The Neighborhood Podcast
This is a podcast of Guilford Park Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina featuring guests from both inside the church and the surrounding community. Hosted by Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing, Head of Staff.
The Neighborhood Podcast
"Celebrating the 1700th Anniversary of the Nicene Creed" (October 26, 2025 Sunday School)
A small phrase can shake the world. We take a clear-eyed walk through the Nicene Creed’s closing movement and ask why a line about the Spirit, a set of four ancient marks, and a single baptism still shape how we pray, belong, and hope together. Along the way we unpack the filioque clause—those three words “and the Son” that fueled centuries of East–West controversy—and consider what the debate teaches us about guarding mystery without turning language into a weapon.
From councils at Nicaea, Constantinople, and Toledo to Reformation lessons that still guide local churches, we connect history to practice. One means a deeper unity that outlives our divisions, which is why many traditions won’t re-baptize. Holy means set apart for God, not holier-than-thou. Catholic points to a universal church larger than any brand or building. Apostolic ties us to Jesus’ first witnesses and pushes us into mission today—reformed and always being reformed by the Spirit. We also open the Lima text’s five lenses on baptism: dying and rising with Christ, conversion and cleansing, receiving the Spirit, joining the Body, and living as a sign of the Kingdom. Whether sprinkled or immersed, infant or adult, the font marks our first allegiance to God and trains us to resist lesser loyalties.
You’ll hear pastoral stories about confirmation, why funerals are called services of witness to the resurrection, and how communal vows make faith a shared project. If you’re curious about creed controversies, practical theology, or how a weekly confession holds a scattered church together, this is a gentle, grounded guide. Listen, reflect, and tell us: which mark of the Church feels most alive where you are? If this episode sparked a thought, share it with a friend, hit follow, and leave a review to help others find the show.
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Website: www.guilfordpark.org
Well folks, let's go ahead and get going. Since uh your your uh your preacher is a little long-winded today, so uh it's short of time to do here. So uh just a quick announcement. Um, this is the last of this class, but for the next two weeks, Dylan's gonna be leading a class on prayer. Um so hope you all can come back next two weeks. Is uh Dylan will leave us through that. Dylan, anything that we as a class need to do to prepare for this? Is there pray about it? Pray about it all I think we need questions. All right, good. All right, folks, what are we grateful for today? Grateful for a great sermon today.
unknown:Thank you. Felt a little bit better after that rant, you know? I think this is the most overlapping uh sermon, uh good job.
SPEAKER_01:Laughter can be a holy thing. I I don't um I actually not that I fancy myself a stand-up comedian, but one of my professors, uh preaching professors in seminary, his name is Jake Myers, and uh he he actually wasn't one of my professors because he started the very semester after I graduated. But he wrote a really great book called Stand Up Preaching, um, that basically he's he did a his doctoral thesis, his PhD thesis um on preaching through the lens of stand-up comedy and what preachers can learn from stand-up comics as as it pertains to holy humor and things of that nature. So anyways. Alright, what else are we grateful for today? Hey, Susan.
SPEAKER_05:I'm pretty grateful for uh trunker tree. The trunk or treat. That's always fun to meet like to participate. All right, see all the kids.
SPEAKER_04:What color are you dyeing your beard this year? Huh? What color are you gonna dye your beard this year?
