Evendays

From Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity?, pages 59-60:

The Maasai of East Africa… speak in their so-named African Creed of believing as a community rather than as individuals, and instead of casting their creed in cognitive abstract terms of the seen and unseen, of Christ as eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, begotten not made, etc., they speak of a journey of faith in a God who out of love created the world and us, of how they once knew the High God in darkness but now know this God in the light. The creed continues with God’s promises in Scripture and momentously in Jesus, “a man in 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,” until finally he was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed, hands and feet, to a cross, and died. Then the irony of the historical Jesus is clinched with a stunning understatement with the words, “He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day he rose from the grave.” A note of eschatological joy and hope swells to conclude the creed: “We are waiting for Him [Jesus]. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.”