Scripture - John 14:1-7

Well, friends, today is Sunday number four in our October sermon series where we take up the question “Why?” each week.  In preparing for this morning’s sermon, I looked back at the first three weeks.  Week one:  We should ask “Why?”  Though we often don’t because we don’t want to have doubts, and maybe too many “why questions” lead to too many doubts.  But doubt is not the opposite of faith.  The opposite of faith is indifference.  Doubt is a part of faith.

And with some confidence in that thought, perhaps, in week two we asked, “Why do we suffer?”  So many of our questions begin there.  We forget that.  Granted, “Why do we suffer?” might not be the first question folks ask.  The first question might be “What time does church start?” or “Where’s the nursery so I can drop off my child.”  But then question #2 is right there under the surface and it’s “Why do we suffer?” 

We explored that question this month, and will continue to explore it.  But this much we’ve said so far:  While we may not be able to get to the absolute bottom of why we suffer, we do know that God is with us in suffering—that God’s place is not “making it happen” or “letting it happen”—and in fact we said that not everything happens for a reason.  But we did say that no matter what, God is with us when it happens.

Week three—last week—we asked, “Why does religion divide us?”  A nebulous and sometimes perplexing question that looms heavy with kindred questions like “Are all religions true?” and “If they are all true, then why does it matter what anyone believes?”  We sat with John 14:1-7 last week, and Jesus’ words, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  This verse is often used to claim the exclusivity of the Christian faith—to say that other religions cannot possibly be “true.”  But we examined Jesus’ identity as “the Way”.  Do you remember the Hebrew word?  “Halacha,” the path, the way of walking.  Jesus said “the Way” is not a list of rules; rather he said, “I am the Way.” And so Jesus took a very narrow and exclusive way of understanding holiness and faith, and made it inclusive.  In saying “I am the Way,” Jesus was more radically inclusive than we often realize.

So to recap:  Week one:  It’s ok to doubt.  Week two:  Not everything happens for a reason.  Week three:  Jesus blew the barn doors off religious exclusivity.

That’s a lot to digest in one month, and we’re not even done yet.  Today we raise the question, “Why Jesus?” and we’ll reflect on the same passage from John’s gospel that got us into trouble last week.  And then next week… “Why are we here?”  Should be able to sum that one up in about fifteen minutes, right?  Why are we here?  Why are human beings here—in this universe on this planet at this time?  But also, why are we here?  You and me—here in Racine.  Why?  Sort of a “What are we doing here?” question, you could say.

When I was a kid, I had lots of questions, as I do now.  I can remember that my minister growing up, Rev. Bob, was a man I always knew I could approach and talk to.  He was peaceful and kind and wonderful to be with.  I was probably in about fourth grade when he invited folks in the congregation to submit questions in the church offering plate—questions about God, about the Bible, and about faith.  I can’t remember if he was doing a similar “why series” or if he was just looking for ideas for sermons and Bible studies—or if he just wanted to know what we were thinking.  But I do remember that I wrote down a question.  The question was, “Is God powerful enough to make a rock so big that even HE can’t lift it up?”  I was so pleased with myself!  It was the perfect question because it could not be answered!  I put that question in the offering plate and then could not wait until I saw Rev. Bob next because I knew that this question would blow his mind. 

The next Sunday morning, I raced from the car to the church door, eager to encounter Rev. Bob, who undoubtedly had read my question, and whose head was undoubtedly spinning with a conundrum that I (a fourth grader!) had dropped in his lap.  He saw me coming with what was probably a look of smug satisfaction on my face.  And then he gave his answer.  He smiled.  A big, joy-filled smile that said it all:  “You got me, Ben Krase!”

I grew up in a church where I knew I could ask anything.  That memory guides me still today in the way I think about church life.  I see our kids here, along with the rest of us,       and I think to myself, “I want this to be a place where we can seriously—and playfully—engage questions and ideas—where doubt is not the opposite of faith—where faith is a wonderful adventure of learning and coming into better and better understandings of God and ourselves.”

