Normally during Sunday worship we use either the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed. These are the ancient creeds universally accepted by they church and in use by Christians for over 1600 years.
Unfortunately, precisely because they are so well known, we fly right through these creeds during worship without much thought given to the words that we are saying.
This Advent season, we are using the Maasai Creed (sometimes spelled Masai).
The Maasai people live in East Africa, in the countries of Kenya and Tanzania. In 1960 along with Roman Catholic missionaries, the Maasai people wrote this confession as an expression of their faith. It represents the concerns and faithful expression of the faith of our African siblings.
This beautiful and powerful creed encourages us to slow down with our recitation of faith, to give thoughts to the ideas we use.
Maasai Creed
We believe in the one High God,
who out of love created the beautiful world
and everything good in it.
God created humankind and wanted us 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 this promise by sending his son,
Jesus Christ, a human 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 Jesus must be sorry for their sins,
be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God,
live by 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.