Gollum's Choice or, What is Your Precious? Some thoughts on Judgment and Hell

“A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.” (Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude)

Last Sunday, during coffee hour after worship, a member of the congregation asked for my thoughts on judgment and hell. Then, I read that former television star (Full House) and Conservative Christian podcaster, Kirk Cameron, recently announced he had changed his stance on the doctrine of hell. He no longer believes in eternal torment, but rather that those who don’t go to heaven will instead be annihilated. While I think Cameron is right to reject the notion of eternal torment, I do not think “annihilationism” is an adequate alternative.

So, if not eternal torment or annihilationism, what? Do we just say everyone goes to Heaven or enters the kingdom of God regardless of the decisions they’ve made or the life they’ve lived? Such an easy universalism does not seem faithful to the scriptures or the Christian tradition.

A degree of humility is called for. As Paul said, “we see in a mirror dimly” and only “know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Attempting to take seriously the significance of our choices and the notion of God’s judgment I offer the following.

Smeagol was once a hobbit-like creature. A hobbit is an imaginary creature invented by J. R. R.Tolkien who wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Short creatures with hairy feet, hobbits have been described as a cross between a rabbit and an English country gentleman. One day, Smeagol and a friend were fishing in a river. His friend fell into the water and swam or sank to the bottom of the river where he saw a bright and shiny ring. He returned to the surface and showed the ring to Smeagol. It happened to be Smeagol’s birthday and he asked his friend, or rather demanded of his friend, the ring as a birthday present. The friend refused for he had already given Smeagol his birthday present. Smeagol strangled his friend, took the ring and put it on his finger.

It was a magical ring. When he put it on, he was invisible. But it was also a cursed ring, and it began to warp Smeagol. It warped him such that he began to find the sun too hot and too bright. He took shelter in the caverns of a mountain. When we first meet him in the story he is no longer known as Smeagol but has been warped into a strange creature called Gollum because of the odd gulping noise he makes. When we first meet Gollum – formerly Smeagol – he lives on a small island in the middle of a lake at the dark heart of a mountain. There, he eats raw fish and speaks to his ring, which he calls, “My Precious”. Isolated from all other creatures, Gollum is alone, turned in on himself He is alone, that is, except for the ring – his “Precious.”

I have wondered if maybe hell is like what happened to Smeagol. God, in His fierce mercy, gives us freedom – freedom to choose our “Precious”. And we can possess whatever we choose to be our Precious – money, possessions, power, prestige, pleasure, etc. – to the bitter end. And beyond. What we choose for our Precious will either mold and shape us into something more beautiful and more human or it will warp us into something much less, like Gollum. That molding or warping continues beyond this life and God will allow us to continue to fall in on ourselves and our precious forever if we choose.

Scripture warns us that our choices have consequences and there will be judgment. In Hebrews 12:25 there is this stark warning. “How much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns us from heaven?” And, lest we think it’s just some peculiarity of the exhortation to the Hebrews, in the gospels, Jesus warns as well. In Luke 13, Jesus warns, “Strive to enter through the narrow door.” “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The warning of judgment, whether we like it or not, (and I don’t particularly like it) is a part of Jesus’ message. And it shows up repeatedly in each gospel. It is a mistake to try to make Jesus less offensive by denying that judgment is part of his message. The Jesus of the gospels warns of judgment and calls us to repent. We ought not to ignore it or wish it away.

It is also a mistake, however, to take the images of hell too literally. Christians throughout history have managed to understand that the images of heaven in the Bible are metaphorical. Very few Christians die believing that when they awake they will pass through literal pearly gates and walk literal streets of gold and live in literal mansions with a cubicle for each of us. We understand that those images are metaphors pointing to something greater than we can imagine.

But somehow Christians have not been able, usually, to see same metaphorical interpretation of hell. We always seem to take the pictures of hell quite literally – a literal lake of fire in which people burn in agony forever and ever if they choose wrongly. We are familiar with those images. Paintings and graphic descriptions have impressed them on our imaginations. Such images of hell make God out to be a cosmic torturer. And that is hard to square with the rest of what Jesus reveals about the heart of God. The warning is to be taken seriously, but let’s not mistake metaphorical imagery for literal description. If the images of heaven are metaphorical, then so are the images of hell.

A bit of an aside: Such images of hell are not unique to Christianity. Those who say that we should ignore the differences between religions and just get down to that which they all have in common always intrigue me. They ignore the problem that one thing nearly every religion has in common is hell. There are Buddhist paintings of hell that are every bit as graphic and discomforting as anything described by Dante or depicted by Hieronymus Bosch.

It is also a mistake to morbidly dwell on hell. In spite of the impression some have given, hell is not the main point of Christianity. Too often the threat of hell has been used to scare people in order to control them. The primary reason for Jesus’ coming was not to scare the hell out of us. The primary reason for Jesus’ coming was to prepare a way or us and to point us towards the kingdom of God. As Charles Williams wrote,

“The order of purging is according to the seven deadly sins of the formal tradition of the Church. The Church is not a way for the soul to escape hell but to become heaven; it is virtues rather than sins which we must remember.” (TheFigure of Beatrice)

Still, we should not be complacent about the warning of judgment that we have in scripture. It is a warning that comes from Jesus. It would be a mistake to assume that God is just such a “nice guy in the sky” that he could never really judge us severely. Or that he merely says, “All-y, all-y, in come free!” While it is possible to make too much of hell, it is also possible to make too little. The judgment is real. There is no room for complacency.

