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What a month it has been already. Two Mondays ago I was returning from Turkey from an Interfaith Dialogue trip where American Christians and Turkish Muslims discussed the commonalities and distinctions of our religions and customs. This past Monday, only one week after returning from Turkey, I was headed to Lakeview as a counselor for Senior High District Youth Camp. Once again I found myself in a foreign land, trying to understand another language – the language of youth. We kind of had our own Interfaith Dialogue or perhaps Intra-faith Dialogue. One of the questions that began the camp was, “Could Jesus create a puppy so cute that not even he himself could resist petting it?” Ahh, the depth of the teenage mind!

Today we continue our “We Believe” series. Our statement regarding Jesus reads, “ Jesus Christ - Jesus, fully human and fully divine, who lived without sin as a perfect example, assumed the judgment due sinners by dying on the cross in our place, was raised from the dead, ascended to the heavenly Father, and offers salvation to all who repent and put their faith in Him as Lord of their lives.” That’s a lot of words, but when I was in Senior High there was a song that came out that I have not forgotten. It was a rather simple song sung by Andrae Crouch and The Disciples. I want to teach the chorus to you today. It is entitled, “Jesus is the Answer”. The chorus is this:

Jesus is the answer for the world today; above him there's no other, Jesus is the way.
Jesus is the answer for the world today; above him there's no other, Jesus is the way.

It’s a rather simple song, but it has the potential to speak profoundly to our world if we are able to hear the questions properly. Sometimes we make life quite complicated and complex – this is nothing new. The Corinthians were known for doing this 2,000 years ago. They had heard the preaching of Paul that focused on Jesus and his amazing grace, but then they wanted to sophisticate it a bit by bringing in the wise philosophies of their Greek culture and weaving them into this rather rudimentary religion called Christianity. Soon they became known as the pneumatikos, the spiritual ones, with their divine insights into the secrets of God – it was an elite status in the church of Corinth. Paul was concerned about this complicating and diluting of the faith and wrote a rather simple creed to the Corinthians found in I Corinthians 15:3-4. Hear now the Word of the Lord:

3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

The Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

In this passage Paul corrected the Corinthians complexities, by clearly stating Christ’s role in their lives. Jesus was set forth as a One Man Saving Crew who had the answers of God with us, God for us and God in us. Paul was saying the same thing that Andrae Crouch and the Disciples said when I was in high school. Will you sing it with me?

Jesus is the answer, but what exactly is the question?

To the question, “Where is God?” Jesus’ life is the answer: Emmanuel – God with us.

Paul introduced this ancient creed as something of primary significance, “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ…” The title Christ - which had previously been reserved for the Anointed One, the Messiah, the promised Redeemer from God – was now being used as a proper noun referring to Jesus of Nazareth, God with us, Emmanuel, the incarnate God. Jesus is the answer to the question, “Where is God?” In fact, many Christians, in response to this question, cite the verse that Jesus spoke in the Upper Room, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” We usually cite it to non-Christians to let them know that we are right, because we have heeded the words of Jesus, but have we really? If we want to follow the way, the truth and the life we have to do it his way, incarnationally representing the presence of God wherever we are.

I saw this in action this week, but it was not by the preachers or the counselors, it was through teenagers caring for each other as Jesus cares. Every night we had Peace in the Evening where each member of our nine small groups shared their high point of the day and a little about their lives. More than once, as I walked away after this time together I saw some youth hang back and give to one another the time needed to share all their story. If I was asked, “Where is God?” at that moment I could have pointed to the two girls sitting side by side sharing their story without fear of judgment.

The first verse of the Andrae Crouch song to which I have already referred begins:

Then Jesus is the answer, for the world today.
Above him there’s no other, Jesus is the way.

Let’s sing it together:

Jesus answers the question “Where is God?” with Emmanuel – God with us.

To the question, “What have I done?” Jesus’ death is the answer: Atonement – God for us.

Paul, having introduced Jesus as the living, incarnational Christ reminded his readers of the two profound acts of Christ. The first is that Christ died for our sins. This is the doctrine of atonement, the realization that through Jesus’ death he accomplished something for us that we desperately needed, but could in no way do for ourselves. One commentator wrote, “This creed presupposes an alienation between God and humans.” Most of us are all too familiar with the veracity of this statement. Remember what we spoke of last week - the mirror is broken, our representation of the image of God is fractured.

