Amen!
Amen! by Rev. L. John Gable
July 7, 2019
The young minister, new to his first call, wanted to introduce some liturgical responses into the worship service, so when he said, “The Lord be with you”, he instructed the congregation to respond, “And also with you.” Let’s try that, “The Lord be with you.” (“And also with you.”) This went over fairly well for several weeks, until one morning when he stepped into the pulpit he discovered that the sound system wasn’t working. He unsuccessfully tried flipping a couple of switches and tapping on the mic with his finger until finally in frustration he said, “There’s something wrong with this microphone”, to which the congregation dutifully responded, “And also with you.”
This morning we come to the end of our study of the Apostles’ Creed and we find just one word remaining, “Amen”. I wonder with you if this has become for us little more than a “dutiful liturgical response” that we utter without any thought or meaning; simply a way to end a prayer, a hymn, a creed; a liturgical way of saying, “the End”. But is that all it is, or is there something more to it that we might be missing?
Beginning last November, we have been making our way very deliberately through the Apostles’ Creed, the oldest and most generally accepted confessional statement of our faith. Together we have said, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord. I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe in the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. We even spent a full fourteen weeks filling in the gap left by the comma between “born of the Virgin Mary” and “suffered under Pontius Pilate”, for pity’s sake.
Given all that we have discussed there is surely much more we could say about what “we believe”, but this brief statement has seemed sufficient for believers down through the centuries and we have discovered that it is sufficient for us as well today. So, now that we come to the end of the statement and the end of our study we have to find a way to signal to everyone that it is over, so we say, “Amen.” But what do we really mean when we say that?
The word “amen” is untranslated from the Hebrew “amen”. It has various meanings, but the first is that it means, “Truly”. When we say “amen” we are affirming that what has just been said is true for us. If someone makes a statement and we “Amen to that!” it means we are in agreement and that we believe what they have said to be true. That is exactly what we are doing here at the end of the creed or at the close of a prayer or as a response in worship (although that is noticeably less common in our tradition. Most Presbyterian churches don’t have much of an “Amen Corner”), but when we say “amen” we are saying “Yes, that is true! I am in agreement with that!”
Speaking of the Apostles’ Creed the great Reformer John Calvin writes, “We consider to be beyond controversy the only point that ought to concern us: that the whole history of our faith is summed up in it succinctly and in definite order, and that it contains nothing that is not vouchsafed by genuine testimonies of Scripture.” That great thinker of our faith is telling us, “It is true!…Amen to that!”, and even though this statement of faith was written centuries ago it continues to be very relevant and timely for our faith today, so in response to its truth we too say, “Amen!”
So to say “amen” is in effect to say “I believe”, but it can also be translated, “So be it! Let it be so! Let it become true!” Or as Dallas Willard suggests we could simply say, “Whoopee! That’s just the way we want it!” In this sense, “amen” not only affirms the truth of the statement, it also confirms our response to it. It is our seal of approval. It is our call to action.
One of the great critiques of religion and of religious people is that we have the tendency to say one thing with our mouths and then live our lives in a quite another. We have contracted what some have called the “head- nodder’s disease.” We sit in church and listen to a sermon and nod our heads in agreement, but somehow that agreement “in here” doesn’t always translate into our changed way of living “out there”.
When we say “amen”, however, we are being called not just into agreement, but into action. We are saying, “In response to what I know to be true, this is what I am going to do” which is a reminder to us that “faith” is as much a verb as it is a noun. It is not simply something we say we believe, it is something we actually get up and do!
Many have spoken of faith as being the movement from “knowledge to agreement then ultimately to trust.” Take a simple example. One day early in my ministry I was invited by a friend to go flying with him. I know that airplanes can fly. I’ve seen them do it before. That is “knowledge” and if I hadn’t had even that basic knowledge I wouldn’t have bothered going out to the airport with him. But on this day, when we got there Ray began showing me all around the little airplane we would be flying in. He meticulously explained how the rudders and the flaps worked and how the engine was slightly off-set from the fuselage. It was all very interesting, albeit more than I ever really thought I ever wanted or needed to know about an airplane, and I’ll confess I was getting a little bored – I just wanted to go flying. But in that little teaching time my “knowledge” moved to “agreement.” Not only did I now “know” that airplanes could fly, now I actually knew something about “how” airplanes fly, and it all made good sense to me. Let’s translate this in to the life of faith. We can have heard about Jesus (knowledge) which hopefully leads us to the next step in which we study and learn about Him. We may even come to accept that He was a remarkable man and a great prophet (agreement), but still that is not faith. There is one more step that is absolutely necessary and it is called “trust.”
