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...

Who was Jesus?

The carpenter Joseph's son? An itinerant preacher? An executed political revolutionary? The Son of God?

The books of the Bible give Jesus many names:

Alpha and Omega (Rev. 1:8; 22:13)
Author and Perfecter of our Faith (Heb. 12:2)
Bread of Life (John 6:35; 6:48)
Bridegroom (Mt. 9:15)
Cornerstone (Eph. 2:20)
Christ (1 John 2:22)
Firstborn over all creation (Col. 1:15)
Gate (John 10:9)
Good Shepherd (John 10:11,14)

Lent is my favorite time of the year. It's an introverted perfectionist's paradise, chock full of ascetic self-discipline and white-knuckled soul-searching. All of the things that bring me true joy in life!

My Lenten commitment is to tighten the screws on my rickety machine.

Food

Goal: Rice only every day for lunch (except when I'm invited to lunch, when the graciousness demanded by the invitation precludes saying "no, I'm fasting"), fewer sweets, more water.

So far: Doing OK. First day or two on rice and water felt great. Felt the sugary madness leave me. I even hungered for healthier dinners... which is rare for me—I only ever hunger for fatty, sugary things. The last few days have been a struggle. Rice has felt forced and unfulfilling. This is not a complete shock, I might add.

My morning meditations today drew me to words from Fred Buechner, one of the eloquent pastor-authors of our time. He writes about a pivotal moment in his spiritual journey, when his mind became fixed on a single learning objective: "I wanted to learn about Christ," Buechner writes:

"about the Old Testament, which had been his Bible, and the New Testament, which was the Bible about him; about the history of the church, which had been founded on the faith that through him God had not only revealed his innermost nature and his purpose for the world, but had released into the world a fierce power to draw people into that nature and adapt them to that purpose, the church that not even the assorted barbarities and blunders of its ragged two thousand years had ever quite managed finally to discredit or destry; about the theological systems that the passion of his original followers, and of Saint Paul in particular, had been distilled into."

That's a lot to learn about. Millions of books written on the topics. But learning about Christ, for Beuchner, was more than book learning.

Would you trade in a job (call it "Job A") that paid you $400,000 a year for a job (call it "Job B") that paid you $29,000?

What if A had the potential to make you much, much more money in the future, but B would never be more than what pays the bills? What if you excelled in A and your employers saw a bright future for you there, while job B would cause you frustration and sleepless nights? What if job A would likely make you famous and make you an object of adoring fans and sexual attention, while B would relegate you to anonymity and eliminate any chance of a meaningful romance?

Is there any one of you who would choose Job B over Job A? You'd have to be nuts.

Do you ever feel like you're not there yet?

You're headed somewhere in life. You may even have a vaguely clear idea of where it is you're going and a few of the ways that you might, eventually, get there... but what you know for sure is that, as of now, you're definitely not there yet.

It's amazing that I still feel this way. I have a job that I went to grad school for. I am married. I had a dog that I traded in for two beautiful kids. I have dental insurance, for crying out loud. Aren't I here?

But I'm not there yet. I often feel on the move, unsettled.

Some of you reading this turned in your pledge card on Sunday. Hooray! Some of you didn't, and your only comfort is that you're not alone: we've received 300 cards (we expect 850)!

Pledging to church is not the first thing on your mind these days, I know. If any of you saw me Sunday, I was filling out my card on the chancel during worship. Very bad form, I know.

For those of you who haven't pledged, the easiest thing is to pledge online at www.marblechurch.org. The church needs your pledge to know how to budget responsibly for 2010. If we don't know what we expect to receive, we can't plan effective ministry. So get on it after you read this!

This last stewardship email discusses your pledge of service. How are you pledging to serve in 2010?

As we approach Thanksgiving, we start counting the things in our lives for which we are thankful for, and I count each of you. I continue to feel incredibly supported by you and by your prayers and your love for my family. Thank you. We still need your support, so keep it coming!

I'm grateful, too, for the richness of life that we have together at Marble. I guarantee you, there are few, if any, progressive churches in this city that gather a community as diverse and loving as ours. You make that possible when you bring your honesty and your faithfulness to the church every Sunday.

This upcoming Sunday is Commitment Sunday at Marble. During worship, you will turn in your pledge card, upon which you are to indicate your pledge of support for Marble in 2010. I know all of you will give some kind of financial gift.

As we approach the second week of the 2009 Marble Stewardship Campaign, I want to talk to you for a minute about the importance of your presence at Marble.

One way that you can support your church in 2010 is by pledging to be here. By "being here," I mean regularly attending church events: worship, education, small groups, concerts, service opportunities. You support your church when you bring yourself here, body and spirit.

A lot of people feel like we don't need to show up at church to find God. In principle, I agree. God doesn't live in churches only—how boring would that be for God! In fact, one might argue, based on Jesus' example, that God rarely spends time in churches. Jesus went to religious gatherings primarily to critique them for their insularity and hypocrisy, so maybe, you think, we can know God without going to church that much.

This week, I write the first of four letters to you about stewardship. "Stewardship" is shorthand for your responsibility, as a participant in Marble, to support and care for our ministries and programs. You support the church by giving your 1) prayers; 2) presence; 3) money; and 4) service. This week, we begin with prayers.

Unfortunately, everyone at Marble is not flush with cash. We struggle to make ends meet every month and to save for the future, now more than ever. Stewardship season can hit us pretty hard. It can make some of us feel like spiritual freeloaders, because we won't be writing big checks.

But no matter our financial status, I dare say all of us are poor in another way: poor in the amount of time we make in our lives for quiet prayer.