 Rev. Matthew J. Hook |
What's
Faith Got to Do With It?
Sermon:
Scripture: |
|
A family was awakened by their smoke detector in the middle of the night to discover that their house was on fire. The father ran into the upstairs bedroom of his children and carried his eighteen- month-old baby in his arms while dragging his four-year-old son by the hand. In the chaos and confusion, the father didn’t notice that his son wasn’t with him until he got outside. He had gone back to his room for his teddy bear. By now, the little boy was trapped by the flames and smoke in his second story bedroom. Smoke swirled around him and he coughed and cried out from the upstairs window: "Daddy, Daddy! Help me!" His father yelled from below: "Jump out of the window, Andy! I’ll catch you!" In the darkness and smoke, the little boy yelled back: "But Daddy! I can’t see you!" Daddy shouted back: "That’s okay, son. I can see you! Jump!" Do you worry about the future? Are you afraid of what you can’t see? Does it seem dark and smoky? None of us can see what lies ahead, especially these days, but God tells us to trust him, and "jump!" There is a true saying that "I may not know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future." Do you believe that? God calls us to put that belief in action. I don’t know what’s out there beyond what I can see, but I know who’s in charge, and I can put my faith into action. Throughout your life and throughout my life, God has been calling to us from beyond where we can see. Through circumstances, through a person, through the church, through the truth that comes through the Bible, God’s Word, God continually is reaching out for us. Faith is that trust in God that enables the believer to press on steadfastly, whatever the future holds for him. Faith is as much a verb as it is a noun. Tonight we are going to look at faith. It is such a mysterious word. Tonight we will be like Jude, who says in verse 3: "We must contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." Faith gives reality and proof of things unseen, treating them as if they were already objects in our sight. Faith makes real that which we can’t see. Faith is like our headlights at night. As much as I know where my parents’ farm is (though I can’t see it in the dark), because of my faith, I know it’s there. Because I have faith that God has a future and a plan for you and me, I know that it’s there. I can move with as much as God gives me, and that’s faith. Faith is the process of making real that which we can’t see. The way we understand faith has an enormous impact upon the way we go about sharing that faith and living by that faith. A definition: Christian faith is a centered, personal, relational response involving trust and obedience. Christian faith is centered. There is a particular object of our faith: the living God revealed in Jesus Christ. It is not faith "in general." It is not faith in a philosophy of life or ethical ideals. Second, Christian faith is personal. It is centered in a person: its object is Jesus Christ, a living person because of the resurrection. Jesus Christ, who is alive right now! And what I love about the next month is that we really celebrate his birth in a big way. The party decorations are already up in the sanctuary, up in the neighborhoods. It’s a birth bash, because ultimately Jesus Christ is still alive. Jesus died, was dead for three days, rose from the dead, but never died again. He is alive with us and in us still. Jesus is alive right now. It is also personal because it requires a personal response from each human being. You and I have the sacred right to reject or accept the faith. We cannot have faith for another person any more than he or she can have faith for us. That’s why, as parents, we are responsible to share that faith with another person. Every adult Christian believer is called to pass on that faith, so that our children take it on personally. The old saying goes: "God doesn’t have any grandchildren." Each one of us becomes a child of God in our own right, and becomes adopted by God. We must own that faith for ourselves. Christian faith is relational. It makes possible a right relationship with God. "For it is by grace you are saved, through trusting him" (Ephesians 2:8). Faith rightly relates us with our neighbor. 1 John 3:14-16 shows us we cannot claim to love God while we hate our brother or sister. Faith rightly relates us with ourselves, as well. So what’s the problem? There are three major barriers to the Christian faith. First, we think that faith is Believing Beliefs. People can’t help but fall into this understanding because of the heavy use of the English words "belief" and "believe" to denote faith. In the English language, the noun "faith" has no verbal form. We can’t say: "She faiths." Therefore we say: "She believes." This is a problem because "believe" is associated with belief, so people think that faith is believing beliefs. The problem is, belief does not mean the same thing as faith. Once faith has been reduced to belief, it’s a matter of asking: "Which beliefs?" Some say: "If you want to go to heaven, you must believe these things." Others say: "You’ve got to be kidding! If you really want to go to heaven, you must believe these things." There are a million beliefs out there, which become barriers if we reduce faith to belief. Faith becomes robbed of its personal nature, and people become bound to impersonal dogma. Our founder, John Wesley called this a dead faith, not because it failed to believe, but because its object was a set of opinions, notions or propositions rather than the living God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. What are you putting your faith in these days? Is your faith reduced to mental assent, or is it based on your relationship to Jesus Christ? What’s the ground of your faith? You can hold right beliefs and follow a strict moral life, and still not be in a right relationship with God, others, yourself or the world. Christian faith is walking with God toward the unfamiliar and the unknown. Going by faith, heading into the darkness. The opposite of faith is not doubt, but distrust or mistrust. Because you can be moving forward and have your doubts. Understanding that faith is "the assurance of things hoped for" means that faith is dynamic. According to the polls, over 90% of North Americans believe God exists. But almost half go on to say that this belief makes no difference in their lives. The historic creeds never say: "I believe that God exists." That would be like saying: "I have a neighbor named Tom McHurley." This only asserts the fact that my neighbor exists. That’s all. The Christian