including His sovereign power and authority. Every power on earth and in heaven is made subject to Him, forever, regardless of what freedom they may believe they hold in this age. There will be a reckoning, and it will be whether each one is reconciled to God the Father through Jesus, or not.

The first stanza of the Apostles’ Creed reminds us of the element of continuance of Christian faith with Jewish/Hebrew faith in one God, the LORD (YHWH), Creator of the heavens and the earth. There are not numerous gods of many elements (earth, wind, fire, water, fertility, health, prosperity), places and people, but one God, the LORD of all, seen and unseen.
The Hebrew Scriptures (known to the Christian Church as the ‘Old’ Testament or revelation of God) unveil the teaching of God to His people through the Law, the journey from origins to people to one man – Abraham, and his descendants, and from there to a people called His own. The Wisdom books reveal deeper truths to His people, drawing from wisdom traditions in other cultures, but always pointing to the LORD their God as Truth. The Prophetic literature pointed the people back to the LORD when they strayed into beliefs and worship of idols, gods and paths that led away from the one true God.
When Jesus, born a Jew and living firmly within the Jewish traditions, taught about God the Father, we should remember His intimate and unique relationship with His Heavenly Father.
In the Lord’s Prayer we gain a glimpse of the simple trust and breadth of Jesus’ relationship with the Father, which He ultimately offers us through His death and resurrection. It is a simple prayer with eternal ramifications, without excessive rambling on or explanation. God is our Heavenly Father too, when we turn to Him in faith and trust through Jesus. As Creator, He willingly and creatively gives to His beloved children – so we should ask.
In the Two Great Commandments, Jesus confirmed the continuance with Jewish knowledge of God, quoting directly from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. “The LORD is one, He is God. Love Him with all of your heart, soul and mind, love your neighbour as you love yourself.”
The God of Israel is the God of Jesus, and He is real, present, and active.
He is “the Father”, but without the busy-ness, the absence, the distractedness, or even perhaps the wickedness, the laziness or the abuse of earthly fathers. He is patient, gracious and steadfast in loving-kindness, willing to creatively pour out His blessings on His children here on earth, as He does in heaven. He is the LORD, the God of Israel, of Jesus, of all.

I believe in God, the Father almighty, 
creator of heaven and earth. 
I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, 
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, 
born of the Virgin Mary, 
suffered under Pontius Pilate, 
was crucified, died, and was buried; 
he descended to the dead. 
On the third day he rose again; 
he ascended into heaven, 
he is seated at the right hand of the Father, 
and he will come again to judge the living and the dead. 

I believe in the Holy Spirit, 
the holy catholic church, 
the communion of saints, 
the forgiveness of sins, 
the resurrection of the body, 
and the life everlasting. AMEN

During June 2018 our teaching ministry during the Sunday morning services was based on the Apostles’ Creed. While on the first Sunday (June 3) we celebrated a baptism, we also discovered how ‘the Apostles’ Creed came to be’.
The early Church was growing in understanding of who Jesus is, and how our understanding of God shifted in the light of Jesus’ person, life, death and resurrection, and teaching. Clearly, in Jesus, God had revealed Himself in a new way, a “New Testament”.
In the writings of the New Testament, phrases such as “Jesus is Lord”, “Christ Jesus”, and the “Holy Spirit” all signalled a new revelation of God, of three persons together within the Godhead. There was a continuance with Jewish understanding of “the LORD our God, the LORD is one”, and yet Jesus had claimed one-ness with God, and spoken openly of the past, present and future work of the ‘Counsellor’, the Holy Spirit – who would undertake work that is God’s alone to do.
The early Church wrestled and debated these ideas as they spread out across people without Jewish backgrounds, with the words of Jesus’ Great Commission resonating: “Go. Teach. Make disciples. Baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
So the followers of Jesus did so, and developed a ‘rule of faith’ that began to define what Christians did, and did not, believe to be true of God. Over time this grew into Creeds, refined and robustly developed memorable statements that were used to fulfil the Great Commission.
The Apostles’ Creed was used to teach and disciple new believers. Initially it was unwritten, passed down orally to those about to be baptised. They were expected to not only recite the full Creed from memory, but also teach from memory the details of it to the gathered Church before their baptism.
The Creed provided a consistent statement of faith across cultures, languages and places, for teaching, for orthodoxy and above all, for faith in the risen Jesus. May it continue to do so today.

