I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:28)

I've seen it from both sides - from the side of the family with a difficult child and from the side of the mother who complained that one "rotten apple" in her son's third grade class was disrupting the learning environment for the whole group. Both sets of parents would no doubt prefer to live in a simple, unambiguous world in which everything rolled smoothly along like clockwork. The fact is, however, that even the best parents in the world cannot necessarily prevent their children from having emotional problems, and parents who are lucky enough to have relatively well-adjusted children cannot, and probably should not, totally insulate their children against disruptive influences in the environment. (You may have heard this, that children who are overprotected from contact with other children and with "the outside world" do not have the chance to develop many natural antibodies, and hence are more susceptible to infections and the like as they grow older. Perhaps we have a parable here that applies to other aspects of life as well.)

Colonel Oliver North became a household name and even somewhat of a folk hero because he tried to cut through the ambiguity of red tape and get things done. But his story has reminded all of us that a true democracy requires a complex system of checks and balances. Things may have seemed simpler in the days of yesteryear when the Lone Ranger "led the fight for law and order," but even then, vigilanteeism and self-righteous crusades were frowned upon. The Lone Ranger always turned things over to the local sheriff at an appropriate point.

There are people who won't even read a murder mystery novel or go to the movies because they want to avoid facing any of the harsh or ambiguous realities of life. To them it seems as if enjoying a TV show like "Murder, She Wrote" is tantamount to endorsing murder. The attitude is that we shouldn't even think about such things. Similarly, we can become upset at the notion of teaching drug users to use clean needles, as if to do so is to encourage drug abuse, when, in fact, the real purpose of this kind of educational effort is to prevent the problems of drug abuse from being compounded and made worse than they already are.

The point of all these observations is that we cannot hide from the complexity and ambiguity of life. We are in the process of considering the senses in which even our theology about Jesus is complicated and difficult. Our wintery story from John 10 again reminds us that people often have rough sledding in relationship to Jesus. A group with inquiring minds surrounds Jesus and wants to know in totally unambiguous terms if Jesus is the Christ: "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly." The answer given by Jesus is, in effect, that only unbelievers demand such unambiguous clarification. The observation that the Messiahship of Jesus is proclaimed only to his disciples and not to the general public is a way of saying that believers believe in spite of the ambiguity, not because all ambiguity has been explained away! "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." On some profound level, the message of Jesus cuts through all ambiguity and goes straight to the heart. We are back to the theme of Jesus' hesitation to make grand claims about being the Christ. He would rather be seen as a lowly shepherd. Those who want him to pontificate with grand, clear and unambiguous claims are left disappointed.

Among those who still today want Jesus to prove conclusively that he is the Christ, there are a significant number of people and groups who insist that the accuracy of Bible predictions is the ultimate proof of his authenticity. But the word "prophecy" does not refer primarily to prediction. It basically means simply "to speak for someone else" - in the case of biblical prophecy it means to speak for God, on God's behalf. Secondly, sound biblical scholarship has demonstrated that many so-called predictions in the Bible are not actually predictions at all and that where biblical writers do use the element of prediction to validate their beliefs about Jesus they are using it more as an interpretive tool to show that their ideas are consistent with the tradition than as a proof! But above all we need to recognize that the demand for unambiguous proof is exactly what Jesus rejects many times, including when he says in our text "I told you, and you do not believe." Jesus is pictured over and over again as insisting that his message of the grace and love of God is self-validating and that we should not depend primarily on signs and proofs. The message itself, standing on its own, should be enough for us.

At least as early as Martin Luther's time the point was being made that not everything in the Bible is of equal importance. Luther's way of saying it was to insist that the value of any passage of Scripture was dependent upon the degree to which it illuminated the life and message of Jesus Christ. Many contemporary theologians have restated this point by saying that the one truly unique thing about the New Testament is its emphasis on the radical grace of God. This unique, self-validating, radical theology of grace both sets Christianity off from other religions and yet also makes possible a new openness for dialogue among the world's religions (as we discussed at some length during Lent). We have repeated many times that to focus on Jesus as the Christ is to focus on the Grace of God. It is this clear focus on God's unconditional love that cuts through all uncertainty and ambiguity, giving us a profound sense of belonging and security in the knowledge that the real Jesus Christ has arisen and lives in us.

Blessed assurance! Jesus is mine! (Fanny J. Crosby)

The story is told of a brilliant scientist at MIT. He was a leader in his field, but when it came to his religion he appeared to be a rather simple-minded biblical literalist. When asked why he refused to deal with the findings of scientific biblical scholars he would reply that "when it comes to my religion I want something completely different from the changing winds of scientific proof; I simply want to believe without question." I think we all realize that although a totally naive, blind faith is not to be admired, there is an element of truth in this scientist's attitude. At some point we simply must cut through all the uncertainty and ambiguity and believe! There is a sense in which we have to move from the theology about Jesus to the faith of and in Jesus.

