Faith Is a Verb
Reflections for the Second Sunday after Pentecost
RCL Proper 12C
23 June 2019
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached
at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday the 23rd.
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached
at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday the 23rd.
One of the things that I miss now that our children are adults is the presence of their friends. It seems to me that, as our children were growing up, there were always one or more of their friends in the house, whether after school or at meals or just ‘hanging out’. I think that our children’s friends thought that Paula and I were a little exotic. Few of them were active in any religious community and a number came from single-parent homes, so our home was unusual.
One day, as I was driving a group of my younger son’s friends to their rugby game, Owen and I got into an energetic discussion about the proper use of a word. Before I could say anything, a voice from the back seat said, ‘Look out! He’s about to leggett.’ It turns out that our children’s friends had created a new verb, ‘to leggett’, which means ‘to have a serious conversation about the proper use or meaning of a particular word with a goal of on-going proper usage’.
I’m glad that my children and their friends learned that words have meaning and that words can be used to heal or to hurt, to clarify or to confuse, to further conversation or to shut it down. So, this morning I’m going to leggett a bit with you about an important word in the Christian vocabulary.
When you hear the word ‘faith’, what do you hear? Some of us may hear ‘a system of belief or beliefs that are foundational to a particular religious or philosophical tradition’. Others of us may hear ‘an attitude towards the world and life that allows one to persevere in difficult times and circumstances’. We might also hear ‘an act of placing confidence in someone or something’. All three of these connotations are fair and accurate renderings of the word ‘faith’.
But for this morning I suggest to you that it is the third connotation, ‘an act of placing confidence in someone or something’, that makes the other two understandings possible. What I’m trying to say is this: before faith is a noun, before faith is an adjective or an adverb, faith is a verb. It is an action that enables us to persevere in difficult times and circumstances as well as come to believe certain things that help give meaning to our lives and shape our understanding of what it means to be a human being.
This is not a new idea. More than thirty years ago a Christian theologian named Kenneth Stokes wrote a book entitled Faith Is a Verbabout adult Christian formation. Almost two thousand years ago Paul was trying to help the Christians in Galatia understand the same thing.
Here’s the problem Paul was facing. Galatia was a Roman province in the heart of what is now modern-day Turkey. In fact, the capital city of the province, Ancyra, would eventually become Ankara, the current capital of Turkey. Most of the inhabitants were non-Jews and the early Christian community was probably made up of what were known as ‘proselytes’, literally, ‘those who have drawn near’. Proselytes were non-Jews who found much of the moral and religious teaching of Judaism meaningful but, for various reasons, chose not to become Jews formally.
The good news of God in Christ that Paul brought to the community was a source of great joy. These ‘God-fearers’, to use another name for them, could share in the promises God gave to the people of Israel because of what God in Jesus had done for all of humanity. It was no longer necessary to believe a certain set of beliefs or to follow certain ritual customs in order to be considered a believer. All that was required was to place one’s confidence in Jesus and then act accordingly. As a nineteenth-century gospel hymn puts it:
I have decided to follow Jesus;
I have decided to follow Jesus;
I have decided to follow Jesus;
no turning back, no turning back.
Though none go with me, I still will follow;
Though none go with me, I still will follow;
Though none go with me, I still will follow;
no turning back, no turning back.
The world behind me, the cross before me;
The world behind me, the cross before me;
The world behind me, the cross before me;
no turning back, no turning back.
Whatever distinctions there might be in being a Jew or a Greek, they mean nothing in comparison to what God has done in Jesus. Whatever privileges there might be in being male or female, they do not compare with what it means to put one’s confidence in Jesus. Whatever the bonds are between slave and free, they are dissolved through the free self-giving of Jesus upon the cross.
Faith is a verb. When Jesus is tempted in the garden to turn away from the mission God entrusted to him, he puts his confidence in God, knowing full well what the consequences of saying, ‘Not my will but yours be done,’ will be. And the world is changed.
Faith is a verb. When we are tempted to turn away from the work God has given us to do, whether in our families, in our communities, in ourselves, we put our confidence in the one who calmed the waters of the lake, who healed a possessed man and who asks us to follow where he leads. And the world is changed.
It’s a simple word, faith. But when it is embodied in a human being, it does infinitely more than anyone can ask or imagine.
No comments:
Post a Comment