A certain preacher was preaching mightily about the need to trust the Lord. “The good Lord is going to take care of us,” he said. As he lifted his arms, however, his coat parted and the congregation noticed a pistol tucked into his pants. After the service one of his members said, “Preacher, I thought you told us we could trust the Lord.” “Yes, brother,” he said, “you sure can.” The member retorted, “Then why are you carrying that pistol around?” Without missing a beat, the pastor said, “That’s to hold off the enemy until the Lord gets here.”
I use that silly story to introduce
this sermon on faith. Faith is a word
with many meanings and how you define it can have real world consequences.
You may have heard me say before
that faith is not the same as believing the historical factuality of biblical
stories or intellectually accepting church doctrines. No, faith is a relationship of trust;
especially a relationship of trust with God.
That
definition of faith is very much a Lutheran definition of faith. Many major protestant denominations will
define faith similarly. However the
Roman Catholic Church will tend to define faith as intellectually accepting
church doctrines and biblical stories.
Neither way of defining faith is categorically right or wrong, but they
are different.
A
theological dictionary will say faith has two definitions. One is the belief or mental assent to some
truth, whether it be the nature of God or about the past. The second definition is the basic
orientation of the total person, which may include belief but is also about
trust, confidence and loyalty. Again, this first definition is more in line
with Roman Catholic use. The second more
in line with the protestant use.
The
Roman Catholic use goes back to the period of the early church in the 2nd
century. We seldom study that time and
thus we know little about it. However,
it was a time when Christianity was growing rapidly despite being a technically
illegal religion. There were many
religious movements afoot at the time.
Christianity was too young, too new, to have thoroughly developed ideas
of orthodoxy. The Bible was not
standardized. There weren’t widely
accepted formal creeds. There weren’t
organized gatherings of church leaders to hash out what was orthodox, and there
were many outright nutty beliefs floating around. Faith came to be strongly understood as
intellectual acceptance of certain truths about God. These early believers looked at Paul’s trio
of faith, hope, and love and said that faith was a first step but as it matures
it is supplemented by hope and love.
I
don’t want to get lost in the technical weeds of it all. A Roman Catholic scholar could do it all
justice. But the definition of faith
depending highly on intellectual acceptance of stories and doctrines runs into
very serious real-world problems. That
problem is scientific thought.
Centuries
of scientific discoveries, along with critical Bible study methods, have
brought into question literal biblical accuracy and the understandings of the
universe held by its authors. Very
simply, the biblical authors believed the sun and moon and stars revolved
around the earth and things like that.
What then do we do with biblical teachings when human intellect has
since called into question their understanding of things. The stage is set for a faith vs. science
conflict; which of course, has played out many times and continues to do
so. In the midst of that conflict far
too many people simply abandon faith and biblical teachings as relics left over
from the ignorant past.
However,
let’s not outright reject this definition of faith and say Luther and some of
the other reformers got it right and the Roman Catholics have some catching up
to do. Instead let’s look at how the
Bible’s own authors understand faith.
First,
we have to realize that the word faith is not used consistently across the
Bible. Different writers define it
differently. I think we learn a lot by
using the understanding of faith we find early in the Old Testament as our
foundation.
In
the oldest Old Testament writings faith is trust or reliance upon God; God who
is himself trustworthy. This
understanding of faith is cosmic and especially for its age, profound. God stands at the center. It is God’s initiative and God’s design that is
understood to be at work in the act of creation. God’s initiative and design then continue to
be at work in the Exodus story, the covenant, and the establishment of the
chosen people.
The
Hebrew word we translate as faith is, for the most part, ‘to be true,’ or
solid, or firm. Think trustworthy,
reliable.
In
the oldest Old Testament writings faith is not applied to humans so much as it
is applied to God. The question then is:
if God is trustworthy, reliable, and true what is the correct human response to
it? In the Old Testament the answer is
to live correctly according to the law revealed by God. The end goal is the restoration of God’s
purposes for creation.
For
the New Testament understanding of faith we want to use Habakkuk 2:4 as a
bridge. There we have the famous verse
we read earlier today, ‘the righteous shall live by faith.’ Faith, here again means trust or
fidelity. Fidelity to God is the sign of
a righteous person. God alone can be the
object of trust for God alone is the creator and organizer of the
universe. It is God who creates a
person, gives that person value, and who keeps that person safe and whole.
Perhaps
to take this out of just theory, let’s use this example. We may say to ourselves that we accept that
God made us and gave us value. However,
how valuable would you feel (how worthwhile would you feel) if you had to live
in a broken down Winnebago parked out in the woods somewhere? Perhaps you’d do it for the deer hunting
season and think it’s cool. But how
would you feel if it was your permanent residence? Would you not feel ashamed? Would you not feel like a failure, unable to
attain success, unable to care for yourself properly?
Faithfulness
– trusting in God – means that you know your value lies with God alone; God’s
capacity to create value.
Faithfulness
also means trusting in God’s ability to bring about your salvation. It means to use that as a sure and certain
hope for the future. But “hope” is the
word for next week. We’ll leave that one
sit for now.
Habakkuk
2:4 is a passage quoted by St. Paul in Romans 1:17 and the foundation of his
understanding of faith. Pulling various
pieces of Paul’s letters together to form a cohesive understanding of faith we
find that for Paul faith is not an intellectual exercise in accepting doctrines
but a dynamic one. Faith is active. It is expressed in love. It involves striving and increases and is an
energy that is at work.
For
Paul, faith is a strength that can overcome all things and makes all sorts of
hardships not only bearable, but something that can be engaged with confidence.
We’re
going to come back to Paul in a minute but another definition of faith in the
Bible, especially in Matthew’s gospel, must be noted. There we have something very similar to what
I started by calling a Roman Catholic understanding of faith. At the conclusion of the story of the
centurion’s slave Jesus says, “Go, be it done for you as you have
believed.” Similarly when Jesus heals
two blind men he asks, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” Also the story of the Canaanite woman who
bugs Jesus about healing her daughter give us this line, “O woman, great is
your faith! Be it done for you as you
desire.” There are other examples as
well.
Muddying
the water though, Matthew does conclude with the story of Jesus resurrection
and ascension. There the disciples see
Jesus in person face to face. Matthew
tells us that they worshipped but also doubted.
So, while faith for Matthew does involve belief he also includes
wrestling with doubt as an authentic part of faith. In other words, in Matthew’s gospel faith is
not synonymous with unquestioning belief in the supernatural.
Finally
though and landing very much were the Old Testament and St. Paul do, faith is a
disposition in life that trusts God and is concerned first and foremost living
within the idea that God is in the center,
God
has things under control,
God
can be trusted,
and
that God’s salvation will ultimately come about.
Faith
like this is a long-term thing. Paul
does not say faith will give you supernatural protection from calamities or
hardships. Paul does not say faith will
help you to conquer all things. Faith is
living in reliance on God’s promises, using them to establish priorities and guide
your actions. Sometimes you may find
yourself succeeding. Sometimes you may
feel you are failing. Always though,
faith knows God is faithful and true, and live in that powerful trust.
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