One of the most moving expressions of this attitude that we may ever encounter is found in one of the (unfortunately) lesser-known Spirituals. The main theme of the song is: "And when I come to die, give me Jesus!" In other words, when push comes to shove, simple faith and trust in the grace of God is the bottom line. We cannot and should not ignore the complexity and ambiguity of faith and life, but there are times when we do cut through it all and get to bedrock.

In his book, Future Shock, Alvin Toffler explains how, in this modern world of rapid change, confusion and over-choice, we all need some kind of "stability zones" - regular habits, rituals, beliefs - whatever it is that gives us a stable point of reference. It would be difficult to deny the wisdom of Toffler's observation, or to miss its application to the role of religious faith in our lives. The grace of God as revealed in Jesus, the Christ, is surely our ultimate stability zone.

The great theologian, Paul Tillich, defined religion as "ultimate concern." When all the things that seem important to us - career, family, sex, money, patriotism, and the like - begin to pale in the face of eternal values, we realize that there is no substitute for religion. To go through life thinking that all these very good and important things are of ultimate concern, only to discover that they are not as important as we thought, could be compared to the feeling that people must have had at that moment on the quiz show "Let's Make A Deal" when they suddenly realized that they had chosen the wrong door. They could have had a prize worth thousands of dollars but instead they chose the door with the "booby present" behind it. What a sinking feeling to discover that we have put our ultimate trust in something that doesn't last, in something that is not worthy of our ultimate concern!

Sadly, the true spirit of what religion is about can also elude us if we are full of anger, rage, and a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness. An Islamic scholar appearing on a 1987 PBS program, stated that in many areas of the world the religion of Islam is a movement of the oppressed and dispossessed who feel that the secular state has failed them. The vehemence of some religious conviction is actually a desperate attempt to gain a sense of power or control over our life and the world. Many who "witness" for the Lord by presenting a carefully constructed theological system of Bible interpretation are actually just overcompensating for the fact that they feel angry, hopeless and powerless in the face of a confusing and apparently hostile world. Their religious system gives them back a feeling of power and control. Their dedication to winning others is more accurately seen as their desperate attempt to constantly reassure themselves that they are in control, that life is manageable. Religion as a source of power in this sense is not constructive. Our faith does properly act as a stability zone in the midst of a confusing and sometimes frightening world, but faith must not be fashioned into a billy club that we brandish in order to convince ourselves and others that we have authority, power, and control.

As cautious as we should be about an aggressive approach to evangelism that pushes people into "a decision for Christ," we can recognize in that kind of language a valid reminder of the need to keep our priorities straight. If by "making a decision for Christ" we mean a commitment to letting God be God in our lives, a commitment to remembering what really is the bottom line in life, then the talk of such a decision has its place. In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus reminds us to lay up treasures in heaven, "for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." The playwrite Tennessee Williams put it another way: "Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence." But perhaps the Spiritual still says it best: "And when I come to die, give me Jesus!" Of course, Fanny Crosby's gospel song "Blessed Assurance! Jesus is mine!" also makes the same point beautifully (and the song made a wonderful backdrop for Sally Field's Academy Award winning movie, "Places in the Heart," a story that really struggles to clarify what life is all about).

Whether we stand at death's door or at the pearly gates, we need to be reminded over and over again what it means to have Jesus with us there. Use your imagination for a bit and contemplate what your speech will sound like at those pearly gates. Will it be something like: "Well ... Golly ... I did my best; I'm not perfect; I'm only human, but at least I usually tried to do good and certainly wasn't as bad as a lot of folks are. Please let me in." Or will it be: "Lord, Lord, I believed in your blood atonement and did everything I could to spread the word that anyone who didn't believe the same was lost!" Or, will your speech sound something like this: "Thanks, Lord, for not making my entrance into these gates dependent upon the adequacy of either my faith or my deeds. I know that even when I have managed to do my best it hasn't been good enough to make myself or the world perfect. No merit of my own I claim, but wholly lean on Jesus' name."

"When I come to die, give me Jesus!" Give me the name that means "God will save." Give me the simple, blessed assurance that my destiny is in the hand of a loving and gracious God and that no one can snatch me out of that hand. Let me depart in peace. Open my heart to celebrate the grace of God which unites all things in Christ and moves toward a glorious and yet mysterious future - beyond our imagining!