Is Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior?

This is a question that Marble Church asks every candidate for membership. It's not a question unique to this church (believe me, we didn't make it up). Pretty much every church, everywhere, asks persons who would join that body to make a personal declaration of faith in Jesus.

As basic as this declaration of faith is to Christian identity, I venture to say that there is no more complex and soul-wrenching statement to make for many of you than to declare, with full confidence, "Jesus is my Lord and Savior."

I was sitting in my office this week with a woman who expressed her reticence. She grew up in church, but came, as an adult, to see too many churches riddled with hypocrisies--too mean, too narrow, too rich, too lazy--to find their statements of faith in Jesus remotely credible. She also came to see the statement itself as too narrow. She feels blessed to have been exposed to the wisdom of the Jewish and Buddhist traditions, and she appreciates enough about them to pause in making what appears, by all respects, to be an exclusive identification with Jesus as the only source of wisdom or divine guidance. She asked me if there were space for her at Marble. I said...

Let me get to what I said in a minute. First let me tell you how I understand the profession of faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior for myself.

In my life, after being raised in church as a boy, I came to Jesus as an adult. I met Jesus again (as Marcus Borg says in his book of the same title) for the first time. The Jesus that I have been introduced to through preaching, reading theology, and primarily through my reading the stories of the Gospels, is a Jesus that I need in my life. There is a power that Jesus shows--humble, loving, forgiving, justice-making power--that is the kind of power to which I feel inclined to yield my own life. There are very few worldly powers to which I am willing to bend myself in deference--but in Jesus, I see true power. And Jesus shares his power with me; I become more powerful when I yield my life to Christ. So I feel comfortable when I make a statement that reflects my obedience to the power that experience in Jesus: I say, "Jesus is my Lord." It means that Jesus rules my life; what he says, goes.

I have also experienced that my life is made richer by Jesus' presence. I tried, as a young adult, to make a life on my own, according to my own terms. I tried to make sense of the world without the help of Jesus' teachings. I could not. I tried to develop a life in which I felt good about myself and saw myself as worthwhile and honorable. I also could not do that on my own. I tried to create a life in which I could develop the habits and practices that made me feel like I was having a positive impact on the world and get rid of the habits that were degrading myself or others. I also could not do that on my own. But with Jesus' presence in my life, I feel like I am able to be a real self and my best self. The person I am since I started following Jesus is better, happier, more at peace then the person who tried to go it on his own, by his own power. I could not be who I am without Jesus. Therefore, I gladly say, "Jesus is my savior." Jesus saved my life, making it far better than I was able to do on my own.

The final piece that I will add is that I do not understand my own faith declaration to be an exclusivist claim. It is not meant to devalue the faith or truth claims of others. It encompasses my life and my life only. That is as far as the power of my words can cover. They cannot make any claim upon your life. I have seen beautiful lives emerge in followers of Buddhism, Islam, Judaism. I cannot make any claim over the truth of those religions--I have never seen them from the inside, never walked in those shoes. All I am able to say is that for my life, Jesus is Lord and Savior. And I pray that my faithfulness to that commitment makes my life a thing of beauty, too.

Back to the conversation. I told her that Marble is a Christian church. As a pastor, it is my job to teach and preach the good news of Jesus Christ. My job is to tell a story of the world in which Jesus Christ is a unique and decisive revelation from God. It is not my story--it is the story of the church since its beginning; I am a teacher of this story. As a pastor, it is my job to guide each participant in the life of this congregation in their encounter with this story. Where does the story of Jesus intersect with your life? What does it show you about yourself? Each of us is unique--I don't know where your encounter with Jesus will lead you. Perhaps it will be to a profession of personal faith and joining the church. Perhaps it will lead you to a path of deeper searching, harder questioning, no easy answers, and no ability to speak the words "Lord" and "Savior" with full integrity. That's just as honorable a path. But I do believe that in either case, an individual's life is deeply enriched by an authentic encounter with Jesus. And I believe the world is enriched by the existence of a group of people--the church--who have been led to a profession of faith, and who are ready to live, with full intention and energy, the humble, loving, forgiving, justice-making lives that a profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior requires of those who utter those words.

Hope this sheds some light for you on this important part of the Christian journey. I'd love to hear your comments, challenges, or questions.