TRANSCRIPT

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good morning friends how you doing today my name is Alex I’m one of the pastors here it’s great to see you if you’re visiting I’d love to meet you after the service thanks for being here today we’re going to jump into acts chapter 17 verse 16 in a couple of minutes if you have a text that you’d like to open and get ready in front of you then feel free to do that I’d just like to complain for a little while just before we get into it about the fact that all of my kids were sick again uh so on Sunday night after preaching Sunday morning we had three buckets working in rotation around the three different kids and there’s only two of us which just isn’t fair um and someone should do a class on parenting that says to you this is what you do when all of your kids are sick at the same time just so you can deal with it and I said to someone I think maybe the most depressing part of being a parent the most depressing moment is the first time a kid throws up on your hand or you get poop on your hand or something and you just go oh well what can you do that’s just how this day’s gonna be and you just you shrug it off I got to a point after Jude had thrown up for the 14th time I just said well I’m just going to get through this together pal we’re going to be fine um and there we go so acts chapter 6 17 verse 16. while Paul was waiting for them is Luke and Silas in Athens he was greatly distressed to see that the

city was full of idols so he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and Greek and god-fearing Greeks as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happen to be there a group of epicurean and stoic philosophers began to debate with him some of them asked what is this babbler trying to say others remarked he seems to be advocating foreign gods this they said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus where they said to him may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting you are bringing some strange idea to at ears and we would like to know what they mean all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about the and listening to the latest ideas Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said people of Athens I see that in every way you are very religious for as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship I even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown god see you are ignorant of the very thing that you worship this is what I’m saying I’m going to proclaim to you the god who made the world and everything in it is the lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything rather he

himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else from one man he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands god did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him though he is not very far from any one of us for in him we live and move and have our being as some of our your own poets have said we are his offspring therefore since we are god’s offspring we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone an image made by human design and skill in the past god overlooked such ignorance but now he commands all people everywhere to repent for he has said a day where he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed he has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead when they heard about the resurrection of the dead some of them sneered others said we want to hear you again on the subject and at that Paul left the council let’s pray god as we open this text as we look at it and ask what you would have to say to us would you speak for those of us that are comfortable would you afflict us something new up for those of us that are afflicted that walked in here just surviving would you bring some comfort for each of us would you nudge us further on our journey and may we be

able to see just a little bit more of who you are may you reveal just a little bit more of yourself to us your people ah man okay so let’s start here I think today some years ago uh Mr. frank Sinatra sang the now immortal lines um start spreading the news I’m leaving today and he goes on to give this articulation of the incredibleness of this particular city of new York city if I can make it there I’ll make it anywhere it’s up to you new York new York is what he said it’s the story of a person bringing artistic talents to what he considers to be the greatest city in the world now my wife and I we lived in new York for a little while we were a bit further upstate but I remember the first time I went to new York city I remember standing there amongst all these buildings and looking around me and saying it’s no London it’s just not the same it’s just not as good enough it’s this place of that is truly spectacular truly incredible it has a commonality with London in that it’s one of those few places where you can spend 150 to hundred dollars on a meal for two and say huh I could have cooked that at home it was okay it was just average but there is for some people this idea that there is only one city that they would ever want to live again and that’s why you can buy penthouse apartments for 200 million

dollars in some of these incredible high-rise skyscrapers to a certain group of people this is the only place to be in its time the city that we’re looking at today Athens was perhaps that city Athens wasn’t the political capital of the world Rome was certainly that and it probably wasn’t the spiritual capital of the world that would be Jerusalem and some other cities like it but Athens was the place of intellect the place of ideas it’s the place that ideas went and they either lived or they died a bad idea would be ripped apart by the incredible Athenian philosophers they would think through all of the details of it and a bad idea would dissipate and good ideas would catch hold and they would be discussed there and they would flourish there so when we read that Paul walks into Athens and I love how Luke sets it up he sets it up as though it’s just Paul in this moment it’s really Paul versus everybody else all of these great thinkers Paul walks in bringing this new idea that he’s going to articulate for them this is the place where the gospel faces its toughest test it has so far moved around Greece it’s starting to spread it’s starting to catch hole but when it comes to Athens there’s this moment of can it survive here what does this gospel this this way of explaining the world this story what does it mean and can it survive amongst these people these people who bring incredible intellect who bring incredible

