Creeds: Do we need them?

Of all the parts of our Sunday Liturgy, the Nicene Creed causes many believers to pause.  How can I believe these ancient words? Do I take them literally? Each one? If I do not believe in one phrase, does that rule out the whole?

I highly commend that you listen to this podcast of Krista Tippet’s On Being program that can be heard on NPR stations Sunday mornings. She interviews the late Jaroslav Pelikan, professor of history at Yale University for four decades

Click here to go to On Faith website 

The gem of this podcast is the sharing of the Maasai Creed from Kenya and Tanzania. Wouldn't this be great to use at Christ Church one Sunday morning?  

The Maasai Creed

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in the darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the Bible, that he would save the world and all nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from that grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love, and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

The Maasai Creed is a creed composed in about 1960 by Western Christian missionaries for the Maasai, an indigenous African tribe of semi-nomadic people located primarily in Kenya and northern Tanzania. The creed attempts to express the essentials of the Christian faith within the Maasai culture.