When Ray finally finished explaining to me all the little intricacies of how an airplane works, he finally said, “Let’s go flying” and then proceeded to walk to the right side of plane, the passenger side of the plane, which meant that I was intended to go to the left side of the plane, the pilot’s side. Ray had been carefully explaining all of this to me with the intention that I was going to be the one flying, and suddenly I wished I had been paying a lot more attention. In that moment, my “knowledge and agreement” was being called into action, put to the test. Did I really “trust” what he was telling me to be “true”? It is one thing to agree with it on the ground and quite another to take it up in the air. But sure enough for the next hour or so, I taxied and flew and landed, with Ray sitting right beside me coaching me all the way. That movement from “knowledge” to “agreement”, both of which can be little more than a mental exercise, then to action or “trust”, is what many have called “the leap of faith”. It is the movement from “knowing” about Jesus, to “agreeing” with the things that people say about Him, to actually putting our “trust” in Him as Savior and Lord. That leap of faith, that call to action, is what we take when we say, “Amen!”
When we say “Amen!” we are saying “I believe in God the Father Almighty” and I will trust in His loving care and sovereign providence over me and our world, even when things go terribly wrong. To say “Amen” is to say, “I am going to live my life in the sure confidence that God is able to make all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purposes.” It is to say that I am going to live my life in the full confidence that all of the promises of God are faithful and true.
When we say “Amen!” we are saying “I believe in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord” who alone we can trust for our salvation. We are confessing that we know that we cannot earn our salvation on our own, but that God has had to provide it for us, which He has graciously and faithfully done in Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is a gift of God, not the result of works, lest anyone should boast.” So in gratitude and praise we say, “Amen –that is true.” And in that “Amen” we are being called to action, not only to accept Him as Savior but also to follow Him as Lord. To say “Amen” is to submit to His Lordship, to go when He says “go”, to stay when He says “stay”, to follow when He says, “Come, follow Me.” And to this we say, “Amen!- so be it. Let it be so in me.”
To say “Amen!” is to accept the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us and to pray for His empowering to do the work God has called us to do. It is to accept our role as members of the Body of Christ, “the holy catholic church, the communion of saints”, and to recognize that the One who holds us together is greater than any force that could ever tear us apart.
To say “Amen” is to accept the new reality that “the forgiveness of sins” is not simply a pleasant perk we agree to and desire for ourselves, but is a radical concept we commit to putting into practice towards others. So we have the audacity to pray, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”.
To say “Amen” is to profess that “the resurrection of the body” to “the life everlasting” is not just some “pie in the sky” ideal for the afterworld, but is the very acknowledgement that Heaven and eternal life in the presence of God is our heart’s true home, such that every day we will make a conscious effort to take a step closer to it in order to better prepare ourselves for the new life we will one day enjoy in that glorious Kingdom. To say “Amen” is to confess that we believe that there is more to life than this life. It is to live in the sure and certain hope that one day we will see Jesus again and live with Him in His eternal Kingdom. To that we say, “Amen! Whoopee! Just the way we want it!”
To say “Amen” is to stand before God, in the company of His people and say, “This is what I believe”, as Martin Luther did before his accusers in the 16th century, saying, “Here I stand, I can do no other! On this truth I will stake my very life!”
To say “Amen” is to pray that the power and presence of God might touch our lives, deepen our faith, enrich our understanding of His Word and strengthen our resolve to trust and follow Him. To this end we say, “Amen!- So be it!”
John Updike is helpful with this insight as he writes, “I call myself a Christian by defining a “Christian” as a person willing to profess the Creed. I profess it (which does not mean I understand it, or fill its every syllable with the breath of sainthood), but because I know of no other combination of words that gives such life, that so seeks the crux.”
Yet in all of this there is still one final use of the word “Amen” in Scripture. It is, in fact, one of the many names by which Jesus identifies Himself. In Revelation 3, we hear these words of our Risen Lord to the church at Laodicea, “The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation.” Jesus Christ is the Amen. Just as He is the first word of our faith, so He is the last. He is the fulfillment of all of God’s promises to us. As we read in 2 Corinthians, “All of the promises of God find their “yes” in Jesus Christ.” So then, is it any surprise at all that the very last word of Scripture is “Amen!” – It is true! Let it be so! Through Jesus Christ our Lord! And to this we say, “Amen”!