argument to everything and so we’re told immediately while Paul was waiting for them he goes for a walk he goes to see this city that he’s probably heard so much about and we’re told straight away he was greatly distressed as Paul goes and looks at what he can see there’s something in him that gets stirred up and to help you understand this phrase let’s dig into what greatly distressed means just a little bit it’s this word pariksano irritated stirred and some of you guys know this phrase because you live this phrase the core to this Greek word is this I’m gonna I’m gonna say something I’m gonna have to say something I’m gonna have to speak up and I don’t struggle with this at all uh so I did that strength finder test some of you may have done and it gives you your 34 strengths the lowest one of mine was harmony for some reason I don’t find awkward conversations that awkward I’m okay I once sent the same breakfast back three times I just said still not right still not right still not right take it back and my wife she’s just dying of embarrassment she looks at me finally and says something like I’m going to be in the car and I’m going to be driving home without you I just wasn’t that bad but she just she does not like those things we get some of us to that moment where we’re like I’m so irritated by this I’m gonna have to speak up and say something maybe a pictorial version that would help you is this

one it’s this moment of driving where you’re like you know there’s some wives looking at husbands right now and some husbands looking at wives like you have this problem and there’s something that can happen to us where we just start to get to that point the other day somebody cut me up uh they cut you know we cut right in front of me and I and I was about to pull up to a light and like when I get to that light I’m gonna pull up right next to them and I’m gonna wag my finger at them or something like that something you know very very much like that and then I realized I was driving the church van and it’s got south fellowship church emblazoned all over the side of it so I was like I can just picture them googling the church living in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus except when we’re driving uh this this is where Paul is he is in that moment of I’m done I’m gonna say something has stirred inside him and he’s going to protest so he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and god-fearing Greeks this group of people that meets in in the Jewish synagogue and then the marketplace day by day with those who happen to be there the marketplace was known as the agora it was this place where market stalls everywhere conversations happening all over the place the hub of every day society and he starts debating with these two groups of philosophers a group of epicurean

and stoic philosophers so just a little bit of an aside on them epicureans were agnostics atheists they said this about the world there is a body and it is good for pleasure and it also can experience suffering so we can choose to experience pleasure we can deal with the suffering but that’s the essence of what makes up life there isn’t much else to it the gods if they’re there do not impact our day today they are distant far away the stoics were a little bit different the stoics had a traditional view of the Greek pantheon you may know those names Zeus beside and hades and they believe that those gods rule at least Greece if nothing else and so this is the group that Paul is chatting with debating with and we’re told this some of them asked what is this babbler trying to say what is this babala trying to say the word forbabila is spermalogus it is just as it’s exactly what it looks like when you read the first part of the word it’s where we get the word seed from so they look at Paul this man articulating this new idea and they say this you’re like somebody who just picked up seeds of ideas you don’t really have any grounding in them you don’t really even understand them yourself you just grab this new thing and now you’re here trying to impress us all with your wisdom but there’s nothing really to it you just there’s no there’s no substance poor it’s just a vague idea and we don’t buy it for those of you

that love movies the movie goodwill hunting has a great example of this there’s this moment where will the eidetic genius walks into a bar and his friend he’s having a conversation with a girl and another man approaches them and starts quoting random bits of a historical text and tries to pass it off as his own idea and because will is just so brilliant he can memorize these huge texts just and hold them there he comes alongside his friend and says wow you’re quoting this obscure book and you’re quoting page 68 yeah I’ve read that book is that what you do you just you grab a quote and pass it off as your own and he says to the guy there’s two certainties in life right don’t do that that’s a terrible way to live and two you wasted thousands of dollars on an education you could have got from late charges in a library like don’t put up a facade don’t play that you know what you’re talking about when you don’t really don’t be what they’re saying Paul is don’t be a picker-up of seeds someone who survives on scraps of knowledge when they hear Paul when they hear him present his story his idea they say no nepal we don’t buy that we don’t think that’s real you’re just talking it’s just nice sounding words you might say their accusation towards Paul is this your story has no substance your story has no substance and when I use the word story I want to make sure we’re on the same page of that because

