Pilgrim - The Creeds

A Course for the Christian Journey

Stephen Cottrell, Paula Gooder, Steven Croft, Robert Atwell, Sharon Ely Pearson

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780898699562
• eBook ISBN: 9780898699579
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

A teaching and discipleship resource that helps inquirers and new Christians explore what it means to travel through life with Christ.

Pilgrim is a Christian course for the twenty-first century, Pilgrim offers an approach of participation, not persuasion. Following the practice of the ancient disciplines of biblical reflection and prayer with quotes from the Christian tradition throughout the ages, Pilgrim assumes little or no knowledge of the Christian faith. Individuals or small groups on the journey of discipleship in the Episcopal tradition can use Pilgrim at any point.

Made up of two parts, Pilgrim consists of four courses contained in four booklets.

SESSION SIX:

ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH

In this session we explore what it means to belong to the people of God and to declare that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

Opening Prayers

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and all this is within me, bless his holy Name.

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits.

He forgives all your sins

and heals all your infirmities;

He redeems your life from the grave

and crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness;

He satisfies you with good things,

and your youth is renewed like an eagle’s.

PSALM 103:1-5

O Lord, you have given us your word for a light to shine upon our path. Grant us so to meditate on that word, and to follow its teaching, that we may find in it the light that shines more and more until the perfect day; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

AFTER JEROME (357–420)

Conversation

Tell part of the story of your experience of the Holy Spirit’s work across your life and especially in recent years.

What is your earliest positive memory of the Church?

Reflecting on Scripture

Reading

Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. ²Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—³if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

⁴Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and ⁵like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶For it stands in scripture: “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” ⁷To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner,” ⁸and “A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. ¹⁰Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

¹¹Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. ¹²Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.

1 PETER 2:1-12

Explanatory note

Notice how many metaphors are used in this passage—babies, stones, houses. The passage uses a lot of contrasting metaphors to build its message.

There are a lot of Old Testament allusions in this passage. You might like to look them up—see Psalm 34:8-14; Psalm 118:22; Isaiah 8:14-15; Isaiah 28:16; Isaiah 43:20-21; Exodus 19:6.

The words used for aliens and exiles imply people who have no home—this contrasts with the invitation to come to Christ who builds a spiritual home.

Read the passage through once.

Observe a few moments’ silence.

Read the passage a second time with different voices.

Invite everyone to say aloud a word or phrase that strikes them.

Read the passage a third time.

Share together what this word or phrase might mean and what questions it raises.

Reflection

MARY GREGORY

Lord of the Church

For some this might be the most challenging part of the creed. For how can we believe that the Church is “one” when, in the words of Samuel J. Stone’s famous hymn, it is “by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed”? Or how can we declare that the Church is “holy” when so much harm has been done in its name?

The answer might be to focus on God’s creation of the Church, on God’s sustaining of it, rather than on the way particular churches or individuals have distorted its identity.

In 1 Peter 2 it is clear that it is God’s activity that is decisive for the Church: it is God who builds believers into a spiritual house (v. 5), God who gathers disparate individuals and makes them a people (v. 10), God who transforms them with God’s mercy (v. 10).

It is primarily by God’s grace that the Church is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,” but in each generation the Church itself is called to live out that identity.

In celebrating and blessing a marriage, after the vows have been made and the rings exchanged, the priest stands before the couple and proclaims that they are “joined together” by God; the two are now newly joined to one another. This is also who they become as minute-by-minute, day-by-day they practice the sacrificial way of love and life set out for them in the vows.

It is God who builds believers into a spiritual house.

In the same way, through God’s proclamation, the Church is already one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9). Even so, the Church is to strive to live out this calling—to reflect its designation as “holy,” for example by ridding itself of malice, guile, insincerity, envy, and slander (1 Peter 2:1). These two verses illustrate this paradox of the Church’s identity: that it already is and is becoming holy—one, catholic, apostolic.

The Church is to strive to live out this calling.

In short

God has declared that the Church is already holy, but the Church is challenged t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Welcome to Pilgrim
• Introduction to The Creeds
• Session One: What Are the Creeds?
• Session Two: God as Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
• Session Three: Fully God and Fully Human
• Session Four: Crucified, Risen, and Ascended
• Session Five: I Believe in the Holy Spirit
• Session Six: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church
• Notes