On Faith

based on  Lamentations 3:19-26, Luke 17:5-6




Here’s one of those saying that have continued to puzzle me all my life. How much faith will it take to move a mountain? The very question bewilders me. How does one measure faith? Presumably that’s what’s asked of us. Increase your faith. Step up to the challenge of doing some real faith. We’re in the Olympic Games of Faith here. Only the most fit, the best trained, the most earnest practitioner of faith need bother to come forward for measurement.



Isn’t that the image that comes to mind when you contemplate this mystery? Is that enough faith Lord? Or That? Or THAT? If you’re at all like me, none of these tests work. Gigantic efforts to make myself believe just exhaust my imagination. I give up on Faith.



One commentator, George Buttrick, tries to redirect our attention by saying having enough faith is not a matter of quantity, for we have already established it is impossible to measure such an elusive thing. It’s a matter of quality. Here we face the challenge: improve the quality of your faith and that mountain will be flying through the air in the wink of an eye.



What a relief. Not quantity, quality. But wait a minute. Aren’t we still being asked to measure something? How does one measure a quality? Once more we have the impossible before us. Quality is as elusive as quantity.



Then let us agree not to talk in terms of measurement. More or less is all but meaningless. Let’s see if there aren’t some mountains that have been moved. I think of the film “The Blind Side” Based on a true story, a wealthy Southern woman Leigh Anne Tuohy, notices a large colored high school student, poorly dressed, trudging along in the rain. Something stirs in her. This is a sight she cannot ignore or forget. She tells the boy to get into the family car. This begins a journey to a whole new life for the boy and the family. He has no way of knowing how a mountain is about to be hurtled into the ocean. Neither does she, for that matter. She only sees a need and feels a compulsion to do something to meet that need.



Perhaps faith is that blessed gift of second sight that not only sees a need but sees the way to do something about that need.



Not many people ever heard of Cordell, Oklahoma. There’s not that much there to notice or talk about. But for someone interested in classical music and especially Wagnerian opera, Cordell has something to brag about. The Wagnerian soprano Roberta Knie was born and raised there, and returns there frequently to visit her family. I had the good fortune to meet her and she graciously allowed my 14 year old son to interview her. A lad with budding aspirations of becoming a performer in musical theater himself, he was naturally interested in how a nobody from Cordell ever dared to become an opera star. She took his question seriously and said, “well I became an opera singer because nobody ever told me I couldn’t”



Could it be that there is no more mystery in these words of Jesus than that? See a need and have an idea you can do something about it, and then act. That may be the heart and core of faith.



Faith: it’s not about how much, it’s a matter of what in, or who in.



The author of Lamentations, usually assumed to be the prophet Jeremiah, reflects on the grief he felt at the desolation surrounding the Jewish people who were about to be shipped off to Babylon in slavery. “Just thinking of my troubles and my lonely wandering makes me miserable. That's all I ever think about, and I am depressed. Then I remember something that fills me with hope.” What he thinks of is the ever present goodness of God. The core of his faith is the dependability of God.



I don’t believe this is simply a matter of attitude. It’s far more than that. It is also a remembering. It is holding a clear vision of what once was right and good and filled with real hope. Viktor Frankel says that it is this kind of reality-based remembering that got him through the horror of the concentration camps in Germany. When counseling a discouraged woman, he reminds her of the dependability of faith. The woman replies, “In what? I can’t believe in anything right now.” “All right,” Frankel went on, if you can’t believe in anything else, you can believe in me.” “In you?” she responded, puzzled. “Yes. Tell yourself, ‘even though I can’t believe in myself, Dr. Frankel believes in me.’” It may sound meager, insignificant, beside the point to say to someone “I believe in you”. And in fact, the words alone are easily spoken and much harder to believe. But I know, from my own experience, they make a difference. The words joined with the look in the eye and the feel of the hand have a way of igniting power that helps us do things we never dreamed of doing. We have moved a mountain - a mountain of doubt and disbelief.



This kind of faith is not magical. It does not depend on spells and incantations. It rests on reawakened memory, of sanctified moments we had taken for granted but which now look remarkably like huge accomplishments. ‘ I can’t believe I did that’, we say to ourselves. Or perhaps the more familiar remark, “I’m glad I didn’t know before hand what I was going to have to go through, or do. I’d have never made it if I’d known.”



All that tells us is that we’ve not had too little faith, we’ve had too much faith in the wrong thing. We were more ready to believe in our weakness, or insignificance, or unworthiness, than we were to believe we were people of worth, people with talent, people with gifts to offer the world around us. In my experience, that faith was generated by someone seeing possibility in me I was unable to see in myself unaided. In virtually every case, there was someone who sat beside me, listened to me, trusted me, believed in me.



