Faith
“Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.” Mk 9. 24
Trinity 18 (Harvest): Habbakuk 1.1-4; 2.1-4; Ps 37.1-9; 2 Tim 1.1-14
So the man comes home from church one evening having just heard a stirring sermon on ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you.’
There is a large sycamore tree right outside his window that obscures a beautiful view of the sea. Before he goes to bed he looks at the tree and says: ‘Lord, I really have faith that you can remove this tree and throw it in the sea.’ He pulls the curtains and goes to bed.
First thing in the morning he leaps up and pulls back the curtains. He looks at the sycamore tree and says: ‘I knew it would still be there!’
At first sight this saying of Jesus might seem to suggest that if we only had a tiny amount of real, genuine faith, then we could move mountains or replant trees in the sea.
This is obviously the sort of thing that the disciples have in mind when they ask him to increase their faith.
You can almost imagine Peter saying to the Lord after this statement about tree replanting, ‘Really Lord!?’
And the Lord saying unto Peter: ‘Don’t be so daft!’ – or words to that effect.
Jesus is pulling their leg. He’s teasing them. He’s using humour and hyperbole again to show them how they’ve got it all wrong.
We still often talk about faith as if you can have it in varying amounts. ‘He has tremendous faith’ can either mean he’s very devout, or, rather naïve, or even, particularly stupid.
Like the schoolboy definition of faith: faith is believing something you know isn’t true.
It is not the quantity of faith that is important. It is the nature of the faith, and what you have faith ‘in’, that is paramount.
By the ‘nature of faith’, I mean that it must be a belief that affects your actions? I believe that wasting energy is bad for the environment, so instead of driving to the shops, I walk.
But belief that affects actions is not enough. Young children who believe in Santa Claus can behave in significantly different ways for at least a few days before Christmas. But there is no Santa Claus.
More tragically, suicide bombers sincerely believe they will go straight to heaven. It is a defiant act of faith.
No, it is not just the nature, or sincerity, or depth of our faith that is critical. It is also what we have faith ‘in’ that is crucial.
My uncle had great faith in number 7 running in the 2.30 at Doncaster; and in many other horses throughout his long life. It was nearly always misplaced faith.
I must have told you about the strict Baptist minister visiting Newmarket. Out of curiosity he goes to the races, and knowing that nobody knows him there, decides to have a flutter. He goes to the paddock first and is intrigued to see a Catholic priest praying in Latin over a horse. He is even more surprised when it wins. The priest prays over two or three more horses and they all win.
So finally he lays half the church funds on the horse the priest next prays over. The horse starts well but then keels over before the first fence and dies. The minister is distraught and rushes to ask the priest what happened. “Ah that’s the trouble with you Baptists,” the priest replies, “you don’t know the difference between a blessing and the last rites.”
So before faith leads to actions, we need to be assured that the content of our faith is sound and will not lead to foolish actions.
This is why Christian theology, which down through the centuries has tried to wrestle with what the Bible teaches us, is so important. In Anselm’s phrase, it is faith seeking understanding. Othodoxy leads to orthopraxis. Right belief leads to right actions.
Many of the struggles of the Anglican communion at the moment are centred on this very thing.
As we use Richard Hooker’s three-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition & Reason, we come up with different answers to the question: how should I act in response to my faith?
We have a guide in conscience, and in the peace of Christ, which is supposed to rule in our hearts and minds. But Scripture warns us that the human conscience can be seared, and that selfish desire can lull our heart into a false sense of peace.
This is why Christianity is essentially a communal faith. We need each other to save us from ourselves, as we try to act out our faith.
So the lives of the saints, and of our brothers and sisters around us and around the world, help to form the content of our faith and encourage us to act on that faith, to ‘taste and see that the Lord is good.’
Occasionally there will be some incident in our life or in the lives of those close to us, which acts as a fillip to our faith. It gives us a sense that God really is there and that our relationship with him is not just wishful thinking. It is never ‘proof’, but it is an encouragement to go on believing.