Jesus is instructive. Asked a theoretical question in Luke 13 about how many will be saved, Jesus, as is his wont, refused to get into the theoretical or speculative. Instead, Jesus’ answer to the question makes it personal. “Don’t worry about how few or how many make it to heaven. If it ends up that only a few get in, that is God’s business. If it turns out that God, in his incredible grace and mercy, makes a way for all to enter, that also is God’s business.” Jesus says, “You strive to enter through the narrow door.” He makes it personal. Don’t worry about the particulars of what it’s like. Don’t worry about who else is in or out. You strive to enter the narrow door. Choose today who is your Precious.

Our choices matter in the short run and in the long run. We can choose wrongly. We can choose that which will warp us. It does matter how we live. It is not a matter of indifference whether we live lives of self-giving love or lives of self-centered, self-absorption. We can choose our Precious, and in the end, God may just allow us to live with whatever has been truly precious to ourselves – eternally. Our choice of what (or who) is our Precious will ultimately either mold us into something glorious or warp us into something terrible. That molding or warping begins now and continues eternally. C. S. Lewis expressed it this way in Mere Christianity:

“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state of the other.”

Lewis elaborates on the point in his essay, The Weight of Glory:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

The Christian conviction is that Jesus also matters. Jesus did not come to scare the hell out of us; instead he came to show us what is eternally Precious. Indeed, he came to be our Precious. Our problem is, among other things, that we, in our sinfulness and our ignorance, find it difficult to recognize or receive what is truly Precious. There are many things vying to be our Precious. Jesus comes to break into our willfulness and ignorance and say, “I am your Precious. I am the way to all that is precious.”

But more than just showing us what our Precious is, Jesus frees us to pursue it. Our problem is more profound than just ignorance. We are born addicted to things that are not our true Precious. We are unable to deliver ourselves. Jesus Christ, on the cross and in his resurrection, breaks the bondage of that addiction, frees us to choose our true Precious – to choose him. Jesus is our Precious.

Being a hopeful universalist*, I still hope that (back to the analogy) maybe even Gollum, isolated and alone on the island at the dark and lonely center of the mountain, is not completely abandoned. Perhaps Jesus is still sitting beside him saying, “Smeagol, come back. Repent.” Maybe that’s what it means when we claim Jesus descended into hell. I hope that Dante was wrong when he wrote that over the gates of hell it reads, “Abandon all hope you who enter here.” I wonder if the God we know in Jesus Christ ever completely abandons hope. Is it possible that not even hell is God-forsaken and the relentless love embodied by Jesus pursues us even there? Wull God ever give up until he is “all in all”?

It might be harder there to reverse the soul’s momentum after death. Our hold on what has become Precious to us and the hold the precious has on us can make it hard to turn from it. As was the case with Gollum. And, if one does, there may be some painful recovery and rehabilitation involved. “It may be centuries of ages before a man comes to see a truth—ages of strife, of effort, of aspiration (George MacDonald). But I am inclined to believe, based on what we know of God as revealed in Christ, that God will never give up on those created in his image.

The warning is real. The promise is also real. Our hope is real. In Hebrews we read that we have received a kingdom that cannot be shaken and therefore we do not need to be morbidly fearful of hell. We can give thanks. But in reverence and in awe, because we remember that our God is a consuming fire. Our choices matter. Jesus comes to us day by day, comes to us today, and says, “Choose today to enter in through the narrow door. Choose today who is your Precious.”

* “Hopeful universalist” is a term I learned from my seminary professor, Charlie Price. It is distinct from what might be called a “simple” or “complacent” universalism. Holding that no one can ultimately end in hell is as presumptuous as presuming to know exactly who ends there. It presumes on God’s freedom to judge. It also denies the glory and awfulness of human freedom. A hopeful universalist, on the other hand, while acknowledging God’s judgement, hopes that, in his relentless love, as demonstrated in Jesus, God never completely abandons the objects of that love. Hopeful universalists in the church’s history would include Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, with his sister, Macrina (On the Soul and the Resurrection, an excerpt of which is here), and Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac of Nineveh/Isaac the Syrian: The Second Part, excerpts of which can be found here) among the early theologians. More recent examples are F. D. Maurice (The Word "Eternal" and the Punishment of the Wicked), George MacDonald (The Consuming Fire), C. S. Lewis (along with the works quoted above, check out his book, The Great Divorce), Karl Barth, Hans Urs Von Balthasar (Dare We Hope That All Men be Saved?), Kallistos Ware (Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?) John Milbank (Universal Salvation in Christ: A conversation with Professor John Milbank), and David Bentley Hart (That All Shall Be Saved).

