Today in the life of St. Martin, we had a lot to celebrate. This year is our 60 anniversary (in fact, 60 years ago today was when the church was officially named!), and we also burned our mortgage, which we paid off last year. What a wonderful opportunity to look backward and forward in faith! I preached a slightly different sermon at Bethlehem, but I thought I would share this one with you instead.
Pentecost 20C (SMLC Anniversary/Mortgage Burning)
October 6, 2013
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Psalm 137
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10
Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today
is a big day for St. Martin! Today we celebrate 60 years of ministry in West
Webster, and we also celebrate that after 26 years worshiping in this
sanctuary, we worked and came together in faith to pay off our mortgage! This
is a remarkable achievement for any congregation, but given the various ups and
downs that St. Martin has experienced in recent years, it is especially
reflective of the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of this place, and of
this congregation’s faith.
We
often throw around that word – faith. We say it like everyone knows just what
it means, just what it entails. But really, it is such an elusive word,
difficult to define, and even more difficult to live. Even so, we can never
seem to have enough of it. So we can resonate with the plea of the disciples in
our Gospel lesson today: “Increase our faith!”
Who
has not uttered that prayer at some point? When things seem not to be going our
way – increase our faith! When we are confused about what is happening in our
lives – increase our faith! When we really want to believe, but just can’t seem
to find it in our hearts at this moment – increase our faith! When our church
faces struggles, unsure how the bills will get paid, or how God is planning to
get us through this or that trial – increase our faith!
It
is a plea familiar to us all. As it turns out, it has been familiar to God’s
people throughout history, and so the Bible has much to tell us about faith –
what it is, what it isn’t, and how it might play in our lives. Several of these
insights are present in our readings today.
First,
from Luke we learn that faith is not something that can be quantified. That familiar plea, “increase our faith,” doesn’t
really make sense. Jesus retorts that the amount of faith is not what matters – indeed faith as small
as a mustard seed can do very great things! It is unhelpful to think of faith
as a thing that can be counted. Better to think instead of faith as a
relationship – specifically a relationship of trusting God. And if we can enter
that relationship of utter trust in God, then Jesus is exactly right: we can do
anything, even uproot a mulberry bush and plant it in the sea, even start a
brand new church, even pay off a mortgage when only three years before there
was conversation about closing our doors!
A
friend was telling me this week about when she was in college, and her
roommate, who was a rock-climbing instructor, brought her to a climbing gym. My
friend, who had never been rock-climbing before, harnessed up and tentatively
starting climbing the wall. Partway up the wall, her roommate called out,
“Okay, now let go!” “No way!” shouted back my friend. “I’ll fall!” “No you
won’t,” returned the seasoned instructor. “The harness will catch you! You
won’t fall.” Finally, with fear and trepidation, my friend did as she was told
and let go – and sure enough, the harness held her. As she dangled there, she
felt liberated, the fear of falling totally gone, and suddenly the prospect of
climbing was a lot easier. She scampered up the rest of the wall without fear.
And
that is how faith-as-trust works. If we trust God, we might still fall, but we
need not fear it if we do, because that faith, that trust, will catch us. With
that assurance, we can step out in faith into whatever it is we feel God
calling us to do.
The
prophet Habakkuk’s lesson in faith is simple and all too well known: faith
isn’t easy. His is a context wrought
with injustice and violence, and so he cries out to the Lord for an accounting
of this situation. He cries in words that are also very familiar to us: “How
long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?” How long will I endure
this illness? How long will the loss of my loved one cause such pain in my
heart? How long will I be unemployed? How long do I have to pray for help, and
get no reply from God?
And
God’s answer to Habakkuk? The same answer we often seem to receive: wait. And
that is what makes faith so hard. It requires patience. As Paul writes in his
letter to the Romans, “We hope for what we do not see, [and] we wait for it
with patience.” We have to wait a lot, don’t we? We wait for red lights to
change, we wait in line, we wait for test results, we wait for a friend or
family member to come around – so much of life is waiting! Having to wait for
God’s promises to be fulfilled can be the hardest waiting of all, and that, more
than anything, is when we need to understand faith as trust – trust that those
promises will someday be
fulfilled.
As
we wait, it is hard not to have doubts. But that is what our Psalm tells us –
that faith offers consolation when we find ourselves in doubt. You see, faith and doubt are not opposites. Indeed
some of the most faithful people in history have been wracked with doubt.
Martin Luther believed that struggle was a mark of faith – without struggle, he
said, faith isn’t genuine.
Our culture would have us believe that faith and doubt
are incompatible opposites. But faith is not so much an absence of doubt as it
is a commitment to believe even when you are surrounded by doubt. Sort of like
the relationship between courage and fear. Someone recently told me that I am
courageous, as I face another major surgery in a week. I said I didn’t feel
courageous, and she replied that you don’t need to feel courageous to be courageous. Courage is doing what needs to be done even when you do
have fear. Indeed, you wouldn’t need courage if you never had fear – and
neither would you need faith if you never had doubts. Faith is continuing to
trust and believe even in the midst of doubt.
And
that is where the Psalm comes in. The Psalm each week is chosen to respond to
the Old Testament reading. So today’s Psalm, in response to Habakkuk’s
discouragement, is that even as we doubt and have to wait, there is joy and
delight in being caught up in God’s promises. When we find ourselves in that
wonder, and let ourselves experience the delight of God’s promises, we find
ourselves free, even for just a moment, from our usual worrying about the
future. When we have faith in God’s love, it casts out our fears.
And
finally, we have a word from this letter to Timothy, speaking to Timothy’s
faith, and also hearkening the faith of Timothy’s mother and grandmother. This
letter reminds us that faith is not something we do alone. It is something passed down to us by our family – as
it has been passed down here at St. Martin for 60 years, and continues to be
passed down every time we have a baptism, or teach Sunday School, or sing hymns
together, or confirm young adults, or study the Bible, or eat together at this
Table. It is something you may have shared with your family at the dinner
table, or during bedtime prayers, or even while you were out fishing with your
grandchild. Faith is shared every time you talk with each other – with friends,
children, or even strangers – about how your faith has shaped your words,
thoughts, and actions, how it was present with you in times of joy and sorrow,
times of waiting and times of satisfaction.
Faith
is a gift, given to us first by Christ in baptism, and continually apparent to
us through all the people in our lives who have shared faith with us through
worship, prayer, song, sacraments, and conversation. As Timothy shows us, faith
is and always has been communal, an experience of the risen Christ together and
throughout time.
And
so today we celebrate: celebrate the myriad ways St. Martin’s faith has
increased in her encounters with God’s promises; celebrate how those promises
have been embraced and passed down in times of waiting and times of joy;
celebrate how we still come together to share in love, worship, song, and
sacrament, surrounded in the promise of new life in Christ. Thanks be to God!
Amen!
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