Great Words of Lent and Life: Faith

March 13, 1988

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The place to begin, I think, is precisely where we left off last time. A couple of weeks have elapsed, I know, since we began this series. I hope the interim hasn’t destroyed the continuity completely. Do you remember the theme? The bulletin is a good place to look for a clue....

The theme for Lent is WORDS....Great Words of Lent and Life. The plan, the hope, the scheme is to take some of those great words of the Faith, some of those marvelous words of the New Testament, which tend to become blurred and fuzzy sometimes because of sheer familiarity and try to put them in focus again. The Bible makes a big thing out of words, because the God of the Bible is a God who speaks.... In a sense, the Biblical religion is a religion of the ear, if I may say it that way. This is how the Bible writers consistently show Him operating. God speaks and you have to answer.... God calls and you have to respond....

Words lead to encounter, confrontation, challenge, decision. So words are important, not to be taken lightly. We ought to know the words of the Faith, that’s what we’re saying. We ought to be conversant and intimate with the realities for which they stand, so they’ll throb and pulsate for us as they did for Christians in the 1st Century. It’s not the words’ fault, it’s OUR fault when they become encrusted or lose their vitality. We shouldn’t let it happen.

Emily Dickinson, back in 1831, wrote--- “Some say a word is dead when it is said. I say it just begins to live that day.” That’s Biblical. Emily Dickinson was orthodox, at least at that point she was, whether she realized it or not. That’s right on target with respect to New Testament understanding. Words DO have life, the Bible insists. They DO create, They make things happen. They change situations, and the more we can take the wrappings off some of these great words of Scripture, the more they can do their work among us in liberating power.

Well, grace is where we started, remember.... I hope you remember, where you always start IN THIS Christianity business. I’m not going back over that sermon---that would be to submit you to cruel and inhuman treatment---but I Do remind you of it.... THAT’S WHERE CHRISTIANITY BEGINS. Grace is the underlying word.

Grace is the foundational word. Grace is the word that says we receive in life more than we deserve because that’s how God is.... Thank God. Grace is the word that says a right relationship with God, salvation, reconciliation...call it what you will....

IT DOESN’T BEGIN WITH US AT ALL. It begins with God. It’s something God does, simply because God wants to, and the news, miraculously, is GOOD.

Old. H.V. Kaltenborn, the radio newsman, back during the Second World War, used to begin his broadcasts, “Ah, there’s good news tonight....” That’s precisely the Gospel we have to proclaim. GRACE IS WHERE IT STARTS. But now let’s go on. This morning let’s talk about another great Biblical word, the other end of the dialogue, the flip side, as it were, the human response, if you will, to God’s initiative. FAITH. “By grace are you saved through faith”, Paul said, in one of the most powerful declarations ever uttered.... FAITH.

Of course it’s too big to cover in a single installment. It’s too big to cover in a book. Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote one this thick and confessed when he’d finished that he’d only scratched the surface. But let’s go back and try to see this word in its original setting and let it get inside of us to stir us up.

A Texan walked into a restaurant one time, out in the Lone Star State, and ordered a bowl of soup. The waitress said, “I’m sorry, sir, the only kind of soup we have today is oxtail soup.” The Texan shook his head and said, “That’s going back a long way for soup.”

And it certainly is. But let’s go back a long way for something better than soup. Let’s dig into this incredibly rich New Testament mix and sink our teeth into this word which plays so large a role in Biblical understanding.

Here’s where I think I’d like to start. Maybe the most startling thing about faith, and it really is astonishing when you think about it.... We don’t have any verb form for the word “faith.” Have you ever thought about it?

There is no way in the English language, with good form, that we can say, O.K., let’s “faith” it...

Or, I’m going to “faith” this experience Or, Oh, God, I “faith” you. We can’t say that. Faith in English is not a verb. It’s a noun. It’s the name of something. That’s what a noun is, remember? You had it in the 5th grade. I suspect. A noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. FAITH IS A NOUN.

We can speak perfectly legitimately of exercising our faith. We can speak of broadening our faith or deepening our faith.... We can speak of HAVING faith, but there is no verb form, “to Faith”. Maybe we need to invent one, because this is the essence of what New Testament faith is all about.

Whatever else it is, faith, in the Bible, implies action, it implies motion, it implies doing something, it implies getting off your dead...center of gravity.... it implies RESPONSE, on a very complete and involved basis, which includes both the head and the heart. Now, we have some words, some verbs, that come pretty close to that connotation in English. They are almost synonyms for the verb form of faith, at least they reflect some of the shades of meaning that are there....

TRUST is close. We say, “I trust you,”, and that means...well, it means, if I’m talking to an eligible young man, it means, “I would let you date my daughter.” I’m speaking now as a somewhat anxious father, for whom at the moment this is not an inconsequential consideration.

