Hilton Head Island, SC – February 5, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 9:18-31; Mark 13:29-36
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Texts – “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to him, “Yes, Lord.” – Matthew 9:28; “From the fig tree, learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.” – Mark 13:28 (RSV)
At least fifty years ago there was a popular song by Elvis Presley. I didn’t know it was Elvis until I Googled it to make sure I had remembered the lyrics correctly. He sang, “I believe for every drop of rain that falls/ A flower grows/ I believe that even in the darkest night/ A candle glows.” Those are nice, sentimental thoughts. And anyone who believes them is also a hopeless sentimentalist. I am convinced there are far more drops of rain than there are flowers, and there is not a candle glowing for everyone in the darkest night. Would that it were so, but it isn’t.
One of the most famous soprano solos in all of musical literature is the air which begins the final section of Handel’s Messiah. It says, quoting Job 19:25, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand upon the earth.” Job did not and could not know that. That statement of faith is simply not knowable. All that notwithstanding, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth is, I choose to believe, one of the greatest musical airs in the whole history of choral music.
There is a crucial distinction between believing something and knowing something. We believe that tomorrow will be a nice day, but we know that the sun will rise, even if it cloudy and rainy all day. We might believe that La La Land is the best movie of the year (if we actually do believe that, which I don’t, but I am prepared for it to win the Oscar anyway), but we know that it stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling (if we remember that, which many of us probably don’t).
Believing in anything or anyone is something which, by definition, can never be proven. Knowing anything always requires that knowledge not only to be provable, but also to have been proven. We believe that mathematics is one of the greatest of human academic enterprises, but that belief cannot be proven to everyone’s satisfaction. However, we know that 2+2=4. That is mathematically provable every time anyone adds two-plus-two.
Let me give a couple more examples of the difference between believing something and knowing something. We may (or may not) believe that things will soon run more smoothly in the executive branch of our federal government. That cannot be known until it happens, if it happens, depending on what we believe “happens” means. Nevertheless, we know that Donald Trump is our President, and Mike Pence is our Vice-President. The vote of the Electoral College proved that, even if the popular vote did not. Believing is not the same as knowing.
Some people believe the New England Patriots will win tonight’s Super Bowl. Others believe the victors will be the Atlanta Falcons. Until the game is over, the outcome cannot be proven. When it is over, we will know who won, and there will be no point in being believers anymore. (There are many other people who believe the whole spectacle is a colossal waste of time, effort, money, and emotion, and I believe there is some truth in that.)
The Germans have two words for the verb “to know.” The first is kennen, and it means “to be acquainted with.” Thus we are acquainted with and thus “know” many people, and we “know” (i.e., are acquainted with) football or Tom Brady or Matt Ryan. The other German word for “know” is wissen. We “know” the sun is the center of our solar system, and we know that the universe is expanding (not that we know it, but that Einstein and other physicists have known it, and we trust them to be correct, because they really do know such things). We are not merely acquainted with the sun being the center of the solar system; we know it is.
No one knows that God exists. That cannot be known. Many people believe God exists, while many others believe God does not exist, but it is impossible to know of His existence or non-existence. It can only be believed one way or the other.
Do you believe your spouse or daughter or son or best friend will always remain loyal to you, no matter what? You can’t know that beyond a doubt, but you can believe it beyond doubt. But that is something no one can know. Nor can we know that God will always be loyal to us, no matter what. We can believe it, though. We may, and I hope do, stake our lives on that belief.
Here is something very important to remember. Life is determined far more by what we believe than by what we know. There is virtually nothing we can know about God or Jesus or the excellence of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach or the perpetual reliability of those we love or the ultimate meaning of the universe, but we can invest great faith in all those things; we can believe in them; we can trust them. (Here I am equating belief, faith, and trust. Not everyone does make that equation, but for the purposes of this sermon, I am suggesting that all three of these nouns are synonymous. But the verbs “to believe” and “to know” are not the same, and it is vital for us to understand that.)