SPEAKER_01:No color. Yeah, last year I was the Grinch uh because I was told by my children that I was going to be the Grinch. And yeah, that green paint took me forever to get out of my beard, my goodness. No, I am uh I am uh a panda this year. I am recycling an old uh it's actually hashtag hashtag the panda, which was a bit on Jimmy Fallon for quite a while. I don't know if hashtag the panda appears anymore, but anyway. We also be grateful for. I love the weather right now. Yeah, yeah, me too. I I had an outdoor wedding, as I mentioned, in Pinehurst yesterday at the country club, and um I normally detest outdoor weddings just because they're always just either hot or raining or whatnot. But yesterday it was perfect. It was like 62 degrees, overcast. Um, yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_02:I think it's Reformation Sunday, isn't it? Yep. Yeah, I was saying October. For Martin Luther, who who decided that that the congregants should not listen to the priests saying any Christian, saying their faith themselves. And so that began a revolution, I guess, of uh worship. So I'm thankful for him.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, don't listen to us to us preachers and pastors, you know what? No. No, you're absolutely right. Um I once had a uh my I once had a friend in seminary, he's now a religious a journalist uh with the Religious News Service, who uh we we had a our assignment in church history was to write a paper on the Reformation, and my friend literally nailed it to our professor's door. And the professor didn't even read the paper, just gave it an A plus and okay. Well, this is our final stop. Um, we are gonna talk about the three final um parts of the Nicene Creed that uh that the author left up for us. This is this is the final section on the third person of the Trinity, also known as the Holy Spirit, and we're gonna talk about these three phrases that are in that part of the Nicene Creed. The phrase who proceeds from the Father and the Son, the phrase one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and then finally the phrase one baptism for the remission or forgiveness of sins, depending on which version of the Nicene Creed you um you read. Um so as just as a kind of a reminder, the original, the most original version of the Nicene Creed uh did not really have a whole lot on the Holy Spirit. Um remember the Nicene Creed began in 325, but the version that we know of today really didn't happen until 381. Um the original Creed, which if you had your book, uh if you had your book, is on page 22, and you may note that it says that one sentence on we believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of things visible and invisible, or seen and unseen. And then there's that long paragraph on Jesus, right? Because that was that was what everybody was arguing about. Who is Jesus? Is he fully human? Is he 100% divine, 100% human? Is he 50% one, 50% the other? So that biggest section is on Jesus. And then look what the Holy Spirit gets. We believe, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And in the Holy Spirit. That's it. Like you just gotta imagine the Holy Spirit be like, what the heck? Like, what am I chopped liver? You know, so uh the original version really did not expand, give us anything. Instead, there was that um what what you might call an anathema statement afterwards. For those as for those who say there was a time when he was not, aka, what was his name? Y'all remember him? Uh Arius. Arius, yeah. Um, so there they they did that. So that part is no longer in there. So we're gonna talk about what eventually uh came to be the section on the Holy Spirit. Um, and let's read through it here in the original thing. Uh if you want to open up your book to page 14, um, let's read it together if you have it. Um y'all not have it? Okay, then I guess I'll read it. There we go. Because it's a little bit different than what's in our um bulletin. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. We're gonna talk about and the Son here in a second, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. We believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, and we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. But first let's sing. Jordan is very kindly going to sing uh going to play for us um 692, which is one of my favorites. It's to do with the spirit. Spirit open my heart. This is a really lovely tune by uh Ruth Duck, a really great hymn writer who unfortunately joined the church triumphant earlier this year.
SPEAKER_04:Spirit open my heart All right, now let's turn to two eighty six.
SPEAKER_01:One I trust that you all know. Breathe on me, breath of God. So let's talk briefly about a phrase that caused some stir between the East and the West of churches, which is this phrase who proceeds from the Father and the Son. In particular, the phrase that was a little bit controversial was the last three words and the Son. Because you had the raw version of the Nicene Creed with that super short mention of the Holy Spirit and the Anathema statement that was really meant to stick it to Irius in 325, right? That was in Nicaea, right? And then they got back together in 381. Anybody remember where that one was? Constantinople. Constantinople, which is now known as Istanbul, in 381, and that's where we have, that's really where we get the expanded version of the Holy Spirit part, and more or less is kind of the version of the Nicene Creed that we know of today. However, that version in 381 simply said we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceed from the Father. Period. It stopped right there. It did not say and the Son. That was perfectly fine for a couple hundred years until they decided to get back together in, is it Toledo? Oh, somebody help me out. Year five hundred something. Um, which was technically the third council of Toledo, and they added this phrase and the sun. I think mostly because they felt that by not saying that the spirit proceeds through the Son, that that was kind of trading one form of subordination for another. That kind of just as Jesus Christ was subordinated by Arius' opinion that Jesus Christ was divine but not of the same stature of the Father, that by saying that the Spirit comes through the Father but not the Son, does two things. That one, it kind of places the Holy Spirit in a subordinated position. And also, I think there were many that thought that that kind of suggested that it severed the relationship between Jesus and the Spirit, if that makes sense, because there's a lot of language of the Bible of Jesus uh giving the Spirit, so to speak, especially in John. You'll see that a lot in John's Gospel, you'll see that a lot in Luke's Gospel, not as much in Mark, not as much in Matthew, but you will hear that spoken of in John.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, in the Gospel of John, didn't didn't he, didn't John say that Jesus was with God at creation?