When the power of the Roman Catholic Church was challenged on so many fronts, the repercussions changed the world.
There were wars between nations and cities. Monarchies were brought down and republics were raised up. Nation state boundaries were stringently defined and enforced. Confusion reigned in the Church of England as Catholic and Protestant forces gained the ascendancy or were brought down by the reigning monarch. The Enlightenment rose as an alternative understanding of the world and nature, removing yet more power from the Roman Catholic Church which had controlled centres of learning.
The Church underwent ‘schism’ or separation into different ‘denominations’. The Bible was widely translated and distributed in the common tongue of Western nations, and slowly into other languages, thanks to the printing press. Tracts, books, music and propaganda followed thick and fast – and only slowed down as the internet has taken the production of material of all persuasions to hyper-speed.

The Uniting and Anglican Church traditions that make up the Strathfieldsaye Community Church are “protestant” traditions, direct descendants of the Reformation movements five hundred years ago. A generation ago and before, that may have meant an inability to worship with Roman Catholics, strong and even occasionally violent disagreement on some matters, and at the least, suspicion and distrust.
We praise God those days are over! However there are still real differences between Protestant and Roman Catholic understandings of how God reconciles us to Himself, and how God reveals Himself to the Church, and through whom.

Does this mean we fight? No!
Does this mean we can agree on some of these matters? Perhaps. Ongoing dialogue has been happening for a very long time towards this goal, and while there has been some progress, there are some matters that we cannot agree on.
What we can do is examine the Scriptures and test what is heard from positions of power and influence within the Church, in the pulpit, in the paper, on TV, on the internet.
The point is that we can do that. We do have the Bible in language that we can readily understand, in book, electronic, audio, webpage, searchable, study-able, commentary laden forms. We are free to read the Bible. That is a freedom that was hard-won, literally with the blood of many martyrs across history.
We have also been given the promised Holy Spirit to interpret and understand the Bible with us. Jesus promised that He would send His Spirit after He had gone, and did just that.
Never before has the Bible been so readily available. So what a tragedy it is that the Church is so Biblically illiterate, and too often lives off a diet of a few minutes a week of teaching from the pulpit to feed them for a week – when there is a banquet open to them each minute of each day. Sixty-six books of grace and truth are right there, all the time, equipped with the Holy Spirit to help us.

To honour the Reformers who are our spiritual ancestors, make the effort to freely read the words of Scripture they fought and died to release to the people. Of course it can be difficult to understand all of it, but the more often you read more of the Bible, God’s great plan of new life in Jesus Christ becomes clearer and clearer – and you will find your own life being reformed, slowly but surely, toward the person you were created to be in Christ Jesus, your Lord and God.

[Our readings for this Sunday were Acts 17:11-12 and John 16:5-16].

Preached on November 5 2017.

Actually, there were (at least) five streams of Reformation all happening in the extended period from 1450 to 1600, and even before and since then. “The Reformation” was not an ‘event’ rather than a series of awakenings, transformations of individuals, cities, nations and movements.

Here’s a very brief look at the five streams, with sincere apologies to historians and scholars:
German (Lutheran) Reformation: Martin Luther’s act of nailing 95 theses into the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral was not an unusual occurrence, indeed, it was actually a common practice of professors giving students their reading material for discussion in class. But the content was the spark that set off a bushfire. What did he write? You can read them here, but in short he challenged some profitable activity of the Church, some downright wicked activity, and some activity that was in conflict with what the Bible taught. Luther also translated the New Testament into the German language for the everyday person to hear and understand, earning him further wrath from Church hierarchy. Luther never intended to “bring the Church down”, but he clearly expected things to change.