creeds take a different approach. They say, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty…" The small word "in" makes all the difference. If I say "I believe in my neighbor, Tom McHurley," this means I’m involved in a relationship with him, one of trust and commitment. If we take Christian faith as walking with God and taking risks as opposed to believing beliefs, we can claim the assurance of things hoped for. Our church will be affected. Your life is going to be affected. If you can believe faith is a verb and not believing a set of beliefs A second barrier is the view that faith is the opposite of understanding. According to this view, if we have good evidence to prove something, we say we "know" it to be so. If we only have partial evidence, we say we "believe" it to be so. But if we have no evidence at all, we tend to say we have "faith" it is so. To say we are "saved by faith" sounds like we are saved in ignorance, which is opposite of what God calls us to be. Some people view Christianity as an anti-intellectual movement of humanity. And there are plenty of people who believe that. "Just close your eyes, breathe hard, and hope against hope," and that is faith boiled down. It is a barrier because it is false. The Great Commandment says we are supposed to love God with all our mind. We must value our minds. We must continue the quest for knowledge. There is room here for a tough mind and a tender heart. The church father Anselm defined theology as "faith seeking understanding." Look at what he put first: faith. We are not saved by our understanding; we are saved by our faith. Faith has got to be what leads us. George Morris, a brilliant scholar and preacher friend of mine from Appalachia, detests the view that Christian faith is watered-down intellect, the opposite of understanding. He fights against this view of faith as narrow beliefs or anti-intellectual. He points out that many people in the name of intellectualism become close-minded because they view faith through this barrier. He says: "People become so narrow-minded their ears scrape! People become so narrow-minded they can look through a keyhole with both eyes at the same time!" But isn’t that the view that is out there, that we have to change? They ask: "How can you believe in God? How can you believe someone was raised from the dead? How can you believe the miracles in the Bible?" Because faith is not the opposite of understanding, you can believe in those and not sacrifice any of your intellect. A third barrier is the view that faith is a good feeling. This is a hugely popular view that reduces faith to a good feeling, the trend toward "faith in faith." The popular view is that it doesn’t matter what a person believes so long as they believe in something. If it works for you, then it’s alright. If it makes you feel good, it must be good. If it makes you feel bad, it must be bad. How do I know? Because my feelings tell me so. For these people, the real test of faith is the religious experience that goes along with it. The outcome of this view of faith is understood in terms of finding "self-identity, self-worth, self-respect, self-fulfillment, authentic selfhood, or feeling good about yourself." Do you hear what it’s really about? But isn’t that what so many people in today’s world are searching for? It adds up to this: Have faith in faith—it is of great therapeutic value. Get up every morning, open your window, and believe! It doesn’t matter what, just as long as you believe with intensity, so that it works for you. How prevalent is that? Salvation is not a psychological state. Salvation comes from faith focused on God—someone outside the self. This barrier is so pervasive in our world that some scholars have identified it as a powerful contemporary heresy, that means within the church. As Christianity is combined with bits of pop psychology, new-age ideology and eastern religions, it becomes reduced to finding the personal peace, all focused on me. For many people, feeling good about themselves is more important than discovering faith in the living God. Being in touch with God is more important than being in touch with our feelings, our bodies or ourselves. That sure sounds strange, doesn’t it? Because when we approach the world, one of the things we like to say in the church is: "We can offer you peace! We can offer you fulfillment! We can make you happy! We can give you friends! We can make the holidays mean something to you! We can put you in touch! We can give you God!" It is so easy to fall into that type of a consumer mentality. We ask: "How was church? Did it meet your needs? Did you feel fulfilled? How’s your ‘inner peace?’" What we ought to be asking instead of "How was church?" is "How’d you do?" We run the risk of making the worship service a performance, whether it’s Sunday morning, Sunday night, or any service. And yet the real performers are you, the congregation. The people up here are like the stage directors, leading the people in worship. The real audience is God. Whether or not we feel good about it, God and faith and belief in God and the relationship God offers you in Jesus Christ is what worship is about. And it’s amazing how when you get your priorities straight, the rest of these things fall into place. If we have a major idol here in the United States, I think it is personal peace and affluence. "Just give me peace! Let me get away!" We do all kinds of stuff to achieve that, but do we start worshiping it? What I’m saying is so different from what we hear so many places. It’s different from our view of spirituality. Spirituality means connected-ness. You can be as connected to people, nature or yourself as you want, and still die in your sin. There is a difference between spirituality and Christian spirituality, which means being connected with God, a faith that is centered, personal and relational. Faith is dynamic. A few faith passages:
Can you see that? The mountain is out there. God is going to give you what you need today, and the whole process of moving from here to there is faith. It is our response. It is not sitting back in an intellectual library soaking it all up. It is making a response to God’s unconditional, "crazy-about-you" love, and that is faith. Take some time now, in silence. Let me ask you: Have you ever committed your life to Christ? Have you ever taken a step by faith? We sing about it in this service: "I walk by faith, each step by faith. To live by faith, I put my trust in you." "We walk by faith and not by sight" (II Corinthians 5:7). If you have never taken the step of putting that faith, that belief, into action, I invite you now to take a step of faith.
|