Statement of Faith

I confess belief in a sovereign God who is mystery and paradox. God is above all understanding and comprehension and any image we have of God is limited. Using the words from 1 Corinthians, “we see through a mirror dimly.”  And yet, despite God’s infinite mystery, we can still know God. God is revealed to us in Jesus Christ as seen in scripture. Therefore, we can proclaim with full assurance that of God is love. And even then, God is so much more loving and beautiful than we could possibly imagine.

I understand God’s being to be made up of three persons: the Creator, the Sustainer, and the Redeemer. God the Creator made the world out of sheer and dynamic love and joy. God does not despise creation but is in love with it. God delights in the world and in every creature in it—both human and non-human. This project of God’s is still ongoing, and we are invited to participate—to be co-laborers with God—in God’s creation,

The Holy Spirit is a friend and companion who is sent by God to walk beside us. The Spirit guides, transforms, and sustains us on our journey of being neighbor to one another. I see the Holy Spirit to be like the Wild Goose of Celtic Christianity. The Spirit is not merely a peaceful and gentle dove. The Spirit is also Wild Goose that chases us and provokes us to love and good works. The spirit uplifts us and encourages us to get into “good trouble.”

Christ Jesus is our Redeemer. Jesus is the incarnation of God in a specific time and place. As the logos enfleshed in our world, he took on a creaturely existence, and yet he remained both fully human and fully divine. Being born into poverty and obscurity, Christ’s incarnation boldly proclaims God’s solidarity with and preferential option for the poor. Through his life and ministry, he modeled for us what it means to truly embody and live in right relationship with oneself, with one’s neighbors, and with God. As Emily Dickinson wrote, he is our “tender pioneer” showing us the way forward. His death and resurrection were a conquering of sin and Death and a rejection of Empire. Through Christ’s resurrection, we are promised that Life will have the final say not just for our lives but also for the entire cosmos. After Christ resurrected on the third day, he ascended bodily into heaven to sit at the right hand of God.  

I confess that God’s grace and love are freely given, infinite, and abundant, and there is nothing that can separate us from that Love. We are saved and redeemed not by our own works or efforts but are saved as a gift from God. We are saved from dysfunctional and death-dealing relationships with ourselves, with our neighbors, with God, and with all of creation. We are saved in order that we may live into the abundant life of the Kingdom of God.

I see the Church as our attempt to faithfully live into the Kin-dom in the here and now. As one body, we confess, worship, and serve to proclaim the good news. There will be times where we will fail--where we will hurt each other. But in and through the love of God, there is enough grace to heal wounds and repair broken relationships.

I believe in the power of the sacraments of baptism and communion. We are chosen and loved by God before our birth, and in our baptism, we reaffirm our belonging to God and to each other.  In baptism, the Holy Spirit’s mysterious power unifies us and puts us into covenant. Communion is a physical reminder of our inherent collectiveness. Through coming together for communion, the body of Christ in that time and place is re-membered. We are put back together so that we might remember who and whose we are.

Finally, I believe our greatest comfort is that “in life and death we belong to God.” I believe in our collective telos—that one day all of creation will share in God’s perfect peace, liberation, unity, and joy. In the words of mystic Julian Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”