Feast of Saint Faith
5 October 2014
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
More
than seventeen hundred years ago a young woman was executed by the Roman
imperial government in what is now southern France. The stories associated with her death differ
in some details, but one aspect of her story remains constant: Faith was executed because she had chosen to
live her life following the way of Jesus of Nazareth. This way of life challenged the Roman imperial
government because the Christian way claimed that there was a greater loyalty
than loyalty to the state. Even though in
the letter to the Romans Paul exhorts Christians to pray for the state and for
its leaders, our prayers for the state and for its leaders are always to be
tempered by our vision of another world, a world in which all God’s children
shall be free, free from oppression and violence, free from hunger and
homelessness, free from any form of discrimination and prejudice, free to
become who we truly are as God’s beloved.
This
vision of the world is not always welcomed by others. Our vision is not welcome for several
reasons. One reason is that we believe
in authority rather than power.
Authority relies upon mutual respect and accountability between the
parties. Those who wish to exercise
authority know that conversation and dialogue are the primary means to achieve
the common good. Authority knows that it
must offer a vision or hope. Power,
however, can be exercised without conversation and dialogue. Power does not have to offer hope or a
vision; power need only have the means to coerce by force, whether that force
is psychological, emotional or physical.
Power’s greatest tool is fear.
Faith
‘threatened’ her persecutors with a vision of a new world that offered hope to
all who are made in the image of God.
This vision was so persuasive that the only way to combat it was with
the brute force of the imperial regime:
confiscation of goods, imprisonment, exile and, in some cases, cruel
tortures and death. These punishments
were meant to overcome the vision with fear, the natural fear that human beings
have of death in all its forms. What
Faith did was to speak the truth in love to the Roman government, but its
representatives could only see the threat to their own understanding of a world
in which might makes right and in which those who have had the right to take
from those who have not.
By
choosing Faith as the patron saint of this parish, our predecessors, whether
knowingly or unknowingly, have bequeathed to us the same vocation as hers.
My
friends, all we need to do is to read the newspapers or listen to the radio or
watch television to realize that our times are not so different from those of
Saint Faith. Throughout the world there
are powers who are happy to use all the tools of coercion they possess to
suppress the vision and the hope that genuine religious faith in all its diversity
offers to humanity. Every day new
witnesses to genuine religious faith, people whom we call ‘martyrs’ from the
Greek word for ‘witness’, are persecuted in many and various ways. While we generally use the word ‘martyr’ for
those who are killed for their faith, let me be faithful to the New Testament
understanding by saying that all who share the vision of a new world and the
hope that it will come to be are ‘martyrs’, witnesses to this vision and to
this hope to our sisters and brothers.
Being
a witness to this new world always comes with a cost. For some of us this cost is counted by the
resources we devote to the life of our religious communities, whether by our
volunteer hours, by our financial gifts and by the use of our skills and
knowledge to further the mission of God.
For others of us the cost is counted by the resistance to our vision of
a new world we experience from friends or neighbours, co-workers and employers,
even by elected municipal, provincial and federal governments. For those of us in North America the cost is
rarely counted by actual persecution, forced migration, imprisonment and death
expect by those of our neighbours who choose to leave the security of our
continent to provide or facilitate direct assistance to those in need
elsewhere.
What
guides Christian witness is a vision shaped by the scriptures and the example
of Christians throughout the centuries.
What sustains Christian witness is a hope fueled by our experience, from
time to time, of the reality of that vision in the lives of women and men. What Christian witness must be is the
persistent and confident speaking of the truth in love, even to those who are
held in thrall by the forces of fear and death.
The
truth, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu prays, is this: ‘Goodness is stronger than evil; light is
stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death; victr’y is ours, victr’y
is ours, through God who loves us.
Victr’y is ours, victr’y is ours, through God who loves us.’ [1] We who follow the Christian way know that
this truth is shown to us in the life, teaching, death and resurrection of
Jesus of Nazareth. But we believe it to
be a truth held in trust by people of many faiths and of none. We speak this truth not to condemn any of our
sisters and brothers nor to place ourselves above others; we speak this truth
in love, a love which is described in Paul’s words to us last week in his
letter to the Philippians: “Do nothing
from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than
yourselves. Let each of you look not to
your own interests, but to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2.3-4) It is a truth for which we are prepared to
bear witness --- even if it costs us.
But
there is something else about bearing witness.
Bearing witness to the truth that we know in the good news of God in
Christ is an act of freedom and of joy.
Bearing witness to the good news frees us from bearing witness to the
illusions and delusions of self-centredness and fear. God is working out the divine purposes in us,
through us and with us. Every day, if we
have eyes to see it, the signs of the coming world for which we hope are
visible: the hungry are fed, the naked
clothed and the prisoners freed whether their hunger, their nakedness or their
imprisonment be physical, spiritual or emotional.
Bearing
witness to the good news fills us with the joy that comes when we know that we
are doing what we are called to do and to be.
It is a moment of calm centredness when we know that we are not only in
God’s presence but that we are God’s presence in our homes, our neighbourhoods,
our workplaces, our world. I remember,
as a boy, singing the American hymnal’s version of Luther’s great hymn, ‘A
Mighty Fortress Is Our God’. [2] I have never forgotten the last verse: “That word above all earthly powers, no
thanks to them, abideth: The Spirit and
the gifts are ours through him who with us sideth: Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
the body they may kill: God’s truth
abideth still, his kingdom is for ever.’
To my young mind and heart this affirmation was and has remained a
constant reminder of our destination --- the kingdom of God --- and the
reassurance that the joy of knowing where we are bound cannot be taken from us
by anyone or anything.
May
God grant us the grace to bear witness by speaking the truth in love, in
freedom and in joy. Amen.
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