I believe in the Triune God, everlasting and intimate, who baffles our human laws of can and can’t and whom we glimpse as Rock, Breath, Carpenter, Truth, Grace, Power, Laughter, Solace, Hope…

I believe in God, who cradles the whole world in God’s hands, who rejoices in us but grieves how we have forgotten to care for each other. God created us in God’s image from earth’s dust and God’s breath. God claimed the Hebrew slaves of Egypt as God’s own, freeing, feeding, and guiding them. God speaks through prophets and poets—and many whose voices we forget and ignore—to remind us we were made to walk together towards a holy mountain. Patient beyond measure and spilling over with loving-kindness, God pursues us with goodness and mercy and a relentless promise to be our God.

I believe in Jesus Christ, who is Immanuel, God with us. Jesus is fully human, fully divine—God playing by our rules that we might learn to play by his. Jesus mended lives, broke rules, cast out demons, welcomed children, wined and dined the wrong set of people, and told us new stories in which the realm of God was not a theory but a promise. Afraid of the change Jesus brought, we charged him with heresy and hung him on a cross. Yet even in death, Jesus’ arms were stretched wide. On the third day the women found the tomb empty, and Jesus raised from the dead, and death’s power shattered, and our salvation secured. Now the cross is the compass that points us straight to Love.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, who soared over the first waters, inspired prophets, and proved that God was not isolated in a temple or the distant heavens but present in every moment at every place. The Spirit descended into the gathered peoples at Pentecost, breathing passion and courage into the disciples, and consecrating the church to take up the work that Jesus began in Galilee. She lurks in ordinary things, turning them into vessels of Grace. The Spirit shapes us, giving us different gifts, and unifies us, like puzzle pieces joined to restore us to imago Dei, jagged edges and all.

I affirm the Holy Scriptures, a diverse set of ancient texts by which we know both God’s story and our own. Through human witness and the Spirit’s voice, the scriptures bring us comfort and challenge both. I affirm the Church, the holy collection of those who have done their best to be God’s presence in the world, which is as fallen and redeemed and precious as the people inside her. I affirm the Sacraments, Baptism and Communion, in which the stuff of life—juice, bread, water—becomes Life itself, reminding us that Grace suffuses every ordinary moment of life. These ancient sacraments bind us with God and one another. I affirm the real existence of Sin, the vandal that mars our ability to bear God’s image in the world, isolating us from God and neighbor, destroying lives and breaking God’s heart. I affirm Salvation, that God does not abandon us to our mess but will always come to free us again—from slavery, sin, and even death.

Amen.