Rev. Ann Laird Jones
Soon we will move to a new season, as the liturgical year comes to an end and begins anew. Advent: a liminal season of waiting, watching, wondering, hoping. How do we imagine finding new words to express what we believe?!
What about discovering new words to express who we are, and whose we are, in these specific times? Where are the words— the new words — we will need this Advent, 2024, in a world churning with war and storms and loss?
Sumner Presbyterian Church in Sumner, Mississippi celebrated our 150th anniversary last year. This year we are intentionally moving into the bold new waters of the next 150 years’ adventure (a new advent!) with a new hymnal for our church. Clearly it is always more comfortable to stay safely wrapped in the arms of our old hymnals. Instead, we bought 35 copies of Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal. We are learning new words to old tunes and new tunes to old words, and everything in between. We love the 843 hymns in this magical hymnal. We love the new responses, and the liturgies for all parts of the day. But we especially love the new language about faith, afforded by A Brief Statement of Faith, right there in front of us, beginning on page 37 of our brand-new hymnal.
A Brief Statement of Faith is the last in a lineup of eleven confessions and creeds found in Part 2 of our PCUSA Constitution:
The Nicene Creed
The Apostles’ Creed
The Scots Confession
The Heidelberg Confession
The Westminster Confession of Faith
The Shorter Catechism
The Larger Catechism
The Theological Declaration of Barmen
The Confession of 1967
The Confession of Belhar
A Brief Statement of Faith, PCUSA
A Brief Statement of Faith was written by the church following Reunion in 1983:
…It celebrates our rediscovery that for all our undoubted diversity, we are bound together by a common faith and a common task. The faith we confess unites us with the one, universal church…
…Accordingly, “A Brief Statement of Faith” includes the major themes of the Reformed tradition (such as those mentioned in the Book of Order) without claiming them as our private possession, just as we ourselves hope to learn and to share the wisdom and insight given to traditions other than our own…
…No confession of faith looks merely to the past; every confession seeks to cast the light of a priceless heritage on the needs of the present moment, and so to shape the future.
With the advent of our new Glory to God hymnal our congregation was given new words to speak and sing. We started using different sections of A Brief Statement of Faith every Sunday as we affirmed our faith together. We opened the new hymnals in our pews and discovered new words to bring us together, common language, guiding our journey to Jesus.
Eugenia Gamble is a Presbyterian PCUSA minister who lives in Alabama. She is a fulltime writer, the renowned author of many books and publications, and the editor of Virtual Voice, our quarterly newsletter. She also served on the committee that wrote A Brief Statement of Faith. I reached out to Eugenia, asking for the story of how this magnificent confession was birthed. Here is her reply.
Dear Ann,
…I will have to say that working on A Brief Statement was one of the most profound experiences of my life. I was living in Denver at the time but chosen for my PCUS roots. To begin with I was totally intimidated. At every meeting I just wanted to run and hide from all of the powerful theologians around that table. Gradually though I found my voice. It happened in working on the 1st person of the Trinity section. We were all broken up into small groups to work on a section per group.
After we got the section drafts, then we came together as a whole and presented and worked on them together. Anyway, my group was struggling although no one said so. The section, to me at least, sounded stale. Well, one night when we knocked off early I went to my room and out of nowhere, (Thank you Holy Spirit) I wrote a poem that became the bones on which the section came to life. Even a line or two remained after all the tinkering.
But that was not the most profound part for me. We were a very diverse group spanning the vast theological spectrum of the church. At first there was a lot of mistrust arising from all of that. But somehow by the end we were one. To hear an arch conservative who had patted me on the head when I first arrived arguing for my work and to hear me arguing for his was nothing less than breathtaking. I remember when we presented the statement to the GA, when the moderator finished reading, the whole assembly stood up and moved into the aisles holding hands and somebody started singing Amazing Grace and before long we were all weeping. You could feel the Spirit like a force, like a wave, like a vibration. I hope I never outlive that memory!
My prayer is that something will awaken within us this Advent season, inspiring us to new words. My dreamis that we will try out new songs of faith during Advent 2024. My desire is that this Advent will pull us forward into a new life of harmony and peace. This time. This place. This community of faith, as we say together:
In a broken and fearful world
the Spirit gives us courage
to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior,
to unmask idolatries in Church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.
In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit,
we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks
and to live holy and joyful lives,
even as we watch for God’s new heaven and new earth,
praying, “Come, Lord Jesus!”
With believers in every time and place,
we rejoice that nothing in life or in death
can separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
~A Brief Statement of Faith, Part 4
Alleluia! Amen. A final note: our annual Synod meeting is Monday, January 27, 2025, in Franklin, Tennessee. Come join us!