Hilton Head Island, SC – August 19, 2012
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 8:23-27; Matthew 17:14-21
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move hence to yonder place,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.” – Matthew 17:21-22 (RSV)
You never know what surprises you may come upon when you write sermons. Since not many of you write many sermons, what I am really trying to say here is that I discovered something I never would have guessed when I began to put together the things I intended to include in this sermon.
In the Hebrew language, there is no word for “faith.” Whoever would have imagined that? Certainly not I. When I looked in my concordance, I was astonished to realize that the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, has no word that corresponds to what we mean when we say the word “faith.” Either the concept did not exist prior the time of the Greek scriptures, the New Testament, or the Israelites assumed the existence of what we call faith, and they thought there was no need to have a word for it. In Greek the word for “faith” is pistis. There are well over two hundred references to pistis in the New Testament. But obviously that word is not the origin of our English word faith. Instead the English word comes from the Latin fides. Semper Fidelis is the motto of the US Marines, or, in shortened form, Semper Fi, “Always Faithful.”
In Hebrew there is a word for “faithfulness.” Our last hymn is “Great is Thy faithfulness,” and it comes from a verse in Lamentations which says precisely that about God (3:23). But “faithfulness” and “faith” are not the same thing. To be faithful means to be dependable, to be someone who can be counted on. But that is not what faith means.
Or does it? Mitch Albom wrote an outstanding little book called Have a Little Faith. It is the true story of his boyhood rabbi, whom he had not seen for years, asking him to give the eulogy at his funeral service. In order to do the job properly, the sportswriter visited Rabbi Lewis often in his last months of life. In one of those visits, Mitch asked the rabbi how important ritual was. It is vital, said the rabbi. “Why?” asked the writer. “Mitch,” said Rabbi Lewis, “faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe” (p. 44) That’s worth remembering.
So what does faith mean? What, to be as precise as possible, is the nature of faith?
To answer those questions, let me suggest several examples of what some people might consider to be faith. You probably are not aware of this, but a poll indicated that nearly two thirds of Americans believe that Barack Obama is better equipped than Mitt Romney to deal with an invasion of aliens from space. Coming up to Nov. 6, I am certain that gives the President great reassurance that he will be re-elected. A survey by National Geographic says that 80 million Americans are certain that UFOs exist, and 11% of those polled say they have seen UFOs. More than half of those surveyed believe the federal government employs secret agents to deal with space aliens.
Do these amazing (or perhaps more appropriately, appalling) statistics illustrate faith? If people believe in UFOs and aliens from space, does that mean they have faith? If so, what kind of faith would that be?
In a suburb of Mumbai, India, a statue of Jesus at a church began dripping water from its feet. People started collecting the liquid in bottles, drinking it as a cure for everything from arthritis to cancer. An atheist who is president of India’s Rationalist Association said the drips were from faulty plumbing in a lavatory. He was merely trying to give a rational explanation for the phenomenon, but he faces up to three years in prison for blasphemy charges against him. Who has the correct faith about this matter, the seekers of miracle cures or the atheist? Or is faith involved in this matter at all?
A survey, called Last Victory of Dictatorships?, was taken among 7000 German youths, aged 15 and 16. Half of them do not know that Adolf Hitler was a dictator. Slightly less than half knew that West Germany in the old days was a democracy, and that East Germany was a totalitarian state. What do these students believe about their nation? What is the nature of their faith in the German Republic, if they have faith in Germany at all?
In the southern Appalachian Mountains, there are a few Pentecostal Christians who have faith that they can pick up venomous snakes and not be bitten. This bizarre belief is based on an obscure verse in Mark 16, verse 18, which isn’t even included in most editions of Mark’s Gospel. It says that the risen Christ told his followers they could do this and remain safe. One such believer was a young man named Randy Wolford. He picked up a timber rattlesnake, which bit him and killed him. At his funeral a friend did the same thing, but was not bitten. He repeated the refrain to an old bluegrass song, “When I take up serpents, Lord, I got Jesus on my mind.” My song would be, “Don’t take up serpents, boys, or soon you’ll be seeing Jesus.”
Perhaps you have deduced that I am not convinced all varieties of faith are equal. If so, I am very pleased indeed; you have deduced correctly. Some people have faith in the most cockamamie things imaginable, and it behooves us to be aware of that. It seems that we can believe anything we want, but do we have faith? That is the issue of this sermon.
So I ask again: what is faith, and what is its true nature?
Jesus frequently referred to faith and its necessity in the establishment of what he called the kingdom of God. He constantly urged his disciples and others to take what the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and the German theologian Paul Tillich called “the leap of faith,” although Jesus never used those words. And when Jesus observed a lack of faith in his twelve apostles, no less than five times he said of them, “O you of little faith!”
Let us look at two particular examples where Jesus emphasized the importance of faith. The first is an incident with which most of you will be familiar. Jesus and the disciples got into a boat, and went from one side of the Sea of Galilee to the other. “Sea of Galilee” is an unfortunate term, for it implies the lake is very large, although for the Middle East, it is. In fact it about seven miles wide and thirteen miles long. But it is very deep, and is surrounded by mountains on almost all sides, so it can get very rough very quickly in turbulent weather conditions. That is exactly what happened on the occasion you heard about earlier from Matthew 8. Jesus fell asleep as the men sailed across the lake, and a big storm came up. They thought they were going to sink, so they wakened Jesus. “Save us, Lord; we are perishing!” they cried. The narrative says that Jesus responded to his terrified followers, “Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?”