Scripture support for such a view might include passages such as Psalm 139:7-8, Acts 3:21,  1 Corinthians3:11-15 & 15:22-28, Colossians 1:20, 1 Timothy 2:4, 1 Peter 3:19, 2 Peter3:9. While these “hopeful” verses encouragingly point to the wideness of God’s mercy, they do not allow for complacency.

The Nicene Creed: Some Questions & Answers on the 1700th Anniversary

The Nicene Creed [is] the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.

– ‘Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral’ (1979 Book of Common Prayer, p. 877)

In our canons, the formal definition of “doctrine” is “the church’s teaching as set forth in the Creeds and in An Outline of the Faith, commonly called the Catechism.

– The Episcopal Church Canon III.10.4.c.2

Doctrine shall mean the basic and essential teachings of the Church and is to be found in the Canon of Holy Scripture as understood in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds and in the sacramental rites, the Ordinal and Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer.

– The Episcopal Church Canon IV.2

Introduction & Historical Setting

2025 is the 1700^th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea which established the Nicene Creed as the symbol and measure of the Church’s faith.

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus had left his followers struggling to find ways to understand and articulate what had happened and what it meant. Paul and the other authors of what became the New Testament pointed the way. Those writings contained creed-like statements, e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. But even that needed interpretation. How could they make sense of the things Jesus had done and the things Jesus had said about humanity, God – and himself? The Gospels and the other writings accepted as scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit included language identifying Jesus with the God of Israel – including things he said himself. His followers were convinced that his death and resurrection had reconfigured everything, bringing salvation from sin, death, and decay with the promise of a hitherto unimagined transformation of human persons and the world. Finding language to express that in ways that enabled people to experience that salvation and transformation was important. Was Jesus some sort of divine being sent by the God at the mysterious heart of all reality? Was he something more? They had the scriptures, they had the church’s language of prayer and worship, and they had the baptismal formulae that were already the seeds of a creed and which believers were expected to affirm. With all of that, theologians of the church struggled for decades – centuries – to make sense of and find a satisfactory way to articulate who he was and why he mattered. Some ways of articulating that were deemed unsatisfactory, misguided, or even dangerous. This struggle and the debates it provoked became more public and more intense once Christianity was declared legal by the Edict of Milan in 313.

Things came to a head with a priest in the city of Alexandria named Arius who taught that, while Jesus was in some sense divine, he was still a divine creature of God. The God behind it all could not be apprehended and would surely not deign to be identified with the messy, chaotic material world by taking on mortal flesh. But his bishop, Alexander, preached otherwise – that Jesus was indeed the incarnation of that very God. Arius condemned his bishop’s teaching. In response the bishop disciplined and exiled Arius. But this set up an intense controversy. The Council of Nicaea was called by the Roman Emperor Constantine to address disputes about how to understand the person of Jesus and, thus, God, creation, humanity, and salvation.

1. Wasn’t the Nicene Creed the product of the political machinations of Emperor Constantine?

It is true that Constantine called for a council of bishops to be held in Nicaea. His reasons for convening it were probably complex. He wanted order in the empire and probably saw the divisions within the church as a threat to that. And conflicting church parties had caused social disturbances in some places around the empire. As with most times and places before the modern era, this was an age in which politics and faith were seen as inseparable. The idea that whether the church was on the right track in its doctrine and worship could affect God’s blessing on the church and the empire might also have played a role. The pagan Roman emperors had assumed the role of “Pontifex Maximus” – the guardian of the Empire’s worship and piety. Constantine, who had sided with Christianity and was eventually baptized, might have understood himself has inheriting that role. This would mean he understood himself as at least the guardian of the faith with some responsibility for the church’s teaching. He is also recorded to have expressed concern that the disunity represented in different factions teaching different things about the nature of Jesus and of God was a potential scandal compromising the church’s witness and contradicting Jesus’ prayer that the church should be one.

The emperor opened and, to an extent, participated in the Council. But it is unclear that Constantine was directly involved beyond pressing for a “workable” compromise between various theological factions. It is the case that once the council “settled” on the Creed, Constantine did put the weight of the empire behind what was now considered the orthodox position. But he also eventually pardoned Arius. And his son, Constantius, promoted the teaching of Arius that the Nicene Council had condemned. Arianism might actually have been the more politically shrewd option. It was a popular position at the time. It was more philosophically respectable. And it would have ingrained into to cosmos an unquestionable hierarchy of all being—God, Jesus, emperor, people, that would have been helpful for shoring up power in an empire that had been fractured among multiple co-emperors. The idea of two, or three, co-equal persons in God didn’t have that same implications! For several decades different emperors supported different church factions until 380 when the emperor Theodosius I declared Nicene Christianity the official faith of the empire. The next year he also convened the Council of Constantinople, which slightly revised the Creed into the form we affirm now.

The legacy of Christianity’s enmeshment with empire is in many ways problematic. But that does not necessarily compromise the legitimacy of the Council of Nicaea or the Creed it affirmed.one might even say that the clarity and unifying power of the Nicene Creed appears to be a work of the Holy Spirit.

2. Wasn’t the message of Jesus about what to do and how to be rather than what to believe. Why does the Creed focus on the latter?