Thursday night our small group had the task of somehow depicting God’s changeless love and grace for our lives. We began with a girl at the altar worshiping God. There was a heartbeat, a constant loving heartbeat coming from the presence of God. However, the girl lost the sound in the noise and confusion of life. Soon she found herself being drawn away to temptations of drugs, alcohol, sex and later judgment from within and without. Her face told it all, “What have I done?” My heart broke for the teens that had fallen prey to these destructive devices of the enemy, but I also grieved for those who had gone a more sophisticated route. Materialism, self-centeredness, gossip and jealously also have a way of drowning out the sound of God’s heartbeat. “What have I done?” can set in to any of our lives, when we realize how careless we have been with the heart of God. What a relief it was for the girl in our skit to hear, in the silence of her guilt, the heartbeat of God. Paul wrote, “I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins.” The first verse of Andrae Crouch’s song concludes,

Those reflections can beat us up. Jesus’ atonement not only reconciles us to God and others, he reconciles us to ourselves who can become so burdened down by the question “What have I done?” What an amazing thing to realize that Jesus is the answer. Let’s sing that chorus together:

Jesus answers the question “What have I done?” with atonement – God for us.

To the question, “Why me?” Jesus’ being raised is the answer: Resurrection – God in us.

“Why me?” is the question of hopelessness, the question asked from the dark corners of life where very little light shines. This is the question of Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. Not only did Jesus die for our sins, he was also buried. He was really dead, of that there was no question. It is only when we truly grasp the hopelessness of Saturday that we understand the victorious hope of Sunday. “He was raised on the third day.” How often I have heard us well meaning Christians offer words of comfort, “It’ll be alright.” This, I think, cheapens the miracle of the resurrection, which only happened when all hope was gone, when one was absolutely certain that it would not be alright. The resurrection of Jesus gives hope to the hopeless, answering this question of anguish, “Why me?” with the presence of the divine: God with us, God for us and God in us.

This week was a humbling week for me as an athlete. I have never been that phenomenal in sports, but I have always considered myself a middle of the pack kind of guy - until this week. I played softball with the youth, Ultimate Frisbee with these teenagers, I even played soccer with the campers. For each event I was picked last and in softball, a sport close to my heart, I was not even picked. I was simply the last one standing in line so everyone just assumed that I would wind up on the team with the last pick. “Why even go through the motions of pointing to the old guy, he knows which team has to take him.”

I am sure I handled this better than I would have 35 years ago and quite honestly, I was glad to be there to be the last pick so that distinction did not fall on the shoulders of a young man or young woman who just wanted to play a game and not be insulted. But I could not buffer these kids from the other stuff going on in their lives. One youth was trying to escape an abusive parent, another was trying to figure out how one day her parents seemed happily married and then the next they were telling her that they were getting divorced. I wanted to stand between them and their hurt, but I could not. In the dark corners of life they whispered, “Why me?” and somehow Jesus met them with the answer. Andrae Crouch concluded this song from my youth with these words,

That’s why we sing,

Jesus is the answer to the questions, “Where is God?”, “What have I done?” and “Why me?” To those questions he answers with Emmanuel – God with us, Atonement – God for us and Resurrection – God in us. The problem is that so many people that we know are way more familiar with the questions than they are with the answer. They need to be introduced to the answer, need to be invited to his presence.

Wednesday night was the annual Youth Camp Dance – the longest two hours of the year for me and from what I saw, from a lot of other people as well. One girl I noticed had gotten all dolled up for the dance. She had changed out of her camp shorts and t-shirts and donned a black skirt and white blouse. She had washed all the sweat and dirt out of her hair and delicately fried it with a straightener as girls are prone to do these days. I think I even detected a faint scent of perfume as she walked by me to sit in a chair on the other side of the room. She sat in that chair for almost two hours. I would occasionally walk around the room to make sure that the kids were behaving themselves and I would see this girl in her pretty skirt and clean blouse. Finally I stopped on one of my laps around the floor and asked her, “Have you danced yet tonight?”

“No.” she said quietly.

“Why not?” I asked, confused as to why anyone would go to so much trouble of getting ready for a dance and then not dancing.

She looked at me only briefly, trying not to look pathetic and then said, “No one has asked me.”

Now I am a terrible dancer, being rhythmically challenged from birth, and I am about 35 years older than anyone with whom she desired to dance, but I asked her if she would teach me to two-step. She smiled and taught me. As she did I wondered how many people have gotten all dressed up for life and have the same questions that we do, but no one has taken the time to invite them to the answer. Let’s sing it together:

If Jesus is the answer, what is the question? There are many: To the question “Where is God?” Jesus is God with us. To the question “What have I done?” Jesus is God for us. To the question, “Why me?” Jesus is God in us. Jesus is the answer.

Amen!