If, every morning, you proudly dress yourself in your Union Jack pullover, while singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ at the top of your voice, and the very thought of Scottish Independence makes your blood run cold, would you join the SNP?
 
If you long for the day when Britain throws open its borders to immigrants from every nation, when it joins the euro and leads the continent into ever closer union, would you join UKIP?
 
If you like nothing better than a plate of whale meat, loathe polar bears with every fibre of your being, and have invested heavily in every fracking enterprise you can find, would you join Greenpeace?
 
Of course, the answer to all these questions is “No”.
 
If the only music you like was heavy metal, would you take out a subscription to a season with Scottish Opera?
 
If your absolute favourite sport was cricket, would you join the Raith Rovers supporter’s club?
 
If you lived on Shetland and, owing to a debilitating fear of either air or sea travel, never left, would you join the friends of Tate Britain?
 
Well, the answer to these questions is, “You might”.
 
What I’m trying to do, in rather crude terms, is draw a distinction between membership organisations which have values, and those which are really more the providers of service.
 
Those that have values expect those who join to share those values, to a greater or lesser extent. If, for example, you stand for election to public office under the banner of a particular party, voters have a right to expect that you hold the values that the party as a whole espouses. If you join a political party, the other members have a right to expect you to be in sympathy with its stated aims and objectives. On the other hand, an opera company, a football club or a gallery aim simply to provide you with enjoyment and stimulation, but they don’t care what you believe.
 
Now, what about the church? There is a very interesting case currently working its way through the processes of the United Church of Canada. Gretta Vosper, minister in a Toronto parish, has declared she is an atheist. She talks of beliefs which divide and argues that empathy can achieve more and better than religious dogma. She is trying to develop a post-theistic church, a church which does all the good things a church should do – help people to reflect deeply on life, work to overcome injustice, help those in need – unencumbered with restrictive belief systems. Her congregation is standing by her. Her denomination is taking action to remove her because the church does have expectations. It expects those who are members, and those who hold appointments within it, to subscribe to the values it holds.
 
Now, that is a little over-simplistic. Different branches of the church hold different values. They have changed and developed over the centuries. Individual members, even of the same congregation, will believe different things. That’s why I sometimes say that, whenever two or three are gathered together, there you have an ecumenical encounter. But what individuals and churches believe are not wholly different from one another. There is common ground. The church, throughout its history has held on to the need for common ground. And throughout its long history, it has tried to define what that common ground is, what the core beliefs and central values are which define what the church is.
 
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be thinking about these things. This arises from a discussion at a recent Kirk Session meeting. People don’t like saying the Creed, I was told. I tried to say why I thought it was important. I don’t think I explained it particularly well. But, someone said, perhaps it would be good if we knew more about it. That seemed a good suggestion. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to learn about creeds. I’ll talk mostly about the Apostles’ Creed, the one we have been using week by week for nearly ten years, but I’ll be referring to others, principally the Nicene Creed, which, if you like, you can look up in the Hymn Book. I don’t expect anyone to like saying the Creed any more than before, but at least we should all know a bit more about it, and some of the others, and understand a bit better its place in the doctrine and worship of the church.
 
At its most basic, the Creed is an attempt to define what the church believes. The name, ‘creed’, derives from the first word of it in Latin, credo, I believe. Already, we come up against a problem. It’s that first word – I. People have said to me, ‘I don’t want to be told what to believe.’ And, ‘You’ll put people off if you expect them to believe all that.’ I have a lot of sympathy with that position. I don’t want to be told what to believe either. I want to use my own intelligence. I want to examine each proposition of faith and come to my own conclusions. I am an educated, free thinking, post-enlightenment individual, as are we all, and I am not going to be told what to believe by anyone. That would be an unconscionable infringement of my intellectual liberty.
 
