Faith that Saves . . .

      I shared with 8am folks that I was torn about which sermon to give today.  I had about a half dozen that I thought were good and that we needed to hear.  Predictably, I think I chose wrongly at 8am.  But, some of them shared their assent, so I get a chance to try a different one with y’all.  So, if you find yourself comparing sermon notes with 8am peeps, don’t assume either of you are crazy!

     While I am on the “crazy” discussion, our Gospel lesson ought to sound familiar, very familiar.  Those in church on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, the Last Sunday after Epiphany, should remember the Transfiguration and the accompanying miracle.  Every six years in our lectionary, we get that section of Luke twice in three weeks.  That should give you an idea that the Transfiguration is important, though it is not the subject I will focus on today.

     Instead, I want to look a bit at how these readings address a background noise discussion that ebbs and flows in our conversations at Advent.  At its loudest, the question rears its head in our pastoral conversations in the Do I have enough faith conversations.  More subtly, the question is internal and causes us to evaluate our faith in comparison to others or to what we think God expects of us.  Predictably, such conversations peak around funerals, but they are always around.  They make it into Bible studies, into coffee hours, and random reach out’s.  Three of our assigned readings today obviously address those questions, but I will claim Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi does as well.

     So, what is faith?  For those of us who struggle with whether we have enough to please God, what is faith?  Good!  Somebody paid attention in Confirmation class.  I was worried that since Cornelia was not here, the sermon might just end there.  Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  I see nods.  It was a great guess, and the author of the letter to the Hebrews takes up Abraham’s faith in his or her discourse on faith in chapter 11 of that letter.  I asked the question because it is often hard for people to understand their underlying worry.  If you have had these conversations with me, or been in group settings as we explored them, I always ask what is meant by faith or belief.  Part of that is so I understand what the question really is, but part of it is so the asker might realize their need to explore God’s Word more and more.

     To put the author of Hebrew’s words into more colloquial or modern English, faith is that point between hope and anxiety.  Abram wants a son, but he is too old to have a son with Sarai his wife.  They think.  God swears this covenant again and passes through the cleaved animals, as a vassal king would pass through them before a stronger king.  We do not understand the context of Suzerain treaties.  This image is lost on us.  But when it is explained, it makes even less sense.  Wait, God is willing to die if He cannot keep His promises to Abram?  We live on this side of the Incarnation, Holy Week, and Easter, so we understand this covenant in ways that Abram could never have foreseen.  As confusing as it is to us, though, imagine Abram.  Abram would have expected that God make him go through the Suzerain liturgy.  Abram is the vassal.  God is the Lord!  And yet.

     How does Abram respond to this confusion?  He trusts God.  He believes, despite all his worldly experience and knowledge, that God will give him and Sarai a child, that his descendants will be greater than the number of stars in the sky, and that his descendants will inherit the Land.  It makes no sense.  Abram is anxious about an heir.  If no heir is born, an adopted slave will inherit.  If no heir is born, there are no descendants.  You get it, right?  He probably has background noise.  Are there raiders or bandits in the area?  Is there enough grazing land for his flocks?  How’s the weather looking?  And, let’s not forget, I am guessing he and Sarai have had a conversation or three about an heir.  We know they have had at least one, never mind the “normal” conversations of married couples.  But God promises.  And Abram believes.

     The Psalmist, likewise, is in an anxious setting.  We do not know the threats specifically, but we know they are real.  Most experts will tell us the psalm is a lament, that the psalmist is struggling to find courage in the midst of these assaults.  Yet, in the background of this lament and of these threats is a confidence in God.  Of whom shall I be afraid?  He will hide me . . . He will conceal me . . . He will set me high on a rock.  Wait for the Lord!  The threats are real.  The psalmist has reason to fear.  Yet the psalmist also has reason to hope in God.  Again, in between the extremes of hope and anxiety, the psalmist has faith.  To be sure, the psalmist does not know how God will deliver, how God will save.  But he or she is certain they will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living and so he or she waits expectantly!

     Paul, of course, has a different image to describe our lives.  Paul reminds his intended audience in Philippi that their citizenship is in heaven.  Again, we understand citizenship better than Suzerain treaties, but we do not at all understand the import of what Paul is teaching.  Paul is living in a culture where, at its height, about 100,000 individuals were citizens of Rome.  With citizenship came a number of responsibilities and privileges.  Most people fantasized about being citizens of Rome.  Soldiers could not assault or extort or do anything to a Roman citizen.  To attack a Roman citizen was to attack the emperor who thought himself a god.  Shrewd emperors used the award of citizenship for soldiers, who had fought and seen comrades in arms die at the hands of the enemies of the state.  We forget, of course, but Paul was a Roman citizen.  For some who met him and conversed with him and broke bread with him, that part of his identity would have been just a bit below meeting Jesus on the Damascus Road in esteem.  And what does he teach them about that citizenship?  That his and their citizenship is in heaven, not Rome!  That one day all the citizens of heaven will be transformed and share in the glory of the Risen Savior, Jesus Christ.  Why?

