SunOct32010
Luke 17:5-10
“Faith, hope, and love abide, these three,” said the apostle Paul (I Corinthians 13:13). These are the three great hallmarks of Christian life. My guess is that most of us have a pretty good idea what love is. It’s what Paul identified as the greatest of the three, and it has to do, of course, with giving ourselves to each other and accepting each other no matter what. We’d do pretty well, too, I suspect, at defining hope, which is about what we expect and look to in the future. Love and hope seem relatively clear to most of us.
And maybe, for you, faith is clear, as well. For me, though, it’s the murkiest of the three, the one I understand the least. I bet if you went back through all my sermons, you’d find many more mentions of love and hope than of faith. Those two have been linchpins to me, while I confess faith has been harder to grasp. You’d be right to think that maybe that’s something a Christian minister should know! So let’s explore it.
What, then, are some of the possibilities? There are two major ways in which the word “faith” gets used. The first is that faith is belief: I believe in God; I believe in Jesus Christ; I believe in the Holy Spirit. This way of using the word has a distinguished history in the church. Many of you probably grew up in churches in which a creed—from the Latin word “credo,” meaning “I believe—was recited every week: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. . .” (The Apostles’ Creed). But what exactly does that mean, to say we believe in something? If we say we believe in angels or ghosts, it means we think they exist. Is that all that’s being asked of us when we’re told to have faith—to affirm that God exists?
That’s one way the word “faith” gets used—yes, God exists—and there’s something that matters about that. But it’s not quite enough, is it? So here’s a second way the word gets used: it’s a conviction that something we hope for is going to happen even when it doesn’t seem likely. Think about the way the word faith is used in everyday life. “Have faith,” we’ll hear. Or “Oh, ye of little faith” (Luke 12:28). When it’s used this way, it means something like, “Expect a miracle.” You think I can’t prepare a gourmet meal? “Have faith!” You think the Browns can’t win this afternoon? “Oh, ye of little faith.”
The message is: if you just had faith, some unlikely result would ensue. If you just believed in your heart, an upset would happen. The trouble is: how many of us have had faith that the Browns were going to win a game only to be crushed again and again? That sort of faith is irrelevant in the face of better football teams. And we run into the same problem in any number of areas. You can have all the faith in the world and still not be able to get a job in a lousy market. You can have faith that the lump isn’t cancer and still be felled by that lump.
When Jesus talks about faith, it’s in part a belief that God exists. And it’s in part a conviction that good things can happen even when they seem incredibly unlikely. But faith, for Jesus, has more to it than that. The disciples in today’s story, realizing how difficult it is to follow Jesus, beg him, “Give us more faith” (17:5, The Message). Jesus’ response is fascinating. He says, “You don’t need more faith. There is no ‘more’ or ‘less’ in faith” (17:6). He says that even the tiniest bit of faith, even faith the size of a minuscule mustard seed, can move a tree (or, in Matthew’s version, a mountain, 17:20). And we say, “Huh? Nothing like that ever happens for me no matter how much faith I have.” Our problem is that we have taken those words literally. If he means them literally, then no one in the history of the world has ever had a full and lively faith, because no sycamore or mountain has ever been willed into the sea. No, what Jesus is saying is something much more like, “There’s nothing you can make happen by virtue of your faith. It isn’t your faith that makes things happen. Good things happen, not because of what you and I believe, but because God is good.” It’s God who’s the lead actor, not me.
The crux of the matter is that faith can’t be measured by our getting what we want, because we’ll always be disappointed. If faith means getting what I want, then my faith died when I was five and I didn’t get the bicycle I pined for. Faith isn’t about the granting of my every wish.
Faith, if it’s genuine, lets go of all results. It doesn’t tell God what to do. It says to God instead, “I know that whatever happens to me, you’ll be with me.” When it comes right down to it, faith is about trust, which may be the best word for it. Unlike “faith,” which is only a noun, “trust” is a verb as well as a noun. And what it’s about is not bargaining for particular results, but relying instead on the one trusted to be there no matter what.
If I trust someone, I have some sense that they won’t desert or betray me. It’s not that I think they will keep me from all danger. It’s rather that I’m convinced they’ll be with me no matter what happens. It’s an elusive thing, this trust. I went for my annual physical this week. When I got there, I was told that a medical student would do the preliminary exam. He was a friendly man—engaging, considerate, eager to do the right thing. And I’m very willing to help medical students get the knowledge they can only get by practicing on me and others. But what I noticed as I talked to him was that my voice was quiet and weak and somewhat lifeless. There was no history there—we had no connection. And he was so focused on what he needed to do—checking off various tests in his mind, lost in his routine, making sure he didn’t miss anything (you could see the wheels turning)—that he seemed to pay little attention to me. He wasn’t focused on me as much as he was on covering every step of the procedure.