The short answer to this question is that the life and teachings of Jesus were not in dispute. The early church already took the teaching and example of Jesus seriously. They were contained in the scriptures which were already read in worship every week. The church put love and compassion at the heart of its life and teaching. It organized social services for the poor, hungry, and needy. It founded hospitals. Its teaching reflected the example of Jesus in critiquing wealth and violence. It advocated for hospitality to the stranger and foreigner. The dignity of traditionally marginalized groups like women, children, and the poor was honored in a way unprecedented in the ancient world (though, admittedly, the church did not embrace total equality of women and men). The church surely did not practice all of this perfectly always and everywhere. But none of the above was particularly controversial. It was the emphatic teaching of the theologians most often identified with defense of the Nicene faith, e.g., Athanasius of Alexandria, Macrina the Younger, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, and others. And these teachers understood that the practice of the church is grounded in its belief.

Not everything that was decided by the Council of Nicaea is in the Creed. The Council also addressed issues of church organization and discipline including penalties for clergy guilty of sensual sin (Canon 2) or greed and usury (Canon 17). Canon 12, reflecting the church’s commitment to peace, established penance for those who “having cast aside their military girdles, but afterwards returned, like dogs, to their own vomit.” Canon 17 did address a disputed question – to what extent were mercy and forgiveness possible for those who had denied their faith during a recent persecution. Imitating Jesus, the canon declared such people should be “dealt with mercifully.”

But those canons did not address the controversy that had led to calling of the Council of Nicaea. The debate roiling the church was not about the moral teaching of Jesus, but who Jesus was and how he was related to God who he called Father. And, with that, questions about the basic understanding of God. The answer to that question had implications for the salvation of humanity and the restoration of creation. The answer to that question also has implications for why the teaching and example of Jesus should matter more than any other human teacher.

3. Isn't one's faith about one's relationship with the living God and with God's children. Can’t we just say, “Love God and love your neighbor” and leave it at that?

That is indeed Jesus’ summary of the law and that is no small thing. But Jesus had received a lot about the nature and purposes of God as a son of Israel. While there was no written creed as such, Jesus was part of a people who held certain ideas, i.e., doctrines, about God and humanity. As a faithful Jew, he would have recited the Sh’ma found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

 

There is no sufficient knowing of God without some sort of creed. ‘God’ is a meaningless word until it is given meaning. To say, “Just love God with your whole heart mind and soul” only begs the questions, “Who, or what, is this ‘God’ I am to love and what does it mean to love this ‘God’?” As for loving neighbors, who counts as my neighbor? Do strangers count? What about enemies? And why should I love them? And in what way, to what extent, and at what cost? Why is it so hard to do? Does it matter ultimately? Is there any divine reckoning for our failure and refusal to love? What does it mean to be human? And what kind of a world do we live in? Any answers to these questions are not obvious. That they seem obvious to many of us is due to the fact that our imaginations have already been formed in a society shaped by the vision of Christianity reflected in the Nicen Creed – even if we have largely forgotten the source of that shaping. And any answer to these questions takes us into the realm of belief and doctrine. The Creed is the basic Christian foundation for answering them. One might prefer other answers or make up one’s own, but one cannot talk about “god,” “love,” “creation,” or “human beings” without some sort of belief system, i.e., a creed.

It is inadequate to appeal to a simplistic pietism, whether in its more conservative or more liberal versions, that says “Don't bother me with doctrine, just give me Jesus.” We have no access to Jesus other than the Gospels which are soaked in interpretation (doctrine) of who Jesus is and why he matters. The Creed is the Christian guide to understanding God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacobin light of Jesus. It affirms that, while that God will always remain beyond our understanding, when we look at Jesus, we see God. And that God has so loved humanity as to enter into our physical reality with our rebellion, our sin, our brokenness, our unlove, and untruth to deliver us.

4. Can’t we just worship God without getting hung up with the Creed?

Again, that presumes some knowledge (creed) about God and what it means to worship that God rightly. In fact, part of what guided the developing understanding expressed in the Nicene Creed was the language of the church’s worship.

In any event, within the Episcopal/Anglican tradition, getting rid of or ignoring the Creed would not resolve things for those who don’t like it. The rest of the liturgy is saturated with the same story and the same imagery.

Further, the Creed and worship are integrally related:

Nicene Christianity has also understood orthodoxy in a richer and deeper sense: as right praise. To be orthodox is to strive to stand rightly with others before the mystery of the true God. To be orthodox is to join with a community of faith in adoration of God’s doxa (glory), which already casts light on the day when God will finally make everything right. Belief is never correct when it becomes nothing more than a political mechanism to ensure the unity of an institution. Belief is right only when it points us in the right direction: to glorification of the true God, who promises not to give us a secret wisdom, but to be graciously present to us, even and especially where our vision and knowledge are weak.

