Sermon preached on the Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 12, 2024 at Church of the Redeemer, Addison, NY: John 17
It was my first Sunday
at my first parish “in charge,” the Vicar of a longstanding mission church
called St. George’s in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. At the 8 am Service six people were gathered
with me. All was well.
Then we got to the
Nicene Creed and the strangest thing happened.
I started, “We believe . . .” but from the back of the chapel in a
rather loud voice came the word, “I.” And every time the creed used the word
“we,” the voice would say, “I.” The same
thing happened when we got to the Confession. Instead of “we” came “I.”
This continued and after
a few weeks I got up the nerve to take the parishioner aside and ask what was
going on. He said that he was opposed to
the change in the creed from “I” to “We.”
I refuse to speak for what other people believe or confess. I can only
speak for myself.
Just a little
background: the old Book of Common Prayer used “I” for the Nicene Creed,
although the Confession in our Prayer Books has always used “we.” The current Prayer Book changing to “we” in
the Creed was not a newfangled innovation. It was a return to the original form
of the Creed in Greek, which began “we.”
The “I” had crept in when in the Middle Ages, the priest alone said most
of the Service.
Another aside, our Roman
Catholic sisters and brothers say “I” in their confession, and continue to say
“I” in the Nicene Creed.
So why “we?”
It is simple, really, in
the Eucharist we pray not as individuals or a collection of individuals, but as
a body. We are one voice speaking with
God. We are the body of Christ in
praise, thanksgiving, and prayer.
The Nicene Creed, in
particular, is a statement of the belief of the church as a whole. And so we say it as the whole church, in
union with Christians in all times and in all places.
It seems to me that one
way of describing this way of praying—praying as “we”—is fitting to the secular
celebration on this day. To pray as “we”
is to pray as a mother.
Who else better knows
the power of the “we,” than a mother who has carried a child, whose body for
nine months is quite literally a “we.” And mothers never quite lose this
bond. There’s a part of a mother that is
always a “we” when it comes to her children.
Jesus prays like this in
the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel, often called “the high priestly
prayer,” but which I think could also be called “the mother’s prayer.” He prays that “they (we) may be one, as we
are one.” It is in that oneness for which Jesus prays that we pray whenever two
or three are gathered.
All mine are yours and yours are mine . . protect them in your name that you have given
me, so that they may be one as we are one.
I’m not making up on my
own this understanding of Jesus praying as a mother. One of the great saints of the English Church
is the 14th century woman, Julian of Norwich. In her writings she
often refers to Jesus as “mother.” “Our
mothers,” she writes, “bear us for pain and for death; our true mother, Jesus,
bears us for joy and endless life.”
This is part of the
upside-down world that the Book of Acts speaks about. The early Christians were
known as “those people who turn the world upside down.” (Acts 17:6)
Here’s the upside down
world that our use of the word “we” in our prayer. The world—especially western
culture—understands that I am an individual first and then members of
society. Jesus turns that world on his
head. In Jesus we are a “we” before we
are an “I.”
In southern African
culture this is called “Ubuntu,” which means that I am an I only because we are
a we.
Let us join Jesus in his
motherly prayer as we profess our faith, confess our sins, and renew our
oneness with him and one another in the Eucharist, including, as we pray as
Jesus taught us to pray,
Our Father . . .
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