After the devastation of Jesus’ death, and the exhilaration of his resurrection, the small disparate group of good Jews, outcasts, struggling fishers, healed and hoping-to-be-healed really begins to expand. These stories of the early church according to Luke in the book of Acts are exciting and high energy. The Holy Spirit has come among the people in ways they had not imagined possible – until that astounding experience on Pentecost, 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection.

You may not have put it all together but here at Hyattsville Mennonite, we are celebrating the work of the Spirit in the 50 days between Easter and Pentecost. A hymn sing, gift discernment, and coming up – disability awareness Sunday, and a service led by the Colombian sister church group. These are all pieces of who we are as followers of Jesus and how we experience the movement of the Spirit of God among us. These are ways that we are living out our faith, making our faith real in the world.

These Spirit gifts are just some of the things that I love about being part of this community, being a pastor here. And as much as I love my work here, there is a question that keeps me scratching my head and pushing against the church and religious folks I love: the question of God.

The fallacy and fantasy of pastors is that we have it all figured out, that we have the answers that others need. And there are preachers like that. Just this week I wanted to raise my heart rate, but didn’t have time to exercise, so I watched a few minutes of the Reverend Pat Robertson. Now there is a preacher man that knows everything about everything, who has it all figured out. There is not an ounce of doubt in his body, at least not that he would ever admit. Unfortunately, my situation is different.

When the rulers, elders, and scribes with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family had assembled, they made the prisoners, Peter and John, stand in their midst. They inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?”

Peter and John have just healed a person and now they have to explain themselves, their faith and their mysterious power to this gathering of religious leaders and important people. And they have an answer. “If we must answer today,”  they say, “let it be known that this one has been healed because of the power of Jesus.” They go on to quote scripture, from Psalm 118:  “This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by the builders which has become the cornerstone.’”

When new members join this congregation we ask them to share their faith journey with us. It’s not like being on trial as Peter and John are but we do ask people to tell us about their spiritual journey. If “you must answer today,” what would you say?

The recent sabbatical created the time I needed to ask myself the question again, “if I must  answer today…” In contemplating my own faith journey I found that sometimes I recalled it more as a “doubt journey.” For instance, I remember clearly at 15, I received a card in the mail from an adult in the congregation. She wrote, “Thank you for your smile at church on Sundays. I can see the love of God shining through you.” And I remember thinking, “No you can’t, I don’t even know what God is. I don’t even know if I believe in God.” (This was a troubling self-admission since I had only recently been baptized.)

Or there was the time in college when I felt like I had a real spiritual break through. I admitted with relief, out loud, that I just didn’t believe that God worked the way I understood as a child. (But it also felt like saying I didn’t believe in God.)

In seminary some of the other students were upset by the ways we were taught to study the bible. Finding out that the bible wasn’t written by God or even Jesus, that the bible is a collection of writings from across culture and time, that sometimes there are competing and even contradictory narratives in the bible – all of this rattled some of my classmates to the core. They were not sure how they could hold onto their faith. I found that I was grateful to finally find an approach that made some sense to me. Here was an exciting way to read the bible, that took seriously the experience of the writer as well as the reader, that put scripture into a literary and historical context and encouraged us to ask questions of the text.

But I admit the question of God has never really gone away, it only shifts from struggling with God as creator to Jesus and then Holy Spirit. Another concept to struggle with, trinity. This morning, I find myself saying with Peter and John “If I must answer today…”

As a pastor, I admit that many days this all feels like a hazard, to put it mildly. It is hard to be unsure of a definition of God. In my work it is helpful if I can be convincing about God. Lots of pastors seem to know exactly what God is, how God works, how God thinks, what God desires not only for the world but for each individual in the world. I am not one of those pastors.

I do have a personal mission statement: I strive to be authentic in all that I do so that the life and love of Christ can be seen in me. I lead with trustworthiness and generosity toward justice and joy. (You will notice that I speak about how I want to live my life rather than what I believe about God.)

This all came to a head one evening at dinner several months ago when I rather unceremoniously (and foolishly) announced to my children and their teenage friends, “I think I am an atheist.” There were a few raised eyebrows and some nervous titters. Mind you, I did not mean I am like the firebrand atheists Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris. Their brand of atheism is just one more kind of fundamentalism. But really, what was I thinking, saying something like this in front of my children and their friends?