I shared something of my own internal faith journey with the Kirk Session. I told them this. Sometimes I believe without difficulty. Sometimes I hardly believe at all. It comes and goes, and sometimes comes back again, sometimes in a different form. As you get older, the certainties and convictions of youth get knocked about a bit. Life experience changes you, and changes what you think, or at least it should, if you think and reflect at all. There have been times when I have said, “I believe . . .” and I’ve been really unsure if I did believe at all. But I have said it anyway, not out of laziness, nor for show, nor out of a fear of being ‘found out’. I have continued to say, “I believe . . .” because of the church. I have taken strength from the fact that the Creed expresses the belief of the church, even if at times I have been unsure if it was my belief. I have taken strength from the fact that others, whom I have looked up to and respected, have believed, and confessed their belief, and reasoned with myself that I am more likely to be wrong than they are.
 
To me, that is why the church is essential. I couldn’t walk the journey of faith alone. I would venture that only a very few can. Pretty much all of us need companionship on the journey, need the faith of others to carry ours when it is faltering, need the strength of others in those many times when we ourselves are weak. And, for my money, it is the people who obviously struggle who are the greatest source of strength and encouragement, not those who project an aura of unobtainable certainty.
 
Will people be put off the church by encountering a statement of its values? I can see that they might be. If you simply do not share them at all, then why join? But the church is an organisation, a movement, with values. These are what it is about, and what should attract people to it. But what we should never do is give the impression that unless you can sign up for it all, there’s no place for you. The church is more about community than belief. It is a community of doubters, of thinkers, of doers, of the uncertain, of the exploring. The creed is not a test, but an aspiration, an expression of the fundamentals which give rise to the life of this extraordinarily diverse and vital thing that we call church. It is not always, ‘I believe . . .’, but quite often, ‘I would like to believe . . .’ because this is what I want to be a part of.
 
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at the Apostles’ Creed in some detail. We’ll think about its history, what it says, why it says it, its place in the history of the worship of the church and its purpose now. Whether or not we end up with a greater understanding and appreciation, I can be sure of one thing: exploring the Creed, this pithy summary of the faith of the church, will lead us to the heart of the Gospel.
 
Amen.

 
I wonder if you can think of a time when you really felt important. It might have been at work, where you solved a problem that nobody else had. It might have been while playing a sport, when you scored a point that brought your team victory. It might have been a time when you got to meet someone you had long admitted and they took an interest in you.
 
I wonder, now, if you can think of a time when you felt unimportant. It might have been a time when people didn’t listen to what you were saying, or a time when others took the credit for work you had done, or when it seemed that no one noticed that you were around, or when your offer to help was ignored or forgotten.
 
My guess is that more of you will have found it easier to think of times when you have felt unimportant than of times when you felt important. Now, part of that may be down to our natural Scottish modesty. Most of us will have been brought up not to think more highly of ourselves than we should. Boastfulness and self-importance and arrogance are never attractive and we, mostly, try to avoid them. But take it too far, overdo the modesty, the self-effacement, and that can turn out to be harmful. Many of us will have experienced, and all will have known others who have experienced, a sense of worthlessness, of insignificance that can lead to depression and self-harm.
 
Our Bible texts today, the Old Testament ones more than the New Testament ones, have something to say about this. Today is Trinity Sunday, that notoriously difficult Sunday on which to preach, but this year our Bible texts, the three we read and the one, the Psalm, we sang, are all, in some way, about our place in the family of God, our place within the overlapping circles, within the triangle, the Trinity, that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
 
In John, Jesus speaks of the ongoing revelation of the Father through the Spirit drawing us closer and closer into God. Paul wrote to the Roman Christians of God’s love being poured into us. But these short passages leave unanswered the question – why? That’s where the Old Testament texts come in.
 
Both are about Creation. Proverbs offers us a rather beautiful personification of wisdom, which John the Evangelist later identified as Christ. It is, we learn, because God is wise that God created the heavens and the earth and all that they contain. It is because God is wise that God delights that the world is inhabited, and particularly because it is inhabited by us, human beings.
 
This idea maybe flies in the face of what we would expect. What are human beings but cruel, destructive, ungrateful, rebellious creatures? Isn’t that what the church, and history, have taught? How can it be a mark of God’s wisdom that he delights in us?
 
