Statement of Faith.

When a Presbyterian minister changes presbyteries they need to be examined for membership in the new presbytery.  Since I now live in Long Island where my wife is a Pastor, I am applying for membership in the Presbytery of Long Island.  Here is my Statement of Faith.

Statement of Faith + Rev. Paul F. Rack + The Presbytery of Long Island.

Purely by God’s grace I find myself called to trust and obey One essentially unknowable God, “who is above all, and through all, and in all,” a Trinitarian community dancing in ecstatic, overflowing love.  By Word and Spirit, God breathes the universe into being, declaring it all very good, charging it with Holy Wisdom, fashioning all of life — and humanity in God’s Image — to glorify and enjoy the Creator in one beloved and beautiful community, the Reign of God, anticipated in the Church.  

In the fullness of time, God, in overflowing, self-emptying love, emerges to dwell with and among creation as a temporal, mortal human being, a first-century Palestinian Jew, Jesus Christ, the one Word of God.  He reveals the oneness of True Humanity and True Divinity.  In relationship with and in him human beings may, by the Holy Spirit, glorify, know, and even become one with God.  

His human mother, Mary, offers the fullest example of Wisdom and discipleship in response to the Spirit, and is rightly called Mother of God.  She witnesses to his calling to bring into the world the justice of God’s Reign.  Empire has no claim on, or credit for, him.  

The Holy Spirit, as a bird, anoints him, and in the wilderness he refuses the three demonic, ego-centric temptations that enslave human existence and spawn Empire.  He thereby affirms his mission as the promised Anointed One of God.  In his earthly ministry he tells stories, celebrates creation, and liberates people from disease, possession, and death, from exclusion and victimization, and from oppressive abuse of God’s Law by religious authorities.  

Arrested by police and executed by Empire for sedition, he gives his life for the life of the world, completing God’s self-emptying.  Christ fulfills the atonement and liberation prophesied in Jewish Scripture, reconciling all things and making peace by his blood, which is his life, infusing all creation.  

For the good news is that he does not stay dead, but, defeating death by death, he rises to new life.  Liberating us from condemnation and death, God continues his uprising to live with and within us.  

Those called to follow him are ceremonially immersed in Christ's death and uprising in the water of Baptism.  We receive God’s life by sacramentally ingesting his body and blood in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.  Thus he feeds his followers, forming them into his body, the Church, to shine as an exemplary community, the light of the world, one with God, each other, and all creation.  

As the Holy Spirit, God is everywhere present, overflowing to fill all things, proceeding to energize creation to ultimate fulfillment in peace and beauty.  She is God’s Presence, the breath of God’s Word, Jesus Christ.  She is our Creator, Comforter, and Advocate, who abides with and within us, blessing us and cleansing us from all that would separate us from God and others, liberating us and all creation by God’s grace and goodness.  

The Holy Spirit inspires, gathers, and guides the Church, through whom we receive and interpret the Holy Scriptures, “the unique and authoritative witness” to God’s Word, Jesus Christ.  Scripture tells the story of God’s liberating activity in history, from creation, to the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery to Empire, to their receipt of God’s Law as the way of life in God’s Reign.  Scripture always advocates on behalf of the poor, marginalized, oppressed, and victimized.  

In the Church, the Spirit drives disciples to a change of mind and direction, liberating us from bondage to selfishness and violence, so that the mind of Christ may emerge in us, and we realize our true nature in him.  We witness to Jesus Christ, giving thanks in all things, becoming a blessing to the world, actively bearing fruit in justice, kindness, and humility, engaging in acts of resistance, advocacy, and solidarity with the powerless, caring for and defending the creation, standing in opposition to Empire, and living always in obedience to Jesus’ commandments of embodied love.  

The Spirit, inspiring us to gratitude and joy in play, prayer, and contemplation, is the breath animating discipleship, by which God’s Presence and goodness in Christ emerges within us, giving us confidence that the destiny of each and all of us in the whole creation is liberation, joy, peace, ecstasy, beauty, fullness of life, and knowledge of the love of God, which is God’s Reign.   

PfR + The Fourth Week After the Resurrection of the Lord, MMXXI. 

+++++++