26^th March 2014

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Sunday 2 March 2014

Lessons - Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9

'I/We believe in one God the Father, the Almighty.' (Nicene Creed)

Today is the start of a preaching series on the Nicene Creed. Our focus today is on what it means to believe in one God. Next week it will be on God as Creator. Then, during Lenten worship and studies, we will be exploring the Church's faith in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God.

By happy coincidence today is also Transfiguration Sunday when the glory of God embodied in Jesus so 'touched' the disciples that they were 'filled with awe' (Matthew 17:6,7). In this dramatic episode we see that believing in God, as attested in Scripture, is not something humdrum or boring. When the voice from the 'bright cloud that overshadowed them' said, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,' (v5) the disciples were so startled that it was impossible to be complacent or flippant about their faith in God.

In this story, believing in God is shown to be much more than having an intellectual faith in a Supreme Being. As Jesus is transfigured so, too, is our faith in God. Things that puzzle us -science, technology, relationships, life, unsolved crimes and the like - have to be re- configured before we can figure them out.

Jesus was unlike any 'figure' they had known. He was more than a law-giver or prophet, like Moses or Elijah. He was more than human, God-like, yet more fully human than anybody they had met. Nobody could figure him out.

What is clear in the transfiguration is that believing in God, as affirmed in Scripture and creed, means being encountered by radiance unmatched in human experience.

In Scripture, whenever the 'Glory of God' appears in the temple, houses, the heavens and the nations, people are startled, puzzled, unsettled or emboldened. Moses experiences God's glory as a 'devouring fire' (Exodus 24:17). In a vision, Isaiah, seeing the earth full of God's glory, sees his own unworthiness and the magnificence of grace that fortifies him to accept a most daunting task (Isaiah 6:3). The people of Israel are to declare God's incomparable glory to the peoples of earth (1 Chronicles 16:24). It was the cause of deep dismay whenever 'the glory departed Israel' (1 Samuel 4:21).

When the angels sing 'Glory to God in the highest . . .' (Luke 2:10,14) the incarnation of God's love in Christ is announced. The promise that God's glory shall be displayed to all is a sign of hope in a world where that glory has been badly tarnished by sin and evil (Romans 8:18).

What a strange glory! God is a figure unlike any other Divine Figure. God is the 'one God' - not to be confused with gods that we create to satisfy our longing for comfort, security and acceptance. The 'one God' in which the Church believes is not made in our image! Apart from God's revelation in the figure of Jesus, we could never have figured out the unique glory of God. In him we see that the 'One true God' is the God who heals the broken world through complete self-giving love.

At that stage the full extent of God's costly grace was not yet evident in Jesus' ministry. Although the disciples are humbled and awe-struck, they do not realise that the glory radiating from the transfigured Jesus will soon be lit up when he is disfigured on the cross and re-configured at the resurrection. The glory of God is fully illuminated in the crucified-and- risen Christ, God's beloved Son (v5). That is why Jesus swears the disciples to secrecy (v9).

Apart from the momentous events that are about to transpire, the glory of God would be misconstrued. Belief in the glory of God would not be faith in the 'One God' affirmed in the Creed.

That is also why the Creed affirms that the One God is 'the Father' before describing God as 'the Almighty'.

In recent times, people have taken exception to calling God 'Our Father'
in the Lord's Prayer. It angers opponents of patriarchal religion and goes against the egalitarian spirit of the age. In these debates we have learned not to use language for God that mirrors human attributes. When we affirm our belief in God the Father we are not to think literally that God is male with all the characteristics of human fathers. Heaven forbid! (Of course, the situation is the same if we were to swap 'Father' for 'Mother'
or 'Parent'.) Much more could be said. But the point of the Creed, in continuity with New Testament, is that the first thing to be said about 'the One God' is that, in a manner unmatched in normal human relations, God loves and cares for his people - and all people.

That is why 'Father' comes before 'the Almighty'. The power of God is defined, not by glory evidenced in unconstrained power - like gods and humans that thump the hell out of people - but by the costly, redemptive love for all displayed in the figure of the One who called God 'Father'.
God is a father-figure unlike any other!

As we are met by the puzzling reality of God, our sense of what it means to believe in God will also be transfigured. This is not helped today by the widespread separation of 'faith' and 'reason' in such a way that 'faith' is associated with private opinion or unfounded superstition and 'reason' with public facts or scientific reality. In the popular mind, Christian beliefs do not belong in a rational, secular age!

It is a great pity that this split is now embedded in our culture. All knowledge is built up by a process that involves faith and reason.
Scientists and Christians, faced with puzzling data about the world around them, trust that there is a pattern to be figured out. Believing in God, like believing in the order of nature, requires taking calculated risks.
As Pascal once said, 'Betting on sovereign grace is the way of a daring life.' (D Willis, Clues to the Nicene Creed 2005 p23.)

Faith in 'the One God' is an adventure but is not an irrational leap in the dark. Like the faith of scientists, it is an act of 'informed trust'
that persists even in the face of evidence that contradicts the pattern of grace. Faith, as Calvin said, is not 'ignorance tempered by humility', but 'knowledge' of God's benevolence toward us in Christ. (Ibid, p24)

Such knowledge is akin to knowing another person. We may know a few 'facts' about them - e.g. family, work, height - but unless we come to trust or love them, our knowledge is second-hand. Likewise, we can know about God from Scripture - e.g. presence with Israel, Jesus, church - but until we come to trust and love God, our knowledge is second-hand.

The movement from knowing about another person or God to putting our faith in them is always accompanied by a moment of transfiguration when, unexpectedly, we see them in a new light. In seeing their true glory, we are propelled into a relationship of deepest trust and love, even though we do not know everything about them and will go through times of doubt.

That is why, in the Creed, each one of us ('I') and all of us together
('We') affirm our faith in the One God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - who loves us and calls us into a community to declare God's glory on earth. We believe in ('trust') the God who has transfigured our lives. Thus, the Creed is a joyful affirmation of God's grace - not a list of dry, abstract, impersonal religious facts to be rattled off unthinkingly.

The creed sketches the basic pattern of beliefs that emerges from being transfigured by the costly love of God. It steers us away from misconstruing faith in God as 'intellectual assent' or 'subjective emotion', where what we think or feel decides what we are prepared to believe about God. It thereby guards God's glory from being tarnished by 'beliefs' that have been figured out to glorify us.

In particular, belief in 'the One God' is a protest against every attempt in multi-faith societies to regard all 'gods' as equally useful (or irrelevant). Christians, too, are prone to believe that there are many paths to God. At such times, the Creed reminds us of the unmatched glory of God!

May we, then, gladly accept the invitation to 'believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty' and therefore open ourselves to being transfigured in the light of God's glorious self-revelation in the puzzling and compelling figure of Jesus.

It is fitting, therefore, that after this and every sermon, we end with an 'ascription of glory' to remind us that we are not here to glorify our faith but the faithfulness of God. Blessing and honour and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb for ever and ever. Amen.

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Rev Dr Max Champion is the minister of St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is a member of the Council of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.