Cruel, destructive, ungrateful and rebellious though we may be, when we look at the psalm for today, Psalm 8, we see how God actually thinks of us. The Psalmist reveals that God regards us as only a little lower than the angels, that God has crowned us with honour and glory, that God has given us dominion over all the works of his hand.
 
We were thinking a moment ago about importance, about feeling important and feeling unimportant. These ancient texts are telling us something that we need always to remember. They are telling us that we are important to God. We are important to God because God values us, not for what we do, or who we are, or what we are like, but because we are the work of his hands, a pivotal part of his creation, a part to which is entrusted special responsibility.
 
As Christian Aid Week draws to a close, this is a good thought to bear in mind. Through the video we watched together, we were given a glimpse into a life very different from our won, but we are reminded that Morsheda and her children, and and people like her, are important, as important as us, because, like us, she is important to God. Through God who loves us all, we are connected to her, and Christian Aid simply makes that connection a little more tangible, by telling us her story, by showing us her home, by letting us see a little of her way of life.
 
It is this realisation of the connectedness of humanity through God and in God that lies at the heart of Christian Aid’s work, and arguably at the heart of our whole vocation for be followers of Christ. Sensing these connections should change us, change us from being cruel to being kind; from being destructive to helping to build up, to repair and to renew; from being ungrateful to being thankful; from being rebellious to being obedient to God. I believe that’s what makes Christian Aid different from other charities, excellent though so many are. It is never enough just to give some money. Giving money does not discharge our whole responsibility to suffering humanity. Involvement with Christian Aid is also, always, about personal change and renewal, about loving as much as about giving.
 
In that, it is simply an expression of all the Christian faith should be. We love because God loved us first. We serve because God in Christ came to be the servant of all and to show us that everyone, no matter who we are, no matter where or how we live, is important to God.
 
Amen.

 
On Tuesday evening last week, a dozen or so of the Kirk Session, not a bad number considering all the meetings we have had recently, sat around a table with members of the Presbytery of Lothian’s Congregational Development Team. They were with us to follow up on the meeting back in February which many of you attended and contributed to.
 
As I think about that meeting last week, I find I could think two quite contradictory things about it. I could, on the one hand, feel that it was quite a depressing, dispiriting meeting. The Presbytery team said they couldn’t really discern a clear sense of direction within the congregation. They were right about that, I think. I was dreading them saying that we had to develop this or that new project, because that’s what Local Church Review teams tend to do, and I was dreading it because I don’t think we have the capacity or the energy to do big new things. We sat round the table and listed the things we have put a lot of energy into in recent years – Messy Church, a holiday club, the Stewardship campaign, Back to Church Sunday, Give Church a Go – none of which brought a return anything like commensurate with the effort put into them. Over the last few years, it seems that if there was a brick wall anywhere around, we’ve gone and banged our heads off it.
 
So, I could feel depressed and dispirited. Maybe others who were there did. But, at the same time, I also came away feeling relieved, liberated. The Local Church Review team recognised that we have been trying hard, and that we are doing good things, but they helped me to see that these big projects were not for us. They may not have been successes, but they weren’t failures either. It was right to try them, because we have learned from them. And perhaps what we have learned is to be content with and to enjoy what we have and who we are – a smallish, gradually declining, gradually ageing congregation which none-the-less finds Jesus to be a vital part of our lives, both as individuals and as a community. We are a group of people who are committed to the church and that commitment finds its best expression in our commitment to each other, for we are the church in this place. We certainly have a short term future, probably a medium term future, but maybe not a long term future, at least not in the form we have always imagined church to have – with a lot of people of all ages, doing all the things that churches traditionally did. The messages I heard most clearly on Tuesday night are that it is not all about legacy, ensuring institutional survival, passing on the kind of church we have inherited to another generation. What is going on now, in the present, is much more important. The future, whatever it is, is in God’s hands. And we have to stop beating ourselves up about perceived failures. We are not failing, just because the church of the near future will not look like the church of our childhoods. God may just be nudging us in a different direction.
 
