Words for Worship

Ministry Today

Faith Builder Sermon –

Why have faith?

 

Texts:

Genesis 17.1-8:

John 1.35-51

I am always amused when someone says I have no faith. And I say that because – they may believe they do not have a faith – but let me tell you – they have. Faith maybe not in the way we would see it –yet they have faith nevertheless. For let me let you into a secret – we all live by faith!

 

A point rather unfortunately made by the recent floods. For most of the poor victims of property loss will look to their insurance companies to reimburse them. After all that’s what they have paid their premiums over the years – paid one could say in good faith; Faith that when there is literally a rainy day, the company will pay out.  Similarly when Joe public goes to the hole-in-the-wall cash machine and inserts his card, then he has faith that the bank will pay him his money. Taking a more dramatic example, when Jean public is going down a hill rather fast in her people carrier she has faith that its brakes will stop her at the bottom. We all then have faith, we could not live without faith, and, in all honesty, humanity could not have advanced beyond the caves without faith.

 

The question then for today is not why do we have faith – but why do we bother with a faith in a power beyond us – why do we want faith in the divine.

 

Well one reason could be that as physiologists now believe we are programmed for it. Certainly from the earliest times, homo sapiens and maybe other species too have looked to powers beyond them;  powers that they enshrined into various gods and deities; supernatural forces that could influence their success in harvests, war and health. Yet the really big break through came not amongst the priests and the shaman and the wise men, but to an itinerant wanderer in a middle-eastern desert. For whatever happened to that nomad back then - it made him truly the father of all faith.

 

Now read  Genesis 17.1-8:

 

Possibly designed to confuse the lesser two services, the stripes on a sailors uniform do not denote that he is a sergeant, they are really long service badges. Therefore 3 badge Able Seamen tend to be rare legends in their own time. Because their 3 stripes mean they have served a long Naval career without attracting the misfortune of promotion. And it was one of the sages of the human condition that Dick emery used to regularly portray. Once, the sketch depicted a reporter approaching our Jack tar and asking if he ever felt that there were strange, unpredictable and inexplicable forces influencing his life. To which the Matelot replied – Yea – we call then officers!

Well the faith revolution of Abraham was to understand that divine power lay in a single all supreme being. What’s more this being was benign and interested him. So much so that He promised our shepherd and his descendants his protection. Yet the Bible goes on to suggest that humanity still did not understand its relationship with their God. They still saw God as unpredictable and sometimes downright petty.  In other words, they had belief, they had obedience, but they did not really have faith in God not being strange and inexplicable and unforgiving of humanness. Time then for another break through!

 

Please now see Gospel of John 1.35-51

 

 

Let me then ask you and myself that question of Christ to John the Baptist’s disciples - What are you looking for?

For that is the basis of our initial question - why have faith? Because what is really being asked is – what are you looking for from faith? More bluntly – why go to the trouble of have religious faith?

And the ultimate answer is probably the same as for cavemen, ancient wanderer in the wilderness, medieval saints and the religious the world over – it is because we crave the faith not that God exists but in what God promises.

Yet we seem at the moment to be in particularly difficult times for faith. For these days seem particularly meaningless. In fact, we have come to the end of the week alone that we have seen the first public acknowledgement that the war in Iraq is meaningless – other than to George W Bush that is!; we have seen hurricanes turning human efforts to meaninglessness and we have seen fire, possibly maliciously set, ruin the holiday if not lives of hotel guests in Cornwall.  Moreover, we continue to witness the essential meaninglessness of the violence so many young people in our country are caught up in.  indeed our hearts go out to the family of …………. Shot dead at th age of 11.

We then can feel very tempted at the moment to be drowned by this morass of meaninglessness.  

 

Yet it is pure prejudice to believe that although a person lived 3 thousand years ago, he or she did not have the same sensitivity of feeling. And so we should have no doubt that Abraham sought meaning to his living as much as we each do today. A meaning he found in the promise of God that he would be the founder of a great clan, that he would be remembered as the Patriarch with faith, that his acceptance of God’s outstretched hand would be the down payment of the Holy Land. No wonder then he changed his name in celebration of that meaningful day!

 

Here also is why desire faith more today than ever before. For if we have faith in the promise of God then we will find a thread of meaning even in the most random or evil of events; we will rediscover the hope of meaning in all that is still wrong in our world and within ourselves; and we will gradually grasp the certainty of God getting us through the great questions in life so that we will find the even greater answers.  

 

Or as Leslie Newbiggin wrote:

 

The life of faith I a continually renewed victory over doubt, a cintually renewed grasp of meaning in the midst of meaninglessness.

