I want to believe

A sermon for First Baptist Church of Austin, Texas

Reformation Sunday

October 30, 2022

John 8:31-36

I want to believe 

What does it mean to know someone? 

You can know a lot about a person by their social media presence. You can know things like a person’s favorite clothing store, their drink of choice, if they like to exercise, write sermons for a living, or enjoy traveling. You can see when they are walking their kid to school, photos of their best friends, and the latest product they are promoting. You can see where they go on vacations, if they prefer the mountains over the beach.

Is this what it means to know someone though? 

I know a lot about Lizzo, and olympic marathoners, and the bakery shop owner down the street simply from watching their instagram stories or seeing their posts. Yes, they are real people, with real things going on in their lives.  But I’ve never once had a conversation with any of these people.  I’ve never been able to sit down at a table for coffee or happy hour to catch up. And believe me, I’d love the chance to sit down with Lizzo over coffee, wouldn’t you?

Social media gives us a false sense of familiarity about each other.  We think we know someone because we can observe their life behind a tiny glass screen that we can hold in our hands.  We know the details of their lives that used to be reserved for discussions around tabletops and couches and church potlucks.  

Social media lets us be anonymous watchers of the every day lives of acquaintances. We are spending hours of our day scrolling through their images, tricking ourselves into thinking this counts as connecting to another human being, that this counts as getting to know someone for who they are. 

Knowing someone isn’t the same as knowing facts about them.  You might be able to search the internet for the answer to Lizzo’s favorite movie.  But if you were able to ask her yourself,  she might give you insight into why it’s her favorite movie, or about her experience seeing it for the first time. or maybe she would share her favorite scene.  This element of communicating is personal, intimate in a way that fact finding isn’t. 

For Jesus, being a disciple is not simply knowing facts about him.  Yes, we know Jesus performed some incredible miracles like turning water into wine.  Yes, we know Jesus was a preacher, unafraid to speak truth to power. Yes, we know Jesus had compassion for sinners, showing mercy when religious leaders wouldn’t. Yes, we know Jesus loved his friends so much so that when his friend Lazarus dies, he wept.  This is the social media view of Jesus, the fact sheet of his life. 

But simple belief isn’t enough.  It’s not enough to say a prayer, professing statements of fact.  It’s not enough to recite Bible verses. It’s not enough to show up at church on a Sunday morning. It’s not enough to “be a good person.” It’s not enough to rest on the laurels of faith

Belief in Jesus requires action, the action of knowing who Jesus is and letting it permeate into every space in your soul We make room for Jesus’ words to govern our actions. How do the words of Jesus influence what you do? Or what you say? Or how you treat someone with a different skin color or sexuality as yourself? Do the principles of Christ influence your political views or where you spend you money? Would a stranger be able to recognize God in you?

Being a disciple is the active pursuit of growing in wisdom and knowledge and letting it permeate every part of who you are. It’s allowing Jesus’ words to challenge and change you and its sometimes admitting that you don’t have all the answers. It’s trusting the person of Jesus rather than a set of ideas trickled down to us from the mainstream, conventional wisdom.  It’s letting go of what’s easy for what’s true. It’s evolving and adapting and being challenged by living a life like Jesus.  It’s being unashamed to persevere when society thinks your belief is too much. It’s going all in with this Jesus thing. 

In 1993, a science fiction drama series began airing on the Fox network.  Two FBI agents named Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were tasked to investigate paranormal phenomena around the country. Mulder, prone to conspiracy theories and possessing a strong belief in the existence of the extraterrestrial was an unlikely partner for the rational, analytical, most-of-the-time skeptical medical doctor that was Dana Scully. Driven by his belief that his sister was abducted by aliens, Mulder dedicated his entire life and career to uncover the truth about her abduction, and he drug Scully along for validation. 

As a career FBI agent, Mulder had access to hundreds of case files that most people considered ridiculous or far fetched. In his dark and dank basement office, away from others, so as not to infect other agents with his beliefs, Mulder would pour over the cases, learning as much as he could about paranormal phenomena. The poster over his desk flaunted a grainy picture of an unidentified object flying through the sky with the words, “I want to believe,” written under it, solidifying in any visitors mind that this guy was all in with the UFO thing. 