SPEAKER_01:Um, yes, that would be uh that that would be the the the logos, which the logos, the word is usually is usually ascribed to the second person of the trinity, not the third. Um but elsewhere in John's gospel, um John uses the language of advocate to speak of of the Holy Spirit, um, which in Greek is a fun word called periclete, um, which we always used to joke was the divine parakeet, but no, it's not perake, it's periclete. Um yeah, so they added this phrase in Toledo in five, um I forgot it already. Five what's eighty-nine. And they added this little clause in um Latin called the Filioque clause. Everybody say filioqui. Filioqui. Filioqui. I think I'm spelling that correctly. Um and since we've been parsing apart a lot of Latin and Greek, let's see if we can parse this apart. It is two words. Where do you think we would draw the line? Last week we did pericuresis, right? Peri meaning around and choresis meaning what? I remember what choreography is? Dance. Dance. Yeah. How would we divide this work up this word up into two? O and Q. Yeah, that's exactly right. Between O and Q. So this is two words. Um we'll start with the the last one, Q, kind of sort of the Latin that means, simply means and. So the meat part of this of this word is this first part, Filio. Anybody want to guess where that word comes from? Give you a hint. Has anyone ever been to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania? What is Philadelphia known as? The city of brotherly love, right? So Philio is in Philadelphia, um, is means brother or son. It's the same, kind of the same thing. So um that literally means and son, right? So that was the part that they added on in Latin. Um y'all have any questions about that? It's not the most exciting part than ice and cream, in my opinion. But if you ever um hear that filioque clause, that was what they thought about in um in the 6th century. Okay. So let's move on, if there's no other questions about that, to the second phrase, um, the where it says, we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. Okay? One holy Catholic and apostolic church. Um, if you have the book in front of you, this is on page 73. It kind of parses out what the original authors of the Nicene Creed or we're trying to get at with these four adjectives. Let's just go through one by one. One church, what does it mean to be one church? What do you think that that means? What do you think that that doesn't mean? Not a rhetorical question. And not any particular one right or wrong answer I'm looking for. What does it mean to be one church? Are we one church? We're all together, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So uh for example, when we come to uh baptism, um, we don't we don't re-baptize here in the Presbyterian church. Was anybody here baptized in a church other than a Presbyterian church? Yeah? What church were you baptized in, Jordan? Baptist church. Baptist church? What about you? Anything. Baptist, Methodist, Methodist, both of you all.
SPEAKER_05:Evangelical reform.
SPEAKER_01:Evangelical reform, all right. How old? Yeah. So one of the ways that we embody this in our Presbyterian theology is we um we don't rebaptize, right? If you if if somebody joins via letter of transfer from another denominator another denomination um within reason, you know, a a recognized denomination or established church, um, we we don't re-baptize. In the Presbyterian church, we believe that that baptism is an act not of a particular congregation. We don't believe that that act is an act of a particular denomination. We believe that that is an act of the Holy Spirit, which is the Holy Spirit of all, right? Um we can baptize us in different ways as infants. Do any of y'all remember your baptisms? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't. I was three, four years old at the time. Um so that's one of the things that we mean um when we say that we are one church. Now, do we have any cynics among us? Are we really one church? Well, these are qualities that you could say we both are and aspire to, right? I think we can all agree that um over the millennia we have fallen short of that of that unity. Um that's that's one thing that I would comment that it is. It is not just making a statement of what the church has been, but also what the church is called to be, right? Um did the church call itself big C Catholic, big C Catholic at that time? Yes and no, and we're gonna get to that in about a second. So um, so so that's one. Yeah, do you have a question for that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you know, well, uh I've always seen the church is called the body of Christ in the world, you know. We're all one in the body, so to speak. Is that is that in the creed?