That’s what Jeremiah experienced. God was no stranger to him. That’s what the disciples experienced. Jesus took them seriously, relied on them, trusted them, expected great things to come from their efforts. This of the apostle Peter.



It may only be a parable, but it tells a great truth. Peter saw Jesus walking on water and suddenly found himself doing the same thing when he asked Jesus to help him. At first it seemed easy. Then he became self-conscious, distracted, and took his eyes off Jesus. That’s when he began to sink in the water. Faith is putting aside one’s usual doubts and looking instead on Jesus who has already believed in you. Lack of faith is only shifting your eyes to something else. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Fear says, “No way, this ain’t going to happen.”



Viktor Frankel’s patient looked in the eyes of the doctor who believed in her and found the beginnings of faith in her self. Teenager Bobbie Knie had a dream and saw no reason why it should remain a dream. Her teachers shared her dream and believed in it too. She followed that dream to stardom in the most demanding roles of all opera. Leigh Anne Tuohy saw a boy who needed help and she did something about it. When that boy proved to have talent and eventually became a star football player, his success was born in her faith in him.



In each of these examples, the miracle wasn’t a matter of a lightning bolt slashing out of the sky producing a fabulous fortune, or fame, or whatever. It was seeing a possibility, believing in it, and living as if of course it was going to happen.



I dare say some mountains have been dug up. Maybe they’ve even been deposited in the sea. Isn’t that what the Arabs have done in that city they’re building, Dubai? The site of the tallest building in the world? Yes, even mountains can be transported into the sea.



Jesus’ words aren’t so mysterious and puzzling after all then, are they? If we have faith, enough faith, amazing things can happen. But first be sure to ask “just what is my faith?” What do I have faith in? Who has shared that faith with me? Remember our faith is grounded in a good and gracious and loving God. Then there can be no measuring that kind of faith. It is boundless.



Look out mountains! You’re about to make a move. Amen.

Don't Forget to Remember

based on II Timothy 2:8-15, and Luke 17:11-19




If you can't remember your last drink, you haven't had it yet!



This is a saying I learned from my friends in AA. Those who have battled the demon of alcoholism don't have to have this saying explained to them. You see, that last drink is a dramatic experience. It represents what the recovering alcoholic refers to as "hitting bottom". That is the necessary watershed moment for recovery. Until you have hit bottom, you are not ready to begin the new life of sobriety. In the old days of AA, it was often believed that if a newcomer arrived at an AA meeting still wearing a wrist watch, he hadn’t hit that proverbial “bottom”. He wasn’t desperate enough. He was not ready to undergo the discipline of the Twelve Steps.



There is wisdom in that belief. Psychologists know that one is not likely to change his or her behavior until that behavior is no longer satisfying. We have learned that people drink alcohol because they like the effect it produces. When they stop liking the effect it produces, (the hangovers, the blackouts, the family problems, the job losses, the legal difficulties, the financial disasters - all connected to the drinking) and continue to drink anyway, then they have crossed over that invisible line from social drinking into alcoholic drinking. So, remembering that last drink serves as a deterrent against taking another drink. If you no longer remember that last drink, you do not have that deterrent to guard you against relapse.



As I read the scriptures this morning, I was struck by two different references to remembering. One in Paul’s letter to Timothy urges his disciple to remember Jesus Christ raised from the dead. The other is a vignette of Jesus who, having healed a group of lepers, is struck by the way only one remembered to come thank him for his healing. This memory was even more striking to Jesus because he remarked “that man was a Samaritan!” This is significant given the then current prejudice of the Jews and the Samaritans. It’s rather like a Tea Party patriot having to admit a liberal Democrat had done something commendable.



Let me suggest something to think about. We are who we think we are. We are a summary of all our experiences. We are the next chapter in the soap opera we call life. We are always, always living in the “to be continued” mode. And if we remember that, then we must remember that, on a continuum of A to B to C, A is our past, B the present moment and C what is yet to come. Of the three B is the only real moment. But if we’re going to ever get to C we must be as completely in the present moment as we can be, and that means we must continually review A. I am who I am when I embrace all of who I was and rightly assess what that can mean for who I can become.



OK. That was a chunk of philosophy, and I’ll back off a bit. When Paul wrote to Timothy, he was interested in reminding the young man of what had happened to him. He had met Jesus Christ. Now this wasn’t just anybody, this was God himself in human flesh, come to alert us that ours is a God intimately involved in our creation including you and me. This great God rescued us from the insanity we had chosen, this delusion that we were - and are - independent, on our own, in charge of our own lives and by extension, in charge of everything and everyone around us.



