As a fifteen year old, I was drawn to an exciting view of Revelation, one that made my faith seem real, relevant, and important. I no longer believe that particular view reflects good biblical scholarship, but I still find faith to be real, relevant, exiting, and important. This past week, at Church camp, I experienced that reality, relevance, and importance through the majesty of hiking through mountains and woods, the poignancy of sharing life and life stories with others, and the mystical presence of taking time away from usual routine to hear the still, small voice of the Spirit. I was reminded that the presence of God is around us always and the life of God through the Spirit of Christ is in each of us. I believe God waits eagerly for each of us to step up to full partnership with God’s own Spirit in realizing God’s own dream of Shalom. This dream seeks not to destroy evil, but to transform evil into what is good and holy through the power of love. Life doesn’t get more tangible, exciting, and real than that!

Somewhere along the line in my life, the idea of journey became my operative theme. That’s certainly not unique to me. I am increasingly aware, however, of how important this theme has become to the choices I make, and how I feel about those choices and their implications. My journey of being a pastor, first working primarily through the medium of music and drama and then a pastor in the more conventional sense, has encompassed has been my full-time work for more than thirty years. But now, as the result of choosing to follow my wife Kathy on her professional journey, I find myself working very part-time as a pastor and also part-time as a college professor of music.

When I chose to leave the church I had served as pastor for ten years in Kansas City, I absolutely expected to be working full-time again as a pastor in a church within a few months. That would have given me a feeling of professional continuity and us considerably more financial security than we are experiencing. Instead, it took many months to find even part-time ministry work. Yet, despite the anxiety with regard to money, I believe my life is unfolding as it should. My journey of growth and fulfillment continues unabated. The fearful times reveal a great deal about who I have become and what I am valuing. This is an insight that probably would not be so available to me apart from those experiences of fear, weakness, and disorientation. I know it brings more integrity to what I say from the pulpit and what I bring to pastoral relationships.

In the last week of his life, as the Christian gospels tell it, Jesus faced many fears and many temptations to lose the direction of his journey. In each case, he was able to remember who he was and whose he was. As a result, he finished his journey faithfully and gave each of us reason to hope that we, too, can be faithful, each on our own journey. God’s promise is to be faithfully present with us always, to the very end of our journey, as we finish where we began—in the very heart of God.

Each person, no matter how old (or young), has an important work to do…. This good
work not only accomplishes something needed in the world, but completes something in
us. When it is finished, a new work emerges that will help us to make green a desert place, as well as to scale another mountain in ourselves. The work we do in the world, when it is true vocation, always corresponds in some mysterious way to the work that goes on within us. (Elizabeth O’Connor, Cry Pain, Cry Hope)

Our task in this generation, as it is for people of faith in each generation, is to develop our theological, social, and political understanding that is rooted in the past yet adapted to the realities of the present. We have an obligation to reinterpret our faith on our own journey and in our own time. But to do that reinterpretation requires a solid foundation.

At the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his listeners, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.” (Matthew 7:24NRSV) This famous passage challenged many of the firmly held theological, social, and political opinions of people in Jesus’ day. These teachings shifted the sand under peoples’ feet and left with them the challenge to trust the rock solid teaching that lay underneath.

What is universal in this teaching of Jesus? It is that the eternal God lives in particular and peculiar people—like us! Salvation involves moving beyond our boundaries of race, class, and religion—beyond sin, pride, and division—to live in a way that is renewing, transformative, and life-giving. It is to place our trust in the future “reign of God” that is breaking into the now in ways that are characterized by working for justice and treating others with compassion. These are sacred things whatever our religious tradition. The oneness that many call heaven is found, at least in part, by embracing the abundance that comes from doing what brings you life, the abundance that comes from giving yourself away. When the desire to live this way overpowers any fear you have of taking the risk to live this way, you will discover heaven in your own heart.

This life journey a process we enter through questioning and seeking. It is a place where people explore understanding their faith in an atmosphere of trust and safety. Finding faith now can be a shared journey on which people ask hard questions in love and share their differing understandings. The result of doing this can be an integration of one’s beliefs and actions.

Our identity as people of faith is not found in a set of doctrines. Our best answers about God will almost certainly not be summarized in a statement of beliefs. In fact, all the teachings of the Bible–from the Ten Commandments to the ancient prophets, from the beatitudes of Jesus to the letters of the Apostle Paul–reveal to us how people, inspired and guided by God’s Spirit, have come to understand God’s own hopes and dreams for their lives.

As we walk along this journey, we come to discover and embrace the reality that the God we perceive in the Hebrew Bible is the same God we perceive in the New Testament and in the Quran; the same God we see throughout history, and the same God we perceive now in our lives!

The journey of faith includes exploring our theological understanding. But theological exploration done with integrity must be life exploration. Too often theological conflict is really just a mask for life conflict. On my journey, I have come to believe that faith is both relationship and belief, but it is more relationship than belief. Faith is both trust and insight, but it is more trust than insight. Faith is both letting go of the familiar and taking on new understandings and directions, but it is more letting go than taking on.

Communities of faith exist to support us on this journey: to hold us accountable on this journey and to keep us focused on this journey as our first priority.

Finding faith is a different sort of journey, a different kind of search. We think of ourselves as working toward some goal such as looking for answers about God. What we discover is that the answers we seek about God are really the answers we seek about ourselves. It’s as though we keeping asking God, “Who are you?” and “What do you want me to do?” The answers we want and need are to different questions altogether. “Who am I?” “What do I really want?”