Swiss Reformation: Under John Calvin and his contemporaries in Geneva the Swiss Reformation was as intellectual as Luther’s in Germany was passionate. Calvin systematically interpreted Scripture and made clear theological ideas and teaching that had been obscured by language (the Bible was only ‘officially’ available to clergy and only in Latin) and doctrine (the rule of the Pope was absolute). As the Swiss Reformation grew, city-states and regions resisted the power of the Roman Church and pursued Calvin’s interpretation and understanding of Scripture above Papal proclamation and force. Calvin and his co-workers were in communication with other Reformers, particularly those in England.

English Reformation: It is widely known that King Henry XIII wanted a divorce and the Pope would not grant him one – so as King of England he separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. And yet there were much greater movements at play before that, not least the work and writings of John Wycliffe (see post on ‘Pre-Reformation’). Thomas Cranmer was a key person in the English Reformation, creating the instruments and systems for the newly separated Church of England to function outside the authority (but not completely out of the control of) the Pope in Rome. Cranmer had worked hard to separate the English Church from the Roman Church throughout the sixteenth century.

Anabaptists: The Anabaptists were anti-institutional long before any Reformation movement. They opposed many Roman Catholic teaching and practices, and indeed were disliked by most other branches of the Church, and were often attacked and killed en masse, and being passionately pacifist, did not violently resist. The Anabaptists are the spiritual ancestors of the Salvation Army, Baptist, Church of Christ denominations, those that have minimal hierarchical leadership.

Counter-Reformation [Council of Trent]: Finally (in this terribly brief summary) was the Roman Catholic Church’s response in the mid-sixteenth century. Primarily hoped to find reconciliation with the Lutheran Reformation, common ground was sought and concessions made by the Roman Church. Change was achieved and many of the deeply wicked, and un-Biblical, practices were abolished. Yet agreement was not found, and the Reformed Church and Catholic Church drifted further apart.

Volumes have been written on this era in the history of the Church, including lessons from it. In our service we encouraged those who strongly disagree with Church behaviour to not reactively act without seeking answers, and positive action. Arguably Luther, Calvin and Cranmer wanted keep their beloved Church as one, and none desired to create all new “denominations”.

Note: if ‘strongly disagree with Church behaviour’ and believe such behaviour is illegal in nature we encourage you to contact legal authorities in the first instance.

[Our readings for this Sunday were Romans 3:9-31 and Luke 17:1-10].
Preached on October 29 2017.

‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ (Lord Acton, 1899).

By the sixteenth century, the Western Church was almost completely under the authority of the papacy in Rome. There had been civil war within the Roman Catholic Church at various times with rival popes claiming authority and nations under the authority of the Church jostling for power, sovereignty and favour.
However there were a small number of men and women who worked not to bring the Church down nor for outright revolution, but to see change within the Church reflecting Biblical principles. These people were in different places and worked across a century and a half to wrestle the Bible out of an ancient language only known to clergy and the elite (Latin), and able to be understood by the peasant and merchant, child and mother, villager and traveller alike.
While the Church controlled the language of the Bible, it controlled power, tax, nations, kings and queens, law, learning and trade. Lord Acton’s quote above may have been said four centuries later, but may well have been a reflection on the Church at that time.

In our sermon on this, we heard the account of John Wycliffe, a learned Englishman in the fifteenth century who had studied Hebrew and Greek languages, and could read the Bible not just in the Latin Vulgate (official) version, but also the increasing number of manuscripts being found and copied out by scholars.
Wycliffe was passionate about opening up the Bible to his English-speaking compatriots, and translated the Bible into common English. He was arrested, tried and killed by the State, under authority of the Church, for this act of ‘treason’.
Wycliffe’s work, including numerous writings on the contrast between what the Bible said and what the Church did, was picked up by a young man from the Continent named Jan Huss. Huss distributed Wycliffe’s ideas in Europe, where they were subsequently found by Martin Luther in Germany in the early sixteenth century. It was Martin Luther’s actions later that is claimed to have been the ‘start’ of the Reformation (nailing 95 theses to the wooden door of Wittenberg Cathedral on October 31 1517), but it can be argued the reforming of God’s Church (not the Pope’s!) was already well-under way in numerous places.