This - as I understand it - is the true dynamic of what we call sin. It’s not how much booze we drank, or how many swear words we uttered, or how sexually lustful and lascivious we have been. No, sin is how much we have turned our backs on God in the pursuit of our own will and our own way. The consequence, Paul reminds us, is death. Our bodies will die any way, but that’s not the point. The point is, the essence of who we are dies in the morass of our self-centered living.



I think of that moment when James Cameron accepted the Oscar for his accomplishments with the film “Titanic” and his joyous declaration “I’m king of the world!” He was misunderstood. What he thought he was doing was aping a pivotal moment in the movie when Leonardo diCaprio stands on the bow of the ship screaming that announcement. What we saw and what we heard was the universal declaration of every human soul, momentarily stripped of all pretense and showing its true desire and character. We all hunger for just that accomplishment. We all want to be “King (or Queen) of the world”.



Paul knew it. He lived it. He was living it when Christ met him on the road to Damascus and Paul would die. Quite literally, he died. Even his name changed. (He had formerly been known as Saul.) So it seems quite natural for him to remind Timothy, “you’ve died in Christ.” We aren’t the people we once were. The past is finished and gone. We have become something entirely new. The challenge facing us now is to live that new life. And one of the most important ways we do this is by remembering. Don’t forget that last drink. Don’t forget what you used to be like. Don’t forget who you once were. Don’t forget what happened. Don’t forget what God has done.



Jesus’ observation about the Samaritan thanking him for his healing is usually put before us as a reminder to be grateful. That’s a good one. But don’t forget what gratitude really is. It is a reminder of what once was and has now been changed through the gracious healing of God. Often we like to put the bad memories behind us. The recovered alcoholic puzzles the non-alcoholic person with his insistence upon still calling himself an alcoholic even though he no longer drinks. Why bring that up? Aren’t you over that by now? Yes. He is over it, the drinking part, but he is reminding himself of what he once was and will be again should he decide to drink again. You see, we don’t change our metabolism when we quit drink. Well, we do change it, but it is not a permanent cure. It is in remission if you will. Forget what you once were and you open the door to revising your opinion of what you are. It won’t hurt me now. Wrong. I’ve known too many who lost their sobriety after long periods of abstinence. They forgot to remember.



Paul tells Timothy, “deny Jesus and he will deny you.” We deny Jesus by forgetting him. By marginalizing him. By relegating him to the status of a fair weather friend. Or a fox-hole colleague when the going gets rough! But Jesus doesn’t deny us out of spite, or hurt feelings, or anything that petty. He didn’t reverse the healing of the nine lepers who forgot to thank him. What Jesus does do is waits for us to “come to our senses” if you will - and in that waiting, we are alone. We are abandoned. We have denied ourselves the pleasure of his company. That blessed relief of no longer having to exist in that living-death we once were in has been neglected, lost, become useless.



Gratitude is a reminder that something has changed. Something is uniquely different. And if I am going to fully appreciate that difference, I must never forget what it was like before. I remember hearing a story years ago about a boy whose parents left him with a guardian while they went on a trip. He had been told to be good. He’d also been told if he misbehaved, the guardian was to pound a nail into a fence post in the yard for each misdeed. The boy paid little attention to this instruction until he noticed how many nails had appeared in the post. Since he’d also been told good deeds could take nails out of the post, his behavior dramatically changed. By the time the parents returned, not a single nail remained in the post. When they praised him for his good behavior, he shame-facedly replied, “Yes, but the holes are still there where the nails were.”



This is not a particularly good story on several levels. For one thing, contrary to popular opinion, God is not keeping track of all our bad deeds and recording each one in a big book in heaven somewhere. Nor do we get to erase them by performing good deeds, as the parable of the boy and the post suggests. I don’t even think there are holes left that God sees. But the story is useful in this regard - when we remember, our eyes are drawn to the loving face of God who did for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Our hope is all the sweeter when we recall what we used to be like, and what we could so easily become again if we forget what happened to make this dramatic change.



For who we are today is dramatically different from who we used to be. That’s the point. Not only did Christ die for us, we died in that same death, and we are new creatures launched on new adventures if you will. We are growing up in Christ.



Each Sunday morning we take a moment to make our confession to God. This act may seem a little ritualistic, old-fashioned, superfluous, but in fact it is not. It is an essential element for the right worship of God, for this is our “remembering” time. This is when we - like the prodigal son - come home to ourselves, and remind ourselves who we used to be and who we now are. Repentance is not about how bad we’ve been and how ashamed we are - although those are the words we continue to use. Repentance is about truly acknowledging what we’ve been and can continue to be -if we forget. Then repentance takes on powerful new meaning for it is our way of reminding ourselves we still need God’s grace, God’s cleansing, God’s love.



Those who forget to remember - pray for them. And be sure, when you do, you remember to pray for yourselves as well. Amen.