     Imagine the anxiety living in that culture.  An emperor thinks he is a god.  The military assigned to your locale is likely an ethnic enemy.  Tax collectors have lots of power and soldiers.  The gods require specific worship so as not to forget you but also so as not to be offended by you.  Weather is a problem.  Disease is a problem.  Wars are a problem.  And in the midst of those anxieties are the personal anxieties.  Families are families, right?  Relationships are frayed, particularly in those families where a few are Christians and the others are not!  Paul never diminishes the anxieties, but he reminds people of the hope they have in God’s promises!  Faith is that point, yet again; and faith allows God’s people to live in the world even as they are not of the world.  And what is Paul’s instruction? Stand firm!  Yes, the anxieties are real, but so is the hope we have in God!

     The Gospel story is just a couple week’s old in our minds, or it should be.  Jesus has been transfigured and set his face on Jerusalem.  From this mountaintop experience He has headed back into the world to accomplish His departure.  We might rightfully understand Jesus to be about cosmic things.  What is to happen during the events of what we call Holy Week are no less than a cosmic battle.  Jesus will work to accomplish God’s will, and Satan will fight hard against that work, drafting us whom Jesus came to save, into the tempting and condemning crowds.  Yet in the midst of this incredible cosmic battle where Jesus will free us from our bondage to sin, He encounters a father.  The father begs Jesus to heal his son, his only child.  The father shares he begged Jesus’ disciples to cast out the demon, but they could not.

     Can you imagine the temerity of this father?  Jesus is in the midst of a cosmic battle to save his soul, and the father wants a son dispossessed!  He begs Jesus to do this.  I used the word temerity to drive home a point.  This man’s longing need is for his son to be healed.  Luke describes it as an exorcism.  I read a few commentators that wanted to go the epilepsy route this week, because they were certain demons are in our heads.  I chuckled as I read them understanding that the boy would have been perceived by those around him as inheritors of Balaam and Saul.  The father does not know about the event on the mountain.  The father has no idea Jesus is here to free us from sin.  He only knows that Jesus has done works of power in God’s Name and that Jesus can work the same in his son’s life.  He hopes in God and in God’s Prophet.  He finds that place, faith, where he can trust in the midst of his great anxiety.  And so He interrupts Jesus.

     Shockingly to our ears, Jesus seems to respond to His disciples’ failure with the condemnation “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?”  I don’t know that Jesus’ complaint is specifically about His disciples’ failure, though their fight in a few verses about who is the greatest certainly merits Jesus’ complaint.  No, the quote is from Isaiah.  Most of the audience would have recognized it, even though we do not.  It is yet another statement of identity from Jesus.  In Isaiah’s scrolls, God is the one complaining about being with and bearing the perverse generation.  And, let’s be honest, we human beings are perverse and faithless far too often.

     Jesus instructs the father to being the son to him.  As the son is coming forward, the demon dashes the son to the ground.  Jesus simply rebukes the demon and heals the boy.  There is no climatic struggle.  Jesus, we are told, does not even have to scream at the demon.  Jesus simply tells it to leave, and the demon leaves.  And the vestiges of that possession are even healed before Jesus restores him to his father.  And the crowd is astounded at the greatness of God!  Jesus has identified Himself again as God.  Jesus has again demonstrated power over the supernatural.  Jesus has again demonstrated His ability to heal.  And Jesus has demonstrated again that He should be the focus of Israel, and our, faith.

     My friends, we live in a world every bit as anxious as that of Sarai and Abram, of the psalmist, of Paul and the Philippians, and even of those who encountered Jesus in their daily life and work.  You and I are so close to WW3 that our children and grandchildren have learned we really were taught to hide under our desks, in case of nuclear attack.  We are watching the attempted eradication of a people, much as we watch the Avengers fight Ultron’s or Thanos’ minions for entertainment.  We want to put it behind us, but there is that pesky pandemic still playing Russian Roulette with human lives – I know, I know, but that’s how it seems to be working.  Gasoline prices are crazy high.  That means food insecurities, medicine insecurities, housing insecurities are going through the roof as our fellow citizens figure out budgets.  The economy is impacted by rising gasoline prices.  Everything costs more because everything is transported.  The market is down, which causes anxiety for those of us on fixed incomes or retirement incomes derived chiefly from our accounts.  All these things are anxiety-producing enough that mental health experts are screaming into a seeming void that we are all unwell to varying degrees.  We are suffering from depression, from anxiety, from addiction, from all kinds of mental illness in a society that perceives such illness as weakness, rather than signs that things are crazy out there.

