Monday, June 08, 2009

Athanasian Creed

Okay, I missed a couple of days. I had an excuse: I was preparing for, executing, cleaning up after, and recovering from a big party. I could have popped on and posted, "Too busy to blog," but didn't see the point.

As I was catching up on Facebook statuses today I saw several people with status updates from yesterday mentioning that they didn't get to say the Athanasian Creed yesterday. This is just another of those odd things about us confessional Lutherans. We get all excited about reciting a REALLY long creed once a year on Trinity Sunday.

Now to start the rumors going: We didn't say the Athanasian Creed yesterday at Redeemer.

Nope. We sang it. Set to one of the tunes used for the Te Deum, we sang the Athanasian Creed. I don't remember if this is the second time, or if we did it before, but I love doing the creed that way.

9 comments:

Elephantschild said...

That is very cool! And a wonderful way to confess what is indeed, for all it's wonderfulness, a very long creed.

We said it, too. And Pastor didn't warn anyone. Tee-hee. When it was time for the creed (we used DS III) he just said, "it's Trinity Sunday, turn to page 3--"

I heart my pastor.

Dan @ Necessary Roughness said...

I dislike "too busy to blog" messages. Who doesn't use Google Reader, Bloglines, or some sort of RSS reader nowadays?

Yeah, I was gunning for the Ath but didn't get it. But we got equally cool stuff that I prolly will blog on.

Singing the Ath to the Matins Te Deum? Sounds cool. So did you have the normal two major sections and one minor section, or did you cycle through the whole music enough times to get through?

Presbytera said...

We actually got to do it twice yesterday since I teach Sunday School. I went through it with my students so that they could understand the language when we confessed the Creed in church. I also explained the background of how the Creed came to be.

Cate said...

We spoke it responsively, though I forgot to warn the kids and when they turned the pages in their hymnals after the first half the two big kids' eyes practically popped out of their heads.

Elephantschild said...

Oh, Cate - that's hilarious. Your poor kids!

Kim said...

No Athanasian Creed here but the good news is that we found a church! It's not the most solid church but it's workable.

Unknown said...

My husband Paul said to me before church yesterday "This is Trinity Sunday, we are going to be doing the Athanasian creed today." I looked at the bulletin and didn't see it listed, just saw the Nicene and was like "Nope we aren't, it's just the Nicene." Well we were pleasantly surprised when Pastor also said "Turn to page... to confess the Athanasian Creed. We will read responsively half verse's" We ended up reading it with the whole verse... how do you half some of that? :)

Jane said...

Dan--three major, two minor

Kim--that is good news! I'm glad that you have found something.

Emily said...

I got rid of two dear Jehovah's Witnesses at my door by explaining that I believed in the Trinity and they did not. I am so lame at spontaneous "witnessing"---even after Pastor's fabulous Trinity sermon, all I came up with was the "baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" verses. As soon as they left, I realized I should have made them a copy of the Athanasian Creed! Or maybe had them come in so I could share it with them in person. . .