story can seem very lightweight almost light-hearted we think about fairy stories we think about stories we tell our kids and yet story is actually a very robust word because you and I have stories that explain how we see the world if you grew up in a Christian home if you embrace this Jesus way of life the reality is that is your story doesn’t make it not true it just means that that is your worldview how you explain everything about the world and really everybody has one of these the stoics that we just talked about they have their story the epicureans they have their story and so Paul is to them bringing this new way of explaining the world and their first reaction is this Paul we don’t buy this you’re just picking up random threads we don’t believe this can explain anything about the way that the world works he’s a babbler trying to say things to sound clever and others remarked he seems to be advocating foreign gods they said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection but something that he says some comment is enough that they said we want to take you from the agora this place where people meet by random chants they discuss ideas we want to take you from there to the Areopagus this place where all of the best ideas of the day

are discussed they took him to the area of Pakistan brought him sorry they took him and brought him to a meeting of the ariel pagus where they said to him may we know what this new teaching you are presenting is so forgive me for just a second while I play like fourth grade geography or history teacher because this is the one place in the bible that I’ve actually been so I’m just going to live in this moment for just a little while so this is the area of pagas this is random rock in the middle of Athens up there is the Parthenon and all those famous buildings so this is me just with shorter hair and some terrible sunglasses just figuring out where I am and this is Paul’s sermon that we’re about to read that they’ve plastered all over the world wall so it was so fun to stand there at the break of day I went there at around sunrise just uh just to feel what it must have been like to have Paul articulating all of these ideas at that time and you sit there with these religious buildings overlooking this area and realize that you’re standing in a place where some of the most significant ideas in history were discussed and this moment where this gospel this message of Jesus faces this toughing toughest test does it stand up to a group of people who really understand how to think and this is the discussion that Paul will

have with these thinkers in Athens they took him to the area pagas where they said to him may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting you are bringing some strange ideas to our ears and we would like to know what they mean all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas they are a group of people that like to think they like the newest ideas they like to know what is happening and now they want to know what Paul’s idea is Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said people of Athens I see that in every way you are very religious this is verse 22. so let’s pause there if you have a paper text in front of you depending on the version you have it may say one of two things it may say very religious or it may say too superstitious the first one sounds kind of like a compliment the second one sounds kind of like an insult and the truth is it’s so hard to know which Paul’s phrase is intended as this phrase Greek we’re going to say it together is dicey diamonsterous dicey diamonsterous you got that you now know more Greek than 99 of the world way to go it really could mean one thing or the other too superstitious very religious on one hand it’s got almost this compliment to it Paul

opens with this sort of complementary tone guys in Athens people that love to think you you’re

really searching for this stuff you’re doing a good job you’re investigating things and yet on the other hand it has this lurking undercurrent off but the way you do it the way you approach it you’re kind of like wearing amulets and believing that they protect you in some way you’re kind of tapping into old superstitions that we know don’t really work you’re kind of not being as intellectual as you pretend that you’re being remember this is a group of people famous for their intellect famous for discussing ideas and yet Paul’s accusation is really you’re dabbling with some like older stories that nobody really believes in anymore it’s almost like a challenge to them remember Paul is set up in this passage passages it’s him versus everybody else for those of you that can track with some old testament thinking remember Elijah the famous prophet who stands up to 400 prophets of another religion and they call down fire and there’s this moment where fire comes down when Elijah asks for it the passage has some sort of symmetry with that it is Paul versus everybody else and we’re left waiting for the tension of what will happen will the same thing happen has happened before does fire still come down from heaven Paul suggests to them you’re certainly very religious but maybe it’s just superstition maybe you don’t really understand what you’re talking about as I walked around