– John Burgess, ‘Going Creedless; The Christian Century, June 1, 2004, pp. 24-28

5. But isn’t the language of the Creed poetic, rich in metaphors?

Theologically and philosophically, “metaphor” is a tricky concept but, we’ll use it for the moment. We should always remember that even our best language cannot fully comprehend God who is always beyond our comprehending. In fact, you’d have a hard time finding a theologian of the early Church who did not say the same. They were not so naïve as moderns often suppose. Over and over again, the early theologians remind us that all our language for God is stammering. All images must be held lightly. Gregory Nazianzus, one of the more important defenders of the Creed, affirmed, “It is difficult to conceive of God, but to define him in words is an impossibility” (Fourth Theological Oration).

And yet those same theologians also affirm that we must speak of God because God has spoken a Word to us – in history – especially in Jesus Christ. Thus, while we must speak cautiously and humbly in the face of the mystery that is God, we can yet dare to say something about God because God has said something to us in Jesus, the Word made flesh. “The impossibility has become a possibility by the boundless excellence of the grace of God,” is how Origen put it in his treatise On Prayer. 

Because it is about God, some of the Creed is indeed metaphorical. Certainly, referring to God as “Father,” while it reflects the language of Jesus and signifies something true about God, does not mean God is male. Gregory of Nyssa, another foundational theologian who defended the Nicene Creed, is clear on this in his commentary on the Song of Songs. Similarly, affirming that Jesus Christ is “seated at the right hand of God the Father” metaphorically signifies something about the relationship between Jesus and God the Father, but it is not a spatial relationship. There is no literal physical chair on which Jesus sits. 

But, because the Creed is about the God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus much of it is not metaphorical, but historical, e.g., he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man, for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried, on the third day he rose again, etc. That has always been the scandal of Christianity to the philosophers and Gnostics (ancient and contemporary) who want to keep God safely on the side of the metaphorical beyond the messiness of material reality in space and time (protecting God? themselves?). But Christians confess an historical virgin birth to an historical Mary of an historical enfleshment of God who died an historical death under an historical Pontius Pilate but lives again through an historical resurrection leaving behind an historical empty tomb – all “for us and for our salvation.”

The Creed is part poetry, part prose. Indeed, one might say that in the incarnation, God (ultimately hidden in Mystery and Metaphor) has become prose – prosaic – in order to turn all to poetry. Trying to keep them strictly separate or make it all one or the other always gets us into trouble.

To say that our language about God’s essence is metaphorical is a theological truism. To conclude that therefore all metaphors for God are only human creations or that all metaphors are more or less equal are assumptions and theological falsehoods. To say that all language about God acting in history, e.g., the virginal conception, the incarnation, and the bodily resurrection as historical, physical events, is metaphorical and only true in some spiritual sense is to try to be more spiritual than the God we know through Jesus has chosen to be. This was the fundamental error of the Arians. Arius found it inconceivable and offensive to imagine the One beyond all things taking on human flesh and material reality. The God we know through Jesus and the Creed is a God who is prepared to get down and dirty in the material world to address and transform the very literal, tragic and historical mess we have made of ourselves, others, and the world. And all so that we might be “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). As some of the bishops who were at the Council of Nicaea would say, the Son of God “became what we are that we might become what he is” (for example, Athanasius, ‘On the Incarnation’).

6. I read or heard somewhere that the root meaning of credo is to “give the heart” so intellectual assent is not the point.

I am not sure that is accurate, In any event, to say that the root meaning of credo is to “give the heart” and reduce its meaning to only that is like saying that every time the atheist, Richard Dawkins, says, “Good bye,” he really means, “God be with ye.” However helpful it might be in adding color to our understanding, the meaning of words and phrases are not reducible to their roots. The meanings of words evolve. What did credo mean to those who used it in the 4th century? One need only look at the historical context and development of the Creed to know that it was meant to delineate right belief from wrong belief as well as to shape the direction of the heart (and imagination).

Both are necessary. You cannot give your heart to something without some knowledge or belief about that to which you are giving your heart. And you cannot truly come to know something without giving your heart to it. Loving and knowing go together. Can I claim to love my wife but then believe whatever I want to believe about the kind of person she is, trying to fit her into some fantasy of my own making? Getting to know her as she is what it means to love her. And it is by attending to her in love that I get to know her.

We are not supposed to be able to say the Creed with integrity if we find it incredible (a related word). The very reason for trying to shift the meaning of credo from intellectual assent is self-contradictory in as much as it is based on the conclusion that some aspects of the Creed are no longer intellectually credible.

Continuing to say the words of the Creed without intellectual assent and meaning them in their common sense warps language. Either we mean it or we don’t. Or we stretch the meaning of words beyond all logic. What if we used the same approach to language with the marriage vows? Can I have an affair and then tell my wife she needs to get over her unsophisticated, literalistic interpretation of “forsaking all others?”

Reducing the Creed to “matters of the heart” to minimize its intellectual claims tailors it to the heritage of a naïve romanticism prioritizing feeling over reason. It is an odd thing to do for those who (as Episcopalians sometimes love to do) pride themselves on being in the “thinking person’s church”.

