Search Me

I don’t even know if we say that any more. "Search me!" Shows you how far out of coolness I am these days. Ah, well. But, I remember saying it all the time. Search me. It has probably been replaced by the ubiquitous "whatever" by now. Search me.

It was a "I don’t know" kind of thing. It was an admission of ignorance, and maybe of complacency. Search me. It refers to what we don’t know. We are starting a two month study on the Apostles’ Creed this weekend. I know, it seems like a long time. But others divide the Creed into twelve statements - so it could have been worse!

I’m just going with nine articles of faith. And this week we start with the beginning of the Creed. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. So, we are looking at God. Better yet we are studying God, we are analyzing God, we are, in short, doing theology. Cool. What do you know about God? What do you think about God? What do you believe about God? Search me.

One of the problems the church has these days, I think, is that we are no longer sure what we believe. We want to move beyond a childish faith, and we want to incorporate all that human beings have learned about how the world works - and how we work - and yet we keep being told that what we’ve learned about the world can’t fit into what we believe about God. They don’t match, the bump up against each other and something has got to go. Unfortunately, for most of us, what has gone is diligent theological thought. Which isn’t the same as saying we’ve lost our faith. We just don’t think about it all that much any more. We can’t make it work, so we don’t bother. What do you believe about God? Search me. That’s what many have come to these days. It is just easier. Search me.

Of course, search me is also used in another way. The way that Psalm 139 uses it. And maybe it is that searching, or the acknowledgment of God’s searching that might help us reclaim our faith as a reasonable part of our existence. Faith can be reasonable? Does that make sense? Search me.

No, wait. I didn’t mean that. Of course it can. And our examination of the Creed just might help us make it so. Luke Timothy Johnson, biblical scholar, presents in his book called simply The Creed that faith as an existential response of the whole person characterized by trust, obedience and loyalty (faith is what we do not simply what we think), but that he "has come to appreciate how critical the role of belief is in structuring that response." In other words, if faith is about doing, our doing has t be driven by our believing. And the church is the "gathering of those committed by faith to a radical response to God." But that response, Johnson argues, grows out of a communal sense of identity that is hard to grow without something like a creed.

The Creed, then is that statement of belief that defines us as a community of faith. It identifies us for ourselves and for the world at large. We are the people who believe ... And because we believe we live, we serve, we act, we love.

The guiding scripture for this first statement from the Creed is Psalm 139. The problem with starting with the doctrine of God is that it is, in the end, too large a subject to grasp in its entirety. Every statement, every image, every description about God is only a part of the whole. And the whole is beyond our reach. Which is exactly what the Psalmist says. Take a look:

Psalm 139:1-18 O LORD, you have searched me and known me. 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. 3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely. 5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. 7 Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 9 If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. 11 If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night," 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. 13 For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. 17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 I try to count them-- they are more than the sand; I come to the end-- I am still with you.

The Psalm ends with an admission that knowing all of God is beyond us. But it begins with the affirmation that being known by God is the nature of the relationship. In fact the essence of the Psalm is the declaration that the only knowledge of God accessible is in relationship.

The Creed reminds us that we call God Father. This is not to reduce God to a human role, but to lift humans by acknowledging that the parenting role is a part of the divine. So, whether we are father or mother, whether we care for birth children or adopted children or children baptized into the family of God, we reflect an aspect of God. We believe that God cares and so we do too.
The Creed also reminds us that God is creator, and that all of creation has a single point of origin. However we understand that creation to have taken place, we worship God as creator of all there is. We can argue methodology, and we do, but there need be no conflict with the article of faith that claims God as creator.

The Creed echoes the Psalm with a single word - Almighty. What does that mean? Search me. No, wait. It means that there is more to God than I can grasp with my understanding. It means that I trust in the power of God even when I can’t sense it. It means I believe in the power of God even when it seems God has lost a grip on the world God created. It means I will spend my days seeking evidence of that power and that presence with confidence and with hope.

O Lord, you have searched me, and known me. Let me in my own small way return the favor

Shalom,
Derek