Sermon 5 October 16th Sunday After Trinity
Readings: Habakkuk 1. 1-4; 2. 1-4; 2 Timothy 1. 1-14; Luke 17. 5-10
Theme: Faith as a Mustard Seed
How often have you heard it said, “I wish I had faith, but I just can’t believe in it”. The notion that assenting to a belief is what constitutes faith is a common one in our society. This understanding of ‘faith’ is not an inaccurate interpretation of the New Testament’s understanding of faith, but it is not the predominant one. Much more central to the New Testament, and indeed also to the Old Testament, notion of faith, is faith understood as ‘the gift of a loving trust in God’. Having faith in God is to entrust our lives to God out of love.
And, precisely because faith is a gift given to us by God, it is not something that we have to strain our sinews to obtain. However, we should ask God for this gift, and indeed to increase it in us. Moreover, to receive this gift properly, we do have a responsibility to prepare ourselves for it. Have I examined myself in good conscience to uncover any resistances or blockages that I may have placed in the way of receiving this gift from God? Have I taken the time to read and study the bible, so that I may better come to know God’s story and how my life fits into its narrative? Have I attempted to pray, to listen to God’s voice speaking in my experience, so that I can discover the offer being made to me by God? Posing these, and other questions, is a way that I open myself up to God’s gift of faith. We can be certain that God desires to give this gift to us. But the question of faith in my personal life may have more to do with whether I am ready to receive it and to accept the consequences of receiving this gift for my life.
Receiving the gift of faith is a beautiful experience, but it can also be a scary one, because it might make demands that we struggle to accept. This is why, the gift of faith is not a cheap gift. It comes at a cost of sacrificing what may be a more selfish lifestyle for a lifestyle given over to the service of others rather than our own particular whims and fancies. Nevertheless, it is a gift that is freely given and because of this, we come to realize that a certain logic of reciprocating, based on a 50:50 mindset, is not going to work in this regard. This freely given nature of the gift tells us something about the essence of faith.
It is only in love that we can come to understand this, and love is not based on a ‘you give a bit and then I’ll give a bit’ model of interaction; the 50:50 mindset that we ordinarily operate with, in our daily lives. God gives regardless of the return, because God loves us unconditionally. Experience of this can make us painfully aware of how far from this type of loves our own lives are.
This is why faith, as a human experience, is closer to the experience of trusting someone than of simply knowing that ‘x’ is the case. When I trust in God, then I open God’s word with an eager longing that the God who loves me wants to communicate Godself to me, so that I may learn to return this gift of self to God.
Consequently, ‘understanding’ God, typically proceeds after this experience of existential trust in God. As the eleventh-twelfth-century Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Anselm, famously put it, “fides quaerens intellectum”, that is to say, “faith seeking understanding” is the right order of proceeding: trust and then understanding will follow.
When faith is given, and received, we then begin the never-ending journey of coming to know, in love, the mystery of God. A journey that will continue beyond our deaths in the eternal voyage into the divine Trinitarian love that knows of no ending.
For this reason, faith does not mean understanding everything about God; understanding why, for example, the suffering of the innocent is allowed, why ‘bad people’ seem to prosper, and why so much of life seems to be such an uphill struggle for so many. No, faith is more of a choice, made through the gift of loving trust, to hand it all over to God. This can often seem like very little; it is like a ‘mustard seed’, and one which is given to us by God at that; but when we receive this gift, and make this choice, a certain orientation opens up in our lives that provides us with a direction of travel that was absent prior to it. We gradually come to experience that whatever happens, good, bad, or indifferent, we have surrendered it to God, knowing in faith that God will bring it to a good end in God’s own time.
As our Gospel for this Sunday concludes, when we have done this, we will have simply done what we ought to have done. That is to say, if we truly want to know and love God, we have to trust, and then we shall come to be aware of more than we ever thought was possible in this life. Together with this ‘act of faith’, we should continue to do what we also ought to do, which is to give thanks for this gift of loving trust in God by making the world a better place. When we do this, we learn to know through doing, and hence come to better understand that the word ‘God’ is as much a verb as it is a noun!
And, as we greet the recent announcement of the Archbishop-designate of Canterbury, Bishop Sarah Mullally, let us ask the Lord to increase her faith, so that she may lead and inspire the Church of England, the wider Anglican Communion, and all Christians, in the humble service of Christ that is the common vocation of all Christian men and women.