I must realize what the type "a" personality provided me is often a stumbling block of which I have a multitude of scares. Scares that have long been healed. Others, close to forming a scare on a scare and others that need constant emotional and/or spiritual antiseptic. My greatest personality fault lies in the trait of upon reaching point B, not resting, relaxing, and reflecting, before flying off headlong toward point C. The incident that happened a few weeks ago when a lady asked me to officiate her husbands Viking funeral with strict adherence of no mention of God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit was a point B. I just could not respond to her invitation. The reason is: I'm a Christian. Why would that stop me? I haven't thought about the "why" of my Christian faith hasn't been addressed for years. Why? Am I being drawn back to point B? Am I sensing an importance, at seventy four, the need to experience rest, relaxation, reflection and a rehearsal of my reason for being a Christian?
I remember that the question of "why Christian?" was asked of Douglas Hall by many a student when teaching theology at McGill University in Canada. He explains that it may have been possible that the question was asked rhetorically, maybe even a bit sarcastically, like those near Jesus who threw questions more like daggers than candid inquiries. He also writes that it was also possible that a particular student just wanted to hear an honest explanation: In a world of so many spiritual options, in a world of reasons to reject religion altogether, Why Christianity? Regardless of tone or motive, the seasoned professor of theology decided to answer the question, laying aside the responses that must come automatically after so many years to really give an answer. "I confess, I (he answered) as much for myself as for you," he writes. "You made me realize that after all these years I needed to face that question in the quite basic and personal way you put it to me."
On a typical day, my answer to the question of Christianity might be measured in the signs and realities of the uniqueness of Christ. Thankfully this answer is not mine alone. Like the multitude who have died and those who still live with me, there's no explaining Jesus of Nazareth without concluding his uniqueness. "Surely this man was the Son of God!" "Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing" "Come and see the man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?"
I know Christianity not to be a matter of preference or pedigree, but a pilgrimage chosen specifically because a follower has found one worth following. It was the Scottish nobleman James Stewart who said that Jesus was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, and wrote, "yet He spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God... No one was half so kind or compassionate to sinners yet no one ever spoke such red-hot scorching words about sin... His whole life was love. Yet on one occasion he demanded of the Pharisees how they ever expected to escape the damnation of hell... He saved others but at the last, Himself He did not save. There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts which confront us in the Gospels." Why Christian? Because there is none other like Christ.
The incomparability of Jesus Christ answers the questions of a world of spiritual options and religious hostility. Like professor Hall, facing the question "Why Christian?" is typically a matter of confessing the things I know, even as I know I now see but a reflection and will one day soon, see face to face. Still, there are less typical days when the question comes not with hostility or sarcasm or curiosity, but from somewhere deep within, and the answers are somewhere caught up in despair or injustice or death. When standing over a casket or holding the hand of one whose body is riddled with cancer, "Why Christian?" takes on a different flesh—or else it wavers cold and corpselike. Christ's uniqueness is suddenly a matter of urgency, needing to be spoken in words that have meaning even in valleys of death and shadow. Standing before this body that once breathed, what does it really mean that Christ was unique? Though with a far different kind of trembling certainty, here too Christ's incomparability is ultimately what matters.
If I read the apologetic of the apostle Paul in the 23rd, 24th, and 25th chapters of Acts, rightly; it was always spoken starring life's "last enemy" dead in the eyes. Whether answering the question "Why Christian?" or standing in jail having been beaten to silence, Paul kept before him the hope of the resurrection as both the proof of Christ's uniqueness and the assurance that this uniqueness inherently matters. He spoke of the resurrection of Christ and his hope in the resurrection of the dead before the assembled Sanhedrin, before the Roman procurator Felix, and again before Felix's successor, Festus, who conceded that Paul's arrest was due to his proclamation "about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive." As Paul stood before king Agrippa, in chapter 26, Paul's answer to the first resentful signs of the question "Why Christian?" was an appeal to Christ's uniqueness in the hope of the resurrection. He asked, "Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?...I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen--that the Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles." For Paul, and for all who claim the inimitableness of Jesus, if Christ has not been raised, I can't find any other answer to the question "Why I'm Christian?"
Thank You Father for the opportunity to brush up on the testimony of why I'm Christian. The uniqueness of Your Son, The Christ! It becomes even more of an answer with flesh when my life's typical comforts fall by the wayside and my valleys of shadows are long and lonely. "He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay." There is none other like Christ. I know of no other god who weeps with me at gravesides and then shows me in His own dying and rising that death no more holds its sting. Amen
