It is at moments like this
that make me wonder why,
several months ago,
I agreed to deliver the sermon this morning.  

Anyone who knows me, knows
that I don't possess
the gift of public speaking.
I do speak publicly as part of my job
on the university faculty,
but I still get "stage fright",
especially on the first day of classes.
And delivering a sermon is considerably more difficult.  

One big reason for my discomfort
in preparing and delivering a sermon,
compared to my academic area of expertise
(operations research or management science-- basically,
mathematical modeling and
analysis of industrial systems),
is that I can speak confidently
with a certain level of authority
in the classroom.
Although many people do speak authoritatively
on matters of faith,
I'm uncomfortable with their pronouncements,
and uncomfortable delivering my own.  

Another reason for the difficulty
of talking about matters of personal faith,
sharing the most private aspects
of our being-- our faith--
is that it leaves us vulnerable
to the judgment of others.
Some of you may not only disagree
with what I will say this morning,
but may even judge some of it to be heretical.

Differences,
diversity of opinion,
expressing doubts--
these can be good for the church, I think,
if they can be discussed openly
and not used to judge the character
of those expressing different opinions,
creating "walls" or barriers within the church.
It is sad to see a church
in which people are unable to express their doubts
or differences of opinion
because they fear that others
will call the validity of their faith into question,
that walls will be erected
so that the fellowship which they value
will be damaged.

So let me begin with the disclaimer
that I don't claim to be speaking with authority.
My purpose is not to convince you
of the truth of what I might say.
Rather, my purpose is to present some ideas
which might stimulate you to examine your beliefs--
to stimulate your thinking,
so that whether you agree or disagree with these ideas,
your faith may be enriched in the process.  

I've titled this sermon "Like Son, Like Father"
in order to make the point
that our knowledge of God
does not tell us what Jesus His Son is like--
rather, it is our knowledge of Jesus,
based not only on his life as recorded in the gospels,
but also on the living presence of Christ
which we can experience today...
it is our knowledge of Jesus
which tells us what God is like.  

That's only one point that I want to make.
A second is that being a Christian
is not about believing certain things about Jesus and God.
Rather, it is about our relationship with Jesus and God.
Thirdly
(and this follows from the second, I think)
I want to plead that as Christians,
we must not try to put Truth
into a box made of human language.
The human mind and human language are inadequate
to comprehend the mystery of God,
so that any statement of "belief" cannot be Truth,
but only a hint of the Truth.
It can only point in the direction of Truth,
and always subject to being restated
so as to give us another angle on the same Truth.  

There, I've given away the plot...
If you wish you can now doze off
and not miss the gist of what I'm about to say.
I felt it necessary to enumerate these points at the beginning because, frankly,
looking back over what I've written,
it seems rather disorganized,
with no clear delineation of these three points.
(I learned in a preaching class long ago,
that exactly three points are a basic requirement of a sermon.)  

So, that said,
let me repeat my earlier disclaimer:
I don't claim to be speaking with authority.
My purpose is not to convince you of what I will say
or to change your beliefs.
Rather, my purpose is to present some ideas
which might stimulate you to examine your beliefs--
and to stimulate your thinking--
so that you may eventually gain some insight --
get a glimpse of the Truth from a different angle, perhaps.

Let me begin with what I do know with some authority:
some of my background.
I think that this will explain
how I arrived at many of the ideas
that I'll get to later --
in fact, it might even explain it better
to you than it does to me!  

I grew up on a farm in southern Illinois.
I now know that my Bricker ancestors
were probably Mennonite,
but I didn't even know the name "Mennonite"
until I was an adult.
My family attended the Methodist Church.
I attended the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana,
with a major in mathematics and minor in physics.  

Most of my undergraduate days
I had no interest in religion.
I considered myself to be Christian in some sense,
but I was what I would now call
a "practical atheist",
that is, one who may profess to believe in God,
but one who, for all practical purposes,
lives as though God does not exist.
In my senior year,
I had became involved with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF).
I was a "loner" in college,
but was attracted to the atmosphere of friendship
which I saw in the IVCF members.  

On the other hand,
their meetings raised a lot of questions, mostly theological,
which were unsettling to me--
the major one being the problem of why a God,
if He exists,
allows such suffering and evil in his creation.  