and looked carefully at your objects of worship I even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown god so you are ignorant of the very thing that you worship and this is what I’m going to proclaim to you Paul’s accusation his observation of these Athenians is you’re so superstitious you’re even naming gods that you can’t name it’s so vague so empty you’re essentially doing this you are walking around blindfolded and you’re building somewhere you’re building these things out of out of dirt and dust and you’re proclaiming that these things have substance this is just an excuse for me to play with sand by the way it’s just like a just a nice relaxing moment for me but you’re kind of building these things and they just they don’t stay they don’t go they have nothing to them Paul’s suggestion is that this group of people that claim to be so intellectual are still playing around with building things to gods that they don’t know and so then his proclamation will be eventually I’m going to tear that blindfold off the thing that you can’t see the thing that you don’t know I’m going to show it to you you’re going to get to see it for real when I unveil it to you but initially as they said to him his accusation towards them could be this your story has no substance you Athenians your story has no substance it’s not based on anything it’s not real he even uses this phrase a few times human

hands just articulate how human it is the god who made the world and everything in it is the lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands he’s not served by human hands as if he needed anything rather he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything in it his comment on the Athenians is this there is no substance to your story you’re still playing around building things to a god who doesn’t need them it’s not real there’s no substance there and then now we get to watch as poor this first missionary out in the world bringing this new Christian story to places that it has never been before now we get to watch as he articulates that we get to watch how he does it because this story has always spread this story has always been captivating enough that it is it has grown it is spread to other people that was its core in the beginning we see 12 scared guys standing in a room who then go out and spread the message in a street we watch as Christianity goes from being just a few hundred people right after Jesus death and resurrection to 100 a.d where it’s now 40 000 people and it spreads to this point where by 250 a.d there are 1.2 million Christians and now a couple of billion people that would proclaim to be Jesus followers this story has always spread always grown and yet for many of us in this room that say we are followers of Jesus we probably would

express this struggle with how how do I be involved in that I I don’t know that I find that as easy as maybe Paul would find it I don’t know if spreading this message is an easy thing for me I feel like I don’t always know how to articulate it and when I do feel like I’ve articulated well I feel like I get pushback I feel like people don’t respond to it how does Paul this early mission what does he take and what does he say to these incredible thinkers in Athens how does he shape this message how will Paul share this story Paul believes this story is big enough to encompass everything to him it’s not a competing worldview it’s not an argument against other religions it is pulling everything into it because it is the only thing that has substance that’s just how broad he sees it so how does he share it what does he say he starts here from one man he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands Paul’s starting point is this this story is for everybody and that itself in that day and age was a new idea because most stories had a limit on them for most people when you track through this idea of gods and pantheons in Greece and in Rome when you read about the gods that were worshiped people like gods like Baal most of them in most thinking people’s minds had a limit on how much power they had they were controlled by their own geography Baal may be a god of one territory but he had no

influence outside of that the gods of Greece had power and influence in Greece but they had no influence out of that the gods of Egypt had influence and power in Egypt but they had no influence out of that or at least it was diminished outside of their territories that idea of henoism was how the world was seen to work and so now here comes Paul saying no there are no boundaries for this guy he doesn’t stop anywhere he pulls everything into his story that’s just how broad he is this story isn’t just for a select few this story is big enough to include every single person who has ever been born to us that idea may sound normal to people listening to poor for the first time that’s a new idea this really is big enough to include everybody this god set the boundaries he’s calling everybody into it god did this so they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him though he is not very far from any of us for in him we live and move and have our being as some of your own poets have said we are his offspring one of the fascinating things about this passage is this Paul is giving his first sermon first address to this group of people in Athens he’s sharing this message of Jesus and he doesn’t once quote the bible I’m not just talking about the bible as we know it I’m talking about the Jewish bible the old testament scriptures he doesn’t once mention a single passage from the old testament the