I suppose being on sabbatical gave me the freedom I needed to explore what I mean when I say “atheist.” It gave me the space to try out this shocking statement without all of you around to hear me. (So whatever possesses me to make this confession now? Recall the previous personal mission statement striving for authenticity.) I soon became aware that I had mere weeks to get myself together before coming back to church. Oh my.

I decided I better try out this new atheist identity with some wise, more seasoned pastors. They listened carefully. They didn’t seem alarmed that a pastor would ask questions about God. In fact, as I unburdened myself it became clear that I was not saying anything they hadn’t already wrestled with themselves. These wise ones said that what I was talking about was not atheism but agnosticism.

Agnostic is a term that I had weighed and passed over. I associate it with being indifferent, not caring, not able or willing to make a decision. To  me, agnosticism has always seemed like a lazy place between believing and not believing, an unwillingness to struggle with the questions. So it took me a little while to “believe” that I am agnostic.

Gnosis is Greek for “knowledge.” So agnostic is “not knowing” which is quite different from not caring. There are a lot of things I do not know. Sometimes I am quite comfortable not knowing and other times I really, really want to know, want it all to make sense. In calling myself atheist I think I was saying I was tired of the questions and the struggle. I could never really know so why not just admit that and stop working so hard. But it also felt kind of lonely and isolating. So I was grateful for this exchange with a friend who is a Respected Mennonite Leader:

CL – What I mean when I say I am atheist is that it is all much bigger than we can grasp or define. And too much time is spent in church trying to tame the wildness, unpredictability and mystery.

RML – I remain a Christian–but have also come to see myself as in effect bi-cultural, drawn both to the theist and to the not-sure-about-theism subcultures.

CL – I do feel like there are more of us in this camp than are allowed to speak. With fundamentalists and evangelicals wielding so much power through fear and threats the powerful questions of faith often are squelched or relegated to back room discussions. Yes, it can be scary to let go of all that is known but ah, the freedom of seeking what is real. I am not ready to give up on tradition, liturgy and community. But how might we be more real in the church instead of relying so heavily on platitudes and cliches?

RML – I call myself an agnostic Christian but not an atheist. For me atheism means a kind of faith commitment that there is no good. Whereas agnostic Christian means there is much I can’t fully know and much that deserves questioning yet within all the unknowns I can still humbly commit to following Jesus.

It was after this exchange I began trying out this new identity: “agnostic Christian.”

“If I must answer today…” I would say that I am an “agnostic Christian.” By that I mean that I am a follower of Jesus that lives more by action than answers, more by questions than doctrine. My desire is to join myself to this long tradition of people who are trying to live a life that is modeled after what we know of Jesus from the biblical tradition. And it means that even as I struggle with definitions of God – what God is, who God is, how God is – I want to be committed to the love as defined in I John. “Our love must not be simply words or mere talk – it must be true love, which shows itself in action and truth.”

Taking on this new identity might mean that I am just another reactionary, reacting to what often passes for Christianity in this country today: a prescribed set of beliefs rather than any demonstration of putting those beliefs into practice. In this I think I am in line with the early Anabaptists who reacted to a Christian church that had become calcified and corrupt. The early Anabaptists redefined and reclaimed their faith, despite the dangers.

It could also be that I am having a mid-life crisis or perhaps more aptly a “mid-faith crisis” as writer Lauren Winner calls it. Or perhaps this is just another small step on my spiritual journey.

Whatever it is, “If I must answer today” I have to say that I don’t have all the answers but I know I want to continue wrestling with the questions, with the mystery and the unknowable. I want to be guided by the love that we see in the life of Jesus, love in action and truth. And I am committed to seeking to live love in action and truth in this community, with others who I sense are seeking the same.

Thank you for accepting me (as it says in the covenant you just renewed with me) as a “member in the process of growth in the grace and knowledge of Christ.” Thank you for being a community that provides space where we can explore together what it means to be people of faith putting love into action and truth. I hope and pray that we can deepen our understanding of what it means to be Jesus followers, wherever we find ourselves on the journey, as faithful believing Christians, agnostic Christians or atheists.