Every Sunday night for 9 years, millions tuned in at 8pm to see what new unsolved case Mulder and Scully would look to investigate, including my dorky middle school self and my alien obsessed group of friends.  I was committed to this X-Files fan club. I tried as hard as I could to never miss an episode. (And that was a feat in the 90s! You had to be physically present to watch a show that was broadcasted over the airwaves.  There was no such thing as Hulu or streaming! And if you were lucky, you could get your mom to press record on the VCR so you could watch it later.) If I did miss an episode, I had my friends recount all the details. 

Ah, if only you could see the inside door of my school locker. It was covered with pictures of Mulder and Scully, wielding guns as they ran in the dark, chasing after some unknown entity. The posters on the wall of my bedroom weren’t what you’d typically find in a teenager’s room.  Very little N’SYNC, but lots of Mulder and Scully.

And somehow my proclivity to believing in the unbelievable translated well for me. Now I am a Baptist minister, leading others to belief in the supernatural. Jesus instead of little green men.  Miracles instead of conspiracy theories. Healings instead of alien abductions. But, I digress. 

When you are committed to a belief system, like Mulder was, it consumes your every waking thought.  It transforms who you are and oozes out into every interaction with others. You eat, sleep, and breathe your belief. You might get called crazy or foolish, simple minded or fanatical. But when you know something to be true, have experienced it’s truth first hand, it’s impossible not let it transform you.  It’s impossible to stop searching for it, grabbing onto every ounce of fact you can. It’s an addiction that keeps you going back for more. It becomes your identity as a person. 

I know for me, I desperately wanted to believe in something bigger than myself. I wanted to believe in the supernatural, in the facts that took effort to uncover.  I wanted in on the secret, that this life was more than just what meets the eye. I wanted to be a part of a community dedicated to searching for the truth. I wanted to belong to the group that asked the same questions I was asking. 

And when I met Jesus, it all seemed to click for me. Being a disciple of Christ was the answer to my deep longings, my desire to belong, my need to know the truth. Did I have questions? Like one million.  But I was set free from the fear that my questions would be left ignored.  I joined a community of fellow questioners, ones who were unafraid to doubt, to question everything but view life through the lens of Christ.  

This is the power of being a disciple of Christ. It should transform our was of thinking and our way being into a way of living that is unrecognizable from the world. One that speaks truth to the status quo.  One that also endures the hardships that arise along the way.

Jesus wants disciples like Mulder, committed to holding on to the truth, despite what others would say. Jesus wants disciples who understand the transforming power of the gospel message and live it…ones that are obsessed with emulating the way of Jesus life on earth, not waiting around for some version of the afterlife. Disciples that are willing to ask the hard questions, search for answers, and discover truth. It’s faith with agency.

Diana Butler Bass tells a story of her favorite neighborhood barista, a young Muslim woman. One day, she noticed that this woman wasn’t wearing her usual black hijab. Instead, she was wearing a bright green scarf edged with sparkling sequins.  Diana complimented her on her beautiful scarf in which the woman replied, “you know, they told me I had to wear black.” “What?” “The rules. They said I had to wear black. But I didn’t believe it. So I looked it up myself. I don’t have to wear black! I can wear any color I want.” 

Diana writes, “I didn’t know whether she was speaking of some religious authority or her boss, but it didn’t matter. She had searched the “rules” for herself, not listening to someone else’s interpretation, but reading the text on her own.” 

As Christians, we have a responsibility to actively engage in knowing Jesus, reinterpreting our sacred texts if necessary and finding truth, wisdom, and strength in them. And today is, Reformation Sunday, after all, a day we acknowledge the birth of a new way of thinking, a new way of understanding our faith. Martin Luther got fed up with the falsehoods being preached in churches and the way the Pope and his leaders were profiting off people’s ignorance so he boldly spoke out to condemn their corrupt practices.

This was a revolutionary act of speaking truth to power! Ever evolving, ever adapting, there isn’t one holder of truth.  It’s not owned by anyone. It’s not owned by me, the Pope, or some denominational leader.  Sometimes we have to speak up against the injustices and corruption of those in power, even if that means standing against other Christians.  That might look like being a loud voice against Christian nationalism, a very real threat to democracy.  It might look like standing up for the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. It might look like teaching the history of racism and our role in the oppression of minority races in America. 

Our belief in the truth, that all people are beloved children of God,  should allow us to look at the church with humility and admit where we have gone wrong, how we have hurt people in the name of Jesus… and force us to do better. We have to do better. 

Would Jesus even recognize us as his disciples? Have we remained faithful to his teachings? 

On this Reformation Sunday, may we see the value in rethinking our beliefs to see if they represent the Jesus that we know… and then take that into the world. Let's go all in, yall.