In keeping with our commemoration of All Souls’ Day, later on in the service we will recite the Apostle’s Creed instead of our usual Nicene Creed.
The reason we’re mixing it up is because the Apostle’s Creed is what appears in the Burial Rite of the church. In other words, it’s what we say at funerals. By using some of the funeral liturgy in our commemoration today, we allow the long tradition of the church to shape our understanding of death, “so that [we] may not grieve as others do, who have no hope,” as our First Thessalonians reading says.
But, why was the Apostle’s Creed chosen for the funeral service? Don’t the creeds basically say the same thing anyway? Before I answer those questions, I want to talk a little bit more about what a creed is. Creeds are “statements of belief” that were written by the early church to clarify Christian theology and help the church stay unified, as it spread throughout world.
Scholar James Merrick argues that it wasn’t just the statements, but the structure of the creeds that was important. He says:
“…in a predominantly illiterate society, memorization and recitation of creeds allowed teachings to be fixed in an oral rather than textual way. In preparation for baptism, catechumens would hear a series of lectures on a creed-like summary of the Christian faith and would then be required to recite the creed during the ceremony.”
So, a creed isn’t just a document you hide away in a drawer. It is a statement of belief that has been boiled down to the most important points so that it can be remembered.
(That reminds me of a time when I was visiting New York City with my sister, and we attended a non-denominational church that used the Book of Common prayer for its worship service. When it came time for the Creed, I said the whole thing without looking at the bulletin. She was amazed! “How did you know that?” she asked. Easy! After years of Episcopal church services, I had memorized it.)
But why is it important that creeds are meant to be memorized? Because they tell us what we believe and proclaim about God and Jesus. And, in that way, they remind us who we are.
So, let’s get back to our first question: Why do we use the Apostle’s Creed in funerals? Well, we know that this creed was used in baptisms, and since baptism is the process of joining Jesus in his death and resurrection, it makes sense to refer back to it at someone’s funeral. At a funeral we say that, even though someone has died, they will live again, just like Jesus.
But, there’s also a specific point being made in the Apostle’s Creed that isn’t as obvious in the Nicene Creed, and it has everything to do with the theme of a funeral. I’m gonna read a part of the Apostle’s Creed and let you guess what it is:
“I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body
and life everlasting.
Amen.”
…What I specifically want to focus on is that phrase, “the resurrection of the body.” Christians from the earliest days have proclaimed – in their baptism, during daily prayer, and at the time of death, – that they will be resurrected in their bodies.
Maybe this is obvious to you; but it’s not obvious in popular conceptions of the afterlife. Even those of us who grew up in the church tend to imagine our dead loved ones as disembodied souls who drifted up to heaven while their bodies remain buried in the ground.
At one level, it makes sense that we would think that. After all, when we read scripture that says “we will meet the Lord in the air” or sing hymns about “flying away,” logic would suggest that these are not bodies strapped to jetpacks, but rather weightless souls.
And this isn’t wrong, exactly. Our faith does teach that, when someone dies, their soul goes to heaven while their body remains on the earth. But the problem is that we’ve left off the end of the story. Our faith also teaches that, at Jesus’ second coming – when the whole world is redeemed and all of creation is made new – we will rejoin with our perfected bodies for all of eternity. Sure, it’s kind of weird, but a soul that floats up to heaven is also kind of weird.
I think that one reason we downplay the resurrection of the body because we don’t think our bodies deserve it. We can believe in Jesus’ bodily resurrection because he was the perfect human. But when it comes to our own bodies, we can’t imagine that there would be anything worth saving.
Since Jesus’ day, the western world has thought of bodies as bad. We think of them as the source of temptation and discomfort, And, of course, they are (literally) a sore reminder of our mortality. But it’s pretty hard to justify any of Jesus’ healing ministry if it’s true that bodies aren’t worth saving.
In the year 208, Tertullian wrote “On the resurrection of the flesh” to set the record straight. He argues that each one of us must, ultimately, be reunited with our bodies if we are to proclaim Christian hope at all.
He says that Jesus became a flesh-and-blood human, like us, in order to save us. And not just our souls, but our whole being. It was his own em-bodiment that made it possible for him draw us into the perfection of his own body. His body – dead and raised from the dead – became the bridge to our salvation, in body and soul.
But, Tertullian argues, the goodness of the body didn’t arrive with Jesus. It was present in the very beginning. When God created humanity, God breathed divine spirit into the bodies he had formed and called them “good.” Body and spirit combined to make humankind.
So, we proclaim the resurrection of the body, because God blessed bodies as good, saved us through Jesus’ incarnation, and calls the church to its mission as the “Body of Christ.” This isn’t mere theology. It has real-world consequences.
As N.T. Wright says in his book, “Surprised by Hope”:
‘Because the early Christians believed that resurrection had begun with Jesus and would be completed in the great final resurrection on the last day, they believed that God had called them to work with him, in the power of the Spirit, to implement the achievement of Jesus and thereby to anticipate the final resurrection, in personal and political life, in mission and holiness. It was not merely that God had inaugurated the “end”; if Jesus, the Messiah, was the End in person, God’s-future-arrived-in-the-present, then those who belonged to Jesus and followed him and were empowered by his Spirit were charged with transforming the present, as far as they were able, in the light of that future.’
The “resurrection of the body” means that what happens here on earth ripples into eternity. And fundamentally, that means that people matter – every part of them. Our first job as Christians is not to study the creeds, but to live them, in service of God’s good creation.
When we live this way, we begin to understand that the bodies that the world calls bad or inadequate are beloved by God. We become motivated to care for the bodily needs of humankind, making sure all are fed, clothed, sheltered, safe, and well. We become obligated to “keep awake” to the world’s suffering so that we can alleviate it. We affirm God’s first blessing – that creation is “good” and worthy of being cared for.
And we make God’s promise come true. We work today to build a future in which God’s good creation is restored, loved, and made whole, in body and soul. And we know that effects of our loving-action will not die, but ripple into eternity.
Amen.
