In our quest to be Jesus people, we’re looking at how we can do what Jesus did.

How can we do the things Jesus did, the things that put us in the place that allows God to work on us, change us, and shape us?

Trying to do what Jesus did seems overwhelming at face value, what with the wisdom and the miracles and stuff…not to mention all the PUBLIC SPEAKING!

So we’re starting at an easier place, starting when Jesus was just a boy of 12 years. Jesus and his family went to Jerusalem for a big feast, and it’s not until they are returning home that Mary and Joseph realize Jesus isn’t there. After frantic searching, they finally find Jesus back in the temple.

He’s asking questions and learning from the best teachers of the Jewish bible in the world. The Son of God is learning, pushing, questioning, doing everything he can to learn from others about the bible and about God.

What do you do to learn and understand what you believe?

That’s our theme for today.

Rather than read the scripture passage, we want to show you a video that, well, takes some liberties with the story. It’s called the “Cotton Patch Gospel”; a play that was filmed in the 80’s, a play that sets the story of Jesus in the modern day south, to make it come alive in new ways for us.

Enjoy this look at what it would have been like for Jesus’ earthly father when he realized Jesus wasn’t with them. [SHOW VIDEO]

Here’s how the NIV describes the scene when Joseph and Mary find Jesus, and to tell you the truth, it absolutely amazes me.

“After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.”

It’s not at all shocking to me that everyone was amazed at how much Jesus knew. After all, God in the flesh ought to know just a little bit about the bible!

No, what’s amazing to me is that given who Jesus was, he wanted to learn. He went to those who knew best, and listened to them, and asked them questions. Jesus was a real human being, a real live boy who had to study and learn stuff. And that’s exactly what he did.

My first thought in approaching the message today was pretty simple.

It went something like this: “Look, if Jesus had the humility to actually go and ask others questions about faith, if JESUS took the time to actually learn from others what he believed, we sure better be making an effort to learn our faith as well!”

Whether it’s our own bible reading or Sunday school classes or a small group or spiritual direction with someone we trust, my goodness, shouldn’t we all be taking the responsibility to learn about what we believe?

And all of that is true, but the more I sat with it, the more it felt a little too negative, a little too naggy, a little too much like duty and being a good little Christian boy or girl.

So let’s leave that simple base in place, but move on to things that are a lot more energizing and fun! The simple base is this: just like Jesus did, we each need to take responsibility to learn from others about what it means to live for God. We need to know the bible and what it teaches, and we need to know how God’s people live out faithfulness.

But this doesn’t have to be drudgery!

This can be one of the most liberating parts of our lives, and one of the ways we can break some of the worst stereotypes about Christians, that we are close-minded and afraid.

Making the effort to ask questions, to grow, to learn, to wrestle with what it means to be a follower of Jesus can actually bring our faith in God to life, and allow God to bring a new and fresh power into everyday living.

Last February, Kathy Watson, AJ Schwanz, Steve Fawver and I went back east for a conference.

The main speaker was one of my favorite professors from seminary, Miroslav Volf. He is a brilliant man, well read in all kinds of disciplines, with a very creative mind.

He said something that just grabbed me. He said, “If you are intellectually curious at all…if you enjoy thinking and exploring and figuring things out, don’t go into the sciences or into philosophy. Go into theology! Because we get to study EVERYTHING!”

That perspective, shared with a bright twinkle in his eye, was so refreshing to me! Because sometimes, Christians demonstrate a really tragic characteristic of being afraid to ask questions, afraid to doubt, afraid to explore new things.

But here was one of the smartest men I’ve met saying, the study of God, the pursuit of Jesus, is the BEST place to be if we are curious about the world.

God created everything!

And he created us human beings to be far more curious than cats, to ask questions, to explore, to wonder, to learn. Far from being people who have to shut that off when we follow Jesus, we are the ones who truly have the freedom to explore anything and everything!

Why does the bible teach the things it does? Why would God ask us, for instance, to save sex for marriage, to give away money, to take care of those in need? Why did a God who supposedly is all-good make a world that is such a big mess?

For some reason, many times in the church we give the impression or sometimes out and out say to people, “Don’t ask! Don’t question! Just believe.”

What a boring way to live! What an assault on the infinite creativity of the God we serve!

Twelve-year-old Jesus models something completely different.

Ask the questions! Make the teachers scratch their heads, make the crowd raise their eyebrows. Don’t just be content to take whatever happens in the weekly gatherings for worship: take your best questions and your most inquisitive nature, and seek out people who can wrestle for the answers with you!