Other issues which troubled me included
the divinity of Jesus,
the concept of the substitutionary atonement,
the authority of the Bible, and
the historicity of the resurrection,
to name just a few.
I wrestled with these questions for several months,
and, during the winter break of my senior year,
attended "Urbana '64",
the missionary conference
which is held every three years by IVCF
on the University of Illinois campus.  

I must have expected to find some answers there
to these questions which were troubling me,
but I don't recall them ever addressed
in any significant way.
What I did observe there was
that Jesus was a reality in so many lives,
and that this gave a strong sense of purpose
to many persons.
My graduation was looming only a semester away,
which must have pressured me
to give more thought to my future,
and I estimated my chances of making wrong choices,
of messing up my life without any clear goals or purpose,
were very high indeed!

On New Year's Eve,
the final meeting of the conference,
in an audience of many thousands,
I remember feeling disappointed
by my failure to get answers to my questions,
and frustrated by my lack of purpose.
This wasn't getting me anywhere!
I as much as said, to hell with these questions!
During the midnight communion service,
in the last few minutes of the conference,
I had a profound experience of Christ
and committed myself and my life to following Him.
It's difficult to convey in words
anything of what I experienced--
it was a conviction that Jesus was present,
not "outside" but within me,
and that I was loved and accepted.
Every thought became a prayer,
because it occurred in His presence.
That evening I had put Him in charge of my life
and trusted Him to make the decisions--
a naive idea, I was to learn later,
as I still had to struggle over many decisions
(but not alone, let me add!)

I felt convinced that,
although my natural inclination is
to hole up in a lab or at a computer
and to avoid much human contact,
I was intended for a career--
or I should say a vocation (calling)--
in college teaching.
This change in thinking in itself I consider miraculous,
because it was totally out of character for me.
I hadn't given such a career a first thought,
let alone a second thought,
because of my big problem with shyness
and my dread of dealing with people,
especially groups of people!
But it seemed to me
that the college years provide a person
with opportunities for reflection
and inquiry into matters of faith.
And, as in my own experience,
a need to make some choices
-- not only about a career
but about values more generally,
and that I had a calling
to be a witness for Christ in a college setting.  

(So, after several more degrees
in math and engineering,
some seminary education,
a job with IBM,
I finally accepted a teaching position
here at the University of Iowa 24 years ago!)  

Let me describe another aspect of my experience
that New Year's Eve,
so as to help you understand
where I'll be coming from in my later discussion.
When I made this commitment to Jesus,
I set aside those questions
which had been central in my thinking
the previous several months
(the problem of evil, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, the atonement, etc.)
and committed myself to a person,
not a set of doctrines.  

"Believe and be saved", it is said.
I had come to no conclusions about what to believe
on these and other issues!
I didn't even, as some Christians insist is necessary...
I didn't even confess my sins,
repent and ask for forgiveness.  

There's a danger
in expecting other persons' Christian experiences
to match your own
-- I certainly encountered a lot of that
when I described my "conversion" experience.
Some of my Christian friends with an evangelical bent,
such as those at IVCF,
questioned the authenticity of my experience
because it didn't seem to fit their mold.
Likewise, my more "mainstream" Christian friends
viewed my experience with skepticism as well,
considering it to be
merely an emotional experience.

And it certainly was an emotional experience.
And as those of you who know me can verify,
I am not by nature an emotional person.
But I could not discount it as "merely" emotional
and therefore not a valid experience
of the living presence of Jesus.
It was what I would call
a "self-validating" experience for me,
but of course not self-validating to anyone outside of my skin!  

Like the man
whose eyesight was restored by Jesus
and who was later questioned
by the authorities investigating Jesus,
asking the man to draw some conclusions
about who Jesus was.
Like that man,
I cannot draw any theological conclusions
from the experience.
I can only affirm as he did,
speaking (metaphorically in my case)
"One thing I do know:
that though I was blind, now I see." (John 9:25)

So, even with the caveat
that each individual's experience may be different
and none "normative",
perhaps I risk sounding authoritative
when I suggest that being a Christian means
making the decision to follow Jesus as a disciple,
rather than affirming certain beliefs and doctrines
about the divinity of Jesus,
about the mechanism of the atonement,
about the resurrection,
to name just a few beliefs
which some Christians consider
to be of such "fundamental" importance
as to serve as a litmus test for one's faith.  

