Sunday, 24 June 2012

What is faith?


Pentecost 4 year B Sermon  Based on Matthew 17:14-21;  1 Corinthians 13:1-3
Title slide
Faith that can move mountains. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have that degree of faith…is it humanly possible to have faith that strong…was Jesus trying to encourage his friends or make us feel bad because our faith is so puny?

And what is faith anyway?

Probably if we’re going to talk about our faith at all
if we’re ever going to encourage others to have faith…
we ought to know what it is…don’t you think? But I find most Christians get quite tongue tied…if they’re asked this
by a non-Christian friend.

Hanging around café’s in Wanaka…this curly question
can come in many forms…

Is faith something you have…or is it something you do?
How do I get it…how do I do it …
What difference does it make? What’s the pay-off?
Are belief and faith different? Does it matter?
And do you really take that stuff seriously
about moving mountains?

Let’s say you’re sitting in a café somewhere in Wanaka with a friend…they’re comfortable with the fact you’re a Christian …you’ve known them a long time…long enough to trust you …not to laugh at their spiritual questions…or reject them

They ask you ‘What is faith?’
How would you answer? What would you say?

Talk to your neighbour…  [wait]
Anybody want to give it a go? 
In a spiritually thirsty community like ours
these conversations aren’t rare…certainly in my job.
Recently the question came up when I was talking to my YAK group at Kai Whakapai…YAK means Youth at Kai…
we were talking about baptism and confirmation…
about making a public confession of faith.

The question took this form… ‘but Diane how do you know when you’re ready? What if you have doubts sometimes? Or when you’re praying and you can’t tell if God is really there …or listening?’

It suddenly occurred to me that… no one had ever told these girls…what I discovered quite by accident in my early twenties at university faced with the strong assertions that if you can’t see it or measure it… it doesn’t exist…I discovered that for an adult…
the Christian faith isn’t

Mountain slide
a feeling you have about a set of ideas
but a decision you make…a decision to trust
that God revealed Gods very self… in Jesus Christ.

Of course you can have lots of wonderful feelings about God
but feelings are fickle things…they go up and down
you can have a bad day with feelings…a day of doubt and fear… or frustration and impatience… anger and disappointment…

Were we to rely entirely…on having warm fuzzy feelings
about God all the time…our relationship with God would fall apart the first time something happened that doesn’t fit with what we want God to do or when we can’t sense the presence of God

It’s like marriage in a way…probably we’d never stay married… if we thought we had to feel romantic all the time…for the rest of our lives…but we decide to love…

Both love and faith are about making a decision really…
when you’re in something for the long haul…
neither love nor faith are going to provide nice feelings
by which you’re overwhelmed all the time.

Certainly not the kind of love and faith
Jesus  was living out… and dying for.

And in the Christian community…we regard faith as a
mature decision don’t we…because when you’re a child
you just trust what your parents and teachers tell you is true
You don’t make a decision about it. But when you grow up and you’re confronted with many versions of what the truth looks like … you have to decide… which version to trust.

But let’s see what a decision to trust…
what faith….actually looks like in practise

 Imagine you’re standing on the bank of a lovely clean…warm slow moving river…with a sandy bottom…you can see there are no rocks or slimy moss logs 
or taniwhas…lurking below the surface…

you decide to step into the water…it feels good on your feet
…you imagine how good it would feel to get in a little deeper …so you keep walking slowly…one step at a time…
toward the middle…gradually going deeper and deeper
on the firm but soft sand…

you like the feeling of the river flowing gently around you …you walk slowly in up to your knees…then to your waist …you decide to go still further out…so now you’re in up to your chest and then the tops of your shoulders…
you could almost float

but to go any deeper…to actually float…
you have to do what?

Ask

To actually float… to allow the river to carry your weight…
you have to make a decision…to take your feet off the bottom

And trust…

For your friend in the café…
it may take many small steps over many years…
to decide to turn their will and their life completely over to the God revealed in Jesus Christ…each step a decision to trust.

Like deciding to trust… there actually is a God…
but which God…what are the options…is there one God
or are there lots of gods…where do I find out…
whose view of God do I chose…and you say

well while your reading the Kuran and the sacred texts of Buddhism…why don’t you check out Jesus’ understanding of God…expressed in the Gospels?

And if they find Jesus understanding of God and what it means to serve God attractive… they could decide to become a Jesus’ follower…decide to view God the way Jesus did…
to view people the way Jesus did…to trust God
the way Jesus did…even on the Cross.

And while you’re discussing this your friend throws you another curly one…your friend says…but I thought you said Jesus was God…

And thank goodness you’re prepared for that one too
yeah that’s absolutely what we believe…that God was in Jesus revealing God’s very self…somehow… mysteriously…in the life and teaching of a human being…how is a mystery…
can you cope with a little mystery

Can you decide to trust…to step out in faith…
without every question answered…

Can you decide to trust…that just as God revealed
his will and his purposes of in Jesus
God is working out his purposes of love… today…
here at the ends of the earth…and in a world that seems
beyond redemption and out of control…with violence and greed and injustice

Can you decide to look for signs of hope… that signal
God working in your life and in the world…
Can you decide to get in on what God is doing…[pause]

And so these conversations go…but it does help to have thought it through…and maybe practised a little…
don’t you think?

Now back to that mountain we were trying to move…

Before the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit… Jesus closest friends were frustrated and discouraged
because they thought faith was some magic power Jesus had which they wanted to get

they wanted to know why they couldn’t drive out demons like Jesus did…but I think Jesus wanted them to understand faith very differently…I think Jesus wanted them to get that faith is about doing what you can and trusting God to work in God’s time and in God’s way…

not about working alone as some kind of magician
So what could Jesus really mean… when he talks about faith that can move mountains? When he says

if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.

What is Jesus talking about? He certainly didn’t try it out
on the nearest mountain to prove his point

On a Christian blog recently I came across an old Chinese proverb that goes, "You can move a mountain one stone at a time." It reminded the blogger how Jesus tells his disciples about faith… enough to move mountains

She remembered the many times she turned her back on a challenging situation because she didn’t think she could make a difference?

But what this woman had forgotten all along…is that
when we take a step of faith… we are not alone…
we are stepping into the stream…of God’s love and power… [pause]

God understands the physics of the universe
God created the universe…

Jesus wasn’t ridiculing our puny faith because he never meant for us to tackle the entire mountain at once and all alone. Instead he urges us to take one step of faith at a time…one little mustard seed at a time…to move the stones we can…

One
step of faith at a time…one day at a time…sometimes one minute at a time…trusting that God is working with us… flowing with us…toward the future God has promised. Where all creation is reconciled to God.

And once you make a step of faith…
whether the mountains you’re trying to move
are personal or universal

whether its illness your tackling or global hunger…
Whether it’s bullying in the school ground …
or working for peace in the Middle East…

Every decision… every action… you take in faith…
to work in harmony with God’s purposes of love…
every step…every stone every shovel full…
will make the mountain smaller…