We know that mathematical equations are always verifiable, but we can only believe that the mathematics and physics and mechanics necessary to put human beings on the planet Mars by the third decade of the twenty-first century will succeed in doing that. It cannot be known until it is tried, and trying it may result in either success or failure. No one can know which it will be until it is tried. Therefore we can --- and should --- believe that there is great risk in this idea.
A while back a survey was taken among men and women who have the HIV virus. It was discovered that those who engage in spiritual practices were two to four times more likely to live permanently with HIV than those who did not participate in any spiritual disciplines. A fifth of the respondents said they thought God was using their situation for the good of others. The people in that 20% of the survey were four times more likely to survive HIV than the others who did not share that belief. And it was belief that made the difference for these people; they did not and could not know that being spiritually disciplined would improve their chances of survival.
Three other studies indicated that people with cancer who have strong beliefs in God are more likely to experience better health than those with few or no beliefs in God. The mental health of such individuals is better, with less stress, anxiety, and depression. Those with strong faith in God had a slight advantage in their social relationships over others with no such faith. No one could know they would be better off with firm commitments and beliefs, but their beliefs in the power of God to guide and uphold them made a positive difference in how they handled the reality of their cancer.
A Dutch study considered the issue of happiness for over 9,000 Europeans in four areas. They were: volunteering or working for a charity, taking educational courses, participating in political organizations, and participating in religious organizations. The study concluding that being involved in a religious organization was the only one of the four activities that resulted in sustained happiness. All of that may seem surprising. Or is it? What do you believe about that?
Life is determined far more by what we believe than by what we know. In fact, the things we can know for certain have relatively little effect on the way our lives evolve. It is our beliefs that sustain us through all the ups and downs of our existence, of which there are a great many. As Norman Vincent Peale said more than half a century ago, the power of positive thinking can have a profound benefit for all of us if we will only believe in positive thoughts. But positive thinking is not communicable, like a beneficial bacterium or some such thing; we alone can give it life.
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher and theologian in the early part of the last century. He used a term for describing how each of us has many factors in our lives which are determined by happenstance. In German he called it Geworfenheit. In English it comes out as “thrown-ness.” (I love the German language. It has so much meat on its bones.) Geworfenheit implies that we begin life like several dice thrown onto a table. By means of how in particular the dice fall, we have a certain IQ, we will grow to a certain height, our station in life, at least when we are young, results from the social status of our parents, and so on.
But what do we do with our “thrown-ness”? What do we do about it? Do we believe our lives shall be shaped entirely by it, or do we believe we have the ability to take the best of our Geworfenheit and use it to the greatest advantage, working around the rest of it that is not so advantageous? We can’t know the future, but by our belief in ourselves we can shape the future.
In Matthew’s Gospel, there are three healing miracles all in a row, The rabbi or leader or “ruler” of a synagogue came to Jesus, asking that Jesus heal his daughter. While they were going to see the girl, a woman who had had a continuous hemorrhage for twelve years came and touched the fringe of Jesus’ robe, and she was healed instantly. Jesus knew that healing power had left him, so he asked who had touched him, and the woman admitted it was she. Jesus told her that her faith had made her well. Then Jesus went to the synagogue leader’s home, and he healed the girl, whom everyone thought was dead. Later, two blind men asked Jesus to give them sight. Jesus asked, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” (Mt. 9:28)They said they did. And in that moment both men could see. Everyone in those three stories believed Jesus could overcome the situations which were plaguing them. And it happened as they believed.
We cannot know that God will be with us in all the difficulties which befall us, but we can believe He will be there. No one could know Jesus could or would cure them of their maladies, but many believed he could, and many of them were healed.
During Holy Week the disciples asked Jesus when the end of the world was coming. He told them, “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near” (Mk. 13:32). Nature tells us things we can know, such as the progression of the seasons or the migration of the birds or the revolution of the stars and planets. But some things are beyond both our knowing and our believing. When or how or even why the world ends is one of those things. In this episode Jesus seemed to imply that there is no point in even thinking about it. Belief in the apocalypse was very widespread in Jesus’ day.
