We all live what we truly believe. What is inside our
heart is fleshed out in our daily living. The core values of our souls become
the palate of color displayed on the canvas of our lives. What we believe about
God is how we live our lives in this world. If we believe God is far off,
aloof, distant and unconcerned with the goings-on of life, that will find its
way out in our daily living. On the flip side, if we believe God is up close,
attentive, near, and deeply moved by what happens in life, that too will find
its way out in our daily living.
When I was a teenager, I was introduced to the music of
Rich Mullins. Some of you may be familiar with Rich and his music and ministry.
One of the songs that always caught the attention of my soul was titled
“Creed.” The “verses” of the song were not original to Rich Mullins or to
anyone in the five or six generations before him as the “verses” were the words
to The Apostle’s Creed. Rich added a melodic chorus as a means of breaking up
the content of The Apostle’s Creed. His melody, rhythm, and rhyme helped many
people – including myself – learn this important statement of Christian faith
even if our congregations did not recite The Apostle’s Creed on a regular
basis. The chorus Mullins added goes as follows:
I did not make it; No, it is making me. It is the very truth of God and
not the invention of any man.
This began to have a powerful effect on me. I started to
see – and have been learning ever since – that what we belief is making us into
who we are. What we believe about God. What we believe about Jesus. What we
believe about the Holy Spirit. These are things that shape who we are and who we
become. As James Bryan Smith discusses so candidly in The Good and Beautiful Community (as well as the other books in The
Apprentice Series), the narratives we carry about who God is and what God does
become the lens through which we see life and the means through which we engage
in life.
This is one reason why I believe being active in a local
body of Christian faith – a church – is vitally important. We gather once a
week to be reminded of who God is, what God is doing, the ways God is at work,
and how we are involved in the ongoing story God is telling and writing through
creation and through our lives. We must remember that the Christian faith
shapes who we are. It shapes what we do. It shapes what we are becoming. It is
not the church that determines these things, it is the faith to which the
church holds, or better yet, the faith that holds the church.
We need to be reminded of these things. This is why
regular and routine worship with a body of Christian believers is crucial to
our lives as followers of Jesus. We need the rhythmic and communal reminder
that the Christian faith shapes us.
And central to this faith is the story of Easter. The
very core of the Christian faith, the central expression of who God is, what
God desires, and how God moves is expressed in the events of Easter. When God
raised Jesus from the dead, all of creation – both then and now – came into
contact with the narrative-writing God, the soul-shaping God, the life-giving
and life-changing God. If we believe what we say we believe about Easter, we
will live as people who are shaped by Easter. If we believe that God really did
raise Jesus from the dead, then we will be open to the same all-consuming
resurrection power of God to be free to work in our lives.
In The Good and
Beautiful Community, author James Bryan Smith writes:
The soul-shaping role of the church is not just for our own spiritual
nurture – it is meant to propel us out into mission. We gather together to
worship, and in doing so we learn our ancient family language, tell our family
narratives and enact our sacred moments. We also listen to the Spirit speak to
us through sermon and song. In so doing we are shaped into a people, a
community being transformed into goodness by our God who alone is good. But
then we are sent. We leave worship as all new people, inspired by our
connection to one another and to the old, old story. We leave to go out and,
quite simply, change the world. We change it by our very presence. We cannot
help but make a difference because we are the aroma of the resurrected Christ
to a world that knows only death. We also behave differently, unselfishly,
generously, and in so doing preach without saying a word. And of course we do
preach when the time is right, ready with the right word in due season, telling
our story of hope to those who hunger for it. We are shaped and we are sent. We
cannot have one without the other (130).
I am convinced more than ever that we need to gather to
be reminded of the story that shapes our lives – the story of God’s work in the
world. A work that is uniquely and completely told through the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. I am convinced that this is the story that
shapes our lives into the lives God intended us to live. This is the story that
reclaims the grip of God on our souls that we may proclaim as a community who
God is, what God has done, and how each of us can and should be transformed by
this resurrection power.
I am thankful that what we believe shapes who we are. I
am thankful that we did not make it but it is making us. I am thankful that the
Easter story becomes our story. I am thankful that this is the story that calls
us out into God’s blessed earth that as we tread the soil of the ordinary, we
leave the mark of the holy as those who are being transformed by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I am thankful that together we go
as the church in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
I hope and pray you will join us for Easter worship – but
I hope and pray you will join us each week as together we retell the story and
allow it to reshape us.
Soli Deo Gloria…
-Andrew
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