SPEAKER_01:Is it in the creed? Well, I mean, yes, in that line, one holy Catholic and apostolic church. Um and you know, it's pulling that language, is is that part of the creed is really pulling on language in a lot of Paul's letters, especially Ephesians. The Paul's letter of the Ephesians uses the word unity or all or together, more so than any other letter. Dylan, when you go through the Bible content exam, there are little tricks of the trade because what they do is they give you a phrase, they give you a quote from the Bible, and they give you four different options of which book it came from. And there's these little tricks that you do to figure out, to make a guess if you don't know. Like if if if the phrase, if you think it's from the gospel and it uses the word immediately, it's probably from Mark's gospel, because Mark is already the Jesus immediately went here, immediately went there. If it's something from um Paul's letters and it uses the word unity or all, it's probably Ephesians. So um actually notes. So anyway, so alright, so one, what's the next adjective? One, holy. Alright. What does it mean to say that the church is holy? What does it not mean to say that the church is holy? Of God, okay, that's one way to think of it. Absolutely. What else? Maybe held to a higher standard? Maybe? What else? The word holy in the Bible as it's used really just means separate. And in the original Hebrew, when it uses the word holy, it doesn't necessarily mean holier than thou, as we sometimes colloquially say. It means to be set apart or to be separate. So, like when God said to the Israelites, I'm calling you to be holy, saying, I'm calling you to do things differently than the rest of the world. Therefore, I'm going to give you these 613 laws so that you all can be holy, right? Um if we say that we as a church are holy, are we saying that we are perfect? No. Are we saying that we never mess up? No. Um, absolutely, absolutely not. Um, we get into some tricky territory when we walk around and say that we're holy with the chip on our shoulders. Um again, you could say the same thing about being one church. It's not only what the church is, but it's what the church is called to be. Alright, one holy, and then get back to John. What's the next one? Catholic. Okay, if I had a dime for every time I've had a congregant come up and say, what does that mean? You know, and we're not Catholic, we're whatever. That's that's a very understandable thing. I I I wondered that too when I was learning the Creeds growing up. And you'll notice in most creeds, the Catholic, the word Catholic is not um capitalized. Thanks. Not capitalized. So to get to John's question, which is an excellent question, was did the did they refer to themselves as the Catholic Church at the time that that wording was added to the Creed in 381? My guess is not widely. I could be wrong, but I don't think it was because at the time it that there wasn't really the church hadn't yet quite fully distinguished itself into Roman Catholicism versus Eastern Orthodox. They were still kind of sorting those things out. So my my hunch would be not widely used. And I think the distinction would be that that word back then really didn't have any denominational uh sentiment to it. The word cat um, where is it on page 35? Thank you. Thank you, Warren. Um it comes from the Greek word Catholicos, which just means general or universal or pertaining to the whole, right? So in some ways it's a little bit redundant, it's also kind of saying one, um, in my opinion, right? So when we say we believe, as it also says in the Apostles' Creed, in the Holy Catholic Church, we're not saying that we're right. It doesn't say we believe in the Roman Catholic Church. It says we believe in the Catholic Church. Is that a little bit confusing these days? Yes. Um, but no, that's not originally what it what it is. And it's that we are part of something that really is universal. Yes, we're proud to be Presbyterian. Yes, on this Reformation Sunday we are grateful for our Reformed heritage, but we also acknowledge that we are part of a larger church. And yes, even on this, especially on this Reformation Sunday, it's good for us to remember that we do owe our Catholic siblings a great debt of gratitude and still work closely with them in academical matters. The fourth one is a little bit tricky. One holy Catholic and what? Apostolic church. Alright. What do you think it means by using the word apostolic? When you think of the word apostolic, not a word we use a lot in the Presbyterian tradition, um, what what comes to your mind? Apostles. You know, obviously apostles, right? Um so when we say that something that a church is apostolic, what do you think that's trying to get at? Pretty much, yeah. I mean, basically by saying apostolic, what it's trying to do is to draw a connect, a direct thread through the church all the way back to the direct teachings of Jesus. If you want to, remember an apostle was somebody who was literally with Jesus, um, which is why Paul kind of uh gives himself a little bit of uh uh Paul calls himself an apostle, though one can make the argument that he's kind of a quasi-apostle because he really wasn't, he didn't know Jesus, right? At least we don't have any evidence that he did. Um so yeah, it's just kind of making that that that connection that we um that we are inheriting a thread of teachings, of doctrinal teachings that have been handed down throughout the the millennial. And that that's important to us.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, towards it. Would it also be a call to be apostles or go out and share the word like in Matthew 28 or something? Yeah, absolutely. We're called to share the gospel.