As I see it,
Jesus in the gospels asked those whom he called,
"Follow me".
He called them to be his disciples,
that is, his students,
so that they might learn from him.
He didn't insist on their first affirming belief
in any creed or doctrine!
It was only after they had lived with him,
shared his sorrows and triumphs,
listened to his sermons,
that they came to realize something
of who he is,
and to believe,
so that Peter could finally affirm
that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ!
I think that is the way that Jesus dealt with people
both then and now...
calling them to learn from Him,
to get to know Him,
not calling them to "belief".  

So I am of the strong opinion
that believing the "right things" is not a prerequisite
for becoming a Christian.
Nor, I think, is repentance a prerequisite.
-- on the contrary,
in my experience,
it's only after living daily with Jesus
that we begin to realize how far we fall short
of the way that Jesus wants us to live,
and how much of which we have to repent of!

The problem with those who prepare creeds
is that they assume
that it is possible to use words to state an absolute truth,
while I am convinced that God is so transcendent
that he cannot be grasped by the human mind,
and that it is presumptuous,
even blasphemous,
for us to pretend otherwise.
Those who prepare creeds
might speak of the mystery of God,
but then they try to define that mystery
as though it were possible,
when we can only hint at its nature with metaphors.
Human language is simply inadequate to contain God!  

To say that Jesus is the "Son of God"
is speaking metaphorically.
It is using a concept about biology,
about creatures,
about human society,
to say something about the relationship of Jesus
to God, his Father (another metaphor!)
If it were not a metaphor,
how exactly is "Son of God" defined?
What exactly does it mean?
Paul tells us that all the followers of Jesus
are "children of God".
Jesus calls the sons of Zebedee,
who were two of his disciples,
"Sons of Thunder".
Were they litterally descendents of Thor,
the "god" of thunder?
or did they only share some characteristics,
such as being loud and boisterous,
or perhaps subject to losing their temper?
The Bible often refers to
the "hand of God",
the "face of God",
the "breath of God"
(which is usually translated "spirit").
All metaphors.
But no less true because they are metaphors.  

We believe in the divinity of Jesus,
but what exactly do we mean by that?
Several years ago I discovered a book
entitled Jesus Before Christianity,
by Albert Nolan.
Listen to Nolan's response to the question
about the divinity of Jesus:  

Nolan is saying
that many Christians
have preconceived notions about God
and then use those preconceived notions
to describe what Jesus is like.
They assume that they know what God is like,
and then make the mistake of concluding
that Jesus was God walking on earth in the body of a man.
These Christians who knew what God is like
then use this knowledge
to imagine what God would be like
as he walked the earth inside Jesus.
As they say, "Like Father, like Son".
Because God is
--omniscient,
--omnipotent,
--"omni- (you fill in the blank)",
therefore Jesus must be also.
If Jesus is God, they say,
then, being omniscient,
he knew everything,
even, I suppose, including
the special theory of relativity,
the structure and function of DNA, etc.
Nolan is saying that we have this backwards
-- that we should be saying,
"Like Son, like Father"!
From what we know of Jesus,
we can extrapolate to say something about God.
(And even so, as Paul says,
we see "as in a glass, darkly",
a pale reflection of God's Truth,
not as "face-to-face".)  

According to the gospel of Matthew
which was read by [the worship leader],
Jesus claimed that
"no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom
the Son chooses to reveal Him."
(Matthew 11:27)

Of course God was known
for centuries by the people of Israel...
God the Creator,
God the Heavenly King, ....
But it is Jesus who reveals to us the"Father".
It is Jesus who taught us
that God is our "Abba"
(the informal word typically used by children
who spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus,
a word which is equivalent to our own "Daddy" or "Papa").  

Marcus Borg has written a book titled
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time,
by which he means
proceeding from a secondhand religion
to a firsthand religion.
It is a book which I highly recommend.
(I was pleased to learn
that my daughter at Bethel College
was assigned this book as a text last year.)  