     Individually, we all have subscriptions.  Some of us are battling diseases other than COVID, and more than a few of us are battling injuries that cause our doctors to remind us we are getting older and our bodies are breaking down.  Some of us are raging at the perceived restrictions during the pandemic, even as some of us are freaking out that we are expected to go back to normal life.  All of us have relationships that are frayed, if not broken, to one degree or another.  More than one Adventer caught COVID in January from a “loved one” who chose not to warn the Adventer they were sick with it.  Imagine dealing with an underlying health condition that caused your Primary Care Physician to restrict your exposure to the world for two years, only to find out the loved one did not seem to love you back.  All of us have dealt with death on more than one occasion the last couple years.

     If anyone has reason for anxiety, it is us.  And, yet, if anyone has reason to hope, it is us.  You and I, by virtue of our baptism, are the recipients of God’s promises.  We are not unlike Sarai and Abram, not unlike the psalmist, not unlike Paul and the Philippians, not unlike the father and the crowd in Luke’s Gospel.  Except in one significant way!  We live on this side of the Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ.  For those in Abram’s time or the psalmist’s time or even in Luke’s crowd, God’s saving act was in the future.  Only in Paul’s time was His saving work accomplished!  And so we are called to remember the hope we have in God’s promises, to remember that He has both the Will and the Power to keep His promises to us.  And, so, like our spiritual forebears, we live in that place between anxiety and hope.  The anxieties remind us that we are not yet home.  The anxieties remind us that things are not yet as God will finally have them.  But we trust that His Will will be accomplished.  Perhaps not as quickly as we might like; perhaps not in the way we would do it.  But He will fulfill each and every promise He has made to us.

     It is at this point, of course, that some bad preachers will remind us to have faith.  After all, if we are certain He can accomplish things, we should not let our anxieties win, right?  I see many of you have heard that sermon.  Brothers and sisters, that is not the Gospel.  There is no good news in the idea that your faith saves.  I do not know whether our focus on our faith is a perverse works righteousness introduced covertly by the enemy of God, the product of poor discipleship on the part of our leadership, or our desire to be masters of our domains and captains of our own ships.  In the end, it does not matter the why.  All of it is as opposed to the hope we have in Gods promises in the midst of our anxiety producing environments.  When you feel those questions building, when you begin to worry and wonder that your faith is not enough for God, whatever that means to you in your situation, remember the Gospel!  It is not our faith that saves us.  It is Jesus Christ’s faith that saves each and every single one of those who call Him Lord!  Everything in salvation history down to our own salvation is utterly and totally dependent upon Jesus’ faith in the Father.

     Why, do you think, does Satan spend such an effort trying to tempt Jesus away from the Father’s Will?  Our hearts are fat; our hearts, as we talked on Ash Wednesday, are full of sin.  We recognize, especially during this season we call Lent, our wretchedness.  And so does the enemy of God!  Brothers and sisters, the Good News, the Great News, is that it is Jesus’ faith that saves us.  His faith was perfect!  His faith caused Him to do all that the Father gave Him!  Even as He was hanging on that Cross and we tempted Him, goaded by God’s enemy, “if You are the Son of God, come down!” still He kept His faith in the Father, knowing that only the Father’s Will, and His faith, could save us!  And because of His faith in the Father, God raised Him on that glorious Easter morning that we will celebrate in a few weeks, reminding each one of us of God’s love, God’s power, God’s mercy, and, yes, even God’s dying desire to save each and every one of those created in His image.

     And so we gather, in the midst of this anxiety-ridden world, as individuals in need of a created heart, to remind ourselves of the simple truth that Christ’s faith has already saved us and ensured us of an inheritance with the saints in light.  Why, do we think, do our forebears describe it as a peace that passes all understanding or compare it to a mustard seed?  And, then, fortified by the Scriptures and Sacrament, we are sent back out in to that dark world, that world than can scarcely believe that God is real, let alone loves them, too, freed from the weight or trick that we will never measure up, and those tasked with the wonderful invitation of reminding all whom we meet that His faith saved them, too, if they but call Him, Lord.  And each time the enemy whispers, each time we begin to wonder whether we are enough, we give thanks to God that we are not, but His Son was and is!

 

In His Peace,
Brian†