| October 17, 2004 | Bruce Miller | |
| Hebrews 11 | Meeting Jesus Again (For the First Time) |
A few weeks ago I presided over my first memorial service. In a few weeks I will be participating in my first wedding. To many these two events may appear to be very different. When in fact I have found them to be very similar, they have a very common theme. What do I believe and what do you believe?
What I have found when you ask people the question - What do you Believe? - there is always a moment of silence and the look of a deer caught in the headlights of your car. You know the look. A lot of us join churches the same way. I believe there are a lot of people who are church members who have always thought of them selves as Christians, whose families go to church but who would be hard pressed to say exactly what they believe.
And that is truer of Congregationalist than it is of some denominations. Some churches, particularly very conservative church, are quick at offering simple solutions to difficult problems. They will tell you exactly what you must believe; they will give you simple steps to religion. They will sum up the whole gospel in one easy to remember phrase and then criticize those who cannot.
They say you don't have theology. They claim you can believe anything and be a Congregationalist. That is simply not true. There is a core of faith around which we live. It is one of the things we all need to study. We need to be a lot clearer about what we believe than most of us have been in the past. But it is also true that here we do not put you in a theological straight jacket.
We do not take a narrow view of faith. We believe that every Christian must work out their own salvation. We believe that you cannot borrow your faith from someone else. You cannot ask someone, not even a seminary professor, to tell you what to believe. You must take responsibility for your own spiritual life. I like that. I am thankful to be part of a denomination that does not insist that every Christian see every issue in exactly the same way. We disagree with each other, even about some pretty major issues, and still be brothers and sisters in the one body of Jesus Christ.
We should think of faith as more like a journey rather than a destination. Faith for us is not so much what you affirm as it is where you are going. In our tradition, faith asks questions like: Are you moving on to perfection? Are you becoming the person GOD made you to be? And if you are, somewhere along the way you will discover for yourself what you truly believe.
The Bible is full of stories about that kind of faith. Our reading today retells the ancient saga of Abraham and Sarah. By faith they set out on a journey. They left their home, their family, their familiar world for no other reason than this was what God wanted them to do. They did not head for any place in particular. They simply journeyed into the unknown sustained only by the faith God was with them. Faith for Abraham and Sarah was not just something they believed. It was something they did. It was a journey that changed their lives and the whole future of the human race.
The best way I know to remember what you learn is to learn by doing. When you act out a story, perform a task, do an assignment the message stays with you. You become part of the ancient faith journey. Think about it: Moses and the children of Israel were on a journey. They traveled by faith. They trusted God to lead them to the Promised Land. And along the way through the manna in the wilderness and the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai they came to know what God was like.
We see the same thing happening in the New Testament. It is not accidental that the Gospel writers tell most of the stories of Jesus as a travel log. Jesus was always going places. He was always on the move, he traveled throughout the country preaching and healing the sick. Those who traveled with him were called his Disciples. And that word does not mean students. A disciple is a follower. The invitation is to follow Jesus. It is a journey of faith. We also see this thing in the earliest name given to Christianity. We have not always been called Christians. We were originally called the WAY. Those who were not part of the WAY were the LOST. Christian faith has always been seen as a journey.
Let's talk about the journey of meeting God and Jesus. The first time we meet Jesus is in Sunday school. We see pictures and hear stories of Jesus with sheep and children, and are told that Jesus loves you. In Sunday school we learn that Jesus is God's son and we sing "Jesus loves me." We accept what we are told. We believe. We even learn that Jesus was born of a virgin long before we know what a virgin is. That is where our faith began. But the journey does not stop there.
We grow up. We become adolescents. We start asking questions. We experience a collision between the modern world and the biblical world view. We wonder about solar systems, dinosaurs, sciences. We even start to wonder about Jesus. Then we are confirmed, hit high school, college and many of us experience a total collapse of our childhood religious foundation. We are exposed to the intellectual giants of philosophy such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Events begin to happen all around us, we ask question like why?! Suddenly nothing is as simple as it seemed in Sunday School. We had our faith all together and than it comes apart. Many drift away from church. We lose contact with the old foundation. Sunday school language doesn't seem relevant anymore. Some never get beyond this paralyzing doubt. Some never get back to church and to the faith of their fathers. They stop belonging to the WAY. They are lost.
Yet others - and I hope that some of here - have the remarkable experience of meeting Jesus again as adults. And when you meet Jesus again, it is as though you are meeting him for the very first time. For when you meet Jesus as an adult you encounter him as far more than a stained glass image who loves little children.
You meet a real Jesus who was an adult. You meet a real person who faced the same problems we face, who struggled at times with the same self-doubts we have, and whose faith journey ultimately led to a cross. And more than just meeting Jesus, we hear the same summons he issued to fisherman long ago. He said then as he says know, "Follow me," Join the journey, Make the trip. Do not wait until you have it all figured out. That day may not come. Discover right now through faithful discipleship the meaning of life.
The core of our belief - Faith is a journey each one of us must make in our life. And we make it without ever knowing all the answers. We take the mystery of God very seriously. We believe you can not put mystery in a bottle. You cannot contain God in a phrase. You have to let God's mystery be what it is, something greater than anything anyone of us can ever conceive. There is a sense in which we can never know exactly what we believe because we can never know all there is to know about God.
Let's talk about believing in GOD. Children are very sharp in their ability to ask questions - One they always seem to ask is "and then what happened?" Some times this question stops us in our tracks. I presently am employed by an institute that is searching for the answer to what happened one second after the BIG BANG. However, what happened one second before the big bang is the real question - that is not a mystery. I believe in God the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth. I can not prove God's existence. I do not fully understand God. But I believe in that moment of creation there was a Creator. Imagine that you are walking along the beach and discover a wrist watch on the ground in front of you. Suppose too that you have never seen a wrist watch and have no idea what it is. And suppose that you set your mind to studying the watch. You observe its hands going around in circles or perhaps its regularly changing digital display. You break it open; look at the wheels and the springs or the circuit board. And sooner or later you are going to draw come conclusions about the watch.
First, you will likely conclude that someone made that watch. It did not just happen. Someone made it. Then if pressed you will reach a second conclusion. Whoever made that watch, made it for a reason. You might not have any idea who the creator was or what the purpose of a watch might be, but you would know it was created for a purpose. The same is true with God.When I lift up my eyes - I see a world more wonderfully made than any mechanical device, it doesn't make good sense to say it all just happened. I cannot help believing this world was created and that God created it for a purpose.This is fundamental to who we are as Christians - fundamental to what we believe. It is a message our country desperately need to hear.
We must never forget about God, we are a Nation Under God, and that it is IN GOD WE TRUST. We as church people must reach out and meet Jesus again - and to speak proudly of our faith. If you ask Christians from some other denominations what they believe they will quote scripture, or fire off a familiar phrase. And there is nothing wrong with that as far as it goes. But I am a lot more comfortable around people who answer that same question by beginning "Let me tell you my story." Let me tell you what has happened to me. Then you will understand what you believe. Faith is a journey.
Jesus tells his followers not to be afraid. It can be a very frightening thing to belong to the WAY - for Jesus the way led to a cross. It is not always clear where Jesus will take us. It may not be popular to stand up for principles and values or to follow Jesus. But real faith means we can do nothing less.
The truth is - we need to take Jesus into our heart. But that is only the beginning of faith. Real faith comes when we discover that we do not so much take Jesus into our hearts, it is Jesus himself who takes us places. If you want to find out what you believe as a Christian, go with him when you hear that invitation "Follow me."
Faith is a journey and relationship that you have with Jesus. Lets all
meet Jesus again - for the first time.