Now while Abraham was given a name change by God that we can not fully understand we can do better with Simon’s renaming to Peter. For that is derived from the Greek word for Rock. Yet at the time of Jesus renaming Simon and for much of their future together Simon was far from being a rock. He was impetuous, he was sometimes insensitive and occasionally just a big buffoon. However, he did ultimately meet his promise and become a founding rock of the Church.

 

Here then is then next reason for seeking faith in God and his promise. For that promise does bring stability – stability first in our personality that we too can become what we want desperately to be; stability also in our relationships with others. For by acting and speaking with the foundation of faith, we can more confidently be merciful, understanding and brave. Indeed, we can be more what Christ knows we will enjoy being.  Moreover, faith bring  stability in our beliefs in God; the stability of heart to know that he is constant, that he does care and that he will see us through the meaninglessness. For our desired faith must surely say continually to us - despite the badness and ill fortune, God does know our situation, he does protects us and he does guarantee that our ultimate good will triumph no matter what we need endure.

 

And something of this personal stability offered by faith comes across in the interviews made this week with Frances Lawrence. Now she is the widow of Philip Lawrence the headmaster who was murdered when he went to the aid of his pupils in 1995. Frances is a lady of strong faith yet this was sorely tried when she found out that her husband’s killer is now to be set free and not deported from the UK because that would be a breach of his human rights. However, faced with a situation that would have most of us calling for such laws to be scrapped, her Christian faith gave her the stability of outlook to say that she still fully supported this human rights legislation and sought only improvement in its application.  Her faith then was indeed a rock to see a golden glimmer even in the engulfing storm.

 

However, desiring faith simple due to a promise of some unseen destiny seems somewhat insubstantial. To quest for faith just because it will makes us more mature people seems a bit pedantic. To work daily for faith simple to be an insurance policy when times get rough seems somewhat depressing. However, to demand faith because it gives us real joy is another matter. In fact, this may have been the motivation of John disciple’s.  Because why else were they still looking for something more than the Jewish law. Why else were they looking for the one who would say – come and see! Why else were they desperately scanning the horizon for the joyful arrival of a messiah?

Because, in the end of the day, their faith craved only what their saviour could offer. They wanted the joy of having not just meaning being injected into their lives they wanted the delight of their lives being rounded off. They wanted to someone who would get them through the messiness of living so that they could revel in life in all its fullness. They wanted to have faith in someone who would not take no for answer and come after them and make them have not just completeness now but life that goes on and on; life indeed that truly runneth over.

 

And that surely must be the same meaningful faith that we too are seeking. The same joyful relationship we too must surely be looking for and the same Messiah that we must hope is even now looking out for us.

 

For a life complete to being overfilled with joy must be the greatest fruit of Christian faith.  And that is the faith we must desire with every fibre of our being and seek with persistence we hear of in this story.   

 

There was once an old man who had a little spotted dog. The dog was a mixture of spaniel, collie, terrier and dachshund. He was a bitzer – bits of this and bits of that, but the old man loved him because he was all he had. They were constant companions, going everywhere and doing everything together. Every night the dog slept at the foot of the old man's bed.

Then one day the dog disappeared. He was playing in the garden one moment, and the next thing he was gone. The old boy searched everywhere for his dog but he was nowhere to be found. The old man searched all over the town, calling out the dog's name as he went, listening in vain for his familiar bark. The next day was the same and the one after that . . . for weeks the old man searched till finally his neighbours convinced him that there was no use in looking anymore. Surely the dog is dead.

Still the old man would not give up hope. Every night, before bed, he went out on the porch and called out the dog's name at the top of his voice. This went on for several months. And then one night, as the old man was calling his name, the little spotted dog came home. The old man never knew where he had been or what caused him to stay away so long, but he was very glad that he had never stopped calling his name.  He was glad that he and his companion kept the faith!

 

You may not know what a blog is. In fact, it is a sort of diary that people keep over the internet. Well, this week one blog came to an end; an end that could have been sad and meaningless. Yet due to the fortitude of it young writer it is a testimony to the need for faith; because, the Writer, Miles Levin, was suffering at the age of 19 from terminal cancer. However, he recorded for all humanity that this deadly disease had the power to transmute and he had accepted its offer; the offer to expand his mind and heart. And as a result amongst this experience of apparent meaninglessness he could write with a faith that will encourage even embolden others in suffering.   The faith that allowed him to proclaim - "I can rest assured that even if I succumb to the rogue cells, I will leave behind a legacy of victory.

 

Well, with an example of one so young, let us proclaim why we have faith. The faith that does offer eternal meaning in all meaninglessness; the faith that promises a stability in the flux of life that allows a goodness of heart and mind and the faith that life is a constant delight with our Messiah. Because that is the guarantee to a covenant people; that is the joy for a covenant people and that is the daily victory by a covenant people.

 

Amen