7. That doesn’t leave much room for doubt.

The issue is not about doubt or judging those who struggle with this or that aspect of the Creed. I have no problem with honest struggle with the Creed – historical or otherwise. I have my share, though as I've said elsewhere, there are implications of the Creed that I struggle with more than things like the virginal conception or bodily resurrection (the Sermon on the Mount for starters). Thankfully, it is not up to us to believe this or that bit of the Creed on our own. As we sometimes pray, “regard not our sins, but the faith of your Church” (1979 Book of Common Prayer, p. 395). Sometimes others believe for us. In spite of any personal doubts, the Creed is the standard of Church teaching. At the very least, it is what Christians aspire to believe and conform their lives to – however inadequately.

Doubts, whether about orthodoxy (right belief and worship) or orthopraxy (right behavior), arise when one way of understanding how the world works and how God engages the world comes into conflict with another. But that cuts both ways. Questioning the virginal conception and the bodily resurrection, for example, is unsettling to one way of understanding things. Believing that we live in a world where such things have happened is unsettling to others.

 

We might also wonder why we hold doubt in such high esteem. Are we prepared to doubt everything? (see Little Floaty Things the Say "No")

Conclusion

The Nicene Creed offers the foundation of a way of understanding the nature of reality and the God at the heart of it all. It presents a powerful, provocative, and evocative vision of God, humanity, and creation. The deepest truth about reality is personal and relational. The world in which we live is not an accident, but a creation delighted in by its Creator. In spite of human rebellion, sin, and brokenness; in spite of our failure to live lives of complete love and truth; that Creator, who is merciful, has entered into the mess we have made, bringing deliverance, forgiveness, healing, and transformation. It does not answer all questions and was not meant to. But those whose imaginations have been shaped by the Creed and have sought to inhabit the world it describes have found that it opens up thrilling vistas of life and hope. It is worth celebrating.

Our Hoosier Problem

On Sunday, March 9, a man from North Manchester, Indiana was shot by Secret Service agents after a “confrontation” near the White House. North Manchester is very near where I grew up and I have family who live there now. That got me wondering. I did a little searching on the internet and came across these real headlines:

Indiana man sentenced to almost four years in prison for fentanyl, meth distribution (Pennsylvania)

Indiana man arrested for 2008 rape of 61-year-old San Jose woman, DA's office says (California)

Indiana Man Arrested for Stalking Taylor Swift, Intimidating Her Eras Tour Dancers (Tennessee)

Indiana Man Arrested on Felony Charges for Actions During Jan. 6 Capitol Breach (District of Columbia)

Indiana man arrested in connection with murder of pregnant woman in Spring Hill (Tennessee)

Southern Indiana man arrested in Florida on over 60 counts of child porn, sexual misconduct (Florida)

Indiana man arrested on felony child pornography charges after social media tip (Kentucky)

Rape, murder, drugs, pornography, insurrection – what is up with people from Indiana? 

What if your favorite cable channel regularly highlighted these horrifying stories of Hoosiers run amok throughout our great nation? Or your go-to podcast? Or what if social media algorithms made sure that your feed was full of stories and memes about how problematic and dangerous people from Indiana are? What if politicians railed against the barbaric vermin from Indiana who are invading and terrorizing – and even poisoning the blood – of the wonderful citizens of our other beautiful states? What if rumors were spread about people from this Midwestern state doing outrageous and disgusting things? “Who knows if they’re true? Does it matter given what we already know?” 

Never mind that there is no evidence that people from Indiana are actually any more given to crime or outrageous behavior than people from other states. You would be programmed to think they were and to be suspicious of them. You might even think that something must be done about our “Hoosier problem.”

It turns out “Hoosier” was once a slur, “a term of contempt and opprobrium…used to denote a rustic, a bumpkin, a countryman, a roughneck, a hick or an awkward, uncouth or unskilled fellow” It still is used this way in parts of St. Louis (See What’s a Hoosier?). Indeed, “Hoosier at times can also be used as a verb describing the act of tricking or swindling someone” (See St. Louis' own language: "Hoosier"). If “Hoosier” was commonly used this way across the country, it would reinforce the rhetoric imagined in the last paragraph.

But people from Indiana might rightly feel misrepresented. As a Hoosier, born and bred, I can assure you that, despite the above headlines, people from Indiana are generally no more uneducated or unsophisticated than the average person from any other state in the Union. Or anywhere else. You really do not have anything to fear from the average person from Indiana. We are generally very decent, hardworking, generous, law-abiding people who just want the kinds of opportunities everyone else wants.

Hoosiers are no more or less human – with all the good and bad, joy and pain that go with being human – than any other group of human beings. It would be silly to single us out for suspicion or negativity. And it is silly to do so for any other group of human beings.

Yearning for the vast and endless sea of God

Chrism Mass Sermon, 2024 (Luke 5:1-11)

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”*

This is a paraphrase of something written by 20th century French author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Best known for ‘The Little Prince’, Saint-Exupery was an aviation pioneer with a taste for adventure. I think this quote gets at what we are to be about.