Finding faith is a journey, but not one that begins here and go to there. It’s not one that actually start in any particular place and travel to any other place. It is a journey that is always here and always there. It is ever moving, but at the same time completely still. It is never moving, but always flowing. It is never grasping, but ever opening and always at home.

The process of finding faith is very much that of learning a language in order to name what we trust and how we perceive, what we believe and why we endure. It is the faithing itself, the act and process of trusting, and also the understanding of the process through which we trust and release life.

Finding faith is learning not to let our fears own us. It is the determination and the ongoing act of determining to keeping asking why. It is also the act and the process of deciding to live by the breath of our dreams

.Jack Price

What are you most concerned about showing?

How will you feel then about your life and your choices when all is said and done?

What does it mean to find your faith, and to finally get your questions answered about God that you’ve been struggling with for so long?

These are challenging questions, but the essential question is this: what are you going to do about all that here and now?

I choose, on my life journey of finding faith, to follow Jesus because there is a tangible opportunity to live well and to find meaningful answers about God. Jesus seems to have believed that promise and the invitation to follow Jesus involves our believing it, too.

Throughout much of the Christian Church’s existence, one of the most compelling reasons for following Jesus has involved the image of Judgment Day. What will happen to us when we die, when we are fully known and accountable for the lives we’re now living. One of the great measures for living well is to imagine yourself at the end of your life looking back on this time you’re now living. The Biblical image for honest self-reflection is standing before God on Judgment Day and taking responsibility for what you’ve done. The Apostle Paul seemed eager to show God that he had been faithful in terms of the calling he had felt for his life. Despite the challenges and hardships, he had “fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith.” 2 Timothy 4:

What are you most looking forward to showing God? What are you most concerned about showing? How will you feel then about your life and your choices when all is said and done? These are challenging questions, but the essential question is this: what are you going to do about all that here and now?

There are lots of good reasons for Christians to follow Jesus. I have written a series on the topic Why Should I Follow Jesus? In that series, I share at least some of the reasons for my faith—why I choose, on my life journey, to follow Jesus. There is the divine secret of joy that Jesus showed us. There is also the sense of abundance that is available to each/all of us. And there is the way Jesus always pointed beyond himself to show us what is ultimately true about life and about what underlies the universe. He showed people honest answers about God.

Jesus showed us how to live lives worthy of ourselves. I follow Jesus because he showed us God’s invitation to live as the heroes of our own story:  to receive the healing of knowing who we are, discovering whose we are, and deciding where we’re going. We can recognize and envision a new way of living through our relationship with God—not dependent on an all-powerful deity, but independent to discover and embrace the God-presence that lives within each of us.

This article reveals still reason why we should follow Jesus—why I follow Jesus. When all is said and done that we can say and do, following Jesus leads us along the way to become fully human. In the fullness of our humanity, we can embrace full depth of our relationship with God. We can begin to embrace our calling as full partners with God, shaping this world according to God’s vision of Shalom.

Judgment Day is the ultimate metaphor for self-reflection. The Christian tradition describes God as the One from whom nothing is hidden—no secrets, no deception. We may hide our deepest secrets from our friends, our families and life partners and even from ourselves, but not from God. So the prospect of standing before God and reviewing how we’ve lived our lives is a very daunting scenario!

To the extent the Bible depicts God’s ultimate judgment, it tends to turn not on correct belief, but on internalized values that lead to life choices. It is the nature of those choices that determines the judgment. For example, in one of Jesus’ parables, the sole criterion was what was done for Christ who was present in “the least of these.” Jesus showed us the face of God in a human face. Through his life, his teaching, and what he has left us, we’re able to know God more clearly. Jesus was also a mirror for us to see the fullness of our own humanity, to see ourselves as we can be and seek to be that best self

You can’t hide out in this life—not ultimately. There really is no way through this life but to move through it, to get to know ourselves more honestly and clearly, and to meet our challenges with courage and daring. There is no hiding place. When we stand on Judgment Day, it won’t be a theology test or a popularity contest. It will be more like that story of the ancient Rabbi Zuscha who, on his death bed responded to a question about life after death. The rabbi said, “I don’t really know about life after death. But one thing I do know: when I get there I am not going to be asked, ‘Why weren’t you Moses?’ or ‘Why weren’t you David?’ I am going to be asked, ‘Why weren’t you Zuscha?’” (from Invitations by Francis Dewar, 15)  Why weren’t you you?

Poet W. H. Auden wrote this chilling verse:

God may reduce you on Judgment Day

to tears of shame

reciting by heart the poems

you would have written,

had your life been good. (Epilogue, About the House, 23)

What does it mean for your life to have been good? What about the poems you would write if your life were good? What poems will our congregations write if our life is to be good?

God knows us fully, loves us totally. God invites us both to know ourselves and to act as a result. There is an urgency that we engage in this process now. Self-knowledge comes through prayer and meditation, taking the time in your life to be still and sense God’s presence within and around you. Self-knowledge comes by learning to lean into that presence in living your life. Self knowledge also comes through honest one-to-one conversations with others–each other and those with whom we feel uncomfortable. All this is not to earn God’s love. That is a given. It is not so much to determine where we will go when we die, but it is to enable heaven to be more fully present here and now as we live.