Sunday, February 15, 2015

Sermon: What Is Faith?

1 John 1:1-2:6
What Is Faith?
James Sledge                                                                                       February 15, 2015

What is faith? What is belief? Are they the same thing or something different? And how do you know if you believe or if you have faith? What are the markers? Where is the threshold between faith and not faith, belief and not belief?
We’re in the midst of winter, so let’s imagine a warm, summer scene, a hot July day at the neighborhood pool. Children are laughing and screaming. And over near a corner at the shallow end, a toddler stands at the pool’s edge. She has on a cute little bathing suit, a pair of goggles, and a pair of those orange, inflatable swimmies, one on each arm.
Just in front of her, on his knees in the shallow water, is the child’s father. He is holding out both arms and encouraging his daughter to jump to him. Repeatedly she come toward the edge but then backs off. She looks excited and terrified at the same time, but more terrified the closer she gets to the pool’s edge.
Her father keeps reassuring her. “I’ll catch you,” he says. “You know I’ll catch you, don’t you?” he asks. See nods in agreement, but then backs off once more. Apparently her belief that Dad will catch her isn’t enough to overcome her fear, isn’t enough for her to make that terrifying leap into the pool.
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As we’ve journeyed through Advent, Christmas, and now to the edge of Lent, following the path laid out by Brian McLaren’s We Make the Road  by Walking, we’ve learned a lot about Jesus. We witnessed prophetic dreams that anticipated him, and we saw how his birth causes both joy and fear. We saw Jesus be baptized and begin his ministry, proclaiming that God’s new day is arriving. We heard him call disciples to come with him, and heard him teach. We witnessed his healing powers. We saw him transfigured on the mountaintop and heard the voice of God say, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 
For a lot of us, this is not our first bit of information about Jesus. Many of us attended Sunday School as children. Some of us read our Bibles occasionally, a few of us regularly. Confirmation classes taught a number of us the core of Christian faith, and all of us who are members have made a profession of faith at some point, saying that Jesus is our Lord and promising to be faithful disciples.
So at what point does all this information and all these words become something more? At what point do the things we learn, the things we “know,” become belief? And is that the same thing as faith?

We Protestants have emphasized faith since the days of Martin Luther and his insistence that right relationship with God was not about the good works we do but rather a gift from God received through faith. The faith versus works dichotomy that evolved from this has sometimes led to seeing faith and action as two entirely separate things, and also to viewing faith as a head thing, a mental decision to believe something. At its worst, this dichotomy has turned belief into the only good work that counts for something. Believing in Jesus will save you, but nothing else you do really matters.
In his classic book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a good, Protestant Lutheran, argues against this idea of faith as a head thing. He saw such notions as part of what he called “cheap grace.” This is, he wrote, “grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” 
He spoke of true grace which is anything but cheap. Writes Bonhoeffer, “Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”[1]
For Bonhoeffer, Christian faith is always about responding to this grace, obedience to the call of Jesus. Faith is possible because Jesus seeks us out and says, “Come, follow me.” Faith emerges from response to that call. The first disciples don’t agree to a set of faith doctrines and then decide to follow Jesus. They go with Jesus and learn what it means to be disciples. As Bonhoeffer says, “For faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience. 
“Since, then, we cannot adequately speak of obedience as the consequence of faith, and since we must never forget the indissoluble unity of the two , we must place the one proposition that only he who believes is obedient alongside the other, that only he who is obedient believes. In the one case faith is the condition of obedience , and in the other obedience the condition of faith. In exactly the same way in which obedience is called the consequence of faith, it must also be called the presupposition of faith. Only the obedient believe.”[2]
 
Today’s scripture reading says much the same. Now by this we may sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments. The divine voice on the mountaintop means the same by “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” This is not “Listen to what he says and consider whether or not you agree.” It is a parental “Listen!” that means “Hear and obey.”
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Meanwhile, back at the pool – it’s nice to think about going to the pool on such a cold day isn’t it? – a toddler in her goggles and swimmies continues a back and forth dance at the water’s edge. “Come on, I’ll catch you,” her dad says for the umpteenth time. She wants to. She’s almost ready to, but not quite. 
If you’ve spent much time around pools, you know that eventually, most every such toddler takes that leap. It doesn’t happen because a child comes to a clear enough understanding of the specific gravity of water or the buoyancy of swimmies inflated to a particular psi. It happens because a child trusts her parent and because she’s seen the fun the other kids are having. There’s sometimes a bit of swallowed water, some coughing and sputtering on that first attempt, but the child’s trust is almost always rewarded.
Follow me,” Jesus says to each and every one of us. As we continue to make the road by walking, I hope you will use the coming season of Lent as a time to delve more deeply into what it means to be a Jesus follower, what it means to take that leap of faith and discover that fullness of life that comes to those who respond to Christ’s call.

We Make the Road by Walking. The practice begun in Advent continues through summer of 2015. Scripture and sermons will connect to chapters in Brian McLaren’s book. This week’s chapter is 26, “Making It Real.”




[1] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (2012-08-07). The Cost of Discipleship (p. 45). Touchstone. Kindle Edition.
[2] Ibid. (p. 63-64).

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