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.