My own earliest faith understanding was a song.  “Jesus loves me.”  It’s so simple, but there it is.  Jesus loves me, this I know.  For the Bible tells me so.  Little ones to him belong.  They are week but he is strong.  Yes, Jesus loves me.  Yes, Jesus loves me.  Yes, Jesus loves me.  The Bible tells me so. 

Since I first heard that song and learned the words, I’ve done a lot of thinking about Jesus’ love.  Lots of thinking, lots of time spent reading and studying and analyzing and wondering about the scope and extent of “Jesus loves me.”  And I’m not sure, really, just where along the line the question of “Why Jesus?” occurred to me, but somewhere it did.  At some point, maybe in high school, I started wondering…  Why Jesus?  Why was Jesus necessary?  Or maybe, was Jesus necessary?  Why Jesus in the first place?  And why Jesus 2000 years ago?  Why not at the beginning of time?  Or why not today? 

When I was about a junior in high school, a friend of mine invited me to a Christian youth conference at his church.  Lots of kids there—a few that I knew from school.  We all packed into a room where this guy started to lead us in song.  The music was amazing—loud and pulsing and… different from what I was used to.  They didn’t seem to have any blue hymnals there.  Instead, they used an overhead projector to put the words up on the wall.              And the people around me were singing their guts out!  I can remember feeling stunned.  Church had never been like this before! 

We sang for what felt like forever and then finally sat down in our chairs.  A man, maybe the pastor or the youth pastor, came up on stage and started to speak, and that’s when things got a little weird.  I don’t remember everything he said—just that it was all about how awful we were and how we were all going straight to hell because we were so full of sin and shame.  It went on and on and on—story after story about the horrible things that people do to each other—about the things I suppose he thought we were doing.  Finally he came to Jesus, and looking back, I can see that this was where he tried to redeem the whole evening—to say that we were lucky indeed that Jesus had come, because otherwise we were in a world of trouble. 

I can remember turning my head at one point to see a girl my age, one row up and a few seats over, crying.  Tears rolling down her cheeks, shoulders shaking.  I watched her for a moment, and thought to myself, “Should I be crying?”  There was an alter call at the end, during which about half of the students there went forward to pray.  I, however, clung to my folding chair like a life raft.  The crying girl went forward, got lost in the crowd at the front, and then returned to her seat, still crying a little, but smiling.  Looking relieved.  I thought to myself, “Should I be feeling that way?”

In the van on the way home, I played the tape back in my mind a few times.  That night was so different from “church” as I had known it.  Full of musical energy, true, but also—what they said about God and Jesus, about heaven and hell… did I believe all that?  Was I really as bad as that preacher thought?  Did church really have to be about so much shame and guilt and crying?  The song I’d learned as a child—Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so—sounded weird in my mind, or maybe just naïve in light of a God who could be so angry with me.

Maybe you can see where I’m going with this.  “Why Jesus?” can be a question of faith and history and biblical study, but at some point it becomes a question of personal identity for us as Christians. 

About twenty years after the night of that youth conference, I was 37 years old, serving as an associate pastor in Austin, in a church right next to the University of Texas.  Two decades of thought and growth and study had taken me far from where I was at the age of 17, though looking back, I can see that that experience was not without merit in my life story.  I spent the last year of high school reading and rereading sections of the Bible I’d been given as a third grader in my Presbyterian Church, trying to figure things out for myself. 

In Austin, the church I served, University Presbyterian Church, was behind the co-op bookstore, which was just across the street from the student union.  It was a busy, active place where lots of students gathered each day.  And it seemed like every day there was a different street preacher or church group stationed on the sidewalk, preaching, sharing their good news, and attempting to hand out flyers and little booklets. 

