We ought to be thinking about the life of Jesus when we think about our commitment to faith and what that faith means for the beliefs we hold and the actions that we take in the life of delicate balance that this whole planet has come to cherish. It is relevant what we believe to be true about God and about Jesus Christ. It is a big deal what we think about when we conjure up the terms "Lord" and "Savior." It matters whether or not we believe that God's Spirit is living and active in the world yet today. But how we explain what we believe in down to earth theological terms is incredibly important - because our story needs to have merit and be easily recognizable in the lives of real people - or else our story will cease to exist. If we cloud our story with judgment and market it like a bar of soap that cleans up sinful messes, we'll be no different from the snake oil salesmen that are pitching the latest self-help books or filling people with pills that will instantly ease the pain of the human condition. The story we have to tell is not just any story, it's the ultimate story of being very fallibly human, and being loved by God anyway.

For me, and for the rest of the skeptical thirty-somethings out there, you may know what I'm talking about when I say that I have grown up in the land of "no absolutes." Moral ambiguity has become the cereal many people eat for breakfast. Truth has become more of a product than a way of life. Anyone claiming to know the "truth" in today's smorgasbord of values seems hopelessly phony. So during my formative years I decided to go on my own quest for what felt to me like authentic spirituality in the era of "do it yourself" religion. Although I grew up going to Sunday school and faithfully attending church because it meant that I'd get to go out to lunch with my grandparents afterwards, I read book after book and talked to anyone I could about my other options outside of Christianity. The word "Christianity" itself is still one I don't like to use. For me, it conjures up feelings of being trapped in a box. It smacks of religiosity and can turn people away almost as quickly as a call from a telemarketer. Therefore, I decided to try and find my own thing.

Because that word "Christianity" had always meant talking about God as some sort of wise old guy beyond the clouds who knew everything, first, I sought out something that might resonate more clearly with my own gender. Therefore I became fascinated with witchcraft and nature religions and the occult practices of mixing herbs into love potions. In the rural area where I grew up, that quickly got me into trouble with some of my Christian friends at school who then tried to save me from going to hell by getting me to come to their Baptist Youth Fellowship. It only took my asking a few too many pointed questions for the pastor of that church to get the message across that I shouldn't come back.

So, here I was in quite a dilemma. I knew that it was important for me to find my own heart for God as a young woman, but the witchcraft thing really wasn't I, and neither was going to a youth group where my every step was dictated by a strict set of rules that I couldn't possibly come to understand. Neither story made sense, so I kept searching. I had been to almost every church in town looking for some more intelligible or enlightened answer, and found myself running back to the arms of my own pretty dysfunctional Presbyterian Church home. Would I find a story there that I could embrace as my own?

We Presbyterians are not very well known for our particular telling of the Christian story, are we? Our story doesn't come with all the fabulous details of the rapture that can be emblazoned on bumper stickers and t-shirts. We don't shroud our rituals in mystery, claiming that the bread we'll break today physically becomes the body of Jesus. We don't talk of the assurance of salvation in our baptism or in some revelatory moment when we accepted Jesus Christ into our hearts. We don't obey purity customs, or wear clothes that set us apart, or wave our arms on street corners with Bibles tucked underneath our arms. We blend into the scene of secular society with an ease that is scary sometimes. But I can tell you this, when I came home, I found my story, a quiet story, a story that echoes a profound truth about the human condition that is tied up in the very telling of story itself. The story is about the harsh and the beautiful reality of being human - a good story for a skeptical kid. It starts out in the beginning with the painful truth that we are not perfect. Conflict arises between peoples and nations. Wars happen because people lose sight of God's love. Self-righteous behaviors tear apart the seams in even the holiest of places. But God, this God who loves us with an incredible fury, sends his Son into the world so that we might have a relationship with a human being like us that we can trust. This Jesus knows life's pain and life's mess because he isn't just like us; he is one of us. He's born, some of life is good, some of it stinks, and he dies at the hands of a murdering crowd. But the good news is that his death brings us the possibility of life. We know that we will die a thousand little deaths before we get to the big one, and because he is living, he promises that we too can start over each and every time that happens!

Part of the mess we've gotten ourselves into as people who have to use language to talk about our faith is that our semantics frequently get in the way. No words are going to be completely accurate in describing how madly God loves us or how often Jesus saves us. But we take stabs at it to try and get it right, or at least to try to tell someone else of why it is we do the crazy things that we do - like forgiving people that have hurt us, or lending money without expecting it back, or feeding hungry people, and things like that. We hang a lot of hope on Jesus. The big deal about Jesus is that he has the power to save lives, and the big problem with us is that we want to say exactly and for sure that we know what that means. We stab at it in the prayers we say in the dark nights of our soul, and we go on quests to try to prove that life does indeed have meaning. We want security in knowing that we shall be among the saved. But in my most honest searching, I've not found an exhaustive list of all the right answers. I still am and maybe always will be that skeptical kid making fervent prayers to a God I hardly know and trying to find the will to follow the teachings of a man who lived in a world I can hardly imagine.

This week, though, I found comfort in John's gospel, for John uses a little semantic trick that speaks to this need we have for dialogue with people of other faiths, and if I'm lucky it also may get me out of this bind of not being able to fully understand those Christian brothers and sisters who seem to have little patience with my doubts and insecurities. Instead of John using the exclusive language about Jesus being the "only way to God" that sometimes gets us into hot water in our interfaith dialogues, in this passage he says, "No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me." I like that metaphor. Jesus is for the hungry, for the thirsty, for those who have a deep need to be satisfied at the well of God's overflowing love. The story of Jesus is a story of "drawing us to him" in my book. In many kinds of ways, and perhaps even present in other faiths, there is this sense that God continues to draw people in, through Jesus for certain, and maybe through other means we don't even know. We are learning now that as a human species we may even be physically compelled to ground ourselves in faith and in love. Jesus is the way. Jesus is the life. Jesus is the drawing card that makes it possible for me to have faith in a God who could love even me. Amen.