Most pastors, when they talk about this subject seem to woefully remind everyone of the deplorable lack of bible knowledge, even for people who come to church every week. People don’t know that Hezekiah isn’t a book of the bible, don’t know whether it was Joshua or Isaiah who killed the giant after he parted the Red Sea.

And if you didn’t get the humor in that, you proved those other preacher’s point.

We do need to do a better job of knowing the bible, because it is God’s gift to us, one of the ways God most clearly tells us who he is and who we are and how to live for God.

But I’m just as sad about the millions of people who know the bible inside and out, but seem to have forgotten to ask any more questions.

I’m just as sad about the reality that so many people outside the church think that Christianity means chucking your mind at the door and repeating dogma.

I want to be a part of a community where no question is a bad one, where it’s ok not to have all the answers, where we together decide that because we love God and trust God so much, we want to ask every question there is to ask about life.

Because I firmly believe that God is the one we find when we ask our questions.

So many of us are afraid that those we love…and maybe even ourselves!...we’re afraid that someone might “lose their faith” if they ask too many questions.

My experience has been exactly the opposite.

It has been in my pursuit of God, my questioning curiosity, in my doubts that I name and bring to God, that my faith has become so incredibly rich and real.

I wonder if some of you here this morning, some of you who feel like your faith is weak and feeble…I wonder if it isn’t REAL because you haven’t let yourself question it? You haven’t let yourself doubt it?

Our faith journey of following God is not just about learning facts and beliefs. It is about exploring life in every way, the physical realities, the spiritual realities, the emotional realities of being human. It is about searching, asking, learning, growing, and finding that God is our best teacher, that knowing the Creator is the best and the most fun way of entering the wide open world, waiting to be discovered.

Sarah Baldwin has an e-mail signature that is a quote from Madeline L’Engle.

It says, “Some things have to be believed to be seen.”

I love that! It means that for those of us who are truly curious, the life of faith is actually the best place from which to really grow, to really see it all. Questioning doesn’t have to lead to doubt and despair, but our curiosity and our pursuit of what is real can truly make our faith come alive.

Isn’t it great to realize that we have the world open to us?!

We get to follow Jesus by trying to figure out what we believe! I think that is incredibly exciting, and the idea that we as a community might play a small part in changing the world’s perception of Christians, gives me goose bumps!

Of course, there are some scary parts as well. It’s harder to live in a world where not all questions get answered immediately, where we have to struggle and wrestle. Our questions CAN lead to doubts.

But I really believe Jesus is at the beginning and the end of our journey. I don’t think following Jesus is just about blindly believing…and I ALSO believe that it is only in Jesus that we find true meaning and life. Let me share a time in my life where this became crystal clear to me.

I was taking a class in seminary on the book of John.

We were having one of those days that many people warned me about when I went to seminary, one of those days where the questions we were raising as we looked at the bible made us question all the Sunday school answers we were given as children, where it felt like we might “lose our faith.”

Marianne Meye Thompson was the teacher, and we all could feel the tension in the room as several students got more and more distressed as what they had previously been taught was being questioned.

Marianne is a brilliant woman. She’d studied, she knew her stuff, she could share all kinds of criticisms of the bible that many had raised, and it was making many uncomfortable.

We got to the end of class, and she stopped. She turned ahead in her bible to John 6. She read about a time when the things Jesus was teaching were so controversial and so difficult that all kinds of people were fed up and leaving him.

In this difficult moment, Jesus looks at his disciples, and he says, “What about you? Are you going to leave me, too?”

I imagine the disciples experienced a tense and awkward silence, just as those of us in the class were feeling. Would these hard things mean we have to leave Jesus, too?

Then Marianne read Peter’s reply: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

She closed her bible. “This,” she said, “this is what I come back to often after days like this. We have to wrestle with the bible. We have to wrestle with the hard questions. We have to push, and learn, and question, and doubt. Sometimes, it leads us to the breaking point, because we just don’t see how it all comes together.”

Then she said it. “But to whom shall we go? Peter got it right. There’s no one else to whom I can go. Jesus has made all the difference in my life, and that will never change.”

I remember that day from sixteen years ago like it was yesterday.

Being a Jesus person, doing what Jesus did, means recognizing we have no where else to go but Jesus. We don’t have to be afraid of anything, of any question or difficult thing we can think of.

Just like twelve-year-old Jesus, we can always ask questions. We can always learn. God is the beginning and the end of our journey, and even if the middle part is hazy and unclear…there’s no better way to live!

Go to Jesus. Learn what you believe. Find the joy of asking the questions, and let’s do it together!