LIVE AS THOUGH IT WERE TRUE

Two bishops were discussing the decline in morals in the modern world.
"I didn't sleep with my wife before I was married," said one clergyman self-righteously, "Did you?"
"I don't know," said the other. "What was her maiden name?"

Most jokes succeed on a misunderstanding - that the participants can’t see and fall into, but which we can observe and feel smug about... And there is an element of that in today’s gospel.

The two bits of this passage are linked in a way far closer than at first you’d think, and they’re both about unrealistic expectations...

We’re continuing our look at what life is like in the kingdom of heaven, and this passage is about the attitude of the disciple, and in particular two fundamental attributes: faith and rewards...

“If only we had more faith!..."

How often do you hear people say that?

“All the Church’s problems are to do with a lack of faith... All of my problems are to do with a lack of faith... if I could only have a bit more faith life would sort itself out...”

Is it true that faith is an increasable commodity which answers all our problems?
If that is how we think of it, what’s the difference between Faith and a drug? Perhaps Karl Marx was right when he said “Religion... is the opium of the people.” An increase in faith is all we need and all will be well. That may have been what the disciples were thinking, but it’s certainly not what Jesus had in mind.

The disciples are doing a bit of “Woe is me!” stuff - they’re being drama queens, throwing a wobbly: they are effectively saying “We’re hopeless, we can’t be good disciples because we haven’t got enough faith, so there’s no point in us even trying...”

Notice that when the disciples asked Jesus “increase OUR faith” he turns them away from themselves towards God - Jesus says it’s not about having great faith in God, but having faith in a great God! And that’s an important distinction to make: the efficacy of the prayer or the power of the prayer does not lie in the greatness of the person praying, but on the character of the God being prayed to...

The disciples cry is one of inadequacy... how can we be true disciples? - give us more faith to be able to do the stuff of the kingdom! And Jesus tells them to pull themselves together - that they have all that they need. The unimaginable becomes possible when disciples trust and confidently act on their faith.

You see faith is actually supremely practical.
A man slipped and fell off a cliff whilst on a mountain walk. He was able to grab a branch on the way down and held on for dear life. 200 feet below him was the ragged rocky floor of a ravine. As he looked up it was only 20 feet to the top of the cliff where he had fallen. He called out “Help! Help! Is anybody there? Help!”
A booming voice spoke up “I am here, and I will save you if you believe in me.”
“I believe, I believe!” yelled the man
“If you believe me, let go of the branch and I will save you...”
There was a pause and the man shouted “Is there anybody else up there?”

We’ve been talking about a Development Project here at St John’s - of doing things to the church hall complex to make it more suitable to better serve our community. This will be a project of faith. Faith is actually very practical and down to earth. It’s not about getting the most holy and pious people to pray, it about acting as though God were in charge. Faith is about acting as though something were true...

Clement of Alexandria said that “Faith is voluntary anticipation”!

Christian faith is about our actions expressing what we believe. So if we have faith that God exists, we pray, we worship. The requirement is not for MORE faith, but for a life which is consistent with that faith. And that is what Jesus tries to help the disciples see.... What’s the point in uprooting mountains, or felling Mulberry trees for the sake of it, if it’s not what is needed? What makes a difference, what brings the kingdom of God to fruition is lives lived consistently, putting in to practice what we say we believe.

The Brazilian philosopher Rubem Alves said: “Hope is hearing the melody of the future. Faith is to dance it.”

Having or exercising faith is not about walking on water; or being able to perform great healing miracles; or converting entire continents... It’s about finding out where God wants me to be and acting as though I actually trust God, and who knows what God will do with that...

Faith is a gift from God - if we’ve heard God whisper our name we have faith. It’s as simple as that. I flick the light switch because I have faith that the light will come on. My action expresses faith. I don’t walk into a dark room and worry about how to make it light, or whether I should strike a match, or wonder whether I’m good enough or clever enough to use the switch. I act as though it were true that flicking the switch brings light into a darkened room... and guess what? It does!

So if we’ve heard God call our name; if we’ve experienced God reaching out to us, then we have faith that God exists. It’s what we do with that faith that will determine our lives! We could just say “Well that’s a nice intellectual satisfying proposition, but I’m just off to carry on lying stealing and cheating my way through life...” In the letter of James he says “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that - and shudder!” (Jas 2.19)
When we talk about Faith in association with God we think about it as combining belief and trust. Lots of people may have faith that there is a God out there... in fact more people probably believe that there is a God than don’t... (It used to be said in the First World War that there were no atheists in the trenches...) but most people don’t lead lives that are affected by that faith, and that’s the challenge for the disciples Jesus speaks to, and to us.

Faith in God is a relationship - in many ways like our other relationships - it can deepen over time, or remain shallow and distance: much depends on our willingness to invest time and energy, or to allow that faith to shape and influence our lives.

If faith is about living as though something were the case, then the very act of joining others for worship speaks of a faith in action. We may not feel much like it; we may not feel that we know enough, or know any of the answers - but that’s not what faith is about. It’s about acting as though something were true.