Jewish bible doesn’t go there he quotes their own poets to them can you imagine the tension here if I were to give a sermon and say I’m just going to put the bible aside for the day we’re just we’re just not going to really deal with that I’ve actually bizarrely been in a sermon like that I was in a sermon once when a guy actually just read the dictionary to us he said I’m going to quote you the word audacious and I’m going to describe what it means and you need to know that god is audacious and that was the sermon that’s where we landed but if I did that here I would probably get run out of town I suspect and yet Paul here what does he do he approaches this group of people and he doesn’t go he goes to their own prophets their own thinkers the only explanation I can come up with is this he knows that the old testament means nothing to these people that they just aren’t tracking with that idea but he knows that the stories connect and he knows that when he goes to this point when he quotes these people he’s giving it a basis to then talk about how Jesus encompasses that story as well this story is not only for everybody but this story it seems makes sense of your story for some of you that came to follow Jesus in later life I would suspect that there’s some of you that would articulate it like

this there were things that I believed about the world experiences that I had that weren’t strictly church experiences once strictly Jesus experiences in my first understanding of them but then something happened then I experienced Jesus for myself and suddenly there was stuff from my past that suddenly made sense that there’s language that people will use when they experience Jesus of oh that was you all along I didn’t have a name for you I didn’t understand everything about what I was experiencing but somewhere all of this was leading me to this final moment when now you and I are in relationship I’ve heard that articulation from people over and over again and it seems like what happens here is Paul takes their past stories and says let me explain to you how this fits into what god has been doing all along these people have an understanding of how the world works and god is saying I’m pulling that into my story you are going to get to be part of this and it’s all because of Jesus therefore since we are god’s offspring we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone an image made by human design and skill in the past god overlooked such ignorance that now he commands all people everywhere to repent essentially Paul’s language is your old story matters your old story was leading you here but now it’s time now it’s time to come into my story now it’s time to get

involved in this thing my story is big enough this story according to Paul it has substance it has substance it has something that you can rely on that you can live into for he has set a day when he would judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed he has given proof of this to everybody by raising him from the dead and this is where it gets controversial because it seems like for poor they’ve been tracking they’ve been tracking they’ve been tracking okay Paul we get it you’re quoting our own profits to us we’re on board we’re on board we can buy into this and then he mentions resurrection and it’s like in one big gasp they say really resurrection we could go with you until there but we you lost us you lost us at resurrection he lost us at resurrection some of them sneered when they heard about the resurrection of the dead some of them sneered this story has substance because it’s grounded in the idea that Jesus died physically and rose again physically it is based on man made from dirt and then that dirt being re-animated back to life and that to the Greeks was nonsense they could not buy that idea this story has both substance because it’s based in history and actual reality and stumbling blocks because resurrection is maybe hard to believe maybe harder than anything to buy into a physical resurrection some of you may say something like I believe one day there’s a spatial

thing maybe everything will be okay there’s this better place that our loved ones have gone to the something up in the spacial sky somewhere up in the void and yet physical resurrection dead bodies back to life some of us in this room would say I find that stretch I find that difficult you might say that this story may be for everybody but everybody will not be for this story because this story asks a lot of you this story asks a lot of me physical resurrection for those Greek people listening one of their own poets Euripides had explained it like this when the dust has soaked up the blood of a man once he has died there is no resurrection when he has gone back to dust he is back to dust and that is it there is no way that that can be regathered that when its dust stays dust and I wonder if it’s this conversation what the Paul was thinking about when he writes this to this church in Corinth we preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the gentiles foolishness to the gentiles because they can’t buy that they can’t buy that dust can be re-animated isn’t it true that that idea is disruptive that idea is difficult in itself this is a passage from a pastor a poet Casey smith how now may we celebrate the radiant emergent the emergence the disruption that transfixed the faith for so few hours away ahead how would we paint and create resurrection the disruption that transfixed the

faithful this moment of we didn’t see that coming that wasn’t how we expected the story to go as Jesus starts to articulate this to his earliest followers before his death he says destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again the response from the religious leaders this temple took 46 years to build the Jews replied are you going to raise it up in three days but Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body the truth is that resurrecting the physical temple in three days would have been less surprising than resurrecting a dead body in three days the truth is he’s not saying no it’s easier than I’m making it sound he’s saying no it’s more difficult that I’m making it sound and yet the bible was unashamed that the first followers of Jesus were unashamed about their proclamation of physical in this earth in this dirt resurrection in 1933 the baseball player babe ruth in game three of the world series looks to the stands and reportedly points to the right field and then on the next pitch begins to proceeds to hit a home run to that very section that he just pointed about now it’s become something of an urgent urban legend and some people say it never really happened and yet it seems that this story is this moment where an incredible athlete says he’s going to do something incredible and then does it in some ways the story it mirrors this Jesus moment of

