8 June 2025

In a world in which truth is sacrificed on the altar of personal advantage or political gain and the search for a deeper understanding of what is true is frustrated by many more immediate alternatives, the Nicene Creed provides us with an accessible map through which to navigate our life.

It reveals our solidarity. The Nicene Creed begins with the words, ‘We believe …’  It is a corporate activity. Through its existence, the Creed gathers together not only Christians here in Scotland but throughout the world and, indeed, all Christians over the past seventeen hundred years!

When we stand to confess our faith in God, the Creator, Jesus, the Saviour and the Holy Spirit as Lord and giver of life, we do not stand alone! We stand with the Emperor Constantine and the bishops at Nicaea in 325. We stand with John Knox and the Scottish Reformers in 1560. And we stand with the Kirk today.

In these brief but profound words, we map out what we believe to be true. And what we believe has consequences for the way we live our lives. If God is creator, his creation is sacred. If Jesus is Saviour, our sins are forgiven. If the Spirit is the giver of life then what have we to fear if everything round about us is in flux?

Because it is a corporate activity, we are strengthened in our faith by those who stand with us in our confession. The Kirk acknowledges that some may find some aspects of the faith difficult to believe and respects our conscience giving us ‘liberty of opinion in points which do not enter into  the substance of the Faith’. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  15 April 2025 Ever since a definable liturgy began to emerge in the nascent Church, it has been traditional to read the Passion narrative from one of the four gospels on Palm Sunday or Good Friday. It was the beginning of the dramatic arts which emerged with the Mystery Plays in the Middle Ages. Throughout my ministry, I incorporated the Passion narratives in three ways. Firstly, at the   Good Friday service, we read the Passion often from St. John’s Gospel with different voices taking the roles of narrator, Christ and Pontius Pilate. On Palm Sunday, I always told the children the story of Christ’s Passion beginning with the donkey ride into Jerusalem and ending with Christ’s moving burial in the garden belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. This was accompanied by artefacts of the Passion or pictures illustrating the events. This all came back to me on Sunday when we went to St. John’s Kirk in Perth to hear the St. Matthew Passion composed by JS Bach for Palm Sunday or G...
Read more
  27 March 2025 When we arrived at Coventry Cathedral, we noticed a very powerful welcome statement tied to the gates of the cathedral. It read: WELCOME TO COVENTRY CATHEDRAL We extend a special welcome to those who are single, married, divorced, widowed, straight, gay, questioning, well-healed or down at heal. We especially welcome wailing babies and excited toddlers. You’re welcome here if you’re just browsing, just woken up, or just out of prison. We don’t care if you’re more Christian than the Archbishop of Canterbury or haven’t been to church since Christmas ten years ago. We extend a special welcome to those who are over 60 but not grown up yet, and to teenagers who are growing up too fast. We welcome keep-fit mums, football dads, starving artists, tree-huggers, latte-sippers, vegans, junk-food eaters. We welcome those who are in recovery or still addicted. We welcome you if you’re having problems, are down in the dumps or don’t like organised religion (we’re not th...
Read more
  6 March 2025 I have been reading the report ‘Lost Boys’ which has just been produced by the Centre for Social Justice. The headline statistics are concerning – 550,000 young men are not in work, education nor training, 96% of the prison population is male and 2.5 million UK households are without a father figure. In the report, there is a chapter entitled, ‘Families and Fathers’. It puts down the crisis in masculinity to fatherlessness. British parents are more likely than their European counterparts to have a child outside a union and in almost nine-tenths of these households, the single parent is the mother. Among older children, increased emotional problems are apparent for both boys and girls who live without their father. However, ‘heightened behavioural issues were observed in boys only’. A boy’s behaviour is adversely affected by fatherlessness regardless of age. In 2023, one-third of young men aged 20 to 34 years i.e. 2.2 million in total, were living at home with...
Read more