Faith and feeling often confuse people. Some people think that they can only have faith if they have the accompanying feelings; which is a very 21st Century western touchy-feely kind of approach. We know that love is about wanting the best for another person, so we know that we can love others without necessarily feeling mushy towards them - why do we forget that faith is not dependent on feeling? How do I have to feel towards the light switch before I use it?

Sometimes faith and feeling do come together - but they don’t necessarily have to. There are times when we can feel very close to God, and other times when we might feel that God is far away. There may be times when we are consciously grateful for the harnessing of electricity and the invention of the light bulb - but my feelings don’t determine whether or not I use the light switch...

If faith is a railway engine and feelings are the coach, the train can run with or without a coach...

What Jesus says to the disciples is that size is not important... The mustard seed was a tiny thing - people had a saying that something was “As small as a mustard seed” - just like we’d say “selling like hot cakes” or “the best thing since sliced bread”. “Even if you’ve got tiny faith” Jesus says “you can still achieve enormous things...”

So we’re not to worry about the amount of faith we’ve got... in fact we’ve already got far more than we realise, or give ourselves credit for. Neither should we underestimate the effect of living a life of faith: faith which results in faithful actions - and informs that faithful action - has a far greater potential than we can ever imagine. God can accomplish extravagant, extraordinary and absurd things as we learn to trust him...

We will see lives transformed; we’ll see the imprisoned released; we’ll watch the blind see; we’ll see people find forgiveness and we’ll watch staggered as projects come to be, as inventions solve problems, as transformations happen in society round about us, all because people had faith that things could be different and acted on that faith. God can accomplish extravagant, extraordinary and absurd things as we learn to trust him.


The second half of this passage actually offers a flip side to the issue of worry about too little faith. In the first section Jesus is challenging his disciples’ exaggerated underestimation of their faith potential: next Jesus challenges his disciples about inappropriate expectations of reward for faithful obedience.

The illustration Jesus uses is one from his own time about slavery: a slave is a slave whether in the field ploughing, or waiting at table. A slave does what a slave is supposed to do. That’s like saying “Well done and thank you” to the light switch you flick... you expect it to function like that, because that’s its job.

So what of us today? Should we never say thank you or never praise somebody’s hard work? No - that’s not what it means, because learning to be appreciative and value others made in God’s image is a very important part of a disciple’s job description - it helps us to see God in others.

What Jesus is trying to show us is about the motivation for our discipleship... we shouldn’t be constantly seeking praise from others, or expecting rewards - either from people or from God. So we’re not in this Christianity lark in order to win our place in heaven...

A couple of weeks ago Penny was talking about “pie in the sky when you die” - it’s not all about doing the God stuff to book our place in heaven; we can’t earn our way into heaven by being pious. We follow Christ in the here and now because of the here and now! We don’t get front row seats in heaven if we were priests... we don’t get a bigger crown because we were on the coffee rota, or in the choir, or even became a church warden. If we are disciples because we expect praise and adulation from other, or in order to get into heaven, we’re doing things for the wrong reason and we’re going to end up disappointed and disillusioned.

Living life for the here and now means that what we do, how we behave and what we should expect are all very important - and important to think clearly about. We get the satisfaction and peace of a life lived the way the Maker intended; we produce the fruits of love joy and peace, patience kindness goodness, faithfulness gentleness and self control. We embark on a life well lived, one which makes sense, one which brings Shalom.

Of course that doesn't mean it will be an easy, and learning to swallow our pride is part of that. If we’re inwardly fuming that people should appreciate us more, then maybe there’s something awry somewhere... maybe we’re doing too much, maybe we’ve lost sight of God’s call, maybe we need to step back and find the perspective again...

As servants of Christ there is also no place for any kind of triumphalism or one-up-man-ship - we are no better than others, neither are we morally superior, or headed for better or bigger rewards!

Again this parable and teaching about the place of faith and the nature of reward suggests that we can never put God in our debt... it’s not about God being so grateful to us for following him; it’s not about faith as a commodity that operates like a panacea for all ills... Jesus’ words remind us of the order of things: we are not to become self important - we are to remember that we are servants (just as Jesus came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many). If the laos - the people of God - are his servants, then the clergy are the servants of the servants of God... and the bishop is the servant of the servants of the servants of God - which is why the bishop always walks at the end in a procession. I’ll leave you to work out what the Archbishop is...

There’s a quote from St Augustine which neatly links the two bits of this passage together. He said “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe”

So let’s be sure in our discipleship that we understand that faith is like a muscle, not like rubber: a muscle grows stronger and bigger with use; rubber weakens when it is stretched... Jesus call to his disciples is NOT that they should sit around waiting for some magical increase in faith to gee them up; but they should start putting their existing faith into actions: to live as though they really believed what they claimed. And the same challenge comes to us: we are to be those whose lives show in action what it means to have heard the whisper of God...

 

Fr. Andrew Perry

Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea