“Faith
or No Faith”
Luke
17:5-10
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
October
3, 2010
World
Communion Sunday
How many of you would like to increase
your faith?
Don’t answer that question because it
is a set up. Many of us when facing
a difficult decision or suffering a serious setback or encountering some
agonizing adversity have had the experience of thinking, “If only I had more
faith.” If only I had more faith,
I would know what to do. If only I
had more faith, I could get through this hardship easier.
If only I had more faith, I wouldn’t be such a mess.
With the apostles about whom Luke writes in our gospel reading today,
most of us at some time or another have prayed to the heavens or cried out to
God, “Increase my faith.”
I said that my opening question is a
set up because, according to Jesus, faith is not something that can be
increased. Faith is not a commodity
that can be quantified. When we look
at someone who seems to be a paragon of faith, an exemplar, and say, “I wish I
had as much faith as she,” it betrays in us a misunderstanding of faith.
If you have faith, then Mother Teresa,
Besides that, you don’t need much.
Again, the counsel of Jesus: “If
you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree,
‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
If you are calling someone on the phone, you can enter twenty numbers and
you will reach the person to whom the first seven of those numbers have been
assigned. More numbers are not
necessary or helpful in reaching the person you are calling.
Likewise, even if faith could be quantified and it was possible to talk
about more faith, which it isn’t,
faith is so powerful that a mustard seed-sized dollop of it would be more than
enough because faith is of God.
Faith is a gift from God to us and God
gives no insufficient or inadequate gifts. “The
Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” the psalmist says.
We cannot conjure faith. It
cannot be bought or sold. It cannot
be earned. We cannot bring it into
being. God gives it.
The gift of faith that God gives each of us is God’s assurance that God
will not quit on us, will not abandon us, but will be faithful to us, will, in
the words of the psalmist “keep your
goings out and your comings in now and forevermore.”
Faith is what occasioned
In the book of Hebrews in the New
Testament, faith is famously described as “the
assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
The writer of Hebrews does not mean that we are assured of getting
that second home at the beach for which we have been hoping (okay, for which I
have been hoping) or that Lamborghini that has not yet appeared in our
driveway. This claim in Hebrews is
not frivolous but speaks to that deep place in us that hungers for the bread of
life that God offers and thirsts for the cup of salvation.
I like the way Eugene Peterson puts it in his paraphrase of the Hebrews
verse, saying, “The fundamental fact of
existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under
everything that makes life worth living. It
is our handle on what we cannot see.”
Contrary to popular perception, faith
is not about believing something you cannot be sure about, but believing it
anyway. No less a light than John
Calvin said that “faith rests upon
knowledge, not on pious ignorance.” But
what kind of knowledge? And how do
we come to know it?
Craig Dykstra used to teach at
Princeton Seminary but long before that he had been a student there.
He tells the story of reading Calvin for his classroom studies at the
same time he was teaching swimming lessons at the Princeton Y on Saturday
mornings in order to earn money for his tuition and the connection he made
between the two.
Dykstra said that every week nine or
ten children emerged from the locker room, clutching their towels, ready in
varying degrees to face deep waters. At
first they were fearful and needed his help, but, he said, “…week by week,
as I held each one in my arms and carried them out and away from the hard, safe
surface of the pool deck, they learned more and more to trust a force they
neither could see nor understand. In
order to swim, they needed to learn in a way no physics lesson ever could teach
them the reality, truth, and trustworthiness of the buoyancy of water.
They came to know in their bodies and in their hearts that the water
itself can hold them up if only they relax their limbs, breathe deeply and
slowly, and rest upon it.”
It is as Denise Levertov says in her
beautiful poem called The Avowal:
The Avowal
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
As with Dykstra’s young swimmers, so
with faith. Faith, like swimming,
requires a specific kind of knowledge – profoundly personal and existentially
felt – but nevertheless also objective. Faith
is the knowledge of the reality of God’s “buoyancy” – of God’s
upholding power, constantly and always present in and for the world and for each
of us in every situation and circumstance of our lives.
It is the knowledge of God’s unfailing love and mercy even when we
fail. It is the knowledge that
God’s Spirit gives to us and that grows in us as we attend to gospel and
respond accordingly. None of
Dykstra’s swimmers could come to know and trust the laws of physics personally
until they got into the water.
So, it isn’t about somehow getting
“more” faith as if God’s initial gift is somehow insufficient.
But, as with any gift that is going to be useful or enjoyed or
appreciated, it must be received and opened and cared for.
It cannot be left unattended or put aside.
Those who seem to have more faith than you do, don’t.
Not my aforementioned list of Mother Teresa and friends, no one.
But maybe they have cultivated their “mustard seed” of faith more.
Jesus told another parable about a mustard seed that grows into the
biggest of bushes and becomes a home for the birds of the air and other
creatures. The experience of
faith can grow broader, deeper, wider, more mature as we nourish and nurture it,
but you do not need more faith. You
already have all you need.
That is why, for instance, it is
important to continue to be a part of a worshiping community that will support
the growth of faith in us. It is why
study and reflection, prayer, and finding ways to serve others all are so
important. It is part of what I call
“the long obedience in the same direction.”
Like muscles that grow when they are used and trained, faith also
develops as we tend it and use it and train it and share it.
We do not need more faith. We
need to exercise and ripen the faith we are given.
I cannot tell you how many times across
the years I have been with people who are undone by calamity or trouble because
they have not put in the time over the years to nurture, develop, and call forth
the faith with which God has gifted their lives and by which God’s grace is
communicated to us and experienced. I
cannot tell you how many times across the years I have heard people call the
gospel impractical or say that God’s ways are not realistic in today’s
world, that they will not work and ought to be abandoned.
But they – and I admit that sometimes I am a part of that company of
people – fail to realize that God’s ways in the world are accomplished
through the faith that God gives us. Faith
is the means by which God works in the world and the means by which God works in
us. Faith is the reason that the
word impossible is not in God’s lexicon and thus it should not be in ours.
What of the second half of our reading
today? We are being told that just
as it is a slave’s job – and here Jesus is not supporting the institution of
slavery, simply making an example out of the realities of his day – just as it
is a slave’s job to serve his master and so the slave ought not to expect any
special thanks for doing his job, so, too, as servants of God, we ought not to
expect any special reward for living by faith and being true to God’s ways in
the world. We ought not to expect
special recognition for living the life of faith we are called to live and
gifted by the power of God to live. The
richness of life lived by faith is its own great reward.
So now, with Christians all over the
world, we come to the Table of our Lord invited to commit an act of faith.
We are invited to trust that in this shared ritual God is here.
We are invited to trust that by remembering the story of Jesus the Christ
that we are somehow re-membered ourselves, our lives being knitted together both
individually and in community in such a way that we are able to live more by
faith than by sight, believing – faithing, if you will – that the alchemy of
God and God’s ways is the elixir of life and hope.
Increase our faith?
No. Live the faith we have
been given. It is enough, and more
than enough. Our cups overflow.
Amen.
Copyright
© 2010 First Presbyterian Church