SPEAKER_01:So to say that we are an apostolic church isn't just looking backwards, it's looking forwards as well. That we are we are continuing these teachings. And I think it's important to note on this Reformation Sunday that we don't accept these teachings without question, right? And the whole reason we're Protestant is comes from the word what? Protest, right? So I think that um we hold two things in tension with one another. We have received this wisdom that has been passed down all the way from Jesus, and as reformed Christians, we believe that through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are both reformed and being reformed. Um so it's something that continues to happen. And it and we we do not reform ourselves. We the Holy Spirit reforms us, and as Presbyterians, we believe that we do that discerning together, right? We don't have, again, I'm not trying to knock on our Catholic siblings, but we don't have a Pope. We don't we don't have a high ecclesial figure that that gives out edicts on this is what this interpretation is. We don't have that in the Presbyterian Church. We have the closest thing we have to it are what we call moderators that are elected every two years by the General Assembly, but it's a very different office. Um they they do lead the church and they guide us, but it changes every two years, right? We don't have somebody that's like a pope that's there until they die, or in the case of what's his name, um retire, who's that um, no, the one who uh Benedict. Yeah. So um so yeah, I think that's that that's important to to recognize that yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I thought that language was saying we're gonna follow the teachings of the apostles and the teachings of what the councils have decided, and if you're not then a heretic. But I thought that was kind of a climate language to say this is what we're following right now.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, in a way, that's what they were saying. I mean, remember, all of these creeds were usually a direct response to a heresy of some form, people trying to protect one truth by challenging another. Um, so yes, and I guess for us as a church and as a pastor, I'm like, okay, how do we adhere to these practices, these doctrines that we receive while understanding that we don't worship doctrines, we worship God, and doctrines are our own, admittedly, imperfect ways of trying to wrap our heads around the divine, right? So I think we it's it's both important that we respect that we've we are in we have inherited this wisdom, but also to understand that the spirit is still at work in the world, and you know, we we we are changed in the way that we we interpret things. Um he has some pretty harsh words for those of us who would call ourselves liberals in this chapter, um, which I would push back a little bit on him because you know he himself is a Protestant person, so uh you can make the same argument that the that Martin Luther back in 1517, or sorry, yeah, 1517, um, was rejecting the uh the Catholicity of the church back then. So I I personally don't think that argument is as strong as he makes it out to be. Um I do think that when we depart from the historic teachings of the church, I think it's important that we not do so lightly, right? Um we as a denomination are fully affirming of our LGBT siblings. Do you know how many years our denomination argued about it before we finally decided to go to theology? Does anybody know? 50 years Presbyterians, we argued for 50 years on the topic of saying. Sex marriage and whether or not we ordain LGBT was General Assembly back in the 1970s. Someone whose name I forget stood up with the sign at General Assembly on the floor. He was a gay man, and he said, Is anyone else out there gay? And that was kind of the first time that it really came to the forefront. And it and we argued about it for the better part of 50 years. So again, when he accuses us of throwing away this, I said, you know, we didn't just get together on the plumbing and say, oh, you know what? We're just gonna, you know, we we wrestled like Jacob, we wrestled with it, and not everybody agreed with it, and that's okay. But um, so anyways. Um in our last 12 minutes or so, I'm gonna talk a little bit about baptism, um, because I think that that's a really important line that he lifts up that through the Holy Spirit we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sin. Um, and with our closing, I wanted to do a real quick exercise. Um, this is a portion of a document that I really love that's called Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, or B E M for short. It's also known as the Lima document because it was a document that was put together in Lima Peru. Am I right now? Lima, Peru, by the World Council of Churches back in the early 80s. I think it was 1981. And Catholics, Orthodox, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists all got together and said, okay, what can we all agree on as it pertains to baptism, Eucharist, which is of course another word for communion, Lord's Supper, and ministry in general. And this is the portion on baptism that I always lead up to, or that I always lean on whenever we talk about baptism, because you'll see under the letter, under Roman numeral 2, we'll see A, B, C, D, and E give five different theological understandings of uh of baptism. First one is uh what? Donna, you want to read that, read A for us? Just not just the heading, not the paragraph.
