The weather is getting hotter and graduation parties are showing up. It’s time for summer school where we take a quick look at the six chief parts of Luther’s Small Catechism.
This upcoming Sunday we will do something we do only once a year: Confess the Athanasian Creed in worship. The Athanasian one is the long, somewhat repetitive one. It is also the latest of the three creeds that we use in worship. The Athanasian Creed was written around the 400’s AD, while the Apostles’ Creed that we find in the Catechism was written somewhere in the 1st century, not more than 100 years after Jesus died, perhaps not even 50 years after He died.
All of the Creeds outline who God is for us. The Apostles’ Creed does it in the most succinct way, so much so that we have evidence that another term for the Apostles’ Creed in the 1500’s was “the Children’s Creed”. It walks us through the 3 Persons of the Trinity: The Father, our Creator and the Creator of the entire cosmos; The Son, our Messiah and Lord who stepped into our history, died for us, rose again, and now sits in authority over us; and the Spirit, the animating force behind the Church, Person of God who makes our Christianity come alive within the Church and therefore within us.
There is a story about a little kid who got lost in a big box store. A store worker started to ask the child to describe her parent. Through tearful eyes, she said that her father was wearing pants and a shirt, and that he had hair on his arms. The store worker looked around and saw all sorts of men that fit that description. It wasn’t until she said that her father had green pants and a blue shirt, and had brown hair that they started to be able to piece together who her father was. Likewise, the Creeds help us give the necessary information about who “God” is and how the true God is defined a little bit more particularly than just any other “god” we might find in the world.
Take some time today and review the Small Catechism, especially the Creed (you can find it here https://catechism.cph.org/ ) and learn how to speak clearly about the God who calls you His own.