In the Gospel passage which we just heard, Jesus tells Peter and the others to put out into the deep.  An early motto of the Diocese of Fond du Lac was “In Altum” – Into the Deep. We are called to “Put out into the deep water.” We who are leaders are charged with inspiring others to put out into the deep.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

It might serve as a description of good preaching and teaching. The Church needs preachers and teachers, lay as well as ordained, (and, yes, bishops) who are soaked and smell of salt water and look like they have faced into the Wind and squinted at the Sun on the horizon, who sound like they have put out into the deep of the vast and endless sea and returned to share the wonder of it.

I say that. And, then, I wonder how much of my preaching and teaching over the years has been more about drumming up people to gather wood, dividing the work, and giving orders rather than inspiring them to yearn for the vast and endless sea of God.

But, that is what I need to be about. I want to smell like the Sea – the aroma of God. It is what we need to be about for the sake of the Church. It is what the Church needs to be about for the sake of the world. I can only do that if I – we can only do it if we – put out into the deep of God.

One of my favorite Irish saints literally put out into the deep. Brendan of Clonfert, aka, Brendan the Navigator had already founded several monasteries when he was visited by another old monk who told of journey to the Island of Delight where there was a community of monks. They sent him on to another island – the Promised land of the Saints. On that island there were trees that bore tasty fruit all year long. There was no night and it was always comfortably warm because Christ was its Light.

The old monk asked Brendan, “Do you not smell the fragrance of heaven that we carry on us?”

So, yearning for the sea and for the vast expanse of God and the Promised Land, Brendan, along with some of his monks , built a ship and sailed west. They had many adventures, so the story goes, including taking their rest on an island that turned out to be the back of a resting whale. They stopped at the Island of Delight on their way to the Promised Land which they found just as they had heard. They returned in wonder, rejoicing in the Lord.

Brendan was part of larger movement of wild Irish monks who put out into the deep in search God. Some sailed to islands where they founded monasteries like Iona and Lindisfarne. Or more remote and wilder islands like Skellig Michael which has featured in Star Wars movies.

But others did something even wilder – even more mad, perhaps. There is an account of three monks who washed up on the southern coast of England in a small boat made of wood and leather, a coracle. They had no oars or sail. They had just set out into the deep, vast and endless sea, trusting that the wild Spirit of God would guide and protect them on the wild sea as they dedicated themselves to prayer.

Crazy. But I have to wonder, what wild vision of God had so captured their imagination as to provoke those monks, Brendan, and the others? And what might it look like if our imaginations were similarly inspired?

We are not likely to literally set out into the deep like they did. In fact, I want to discourage any of you who live near Lake Michigan or Lake Superior from trying anything like those would monks. But, we don’t have to do that. We can recommit ourselves to setting out in the coracle of our hearts in prayer, yearning for that vast and endless sea of God.

Perhaps you already have some experience with that.

 Maybe you have been staggered by the Infinity and the Mystery.

Maybe you have gone deep into the awesome beauty and goodness of God.

Maybe you have felt the grace of God splash over you, soaking you to the bone with his forgiving, healing, transforming love?

Maybe you have tasted the saltiness of God’s mercy and delight?

Maybe you have been bedazzled by the awesome splendor of God?

Maybe you have seen a vision of your own self and others in the glory of that splendor?

Maybe you have seen what glorious and beautiful beings we are meant and destined to be?

Maybe you have also dared to face into the stormy, surging waves of your spirit and to acknowledge the dead weight of sin that holds you back threatening to swamp the boat of your heart?

Maybe you have gotten a glimpse of the approaching kingdom of God just beyond the horizon? The kingdom of love and joy and peace where swords and spears – and guns – are beaten into plowshares and pruning hooks, where all divisions cease and there is no stranger or enemy, where there is no more violence or war, where death is swallowed up and all that is left is abundant and eternal life?

Set out in the coracle of your heart into the deep waters of God. That is where our nets will catch the goodness God desires for us. Do it frequently and long. Go further and further. Otherwise however grace-soaked we have been we will dry out. And our bedazzled eyes will adjust again to the mundane selfish fear and violent ways of this world.

I urge you, as we renew our vows today, to make that your first priority. I commit myself to doing the same. We just might begin smell like salt water. We might take on the fragrance of heaven. And we will be able to inspire others to yearn for the vast and endless sea of God.

After all, as Evelyn Underhill, famously wrote, it is God that is the interesting thing about religion. And William Temple said we need clergy to be teachers of prayer. But we can only do that if we are committed to going deep into God in prayer ourselves and come to look and feel like we have been there.

I suspect that when Patrick or Brendan or Brigid showed up in a village part of what got peoples attention was they seemed soaked with the wildness of God and had something of the fragrance of heaven about them. And when people went to Norwich to see Julian’s they encountered someone who looked a little windblown and had a squint in her eye as though she had been staring into the horizon of God. These saints made people yearn to set out themselves into the vast expanse of God.

The Church has long been likened to the ark, a boat, or a ship. That is why the area where the congregation worships is called a “nave” which comes from the same word as navy. Look up. It looks like you are sitting under a large upturned boat. Like Brendan and his companion monks, each congregation is a band of pilgrims called to set out into the deep.