However, in matters of religion and faith, it is important to understand that knowledge is scarce, but belief can be abundant. It is our tendency to want to know more than we can know, to have assurance of things for which there can be no assurance. Nevertheless, we can learn to have faith in and to trust in and to believe in certain factors which enable us to deal more effectively with life. If we believe that God goes with us in every step of our journey, we are far more apt to have a productive, happy, and successful life than if we believe nothing.
Well educated people tend to want to know more than is reasonably knowable. In like manner, many who are sophisticated in their thinking may reject believing in anything that cannot be clearly known. We do ourselves a great disservice if we fall into that mental and spiritual trap. For the sake of trying to lodge these two statements firmly in your minds, I want to repeat them: Life is determined far more by what we believe than by what we know. In matters of religion and faith, knowledge is scarce, but belief is, or least can be, abundant.
So we must ask ourselves a question. Shall we take the leap of faith, or shall we not? Shall we trust in Someone or something beyond ourselves and our own minds, or shall we not?
I am finding all kinds of treasures in our new Pilgrim Hymnal. Well, it isn’t really new; it was copyrighted in 1931, 1935, 1958, and renewed in 1986. But the Pilgrim Hymnal is new to us, courtesy of the gift of our hymnals from the Roxbury Congregational Church in Roxbury, CT.
I knew I wanted to end this service with Tennyson’s poem-turned-hymn, Strong Son of God, immortal Love. It is unusual poetry; the first line rhymes with the last line, and the two middle lines rhyme. I have known, sung, and loved that hymn my whole life. The Presbyterians sing the hymn to the tune St. Crispin, but the UCCs sing it to Rockingham Old, which is even better. In every Presbyterian hymnal from which I sang it, there were only four stanzas. In the Congregational/UCC Hymnal, however, there are six. The first stanza fits our sermon theme like a glove, and I remembered that: “Strong Son of God, immortal Love,/ Whom we that have not seen thy face/ By faith, and faith alone, embrace/ Believing where we cannot prove.”
The pilgrims of New England, bless their sometimes flinty hearts, have given us two more stanzas. “Thou wilt not leave us in the dust/ Thou madest man, he knows not why/ He thinks he was not made to die/ And thou hast made him, thou art just.” And then the fifth stanza, the best for our purposes today: “We have but faith, we cannot know/ For knowledge is of things we see/ And yet we trust it comes from thee/ A beam in darkness, let it grow.”
The world may seem to be a complete mess to you, but it can and will improve. It always has, and it always will. You cannot know that, but you can believe it. You have a very troubled child or nephew or niece or grandchild. Things can get better. You cannot know that, but you can believe it. If you do believe it, it is more likely to happen. What you thought was a tragedy occurred in your life, and you have held it against God ever since. It was not caused by God; it happened because it happened. Life is sometimes like that. You can’t know that God did or did not cause it, but you can believe He has been with you ever since, even if it did not seem like it, and now is the time to try to get over it. You have been at loggerheads with someone for years because of what that person did to you. You thought the relationship could never be repaired, and it can’t be, if you don’t believe it can. But it can, if you believe that you and God can improve things. You will never know that will happen, but if you believe it will, it is far more likely to happen. You have always had a hard time being convinced that God exists, and that if He does, He is truly all-good, all-knowing, all-loving. No one knows God exists, but millions, billions really, believe He does, and their lives are greatly enriched because of it. Take a chance. Take the plunge. The leap of faith is always a leap into the unknown. Nonetheless, the unknown can become partially known, and believing in the partial is better than believing in nothing at all.
Some day we shall all see God face to face, whatever that strange expression might mean. Until then, “We have but faith; we cannot know/ For knowledge is of things we see/ And yet we trust it comes from thee/ A beam in darkness; let it grow.”