Apostle's Creed: Ascended, Seated, & perfect in Judgement.

Another long spell between posts. This has become a habit I'm afraid. I am working on a novel. But there is also three different knitting projects, a long lingering cold, and the stress of work to blame. I have, I fear, found myself living on the surface while I wallow in darkness struggling against my flesh (most on that later).

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,

      maker of heaven and earth,

      and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

      born of the Virgin Mary,

      suffered under Pontius Pilate,

      was crucified, died, and was buried: He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven,

      and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.

From there He will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

      the holy catholic* church,

      the communion of saints,

      the forgiveness of sins,

      the resurrection of the body,

      and the life everlasting.

Amen

I sat in the dark church gathering the darkness. The last bits of the setting sun glancing through the colors of the stain glass in the church. The carpet is red, and in the gloom blood colored. The alter where candles normally light the grace of our forward facing eyes, is covered in black cloth. Placed on the stairs leading up to that black drenched table, is a cross. Its wood is rough, a row of nails is set half driven into the flesh of its length. A hammer lays on the top step full on malice, because I know what it is for. This is the Good Friday service of my childhood. 

I looked back at the giant window, in which the figure of Christ, stands his hands open walking forward. He seems to beacon while he moves, drawing you upward. During sunday mornings his face is peaceful, full of grace. His hands show the wounds of his pain, this is our Lord in his glory. But at night the face disappeared as if the window makers had thought to make him faceless for his death. This death that we practice ever year. Punctuating the night is the sound of the hammer: a passage is read, a character turns away from the Lord, a nail is pounded, banged into the flesh of the cross in corse bitterness. 

As a child I found it easier to understand this Christ, the one who goes willingly to death. I understood death, had touched the cold lifeless hand of my great grandmother as she lay on white sheets in her final bed. I had watched death take animals and plants. I knew more of this death then my parents could understand. Christ the son of God sent to death. 

However, as I have grown back towards that childhood faith, I find it isn't the Christ of death that I cling to. I cling to the Christ of the living. In childhood the fact of his death held finite importance, the fact that he would have died for me, a strange wonder. Now I linger on the reality of his life after death. He leaves the form which he presents to his followers, wounded and light filled. He is gathered up into the heavens, leaving his followers with a promise of a coming fire. It is the glory of his place next to the father that I prostrate before. The judge who will divide the goats from the sheep. The Son of Men, who took my place and writes my name in the book of life. 

The glory of God is strange and wonderful. It is what makes me tremble, seeing the life promised beyond that death I learned of early in my life. I had to learn, am still learning, the daily death of my sin before the throne of God. I am reminded, shuttering, that I am a fleeting flower quick to bloom and quicker to pass away. Still I seek this death to that which is death to my soul, in seeking the life of his glory. "We are therefore buried with him through baptism into the death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live in new life." (Romans 6:4)

Without his death there can be no raising. Without his life there is now freedom from that which he died to. Without his glory, there is no hope in the future of being in that glory with him. In this glory I dance in my spirit, knowing this hard crumbling form will someday be perfect within him.