SPEAKER_05:Just the heading? Yeah, just the heading. Participation in Christ's death and resurrection.
SPEAKER_01:Participation in Christ's death and resurrection, okay? Um yeah, so we have uh Paul in the book of Romans saying, if we have uh if surely if we have died in a in a death like his, we have also been resurrected in a resurrection like his. So we have strong biblical language that tie baptism to the death and resurrection of Christ. Um, I think our Baptist siblings embody this a little bit better than we do, just simply because it's kind of hard to get that death and resurrection symbolism when you're doing what? When you're sprinkling. Were any of y'all at Landon Bryant's baptism a few weeks ago? Okay. If you're being submerged and then coming back out, that's that's a little bit more of a tangible embodiment of that theological idea of death and resurrection. Um if you're at a Greek Orthodox church, sometimes they'll baptize infants literally, um, feet down. I'm not joking. There are videos on YouTube of this. They will take an infant and it will literally dunk an infant. And um, I'm not gonna do that with Landon, but uh anyway, so yeah, participation in Christ's death and resurrection. All right, um, Phyllis, you want to read what's what's the next one, Phyllis? B. Uh conversion, pardoning, and cleansing. Conversion, pardoning, and cleansing. So the baptism which makes Christians partakes of the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection implies confession of sin and conversion of heart. Now, this is also something that I don't think as Presbyterians emphasize quite as much. And why is that? Well, you're an infant. I know, it's when you're seeing an infant baptized, the first thing you're thinking is probably not man, that is one sinful baby. That baby needs to, you know, straighten up and fly right. Obviously, that's not the first thing you're thinking. Um, this is definitely something that is more emphasized with adult baptism or young adult, older children baptism. Now we do sort of emphasize this to a lesser degree in the Presbyterian church because we have something called the confirmation process. Confirmation process is acknowledges that for most of us in the Presbyterian Church, we were baptized as infants when obviously we could not take any sense of agency or claim upon what that meant for us. So in the Presbyterian Church, usually sometime in late middle school, maybe early high school, we have a confirmation process, which is when we acknowledge, okay, you're now old enough to claim your faith as your own and to stand before the church and say, I'm a sinner, so I depend on God's grace, and my life is going to be a gracious response to that mercy that's given. Alright, number three, or letter C. Warner, you want to read that one for us? The gift of the spirit. The gift of the spirit, right? So this is probably more in line with what the Nicene Creed says, that it is where we get the gift of the Spirit. Think about the stories of Jesus' baptism. What happened in Jesus' baptism as it was written about in the Synoptic Gospels? Who wants to summarize what happened? Yeah, the dove came down. Or a voice, depending on which gospel you're reading, and said, This is this is my son in whom I am well pleased, or in whom I find happiness, if you go with the common English version that I prefer. So there's this idea that the Spirit is conferred upon us through the waters of our baptism. You can also make that connection to the Old Testament when the Ruach was moving over the waters of creation, ruach being the Hebrew term for spirit, which is also a feminine word, I might add in in Hebrew. Phil, are you gonna say something?
