After the sermon comes the Nicene Creed, 223 words of orthodox conviction. We rise from our seats, some more quickly than others, some looking down at their paper bulletins and others closing their eyes.
223 words--a lot of words to speak in unison, or in an attempt at it. There’s no melody to guide the words along like a song, just the helpful guideposts of punctuation and paragraph breaks. We stop, so briefly, after “God,” observing the comma, then move into “the Father, the Almighty.” Another beat. “Maker of heaven and earth.” Beat.
It strikes me this morning, and every Sunday morning, how much listening is required in these few minutes of speaking the Creed. The listening starts before the Creed does: I draw in a breath when our pastor invites us to confess our faith in these ancient words. I always make a game of timing here, trying to start exactly when the celebrant starts: “We believe in one God…” Often I’m off by just a moment and miss out on saying “We,” and I pick up with everyone else: at “-lieve,” usually. “-lieve in one God…”
I listen for the pauses, the inhales. I notice the distinct accent of the woman behind me, how it flavors her pronunciation of these words I know so well. Out of the weaving voices in the room, I can pick out threads: those I know well, those who seem to be a word or two off.
It may not sound pretty, but we’ll all wander our way through the same 223 words, and we’ll all end up at that same closing--looking ahead to “the life of the world to come.”
I’ve heard that what happens in church on Sunday is something like a rehearsal: we remember our cues and run our lines before we plunge into the everyday dramas of the week ahead.
“Amen,” says the woman behind me as we reach the Creed’s end. “Amen,” I say--the same word, just a split-second behind.