Then my doctor came in. She wasn’t focused on herself. She was paying attention to me. She has seen me through some challenges, and she wanted to see how I was. It was astonishing to me how much more animated I was talking to her than I was talking to the student. Much more ground was covered in our brief conversation than in my much longer visit with the student. I trusted her in a way that I didn’t trust him. I could grow to trust him—there was nothing intrinsically untrustworthy about him. But I didn’t have the history with him, and I didn’t sense his care for me in anywhere near the same way as I did with her.
Now my doctor certainly isn’t God. But I think there’s a helpful analogy here. If I get Lou Gehrig’s disease, she’s not going to be able to make my body work perfectly again. But I know she’ll be there to help me go through that awful disease. And because of that, I trust her. I trust her not because of any magic she might perform to undo the natural course of things, but because she will be with me in my struggles, she’ll comfort me. We trust someone because of their presence and love, not because they make everything go exactly the way we’d like them to.
This is the way it is with God. Because God promises to go with us through every wilderness, because God promises never to let us go, we can live with the transcendent peace that knowledge brings. We can simply lean upon those everlasting arms, the ones that never let us go. That’s trust. That’s faith.
A month or so ago, my son Alex and I decided to go to the Geauga County Fair. On Labor Day morning, we zipped over—mostly to get a corn dog and a funnel cake. While we were there, wolfing down our nutritious breakfast, we wandered into a barn with prize-winning cows. As we walked slowly between the rows of cows, I suddenly noticed some human legs sticking out between two of the cows lying in their beds of straw. Somewhat alarmed, I backed up and saw there a little boy, maybe eight or nine, his legs between two cows, his torso right under the cow’s head and up against her chest. His body looked incredibly relaxed, and when I looked closely at his face, I saw that he was fast asleep! Lying there among the cows, he was totally at home, filled with a deep and abiding peace. He could not have trusted them more.
Faith is like that. It trusts God to be present and kind and affectionate. Not to insure a trouble-free life, but to walk with us even when things are at their worst. The mountains and trees move, not because we believe some entity exists, not because we think something totally unlikely is going to happen. Those trees and mountains are moved by God, as pain is comforted, anxiety is lessened, direction is sensed.
Now that doesn’t mean that we have no role here. Far from it. One of the distinctive things about this trust is that, in God’s world, this is a two way street. Not only to we trust God, but God also trusts us. Mountains and trees are moved not just by God, but, in their own way, by us, as we increasingly live the lives God would have us lead. That odd parable that ends today’s reading, the one that seems to say slaves should stay in their place and not complain, is about something else entirely. We’re those slaves, Jesus seems to say, and because we have everything we need, there’s a way of living that’s suitable in response. There’s a duty, if you will, a responsibility appropriate to our status as children of God.
On this World Communion Sunday, we can’t help but be aware of the context in which we live. Poverty and hopelessness and cruelty abound. Iraq and Afghanistan are sundered. Children in Haiti go without shoes and food. The slaves in Jesus’ story know that there is always more work to do. Which is why we pray and act for peace, and why we support a Neighbors in Need offering that provides food and works for justice. In these ways, and by our God-empowered efforts, mountains are moved, a little bit at a time.
And what of the horrifying miscarriage of justice in which a young gay man in New Jersey jumps to his death from the George Washington Bridge because a roommate broadcasts footage of the man having sex in his own room? As long as that sort of cruelty is still being practiced, our young men and women who are gay will not ever feel safe in accepting their sexuality. There is still such a stigma about being gay, and as long as there is, we are the slaves in that story of Jesus’, the slaves whose work is not done until all God’s children can live the lives God gives them to live. There is always work to be done, the work of feeding and accepting and caring and remaking the world—and until that work is done, there is really no room to take a break; no room to say, “We’re finished”; no room to rest on our laurels. The God who trusts us is also beckoning to us. And because we can trust the One who never lets us go, we can respond with all our might to that holy prodding, ready to give ourselves in love wherever hurt calls our name.
So let us have faith. Let us trust that we are never alone. And let us convey that great grace to the world. For as we do, mountains are moved in their own peculiar and wonderful way.