In one sense, that was a ridiculous question to ask the disciples. Why were they afraid? They were afraid because they thought they were going to drown! Who wouldn’t be afraid? The narrative continues, “Then (Jesus) rose and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.” This story is included in Matthew’s Gospel for two reasons. First, it intimates that Jesus had the ability to control the weather, which is something nobody else can do. Secondly, and from the standpoint of declaring the Gospel (the Good News) to be the Gospel, the twelve asked one another, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”
The four Gospels were written so that whoever reads them might have faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Savior of the world. The Fourth Gospel explicitly states, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31).
So then: Does having faith mean acquiring beliefs? Many Christians have thought so. That is especially true of conservative Christians and those who are strongly committed to one, and only one, denomination, whether Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, or whatever. But in the Bible, beliefs do not equate to faith. Beliefs have to do with certain doctrinal statements: we might believe in the divinity of Jesus, or not, or in the virgin birth of Jesus, or not, or that God created the entire universe and the earth in six days, or not. But such beliefs do not suggest that we have faith as the Bible understands faith. Beliefs are always secondary to faith.
Faith means making a life commitment to God, and to God alone. Faith doesn’t mean what we believe about God; it means that we believe in God. Faith and faith alone enables us to give ourselves totally to God, or at least as totally as we are capable.
Paul Tillich said that faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. It is a theologian’s way of describing the meaning as well as the mystery of faith. Only God can represent our ultimate concern, the One to whom we offer our highest allegiance. It is not possible to have genuine faith in anything other than God. We might have allegiance to the United States of America, or the State of South Carolina or some other state, or to the Atlanta Braves or the Green Bay Packers or the University of Wisconsin or some other lesser institution of higher learning, but we can have faith only in God. Nothing else is of ultimate concern.
The other day I saw a bumper sticker for Mitt Romney. (Have you noticed this summer how few bumper stickers there are for either candidate? That should tell us something about the upcoming election, but it is yet to be made clear what the dearth of bumper stickers really means.) Anyway, the caption was this: Romney – Believe in America. It certainly is valid for anyone to believe either in Mitt Romney, or America, or both, but not as an expression of our highest allegiance. Only God can merit that, and everyone needs to keep it in mind.
But to return to Jesus and the apostles on the Galilean lake, what Jesus was asking of the twelve is that they should put their trust in God, or perhaps to put their trust in Jesus that God would work through Jesus to calm the roiling waters. Faith and trust therefore are often synonymous. Our middle hymn referred to that when Tennyson wrote of God, “By faith, and faith alone, embrace/ Believing where we cannot prove.”
That is another important feature of the nature of faith: we cannot prove beyond doubt that the God in whom we have faith, in whom we place our ultimate trust, even exists. That is why faith by its very nature requires a “leap;” we can never be absolutely certain that our faith is valid or trustworthy or sure. We trust that it is, but we don’t know beyond dispute or discussion.
It is imperative to understand that faith is truly faith only if it is faith in God. People can’t have genuine faith in their spouse or in their children or in their doctor or in medicines or in politicians or Presidents. They may trust in them, but they can’t put their faith in them, because God alone is able to be the object of our faith. Faith is the intentional commitment of one’s life and well-being to God, and only to God. Further, for millions of Christians, probably for most Christians, faith in Jesus is equated to faith in God, because most Christians equate Jesus with God. That is a debatable point for some of us, but only for a minority of those who consider themselves Christians.
Our second reading from Matthew tells quite a different kind of story. A father had brought his epileptic son to the disciples for them to cure the boy, but they could not. In response Jesus said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” Strong words indeed! When the twelve asked why they could not cure the boy, Jesus said, “Because of your little faith. If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move hence to yonder place,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you” (Matt. 17:14 ff).
Listen carefully: It is absurd to imagine that Jesus was speaking literally. Nobody can literally move literal mountains by faith. It cannot be done - - - ever. And it would be foolish to try. But biblical language is often metaphorical and poetic, and this is a classic instance of the language of metaphor. If we trust God is with us, we can accomplish things which otherwise would be impossible to us without our faith in Him and in His direction of our lives. Figurative mountains can indeed be moved by faith, but literal mountains? - - - Never.
The problem with the type of people who come to The Chapel Without Walls is that too many of us think too little about our faith in God, which may mean we think too little about God. Or we take our faith in God for granted. Of course we believe in God! Who doesn’t believe in God? But do we truly have faith in God, or do we merely have beliefs about God? While beliefs matter, they don’t ultimately matter. And besides, none of us will ever successfully systematize our beliefs so as to have a flawless belief structure. Nobody has everything right. But everyone can have faith in God, if all of us are willing to take the courageous leap which faith requires. It is like a mother standing in a swimming pool urging her child to leap into her arms; either the child does, or doesn’t. But until the leap is taken, the water is fearsome and alien to the child, and he shall never learn to navigate in its wonderful and mysterious depths. So it is with God. If we do not take the leap of faith, we cannot benefit from all the gifts God has to offer us.
In this sermon, I am trying to do what Jesus tried to do with his disciples; I am trying to encourage you to take the fearfully frightening and fulsomely fulfilling leap of faith, if you have never done so. And if you have, I am urging you to do it again – and again – and again. Faith is the essence of life with God, and without it, we are all less than God wants us to be. With faith we can move mountains - - - in a manner of speaking. With faith we can bring calmness to troubled waters. With faith we can encounter any obstacle which life might hurl at us, and somehow overcome it, because we know God is with us and in us and that He moves through us.
As some of you have gotten older, you may have discovered that you have fewer beliefs than you used to have. That is completely acceptable. In fact, it may even be preferable. It is far better to have far greater faith and far fewer beliefs than to have only beliefs and no faith. Religion doesn’t save us; beliefs don’t save us. Only God can save us. Therefore trust in Him. Have faith in Him. And have faith only in God.