Let me read a paragraph from this book:

In fact, in the same book, Borg argues that
"believing in Jesus" does not at all mean
"believing things about Jesus".
The word in the original Greek of the New Testament
which is translated "believe",
in its Greek roots, means "to give one's heart to".
In fact,
even the English word "believe"
has its roots in the German word "belieben",
which differs from "to believe" in the English sense.
Rather, it has the meaning "to belove ",
from which we get the more common word "beloved".
That is, according to Borg,
"to believe in Jesus" means
"to make Jesus your beloved".  

When Melinda and I first became acquainted
with the Mennonites,
which was in Evanston (Illinois)
while I was a seminary student,
we felt as though we had finally found a "home".
Partly we were attracted by the pacifist position of the Mennonites.
(These were the years of the late 60's and early 70's,
during the Vietnam conflict!)
I wasn't a very vocal activist against the war,
but at seminary I become convinced
that Jesus's way was the way of pacifism,
and I felt affirmed by the Mennonites' firm commitment to pacifism.
I also appreciated the Mennonites' emphasis
on discipleship and community,
and their respect for the Bible without,
as do many evangelical churches,
insisting on its inerrancy and ultimate authority.  

I was also impressed by the discovery that
the Mennonite Church has no theological litmus test for membership
-- only a commitment to Jesus as Lord and to his church is insisted upon
for baptism and membership,
not (for example)
an affirmation of the Apostle's Creed (which we seldom recite).
Which is not to imply that Mennonites have
fewer theological beliefs
-- only that these beliefs may be quite diverse,
and not used in order to define who is or is not an authentic Christian.
I think it's fair to say that
Mennonites are less concerned about orthodoxy
(that is, right beliefs)
than about orthopraxy (right practice, i.e., obedience
to the teachings of Jesus in life).  

It has been my observation
that many Christian students who arrive at the university
are afraid to be challenged in their beliefs,
and unwilling to engage in an intellectual inquiry.
I think that this fear results
from the mistaken notion (mistaken in my view)
that the Christian must commit himself or herself
to certain beliefs and truths,
and that to abandon those beliefs
would endanger his or her relationship to Jesus.
These students read the Bible and in effect respond,
"God said it,
I believe it,
that settles it!"
This attitude, in turn,
reinforces the attitude that non-Christians have
about the place of Christianity in the university community.
In their minds,
the stereotypical Christian is closed-minded,
not sincerely willing to dialogue about the meaning (or lack of meaning) of life,
even pushing their beliefs onto others
without really allowing themselves to listen to the other's ideas or questions.
As a result,
the non-Christian becomes closed-minded
to the possibility of finding truth in Christianity.
The search for truth is one of the highest endeavors of the university community,
with the hope that the "truth will set us free",
but few students,
whether Christian or non-Christian,
really engage in this endeavor with open minds.  

Years ago, when I was a student
and society less secular,
students were very private about their faith
or lack of it,
thinking that
if their non-beliefs were exposed
they would be considered not-OK by others.
Nowadays, perhaps,
they are private about any interest they might have in faith
because if exposed,
they would be considered naive, unsophisticated, and anti-intellectual
by their fellow students and their instructors.  

As stated by Carolyn Liebert in the recent issue of the newsletter of the university's Center for Teaching,
 

That strikes me as perhaps a bit too idealistic:
I think that many,
both believers and nonbelievers,
never pass into that second phase,
in which they are willing
to investigate other evidence
and accepting the possibility
that many viewpoints might be valid,
and that their own ideas may be wrong.
I think that we Christians on campus need
to strongly encourage the kind of dialogue
in which persons can openly and honestly
discuss religious questions and issues.
And I hasten to add that I'm not referring
only to the students,
but to all of us in the university community!
Too many of us are committed to our own ideas,
and refuse to accept the possibility that other ideas are also valid,
and that their own ideas may be wrong.
We are too often convinced
that we have been able to package truth in a box
constructed with human language
and feel threatened by suggestions
that truth is too big to fit into any box.  

As Robert Frost has said,
 

• Jesus Before Christianity, by Albert Nolan, Orbis Books, 1976.

• Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, by Marcus J. Borg, HarperCollins, 1994.

• The God We Never Knew, by Marcus J. Borg, HarperCollins, 1998.