I remember the story of the father whose daughter was about to get married. The wedding, indeed, was imminent... his little girl, his baby. He said to his wife, the father did, “I don’t know, I just can’t help it. I suppose he’s a perfectly fine young man, but I just can’t escape the feeling that I’m giving a Stradivarius to a gorilla.”

TRUST is an emotional, primarily an emotional set of the sails, which reads confidence in whatever is out there. Sometimes trust is warranted, sometimes it’s misplaced. BELIEVE is another word that’s close. I say, “I believe you”, and that means “I think you’re telling the truth.” This usually is more a rational thing and may or may not have emotional overtones.

I can say I believe you when you tell me that the capital of Australia is Melbourne, but I might want to look it up in an Atlas to make sure. If it should turn out that the capital of Australia is actually Canberra, which, I believe, in fact, it is, it doesn’t greatly affect my overall sense of cosmic well-being. It might be very important to some Australian real estate people, but it’s not all that important to me. It doesn’t make that much difference. It’s certainly not as important as “I would let you date my daughter.”

Belief is more an intellectual assent to a proposition or set of circumstances. I can believe a lot of things that don’t necessarily involve me on a deep and abiding level.

FAITH does. Faith in the Christian sense, in the New Testament sense is bigger than either of these, bigger than trust OR believe. Indeed, it brings them together into something dynamic. It’s more than just an emotional thing. It’s more than just an intellectual thing. IT’S A COMBINATION OF THESE, PLUS AN ACT OF THE WILL.

Paul is probably our best interpreter here. He’s almost always our best interpreter in matters of the spirit. Nobody ever understood Jesus better than Paul. Don’t make the mistake of trying to drive a wedge between these two, or sticking them in opposite camps.

It’s no accident, I’m sure, and I think remarkably significant, that every great revival that has ever taken place during the course of Christian history, has come about largely through a recovery of the thought of Paul. You can check it out. Over and over, this is how people have gotten back to the center.

Augustine found Christ through Paul.... Luther found Christ through Paul.... It’s how the Protestant Reformation began. John Wesley had his heartwarming experience at Aldersgate one night, 250 years ago[1] this spring, in a little Moravian prayer meeting, while somebody was reading Luther’s Preface to Romans...one of the letters of Paul.

Time and again it’s happened. Paul is our best interpreter here.... AND THE HEART OF PAUL’S THEOLOGY IS THIS BASIC CONCEPT OF FAITH. “By grace are you saved, through faith.” “The just shall live by faith”.... Paul incessantly talking like that. He probably said it in his sleep.

What did he mean by it? What was he driving at? FOR PAUL. FAITH MEANT COMMITMENT. Now, that’s it. That’s the sermon. That’s really what I want you to remember. From here on out, all the rest is commentary. If you’ve got a lock on that, you can go home...Don’t you dare. But that’s it. FOR PAUL, FAITH MEANT COMMITMENT.

It meant accepting the wonder of God’s unmerited favor, and doing something about it. It meant relying, totally relying on what God has done in Jesus Christ, and living that way. It meant trusting...but in more than just a fuzzy-headed, sentimental, uncritical fashion.... There was an intellectual element involved. It meant believing...but with more than just the head, the brain, the mind alone.... There was an emotional element involved.

Faith, for Paul, meant believing enough to ACT on that belief. It meant trusting enough to ACT on that trust. And this is how it comes down to us today, as a legacy from Paul’s thought. WHEN IT’S REAL, WHEN IT’S VITAL, IT MOVES.... It’s a verb thing... not so much a possession as a process, not so much as something you have as something you do.

Faith is to grace, sort of what acceptance is to a proposal...a very, very wonderful proposal.

You may not know all you’re getting involved in, as in the case of proposals.... I mean, there are some things you learn afterward that you didn’t know before.... You may not know all you’re getting involved in, but you know there’s no way you can deny the reality of the love you feel and have to express.

To “faith” is to commit, to faith is to put on the ring. To faith is to say, “I do”. To faith is to stand there before God and this company, as the ritual puts it, and pledge your love each to the other.... To faith is to promise to go along, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health... To faith is to move out, to launch out, even without knowing absolutely.... It’s to journey, even without a map.

I have faith in the love of my wife. NOW, THE TRUTH IS, I DON’T KNOW THAT. I really don’t know that. I can’t prove it. It’s possible that even after all these years, her motives are entirely ulterior. It’s possible that I have absolutely no right to trust her, and that what she’s secretly drawn to is not me at all, but my money.... That might be kind of stupid, I grant, but it’s possible.