One particular day, a man my age stopped me and asked me, “Sir, do you know Jesus Christ?”  The earnestness in his voice, a strained expression on his face—if I hadn’t known any better, I’d have thought that he was looking for a missing person.  “Do I know Jesus Christ?” I asked.  “Mm-hmm,” he nodded.  “That’s right.” 

For the longest time I wasn’t sure what to do with a stranger on the street who wanted to have a 3-minute conversation about the entire content of my life’s faith experience.  My usual goal was to keep things short.  “Do I know Jesus Christ?”  “Yes.”  “Am I saved?”  “Yep.”  “Do I know where I’ll go when I die?”  “Do I ever!”  But this one time I decided to give a bit more of an answer.  I looked at the guy.  Mid-thirties, Bible in one hand, a stack of flyers in the other.  The Texas sun was beating down hard, and he’d sweated through his wide-brimmed hat and his clothes.  I felt some compassion for him.  Here he was, through the intense heat of the day, doing what was right for him—struggling to strike up conversations with people who most likely didn’t want to talk with him.  Maybe he wasn’t unlike the pastor who’d spoken years before to a room packed with me and a few hundred other teenagers.  Only this time I wasn’t glued to my chair or stunned with the unfamiliarity of it all. 

I repeated the question.  “Do I know Jesus Christ?”  And then I said, “Well, that’s an interesting question.  I want to give you an answer, but here’s the thing.  In order to do that, you’re going to have to get to know me.  The answer isn’t about what I say—it’s about who I am and what I do every day.”  And then it was sad.  The man looked at me and said, “Ok.  But are you a Christian?          Are you saved?” 

For some the question, “Why Jesus?” is about a faith litmus test that you either pass or fail.  Either you’re in or you’re out.  But for me at least, answering “Why Jesus?” is never about knowing the answer or saying the right things.  It’s never about rehearsing the lines that the Church has given us again and again and again.  My own response to “Why Jesus,” I hope, is the life that I lead—the Way that I follow, the Truth that I tell, and the Life that I live.

Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”   And I believe that that is true—that for me, Jesus, in the story of his life, death, and resurrection, shares with me the way, the truth, and the life, and it is the only way I can come into an understanding of God’s presence in the universe—the only way.

Why Jesus?  Because in Jesus Christ we experience two things:  God’s true nature and our true nature.  In Jesus Christ we see God’s nature—who God is and how God exists with us and for us.  God with us—living among us, suffering with us, dying for us, proclaiming that death is not the end.

And in Jesus Christ we see our true nature—the way we were called to live and to be.  Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians:  “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us.”  In Christ we see a life worth imitating, in compassion, kindness, habits of grace and healing, challenging powers of evil and darkness, naming injustice, and striving for justice. 

If you’re like me, though, your response to “Why Jesus?” has evolved over time.  Not long after I attended that high school youth conference, I went to college at the University of Illinois.  I can remember my freshman year that I had an intense conversation with a student who was older and, in my mind, much wiser.  He explained to me that despite the fact that I’d grown up in the church, I might not be a Christian… yet.  “Just because you’re in a garage doesn’t mean you’re a car, right?” he asked me in a sensible tone.  I had to agree.  His point was to say that just because I’d grown up in the church didn’t mean I was a Christian—that I had to make a decision to become one at some point in my life.  With faith that he was indeed correct, I eagerly made a decision to receive Jesus as my Lord and as my Savior. 

I’m not regretful that I made that decision, but my answer to the question, “Why Jesus?” has changed since then.  I hardly think I “became a Christian” at that moment.  In my mind today, my prayerful acceptance of God’s love then did little to make it any more of a reality in my life than it was the day before.  In fact if I were asked to name a moment when I was “saved” by God, I’d have to say that it was about 2000 years ago, when God’s love was expressed through the life, death, and new life of a person named Jesus of Nazareth—whose Way has become my Way, whose Truth has become my Truth, and whose Life has become, with God’s help, my Life too.  Amen.