saying I’m going to die and I am coming back again we often treat the people in the first century as though they’re kind of just a lot more superstitious than us as though resurrection was a common piece of language in the first century and yet the truth is the dead stayed dead with the same monotony 2000 years ago as they do today this isn’t a normal story this has always been a supernatural story it’s as though that language that those Greeks used of once the man’s blood is in the dust there is no coming back from that it’s as though this god said huh we’ll see about that from dust you came to dust you will return but that isn’t the end of the story it seems like the last thing isn’t the last thing at all it’s the next to last thing that this this Jesus faith has always been bold in its proclamation of resurrection and yet also bold in its acceptance of death that the thing that we avoid the thing that we don’t like to talk about this faith this religion has always said no that’s a journey you will take outside of Jesus return that’s a journey you will take that’s a journey that I will take and yet this Jesus story has said would you like to take that journey alongside and with someone who has been that way before it’s as though psalm 23 somewhat prophetic in it it’s nature when it says even though I walk through the valley of death shadow I will fear no evil for you are with me imagines this journey with

Jesus alongside that says come this way I’ve done this thing this isn’t my first time here it may be yours but I’ve been there we’re going to walk this road together this isn’t the final word this isn’t the last thing Christianity this Jesus story has always been declarative in the idea that this resurrection is not some spatial thing one day this is real this is physical this is dirt this is uh the writer Fleming Rutledge the resurrection happened at night nobody was there to see it when the women and disciples arrived he was gone he arose from the kingdom of death and carried off its spoils the sun rising revealed the victory already accomplished we’re going to walk with a couple of people through the sacrament known as baptism baptism is this journey of death and resurrection when they go down in the water is this symbol of the death that every single one of us will experience and there’s this moment of pause of like two and a half minutes where they’re underwater it’s not two and a half minutes it’s like it’s like two and a half seconds whether they’re under water and that in itself encompasses every moment of life it isn’t already not yet of waiting for a resurrection that we believe in that we haven’t seen yet and in this glorious moment we pull them up from the water and they in their own hearts are saying I believe one day the death will lead to resurrection I believe one day that night will lead to day

that the sun rising will reveal the victory that he’s already won when the dust has soaked up the blood of man once he has died there is no resurrection it’s as though the god of the universe says we will see about that I took dust once and made humanity I can do it again that’s the substance of this story it is bold and it borders unabsurd and if you can’t believe it I kind of get that I kind of understand where you’re coming from and yet this story is so good why wouldn’t you want this story to be true so my question might be have you ever examined that story have you examined why people believe Jesus rose for the dead have you examined why it seems like that’s the best explanation for the next things that happened that the best explanation for the church and how it develops is the very fact that Jesus didn’t stay dead he did rise again and that changes everything that changes everything does your story have substance how do you see the world and what is happening amongst us and what will come next is it just somewhere up in the sky one day somehow or does it end with this god taking dirt as he did once before and breathing new life into it this is resurrection I’m going to invite Aaron and the worship team to come up on stage and we’re going to walk into this this moment of baptism where we’re going to celebrate with some people who have made that decision to follow Jesus together we’re

going to articulate a couple of things to help us understand this we’re going to recite a thing called the apostles creed it’s a statement of faith that’s a few a couple of thousand years old now and it reminds us of just what we believe and how robust how strong how detailed how it really is now we’re going to sing a song that articulates this idea Christ has died we are forgiven there is this promise of the forgiveness of sins that is encompassed in what Jesus did for us and then the next line is this Christ alive we are the risen when these guys are baptized what they are proclaiming in faith is this in that pause in that moment under the water that encompasses their whole life they are saying in faith one day this isn’t all there is one day death is followed by resurrection that’s their statement of faith and one that we as a bunch of people that are baptized get to sing together does your story have substance what story do you have that explains how the world works can you believe this story can you believe resurrection so I’m going to invite you to stand with me and you’re free to not say the apostles creed if you can’t get there but I’d love you to proclaim this with me so let’s stand and let’s recite