But I do know this. I know there’s something about the way I feel comfortable when we’re together, and about the way I feel fragmented when we have to be separated.... There’s something about the way she looks me in the eye, the way she treats me, even pampers me occasionally. There’s something about the way we can talk together without pretense, and be silent together without embarrassment, THAT MAKES ME WILLING TO PUT MY LIFE IN HER HANDS AS I DO EACH TIME I DECLARE MY LOVE. That’s faith.

I can’t prove the love of my wife. I really can’t. When I experience it, I don’t need to prove it. When I don’t experience it, no proof will do. If I tried to put her love to the test, somehow the test itself would prostitute the very thing I was testing. You don’t prove love. You experience it. You know it because you’ve committed yourself to it. You know it because you’ve “faithed” it.

And it’s this way with the goodness of God. You don’t “prove” that, either. You don’t know it, objectively, and THEN commit yourself to it. If you wait until you know it, you’ll never commit yourself to it. You can’t even prove the existence of God. We used to study the so-called “proofs” of God’s existence in theology school...the ontological proof, and the cosmological proof, and the teleological proof... I couldn’t tell you what they all are now if my life depended on it.

BUT THEY DON’T PROVE ANYTHING, EXCEPT TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE FAITH IN GOD ALREADY. If you don’t believe in the first place, they don’t prove a thing.

The real truth is, of course, that almost nothing that makes any real difference can be proved. I can prove the Pythagorean Theorem...at least I used to be able to. I spent a whole semester learning it in the 11th grade... Mrs. Laird almost had stroke. I can demonstrate the law of gravity, by throwing a grapefruit up in the air and catching it again. I suppose I could prove the world is round if I were clever enough.

But I CAN’T prove that goodness is better than meanness. I can’t prove that life is better than death. I can’t prove that life has meaning, or that God is love. I CAN’T PROVE ANY OF THAT.

But again, as with human love, I know what I have experienced. When I do reach out, when I do commit, when I do put my hand out in faith, and let that strange, Thorn-crowned Man take it and draw me up into places I never thought I could go....

WHEN I LET HIM CHALLENGE ME, and prod me to do more than I used to do.... When I feel Him turning me into something I could never on my own achieve, when I allow myself to be clutched in the grip of His incredible grace, IT MAKES ME WEEP WITH SORROW THAT I DIDN’T LET HIM HAVE ME SOONER. (It may not be as much as you’d like to fall back on when, as today, the life of a congregation is diminished by the loss of one of its members, but I submit to you, it is enough.)

I am told that in the Italian port of Genoa, the home of Christopher Columbus, a remarkable symbol of faith has been planted by the Roman Catholics.... A huge 8 ton statue of Jesus, with arms outstretched, was lowered, delicately and gently...down, down into the sand and mud of the harbor. It came to rest hundreds of feet below the surface. It’s called the Christ of the Deep. This was done years ago. No one can see it. No one has recently touched it. No one knows exactly where it is. No one even knows for sure that it’s still there. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

MAYBE IT MEANS JUST THIS. We must learn to throw ourselves on the mercy of God as sailors throw themselves on the mercy of the sea. This is faith. This is what Paul was talking about. This is the proper, the inevitable Christian response to the allure of Christ’s invitation. WE DON’T SEE, BUT WE GO ANYWAY. We don’t know, but we trust. We don’t have certainty, but we launch out.

We respond, we commit. We “faith”, for there is something about the Christ that pulls it out of us. Now I close with this. Somewhere in one of his many books, Clovis Chappell tells the story of another Wise Man... a 4th Wise Man, who saw, but did not follow the Christmas Star.

He was lured, he was tempted, he was drawn...but he was busy...he had responsibilities...he held back. Years later, as an old man, he held his little grandson on his knee and told him about that magic night.... He told him how they said a special Baby was to be born, a Baby who would redeem the world.... He told him of the excitement and the anticipation; he told him of the tug that came to his heart. He told him how he very nearly left everything to go see.

When he finished, the little boy looked up, and said, “But, Grandpa, is that all? What happened then? Why didn’t you go? Was it true what they said? Was that special Baby born into the world? And the old man shook his head, and said, “I don’t know. Some say it was true. Some say it was only a myth. I DIDN’T TAKE THE TROUBLE TO FIND OUT.”

Well, what about you? I can’t answer it for you. Nobody else can answer it for you. Nobody can ever answer it for somebody else. But it’s important enough to ask...And it’s important enough to ask directly. WHAT ABOUT YOU?

To “faith” in the New Testament sense is precisely to take the trouble to find out. The whole thing may be a myth.... BUT WHAT IF IT’S NOT?

Try it, “faith” it, see for yourself. And may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that waits for nothing more than the beginning of your first step in faith be with you, to lead you further, until at last you are home.

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[1] May 24, 1738