Sadly there is still Reformation to be begun and completed within the Church universal, which like any other human institution falls prey to pride and power. We understand that when the Bible is read and understood in our congregations and in our personal life, we are convicted, refined and transformed by the work of God the Holy Spirit. Finally on the Last Day Jesus will return and make all things new. Come, Lord Jesus!

[Our readings for this Sunday were the explanation of the Parable of the Wheat and Tares in Matthew 13:36-43, and the warning of and to false teachers in 2 Peter 2:1-3; 17-22).
Preached on October 22 2017.

Some new material will be posted here soon, including a brief outline from our Reformation 500th Anniversary series from 2017 (What led to the Reformation / What was the Reformation? / What happened since the Reformation).
Also in coming months we will be doing a series on the Apostles' Creed (June), and Abraham (July-August).

At the Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36) it was blindingly clear to Peter, James and John that Jesus of Nazareth was not only human, but entirely different again. He was greater than the line of prophets, although He was a prophet. He was the long-awaited Messiah – the Christ – and yet even more again.
Jesus’ revelation on that mountain of His glory cannot be under-estimated. The three disciples with Him were all affected since that day, and both Peter and John refer to the event in their subsequent letters to the early churches. Jesus’ living relationship with Moses and Elijah, including His conversation with them regarding His upcoming ‘exodus’, the crucifixion and resurrection He understood He would face, bore witness to the reality of the kingdom beyond this earthly life – and Jesus’ sovereignty in that realm.
This sovereignty had been foretold by Daniel in his dreams and writings centuries before Jesus came. Daniel’s phrase “Son of Man” was known to refer to the One who “was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed”. Jesus took this title “Son of Man” for Himself as more people looked to Him for renewal, hope and life. Only God could offer these in the way Jesus did, and the question grew – could this man be God?
The truth of who Jesus is, is greater than we can ever understand – until we stand with Him in His revealed eternal kingdom.
And then we will sing with all the company of heaven, the hosts of angels, the multitude of nations, the songs from Revelation chapters five and seven. Our new creation will include a new voice that will soar with all creatures in heaven and on earth in praise and wonder at the LORD God, Father, Spirit, and Son – Jesus of Nazareth.
Yet… that Day is yet to be. The power struggles here in this world, locally and globally, continue to surprise and frustrate us. How long, O Lord?
Who, or what, can we put our trust in? Politicians? Celebrities? Technology? Progress? Sports stars? The temptation is to turn in to ourselves as the highest authority when we are disillusioned with the worldly powers that reveal their fragility in different ways. Can you trust yourself? Really? Can you look into your own heart and recognise the deception that even lies there?
But when Jesus is glorified in His rightful place, then we find we have One who has lived as one of us, hungered and thirst, tired and tried, hated and mocked, loved and celebrated, suffered and died, and is now risen, ascended to take His rightful throne in the heavens to rule over all the heavens (the unseen realm) and the earth (our seen realm). Obviously the powers of this world reject His authority, and will increase this rejection of Jesus and His followers. Jesus clearly laid out this reality to His followers on numerous occasions – as does the whole New Testament.
Jesus died on the cross for your sin – God took your sin and shame upon His own shoulders, and died for the sin of the world so that all who turn to Him in faith will live to join Him in His eternal kingdom, in a fullness of life that we cannot begin to imagine. In His resurrection we have the assurance of sin pardoned and eternal life, and in the gift of God the Holy Spirit we have the guarantee of all His promises being fulfilled – something no other authority in this world can match.
Jesus was never “just” a historical figure, a ‘Good Teacher’, a revolutionary, a Prophet, the Anointed/Messiah/Christ. Jesus of Nazareth is God the Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, who was before He came into this world through Mary, to suffer and die, to be resurrected and ascended by God the Father into His rightful position as ruler and LORD over all creation. All authority and power has been given to Jesus, and He calls all who seek life, life to the full, to turn to Him and receive all that He has to offer.

This offer of grace is free, and is freedom. How will you respond?