Let’s set out together on the adventure of seeking the vast expanse of God’s mercy and delight. Let’s open ourselves to being transformed by the by God’s grace such that we bear the fragrance of heaven. And let’s dare to set out into the deep of the communities around us bearing witness to the gospel of life and peace, justice and truth. And serving with them to do what we can to make the world rhyme a bit more with the kingdom of God in anticipation of the Day when God’s will be done on earth as in Heaven.

Let us teach the world to yearn for the vast expanse of God and invite them to join us as we set out into the deep.

* The actual passage that gave rise to the quote above is probably,

"One will weave the canvas; another will fell a tree by the light of his ax. Yet another will forge nails, and there will be others who observe the stars to learn how to navigate. And yet all will be as one. Building a boat isn’t about weaving canvas, forging nails, or reading the sky. It’s about giving a shared taste for the sea, by the light of which you will see nothing contradictory but rather a community of love."

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, ‘Wisdom of the Sands’

Good Friday Poem

When the longed-for Lion of Judah

insisted on being the Lamb of God,
when the Messiah we got
was not the Messiah we wanted,
when he would not play along
with our deceptions and self-justifications –
personal and communal,
when he would not affirm
our fear-filled desire for power,
when he would not bless
our lust for violence,
when he would not wreak vengeance
on our enemies;
what could we do
but avenge ourselves,
and kill him?
 
Will we ever forgive him
for even then
looking—seeing—looking
at us,
at them,
and saying,
"Father forgive"?

(Crucifix from St. James Episcopal Church

Manitowoc, Wisconsin)

Holy Week Confession

 Holy Week

Confession: I have often found faith in God difficult. I nearly gave it up when I was younger. A lot of god-talk leaves me cold. Even less compelling is vague talk of "the Sacred" or "the Holy" – whether glossed with a hint of Christianity or not. So much sounds like a mere projection of the believer’s own ideal self onto the cosmos. Or a sort of cosmic lucky rabbit’s foot.

Ultimately, it is the events of this week, with all their wild meaning and resistance to easy meaning-making that enable me to believe. If this week points to something true about the source, purpose, and destiny of all things, I can have faith and hope. If God is revealed in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, I can respond with adoration, praise, and thanksgiving. I can dare to give myself over to the way of love and peace, mercy and justice. And there is freedom and joy.

Sometimes at the Eucharist, as I am distributing the Sacrament, I imagine I am wielding an invisible needle and thread. With every placing of the Bread in the hands or tongue of a communicant and then the next as I go along the line, the body of Christ is being threaded together anew.

Every Eucharist is a remembering of the body of Christ as we remember and recall the Presence of Jesus in the Sacrament. And every Eucharist is a re-membering of the body of Christ, the Church, in which the threads that bind us together are reinforced. We recall that we are not our own. We are created for communion – communion with God and communion with one another. The Holy Spirit – the Holy Weaver – weaves, knits, and sews us together.

All of humanity is created for communion with God, communion with itself, and communion with all of creation. Part of the Church’s vocation is to be the sign and foretaste of that communion. The Church’s vocation is to be a sign and foretaste of the promise that all that is torn and tattered will be mended, rewoven, and knit back together. All that is torn and tattered in each of us can be mended. The torn and tattered fabric of human relationship and society can be mended. Creation, torn and tattered, can be repaired. It is not just about the Church. But, it is the mission of the Church to point to and live in anticipation of God’s restoration of all things (Acts 3:21).

That is the work of God. Only God can finally accomplish it. But Christians are called to participate in that mission and be menders in the world. It is the Church’s vocation, knit together by the Holy Spirit through Baptism and Eucharist, to be the loom of the Lord.

There is precedence for this image:

“But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.” (Ephesians 4:15-16)

"Christ is likened to a needle the eye in which, pierced most painfully at his passion, now draws all after him, so repairing the tunic rent by Adam, stitching together the two peoples of Jews and Gentiles [and, by extension, every division that rends the human fabric], making them one for always." – Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), 'Catholicism, Christ and the Common Destiny of Man', referencing Paschasius Radbertus (785-865)

"One day a little girl sat watching her mother working in the kitchen. She asked her mommy, 'What does God do all day long?' For a while, her mother mother was stumped, but then she said, 'Darling, I'll tell you what God does all day long. He spends his whole day mending broken things.'" – Festo Kivengere (1921-1988), quoted in 'Glorious Companions'

"From Jesus began a weaving together of the divine and human nature in order that human nature, through fellowship with what is more divine, might become divine, not only in Jesus but also in all those who, besides believing in Jesus, take up the life which he taught; the life which leads everyone who lives according to the precepts of Jesus to friendship with God and fellowship with him." – Origen (184-253), 'Contra Celsus'

“For the sake of love all the saints resisted sin, not showing any regard for this present life. And they endured many forms of death, in order to be separated from the world and united with themselves and with God, joining together in themselves the broken fragments of human nature. For this is the true and undefiled theosophy of the faithful. Its consummation is goodness and truth – if indeed goodness as compassion and truth as devotion to God in faith are the marks of love. It unites men to God and to one another, and on this account contains the unchanging permanence of all blessings.” – Maximus the Confessor, ‘Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice’, 1st Century