I believe in God, our Creator and our Author, who delights in creation and declares it very good. God’s imagination lives out in the vastness of the planets, the specificity of each hair on our heads, and in each wildflower, sea creature, and ant hill. I believe that our very creation is an expression of God’s abundant grace. Through this divine grace, we are called to love and be loved.
I believe in Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and our Teacher, who walked on this earth enfleshed, who felt the wide swath of emotions including joy and anguish, who knew what it felt like to heal through touch, and who was God’s love embodied. The life and death of Jesus calls us to cross divisions of self and other and calls us to dismantle structures and systems that cause harm to any part of creation. I believe in the resurrected Christ, made whole and free, who transcends the binary of human and divine and fulfills for us the promise of life everlasting.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, our Sustainer and our Wisdom, who moves freely through God’s creation. The Holy Spirit reveals to us who God is and what God does through the Word, guiding us towards the truth of love and the kingdom in the here and now. The Holy Spirit reveals to us who God is in our relationships with one another – neighbor and stranger alike. The Holy Spirit turns our confessions into action, guiding us towards compassion and justice.
I believe that among the gifts of love and grace from God our Creator, we cannot avoid the reality of sin. Sin exists in anything that separates us from the love of God and one another. We rely on systems that oppress. We allow our neighbor to go hungry, we act as bystanders and perpetrators to violence. Our sin is personal and collective, individual and communal. Yet sin will never have the final word because of grace. God’s grace gives us the courage to speak even when our voice shakes. God’s grace gives us the strength to forgive because we know we are forgiven. God’s grace emboldens us to move forward with action, working for God’s justice. God’s grace frees us, redeems us, and calls us.
I believe that God’s grace is revealed to us through the gift of Scripture. Guided by the Holy Spirit, Scripture illuminates the depth of God’s love for all of creation through God’s covenant with us and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We return to Scripture for the authority it holds in telling the story of who the Triune God was, is, and will continue to be.
I believe that God’s grace is revealed to us through the waters of Baptism as our lives are claimed in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Through this sign of our union with Christ, we are sealed in love with our Creator. We are sealed in love with a community of faith that will walk alongside us, journeying with us in hope as we work for God’s justice.
I believe that God’s grace is revealed to us through the feast of Communion. When we gather around the table, abundant with the goodness of love and mercy in the risen bread and the overflowing cup, we proclaim the shared mystery of our faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. It is with the Holy Spirit’s movement that across time and generations, this meal sustains us in mystery and in the work of our shared faith.
I believe we encounter the Triune God’s grace at church – a place where we share our faith out loud. We respond to God’s grace through worship, making a joyful noise, encountering and proclaiming the Word, feasting at God’s table in communion and claiming God’s call on our lives in baptism. I believe the church gives us the relationships to surround us when we suffer, to sit with us in our lament and to celebrate with us in our joy. I believe that in both a promising and fearful world, the church is called to act decisively out of God’s abundant love. I believe being a church is the act of living into God’s reordered vision where we all belong. It is because of and with these beliefs that I listen to God’s call on my life and respond with gratitude, working for God’s kingdom in the here and now.
Susan Landrum 