The team on Tuesday reminded us about the experiences and practices of the early church. It wasn’t a big institution. It didn’t put on big events or try time and energy and money consuming initiatives. It had a life in many ways very different from our own, yet it grew.
 
We catch a glimpse of that life in the story from Acts. What may not be immediately apparent is what difficulties Paul had encountered before this point. We picked up the story with his dream of a man from Macedonia, calling Paul in a vision, to cross over into what is now Europe, to bring the Gospel. Prior to that, Paul had been travelling around Asia Minor where, and Acts is quite explicit about this, the Holy Spirit had forbidden, yes, forbidden him from speaking about Jesus.
 
What must this have been like? We can only imagine. Paul had all this good news, yet he was unable to share it. How frustrating. How disappointing. How dispiriting. And he had no idea why he had been forbidden, not by earthly authorities, but by the Holy Spirit herself, from speaking about Jesus. But, to my ears, there is an echo in this of our experience, an echo of the sincere desire to tell the Good News here and the experience of our efforts being thwarted for reasons unknown. God was directing Paul elsewhere. Perhaps our experiences as a congregation over the last few years are God’s way of nudging us in a different direction.
 
Paul took the hint, his dream being the final confirmation. He set off to a new place, a place he didn’t know.
 
In Philippi, on the Sabbath, he went down to the river. This is intriguing. Why might he suppose there to be a place of prayer there? Perhaps this might be the reason. Women would have gone to the river every day to wash clothes. To Gentiles, for whom the Sabbath was no different from any other day, a gathering of women by the river would not have seemed remarkable at all. For those who wanted to meet and pray, therefore, this was a perfect cover, hiding in plain sight. And of course, it would just be women.
 
So Paul meets people, most of whom would have had little status, in the place of their ordinary work. It’s not a special gathering, just coming alongside people in the ordinary course of life.
 
But there was one among them who was a bit different. Lydia was a businesswoman, something that was probably quite unusual, a woman of independent financial means, but equally someone who was at home among the women by the river. She probably washed her clothes there too. She was also a worshipper of God, not a Jew, but a Gentile who worshipped the Jewish God. Through she was successful in life, she was looking for something more. She found it in the words she heard from Paul, and so became the first European convert we know by name. She received baptism, along with her household, and placed her home at Paul’s disposal, as a base for evangelism.
 
What can we learn from her? Well, she was already looking for a deeper spiritual meaning in life. If the church now is to reach people, perhaps these are the kind of people we need to seek out and find, those whose minds are already open, who are looking. And we’re probably more likely to find these people in the ordinary course of life, rather than hoping they’ll somehow come to us. Arguably, that’s what Jesus did. As he walked through Galilee, he passed dozens of people, but only picked a dozen, people he sensed were open to what he had to say, and even he got it wrong with Judas.
 
The visiting team on Tuesday emphasised this. They argued that our efforts need to go into making disciples, deepening faith rather than trying to get bums on seats. They told us that there are three things which are essential for the life, health and witness of any congregation, two of which we are already quite good at, and all of which appear in or around the story we have been thinking about.
 
One is to work to meet social needs and to bring about change so that justice may prevail. We do that through Bethany, Christian Aid, Storehouse and MidAid. There’s a wee example just after the story of Lydia when Paul rescued an exploited child.
 
Second is creating Christian community which worships God in spirit and in truth. That’s what we hear of Lydia and her household and the women by the river doing, and we do it too, on Sunday mornings, at lunches and other social occasions, as members visit and care for one another, and in the Coffee Shop.
 
But what we do less well is the third thing – encouraging people to become disciples and enabling people to deepen their faith. I hope that that is what the Kirk Session may start to work on, but it is not just the work of the Kirk Session. The ideas, suggestions and commitment of all will be welcome.
 
I feel we are being nudged in the direction of small things, unspectacular things, things that maybe few will notice any time soon, but things which may, if blessed by God, have a profound effect on the life of this wee community of people who are trying to follow Jesus. Let’s see what happens. After all, it was just a conversation by a river in Philippi which sowed the seed for the eventual evangelisation of our whole continent.
 
Amen.