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"Faith Is ..."
Is faith a technique for getting what we want? Is faith a technique for getting around difficulties? So that we can be secure, content, happy, prosperous with no hassle, no bother, no pain. We ought not to fall for that pipe dream. There is more to faith than that. Faith is not a technique for getting what we want or for getting out of difficulties. Dr. Joseph Sittler, a great Lutheran theologian, tells the following story: Once at a church where I was interim pastor for a year, there was a woman really hooked on the "me and Jesus" movement, and she used prayer as a kind of personal means to everything she wanted. She worked at a hospital in Chicago, and she used to tell me, "Every morning when I drive from my house to the hospital, I pray to Jesus that he will find me a parking spot. And you know, pastor, he always does." I kept asking myself, "What kind of God-relationship is built on this parking-space-finding faith that will sustain this woman in profound deprivation and tragedy? Is it enough?" One Sunday morning I said to her, "Emma, suppose there is another woman driving in the second lane on the highway taking a sick child to the hospital, and you drive right in to the parking space that Jesus found for you, and this woman who is frantic with a sick child can't find a space. How about her?" "She didn't pray hard enough," was her retort. That really stumped me. So I tried to think of how to correct her, but she was immune to argument. Well, finally I found one, and I am sinfully proud of it; I think it was a straight gift. The next time I saw her I said, "You know this speech you give me about Jesus finding you a parking space, Emma. What do you suppose Mary was praying about jogging along on that donkey on her way to Bethlehem?" Emma never mentioned the topic again. If Mary couldn't find a parking space in which to have a baby, particularly that baby, then there must be something wrong with the parking-space finding faith. The image it conjures up of God being hitched to some private little enterprise against headaches and nervous breakdowns is too small. The God who is primarily a helper toward the attainment of human wishes is not the being to whom Christ said in Gethsemane, "Thy will, not mine be done." There is too much pain, danger, hatred, and meanness in our world. God is not going to get us out of some things: God loves us too much to do that, and has more profound respect for our freedom than we do. Besides God has given us work to do. What is this faith which God gives, but we must receive? What is this faith we need for the living of these days? Faith is trust: binding commitment to, a covenantal relationship with something or better someone. We live by trust, by what or in whom we place confidence. Trust is essential. When it is not there life disintegrates. Desperation leads to some strange, destructive trusts. Each of us lives in confidence some other persons or institutions are reliable, trustworthy, honest, and supportive, otherwise the normal relations of everyday life would be impossible. Much of life's pain issues from the failure of one or more of these trusts. When all else fails, we trust ourselves only. That is a most dangerous process. When that trust starts to fail, we really get anxious. For many of us our truster is busted. The church is a place for truster repair. The Christian faith says we owe God trust. Why? Christian faith is a response to the grace of God. Though we are separated from God by our own pride and self-centeredness, God still loves us and is reaching out to us. God does not demand that we become worthy before God will love us. God loves us while we still are unworthy. We are made right with God not by what we do, but by what God has done. The gospel does not say "Trust God and God will love you," rather it says, "God already loves you, so trust God." God's grace is love that is undeserved, reaching out to you, right where you are, offering itself without reserve, meeting you where you are. You are accepted. Accept the fact that you are accepted. How do we know that? Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. As we live close to his story, that will become clearer. It was fascinating. There they were in the chapel of the convent. About 30 of the sisters were sitting. Absolute silence. Every day in the evening they gathered for 15 minutes of prayer and meditation. All were oriented toward the large cross that dominated the front of chapel. Wonder with me. Is there any other image in the history of the world that could survive such constant gazing, reflection, prayer, such need for trust? What other form could absorb all the worries and apprehensions heaped upon it? Is there any other image in the world that could stand the weight of so profound a demand? The answer is clear: no. In the cross pain is experienced, endured, comprehended, and transformed into building blocks of love and compassion. And because that life was resurrected, we know that ours can be too, and that ultimately the tears and pain will disappear. Can God love us that much? Yes. Unless the God before whom we sit, and at whose cross we gaze, about whom we think, and whom this sermon calls us to trust--unless that God has the tormented shape of our human existence that God isn't God enough. The cross says God has always been God enough, has always loved so. That's what the Psalmist learned. The religious certitude of which he speaks is not so much a knowing what is going to happen, but rather a power which sustains him and enables him to proceed steadily even when he cannot see clearly the course which his life is going to take. We may discover that trust through scripture, in the company of others, in our own pilgrimage and around this table. We can't buy trust, but we can receive it. Trust is a word which ties hope and God together. But there is no detour around adversity. This trust expects nothing to soften the hard realities of existence. Such trust is not easy. Learning to trust is one of the compelling reasons for belonging to a believing community. The psalmist describes the reality which gripped him: Nevertheless I am continually with you, Amid all uncertainties the Psalmist received a two-fold certainty. Faith did not depend on his grasp of God, but on God's grasp of him. The essence of faith is a relationship that nothing can break and in the light of which everything else pales into insignificance. Obviously faith is also something else. Faith is risk. There will be perilous seas and times. We live by faith, and it is never a finished faith. Mine has collapsed, lying around me in shambles time after time. I've had to stop and reconsider and slowly build it up again, inasmuch as any one of us builds it, by ourselves. We resist the notion that the struggle toward the light is life long, but that is fact. God made us for great things. God made us to carry out God's goodness. God designs us for yet greater action in the spheres of the kingdom. We are God's. Our doing good is fruitless without our being what God would have us be. Our being is frivolous without our doing what God would have us do. By faith we accept God's creation of our selves. God made us for God's purpose. By faith we remember our relationship with Jesus. He is the pattern of God's plan. By faith we seek God's guidance to perform God's task here and now in the sphere God has provided for us. In faith we look to God that we might know what we are to God--God's beloved. Through faith God points us to the world around us that we might do what God would have us do--God's work. You don't think that isn't risky! A wise Christian who had gone through turbulent times has said: "what is clear is that nothing was clear; but I continued on the path set before me. This is the nature of faith as it is of life. I may not be healthy, wealthy, but I am wise. My wisdom consists in this ‘I am loved and have a place.’ I can trust that and take risks for it. This is sufficient." That is sufficient for us all. |
F.
Harry Daniel