SPEAKER_05:Oh yeah, is that where he said listen to him?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Um all right, uh, John, what about D? What's the next one? Incorporation into the body of Christ. Incorporation into the body of Christ. Um of all the five here, the last one we'll get to you, this is probably the one that we emphasize the most, I think, in the Presbyterian Church. Um we don't we don't do death and resurrection as much because we're sprinkling. We don't do um conversion, partying, and clinging as much because they're babies. But incorporation of the body of Christ is one that we pretty heavily emphasize, right? Um, a lot of times in baptism, I'll I'll have the kid or the family look out and say, look, this is this is now your family. And that your family is not just making a promise. All of us together are making a promise. You may know that there are questions that we ask the congregation at every baptism. At Landon's baptism, there was a question that said, Do you promise to love Landon and to nurture him and to care for him? Not just in this moment, but as he grows up in the faith, and all the people of the church say, We will with God's help. That's one of our ways of emphasizing this incorporation into the body of Christ. Again, it lifts up language in Ephesians right there. Alright, and then what's the final one? Um, Dylan, what's the final one there? The sign of the kingdom. Sign of the kingdom. I don't think we emphasize this one enough. Um this is one that I think turns our attention to the future that says that through baptism is a sign of the coming kingdom. Which I like to think that in this idea, in this thinking of baptism, baptism I think is a form of nonviolent protest. I really do think that baptism is a form of nonviolent protest. Because every time we we celebrate a baptism or remember our own baptism, we are remembering ultimately that we do not belong to the powers and principalities of this earth. We do not belong to any political party, we don't belong to any one nation. We are, through our baptisms, first and foremost, a child of what? A child of God. And every other identity takes a back seat to that one, right? So when the Christians, uh, not all, but when some of the Christians in Germany in the 1930s got together and said, no, we do not belong to Adolf Hitler, and we we reject any gospel that suggests that that we would be, that our ultimate allegiance would be to anyone other than Jesus Christ. My guess is that that Lutheran understanding of the sign of the kingdom, coming kingdom in baptism, I think gave those church leaders the hot spot to stand up and say no and write a little declaration called the Barman Declaration. That's part of, that's another one of the creeds that we ascribe to here in the Presbyterian Church. Why did the church go to baby baptism? You know what? That's a great question, and I don't have a short answer to that. Um academics have gone back and forth over whether the Bible explicitly gives examples of infant baptism. The short answer is just depends on how you interpret it. We have numerous places in the book of Acts that talk about entire households being baptized. So if we take that literally, that households were pretty big. They included, you're not only talking about the nuclear family, you're including um slaves or servants, um, and ostensibly children too. So some would make the case that yes, obviously that means that children were baptized too. Some people would say, well, it doesn't explicitly say it. And since baptism is talked so much about hardening and cleansing, and babies can't do that, then no. So it kind of depends on who you ask. But I I personally believe that infant baptism is nothing new to the church.
SPEAKER_02:You you recognize baptism in funeral services, you start with that. Every single one. You were you were baptized into the faith, and now you've completed your your duty, so to speak, with us.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, absolutely. Just let us know how to remember that. Yeah, that's what I thought. Um, yeah, every single funeral service that I've ever led starts with a remembrance of baptism. Again, just reminding us that we are sealed into the death and to the resurrection of Jesus. And remember, in the Presbyterian Church, we don't actually call, technically, don't call those uh services funerals. Did you know that? It's not actually called a funeral. Does anybody know what we liturgically actually call it? Actually, we print it on the front of the bolt. Anyone know what it's called? Resurrection. No, it's not that celebration of life. Closer, a service of witness to the resurrection. That's technically what we call it. And on every bolt, and it doesn't say funeral, it says a service of witness to the resurrection. Is that wordy? Yeah, it is. But it's important because it reminds us that ultimately that's what we are affirming. Um, we are reminding ourselves of the promise of the resurrection. Okay, let's sing real quick and then we're done. Um let's see here. Let's do well, let's just do uh an oldie but a goodie. Uh 288. Spirit of the Living God. Have you all heard this song before? I'm guessing. Let's sing it through twice, watch it toward it, and then we'll do it uh a cappella, okay? Two eighty-eight. And let all of God's people say. Thank you all for this brief little skip through of the Nice Team Creek, and hope you all have a wonderful week. And I'll see some of y'all at the Chunk or Treat in a few hours, and Dylan's gonna be taking the help for the next two weeks. Alright. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.