October 18, 2007
Faith
Pent 21/24C (Gen 32.3-8, 22-30; Lk 18.1-8a; BCP lectionary)
At its heart, most theology, like most fiction, is autobiography.
That is, most of what we think about God or don’t think about God and about what God does and doesn’t do and should do and shouldn’t do and about what we and God do together and don’t do together, all this, when push comes to shove, is shaped and affected by the story of our lives. Plain and simple, it’s autobiography.
It’s a mistake, unfair, and insulting to put theology in ivory towers or behind altars where it’s safe and inaccessible. Theology belongs in kitchens and bedrooms, SUVs and traffic jams, beer halls and soccer games where it’s vulnerable and in-your-face. Underneath all the doctrines and liturgies and catechisms, that is, the “religious stuff,” we always find an experience of flesh and blood, a human face smiling or frowning or weeping or covering its eyes for the glare.
That’s one reason why it’s so good to keep a constant eye out for those faces in our family history in that public library genealogy we call the Bible. Take these stories: Here’s cousin Jacob in a dirt fight with heaven only knows whom, and here’s the gutsy widow that reminds us of Aunt Maudie banging on the court house door (Gen 32.3-8, 22-30; Lk 18.1-8a).
Further, the Book of Genesis makes no attempt to conceal the fact that Jacob, among other things, was a crook who twice cheated his lame-brain brother Esau out of his inheritance and at least once took advantage of his old father Isaac’s blindness to play him for a sucker. We know next to nothing about the widow save that she was perhaps more enduring than endearing. We can be sure that God was rather fond of both. Knowing that may just hold out some hope for us. Knowing that is really sermon enough for any Sunday. (But we preachers often never know when to stop when we may be ahead.)
These stories and God’s response to them tell us about faith, that faith, too, is radically autobiographical. Like a two-by-four between the eyes, these readings tell us that faith and perseverance are not all that different, that faith, unlike a neat system full of big words, is more like wrestling with God and banging on doors and maybe finally getting some sort of results, even if not always exactly what we want.
The collect today puts it rather much the same way if somewhat more delicately when it prays that God help us “persevere with steadfast faith…” (BCP p 235). For God does not always come to us in pillars of cloud by day or fire by night, easily recognized and free of all ambiguity. God meets us in circumstances which we have to strive to understand in other terms. Without the persistence of a Jacob or a widow who would not let go, we may abandon our struggle for faith because it does not appear to be faith as we had imagined it. Jacob and the widow and even the old non-believing judge remind us that the persistence and the tenacity itself is faith.
For faith is like life. It is purpose made incarnate. It is better understood as a verb, than as a noun, as a process rather than as a possession, as on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all, as risking being wrong, as not always having to be right or orthodox, faith is a journey without maps.
We remember as well to our benefit that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith, doubt is a critical and essential element of faith, and that faith comes not as a result of understanding, but that faith is, itself, a way of understanding not as defining, but as giving and finding meaning to our lives.
One of the things that has hounded the church through the centuries and once again in our time is that it gives too much attention to its religion and not enough to its faith, not its doctrine, for heaven’s sake, but its faithfulness. It doesn’t make disciples by right belief, it wins disciples by faithful living, by being a community that people simply and finally cannot resist cozying up with.
Of course, it’s easier to pay more attention to our religion than to our faith. For one thing, religion’s far simpler and not nearly so risky. Religion offers the false comfort of easy answers, faith raises the discomfort of hard questions. Faith secures the vision that protects religious conviction from becoming religious delusion. Finally, faith enables an environment that is less judgmental and more forgiving and in which love can mature.
Like the widow pestering the unjust judge and like Jacob contending with God, we mumble and curse and try another path because these snares keep snagging our hems or bruising our feet. But we try another path and keep stubbing painful toes until, finally, we pay attention and then can ask the theological question, What, finally, is the message, the meaning in all this?
For one thing, it tells us that control is an illusion, and that perhaps we might try gratitude rather than mastery and power. I got an omelet in a restaurant one day that was as tough as shoe leather, but remotely edible. I groused about it, privately, but I’d have been better off had I simply been grateful for food and whatever nourishment there may have been in those tired eggs.
Be grateful for work. Work gives shape to the day, and many wish they had it. Be grateful for people. Each is interesting in his or her way and teaches us new things. Be grateful for love. How lonely it would be not to miss anyone, not to have someone to telephone or to be telephoned by.
And be grateful for God. Distress in our homeland will not go away soon. Evil forces are arraigned against us and, as well, even infect our leaders. I hesitate to be so presumptuous as to use that word “evil,” because warfare rarely pits good against evil. Warriors have values and codes and limits, although that is often difficult to discern. Spreading weapons of mass destruction is not the act of a warrior. It is an act of an enemy of life itself. God is strong against such enemies.
Faith and love give us access to that strength and to our potential to use it. They allow us to persevere and to endure and perhaps even to understand.
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