When I was young, I ran a youth club on a barge on the river Adur in Shoreham. A number of the teenagers became Christians and exhibited that naivety of faith which can often be such an inspiration to us old cynics who’ve seen it all and are more prone to put things down to co-incidence than prayer!
We outgrew the one barge and needed another one. They prayed and we found another barge, floated it and claimed it. We needed timber, pitch pine to be specific. They prayed and the old Palace Pier in Brighton was being scrapped and they gave us all the timber we needed.
And most strangely, we needed coach screws – huge screws for fixing the timbers together. Their faith was all stoked up and they prayed for coach screws. As we went on a Sunday afternoon walk up the riverbank, through the south downs valley, incredibly, we found coach screws in the grass along a hundred yard stretch, far more than we needed.
God had not rained them down like manna from heaven. That would have been a bit irresponsible of the Almighty. They had been thrown there a decade before, by the railwaymen taking up the old Horsham line which was axed in the Beeching cuts, that many of you will remember. Whether co-incidence or not, certainly it was an encouragement to faith.
But what if acting on our faith does not lead to greater blessing, but seems to add to the difficulties of our life. Or what if, however much we believe and pray, the horrors and messiness of life do not go away?
If today’s readings have any common thread, it is, how do you keep faith, when all around you wickedness and chaos seem to go unchecked, and the task ahead of you as a disciple of Jesus Christ seems impossible and unrealistic?
So Habakkuk complains to the Lord: “Why do you tolerate wrong? …The law is paralyzed and justice never prevails!” (1.3f) The Psalm (37) takes up a similar theme.
In the reading from Luke, the disciples begin to grasp the enormity of the Gospel project and ask simply: “Lord increase our faith.” (Lk 17.5)
At the end of Habakkuk’s short prophecy, he sums up the Christian position:
“Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.” (Hab 3.17f)It was refreshing to hear on the radio this harvest Sunday morning, a farmer whose crops had been decimated by floods, expressing just this same thought.
Acting in faith is a statement that we do believe that God is good; that right will triumph over evil; that saving the world is a project worth giving our life to.
In Stanford’s anthem (at the offertory - see below) based on Habakkuk’s prophecy, you will hear how he turns the gloom into an assertion of faith as we come to the Altar of God.
For every time we come to this Table and taste the food of heaven, we are offering a Eucharist, a thanksgiving for God’s sustaining harvest in our lives.
And we bring our mustard seed of faith, seeking to understand what God is doing in our lives and in our world.
It is not always easy to believe and to shape our actions to our belief, but whenever we come in penitence and faith to the bread and the wine, we can say with honesty:
“Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.” Mk 9. 24
Offertory Anthem
"For lo I raise up"
Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)
For lo I raise up that bitter and hasty nation,
Which march thro' the breadth of the earth,
To possess the dwelling places that are not theirs.
They are terrible and dreadful,
Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.
Their horses also are swifter than leopards,
And are more fierce than the evening wolves.
And their horsemen spread themselves,
Yea, their horsemen come from far.
They fly as an eagle that hasteth to devour,
They come all of them for violence;
Their faces are set as the east-wind,
And they gather captives as the sand.
Yea, he scoffeth at kings,
And princes are a derision unto him.
For he heapeth up dust and taketh it.
Then shall he sweep by as a wind that shall pass over,
And be guilty,
Even he, whose might is his God.
Art not Thou from everlasting,
O Lord, my God, mine Holy One?
We shall not die.
O Lord, thou hast ordained him for judgment,
And thou, O Rock hast established him for correction.
I will stand upon my watch and set me upon the tower,
And look forth to see what he will say to me,
And what I shall answer concerning my complaint.
And the Lord answered me and said:
The vision is yet for the appointed time,
And it hasteth toward the end, and shall not lie,
Tho' it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come.
For the earth shall be filled
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord,
As the waters cover the sea.
But the Lord is in his holy temple:
Let all the earth keep silence before Him.
Habakkuk 1.6-12; 2.1, 3. 14, 20
