my previous post covered the first part of the sermon, specifically the look at Acts 2:42-47. This part looks at the four statements we see in the Nicene creed about the church.
Now the statement in the Nicene Creed is: We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. There are four truths to be explored here. They are: One, Holy, Apostolic, and Catholic. Each are truth statements about the nature of the church.
The Church is One The apostle Paul teaches that the church is one body in Christ, with one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. Yet we see that Jesus prayed for the unity of believers in John 17. Jesus anticipated and Paul addressed disunity as a problem in the church. The reality is that the church is both one and needing to seek oneness. It is unified in Christ spiritually but needs to seek unity humanly. We are called to love one another, serve one another, and build one another up. All of this is to be done for the glory of God.
What then do we make of the reality today that there are many different denominations of Christian churches? I think two ideas help us understand how to think of the church as one. First, we will see a true oneness or unity of the church when Jesus returns. At that point the one true church will unite to worship the Lord. Until then, we have a reality that theologian John Calvin describes as the church visible and the church invisible. The visible church exists in many expressions. We have Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and many others around us. However, the church invisible consists of all who are truly in relationship with Christ: past, present and future. That is the church we will see clearly on the last day.
We get glimpses of the oneness or unity of the church periodically in our lives. When I took my youth group to a national conference in Washington, DC we were surrounded by 20,000 young Christians from all sorts of denominations. We were all worshipping the Lord together and growing in our understanding of his call on our lives. It was a peek into the future reality that the church is one. We also saw after the Emmanuel AME tragedy a few years ago, a unity amongst churches in Charleston that really was a profound testimony to the world. Christians that normally did not interact were praying together and singing hymns and praises. The world around us expected to see protests and maybe even riots in the streets. Instead what occurred was a manifestation of the oneness of the church. It was a powerful testimony that glorified God.
The Church is Holy This is similarly complex to the oneness of the church. We tend to equate holiness with moral perfection. So how can we say that the church is holy when the church is the people and the people are imperfect? In the moral sense, the church is holy because it will one day be purified. Until then, the church is as sinful as it’s members and even it’s leaders.
However, moral perfection is only one way of looking at the word holy. In the bible, it’s larger meaning is “to be set apart”. To be holy is to be set apart for and dedicated to the service of the Lord. We see in the Old Testament that God set apart a people for himself, the nation of Israel. Israel was not only to be God’s chosen people, they were to be a blessing to the world. God made a covenant with his people, which was fulfilled in the person of Christ. In the New Testament we see Jesus ushers in a new covenant that goes beyond the Jewish people to include all who would follow him.
When we speak of the church being holy we do so because the one who called us out to be different from the world, namely God, is holy in every sense of the word. To say we are a holy people primarily means that we are set apart by and dedicated to God. Moral purity is not yet but dedication to the Lord is now. And the fact that the church is holy includes the idea that God intends the church to be a blessing to the world.
The Church is Catholic This is perhaps the most confusing word we are looking at today. We have in modern times used the word catholic as a shorter way to refer to the Roman Catholic Church. This is not what was meant when the creed was written because there were no protestant and catholic churches. At the time there was just “the church”. So what does catholic mean? The simple definition is “universal”. So, some protestant denominations when they recite the creed have replaced the word catholic with universal to avoid confusion. And honestly, I’ve met people who thought they were worshipping in a Roman Catholic Church simply because of this word in the creed.
What does it mean that the church is universal? This one is easy. It is the church throughout the known world. This is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham that in him all the nations of the world will be blessed. Holy Cross is just a local gathering of the universal church. Think about it this way. Our denomination consists of slightly more than 1000 churches in North America. Yet our Anglican brothers and sisters in Africa number in the millions. This is the universal church. And it includes not just Anglicans but all who confess that Jesus is Lord. It’s related to the idea of the church invisible in that the universal or catholic church is massive and who all is included… we don’t yet fully know.
The Church is Apostolic In our reading of Acts 2, we saw that the early church was devoted to the apostles teaching. The meaning of the word Apostolic in the creed is simply that the church originated with the Apostles. There is a direct link between the church today and the apostles. It raises the question, what is an apostle? Simply, an apostle is someone who was commissioned by Christ with the task of bringing the good news of the kingdom. It is someone who was a witness to the risen Christ or to whom Christ revealed himself as risen. So basically we are talking about 12 Apostles and Paul.
Therefore a good explanation of the church being apostolic is to say that it was planted in the world by the apostles, adheres to the teaching of the apostles, and carries on the succession of the apostles. In some traditions like ours, the understanding is that our bishops fall into the line of succession of the apostles. They themselves are not apostles but their consecration follows the line of who the apostles laid hands on to be bishops in the church.
So let’s connect what we have discovered about the church…
The church is one holy catholic and apostolic body. We find unity in devotion to the apostles teaching (aka scripture), to prayer, to fellowship, and breaking bread. And we are connected to all others who are devoted to the same throughout time and space.
We are set apart from the world in a radical koinonia fellowship with our shared identity in Christ. This should make the church a very different sort of body than any other organization, so much that it blesses the world around us!
In Acts 2:47 we are told that the Lord added daily to the number being saved. This one holy catholic and apostolic church was such a powerful community that people wanted to know more. Those outside the church were drawn to the love and devotion they shared. They found meaning and purpose together in Christ.
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