The Meaning of Faith

Preached at Hanover Street Presbyterian Church

On August 8, 2004

By the Rev. Thomas C. Davis, III, Ph.D.

Texts:

Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16

Now faith is the assurance of things not seen.  Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval.  By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. . .By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.  By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.  For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.  By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old?and Sarah herself was barren?because he considered him faithful who had promised.  Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, "as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore."  All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.  They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.  If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return.  But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

Matthew 8: 5-13

When [Jesus] entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress."  And he said to him, "I will come and cure him."  The centurion answered, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.  For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ?Go," and he goes, and to another, ?Come," and he comes, and to my slave, ?Do this," and the slave does it."  When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, "Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.  I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."  And to the centurion Jesus said, "Go; let it be done for you according to your faith."  And the servant was healed in that hour.

Sermon Text

At Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, the apartments for married students, where Alice and I and our sons once lived, were like a miniature United Nations.  Students from Africa, from Europe, and Asia were our neighbors.  Americans were enriched as we mingled inside and outside of class with brothers and sisters in Christ who had grown up in very different parts of the world.  One evening I was invited to supper by several South Korean students.  There had been recent arrests of Christian leaders in their country, that is, leaders who had been critical of the government.  Before we sat down to eat, my hosts opened their Bibles to the eleventh chapter of Hebrews and read these words to me:  "Faith is the assurance of things not seen."  "That's why we are here," they said.  "We are here in America because we are assured that things are going to be better for all of Korea, though we don't see exactly how just yet.  We want to be part of God's future. We trust in God's good will, and God's power to change things.  We trust God so much that we have come here to study, which may mark us for suspicion too." 

I felt honored that they had trusted me enough to confess these deep convictions, which made them vulnerable.  Not all Americans, they wanted me to understand, could be trusted.  I had never heard Christians speak of their faith with such earnest intensity.  I hadn't read Dietrich Bonhoeffer yet, but these Koreans were demonstrating to me what I later would learn from his writings, that being a disciple of Jesus can be risky business.  In a world not yet redeemed it can cost your life, or at least your freedom.  We tend to forget that in this "land of the free."  Faith is trusting God with your very life.  That's what my Korean friends were telling me.  Abraham left everything familiar to him, not knowing what would become of him, because he trusted in God's promise alone--not in his own cleverness and strength, but only in God's promise.  "That's how it is with us," they said. "This passage speaks to us about our passage to America."

I needn't explain that to many of you.  You know by experience.  Some of you trusted God with your life when you went under a surgeon's knife.  Or, you  trusted God with your life when death took away your soul-mate, and left you alone in an empty house.  Or, you trusted God with your life when someone you trusted betrayed you and abandoned you, and the shock left you reeling, and wondering whether anybody could be trusted anymore.  Or, you trusted God with your life when you couldn't bear to live a lie one more day, and you declared who you were, the real you, not knowing whether you would be embraced by the people you loved, or cast out.  Or, you trusted God with your life when your mind kept expanding to keep pace with your experience, and you couldn't hold on any longer to the ways you used to think of God; and it felt like you were free-falling into an abyss, with only God to catch you, whoever God was.

That last example brings me to another way of thinking about faith.  There are some people who think that if your beliefs about God change, your faith will wither away.  I've found that not to be true in my own life, but nevertheless, some people think it's so, because they put more emphasis on faith  as a cluster of ideas than they do on faith as basic trust. There is biblical warrant for thinking of faith that way.  In the later New Testament scriptures, for instance, the Gospel of John and the pastoral letters, we notice that the writers were concerned about preserving people's faith in Jesus from critics and skeptics.  Earlier, faith in Jesus had meant trusting a person whom eye witnesses had known in the flesh, and remembered. But as these eye witnesses died, faith in Jesus depended more and more upon the written testimonies of the first Christians; and  as critics and skeptics questioned the truthfulness of these testimonies, the faithful community reacted by insisting that faith means right belief, in other words, strict adherence to the content of those now sacred testimonies, for instance, that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, that he rose from the dead to save us from our sins, and that he would come again to judge the world.  To put this distinction perhaps a bit over-simply, as the church aged from a sect into an institution, being a faithful Christian became more and more a matter of professing orthodox beliefs rather than trusting a living Lord, whose continuing presence could be experienced through the Holy Spirit, the indwelling spirit of Jesus.  Both kinds of faith did persist in the church down through the ages, but as Christianity became more institutional, faith as right belief became more important than faith as basic trust.  In fact, the church frequently challenged claims of first-hand reliance upon a living Lord, for such claims threatened to weaken the authority of church leaders by by-passing them.

When a new pastor comes into New Castle Presbytery to begin working in this region, he or she must prepare two type written pages and defend their content. One page must contain the pastor's journey of faith, that is, the story of his or her growth as a Christian, highlighting significant life events.  The other page must contain the pastor's personal statement of faith, that is, what he or she believes about key items in Presbyterian theology, such as the sovereignty of God, Jesus' role in saving us from sin, the authority of holy scripture, the practice of the sacraments, and the priesthood of all believers.  The faith journey part of the exam relates to the first meaning of faith which I talked about earlier, because  it involves the pastor's trust in a living Lord. But the statement of faith portion of the exam concerns faith understood as belief (the second meaning of faith which we considered this morning).  So you see, our presbytery acknowledges that both kinds of faith are important for pastoral work.  If a pastor exhibits little experiential connection to a living Lord, then he or she will not likely be able to lead others to faith in that living Lord.  On the other hand, if a pastor espouses theological views which lie too far outside the range of acceptable beliefs of our community of believers, then he or she will not likely be able to work cooperatively with colleagues in ministry.  So, both kinds of faith are important:  faith as trust, and faith as right believing.

Having said that, however, it seems to me that the inspirer of our faith, Jesus of Nazareth, thought of faith as a basic trust in God, not orthodox belief.  Take our reading from Matthew this morning as evidence of this.  A Roman army officer's servant is dying, and he asks Jesus to heal him.  Knowing that Jesus will be ritually contaminated if he visits him at home, the centurion asks only for Jesus' blessing.  Jesus marvels at the man's trust in God's power to heal, even from a distance.  Never has he seen a person in Israel with such faith as this, Jesus comments.  Obviously, Jesus was talking about faith as trust, not faith as right belief, because the centurion was a pagan, not a Jew.  This was not the only instance when Jesus reached across religious boundaries to heal people, and then said to those cured:  "Your faith has made you well."  In such instances he was not talking about correct belief, because the people in question were foreigners and infidels, according to the measure of correct belief.  But, they trusted God with their lives, and that's what seemed to matter most to Jesus.

Alice and I have just returned from another reunion with Bible study friends whom we met thirty years ago.  Seven couples formed the original group.  Those seven couples still remain, and their children and grandchildren now attend.  What a remarkable, enduring fellowship in a world so changeable as ours!  What drew us together, and what keeps us together?  We were drawn together by a reverence for and curiosity about the Bible, and our common hope of finding something in it to guide us-- a living word.  We did.  In various ways, our study changed us all.  So, a common dedication to learning and growing in faith drew us together.  But what  has kept us together all these years?  Sameness of belief?  No way!  If you took statements of faith from all the individuals in this spiritual extended family, I'll bet you wouldn't find two the same.  No, what has held us together is trust in a living Lord, a Lord whom we think about in various ways, but whom we trust with our lives, every one.

For the years ahead, my prayer for Presbyterians is that we come to appreciate that what preserves the peace, unity, and purity of the church is not sameness of belief, but rather trust in a living Lord, the one who said, "Your faith has made you well," and didn't mean religion.