5th Sunday after Pentecost – Year B
June 28, 2009
Mark 5:21-43
What is “Faith”?
“Daughter, your faith has made you well;
go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
There is a simplistic understanding of
Jesus’ words - and a very complex understanding of Jesus’ words to the woman
who pushes her way through the crowd in order to touch the hem of Jesus’ robes. The simple understanding is to link her
confidence that Jesus could cure what ailed her with an act in which Jesus does
indeed heal her. This understanding is
sufficient. There is no necessity for
going any further. It is enough for us
to hear and to come to know Jesus as the one who embodies God’s desire for
wholeness in our lives.
The woman knows this. Jairus knows this. Retelling their story is Mark’s way of
helping us to know this.
The Good News – proclaimed this day for
all to hear – is that Jesus enters our world in order to do this very
thing. His life among us affirms for all
eternity the promise of Lamentations.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to
an end.
It is enough; it is more than enough, to
hear this news and to rejoice in this news as we gather around font and table
to touch and to taste this good news. It
is enough.
Now, if you want to exert a bit of mental
energy. If you feel, anywhere at all in
the deep recesses of your heart and mind, the desire for subtleties, then we
could go a bit further. We could – it is
up to you. What do you want to do? Okay, let’s settle it this way. If you are not sure you want to pick apart
unessential, minute differences in language, you can pull out your hymnal and
start to read through the psalms. Go
ahead. You have my permission. If you want to think about this a little
more, then you might want to get out a pencil and look for some marginal space
on your bulletin. Cause what comes next
is less in the order of a sermon and more along the lines of a lecture.
“Daughter, your faith has made you well;
go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
This whole section of Mark is about
faith. The parts of Mark chapters 4, 5
and 6 which we are reading through for these three week are all about
faith. The cover of last week’s bulletin
would have had us to think that the reading was about Jesus calming a
storm. “Not so,” Pastor Hartsell’s
sermon pointed out. The story was about
the lack of faith on the part of the disciples.
When they wake Jesus, asking why he is napping in the back of the boat
while this storm is about to wash them all overboard and to an early grave, he
asks them, “Have you still no faith?”
Same issue with this week’s artwork which
suggests that these stories are about a miracle. But the verse in the center, the comment
around which everything else coalesces, is this statement on the part of Jesus
where he says as clearly as can ever be said, “It is all about FAITH.”
Danielle will be preaching next
Sunday. Guess what? She will have the opportunity to answer the
question of why Jesus isn’t accepted in his hometown. Jesus will not be able to any deeds of great
power in that place. He will leave the
city, amazed at their unbelief.
The disciples fail to cling to
faith; the hometown folks follow a
similar path; only this unnamed,
bleeding woman seems to get it and does what is necessary to position herself
to receive what it is that Jesus has to offer.
“Daughter, your faith has made you well;
go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
“Faith.” It is all about faith.
You already know that, though, don’t
you? You understand that it is “faith”
which makes all the difference. Right? Simple stuff.
But here is the hard part – tell me what “faith” is? How do you define “faith”? What does it mean when some preacher or
pastor tells you to “have faith”? In a
few minutes we will baptize Caroline Grace.
We will stand in a circle around the baptismal font and “profess (our)
faith in Christ Jesus, reject sin, and confess the faith of the Church.” What does that mean?
Let’s try something. And this will either be a great thing or a
terrible flop. I want you to turn to
someone sitting next to you and say what you understand faith to be. Really.
Make sure no one is left out of a pair.
So you might not get to talk to the person who came with you but with
someone else. 45 seconds. Tell one another what “faith” means.
Okay.
First and foremost – there are no wrong answers. Second – I would love to have (in writing)
how each of you answered the question.
Write it on your bulletin (don’t change it after you hear what I am
about to say) and leave it with me or send me an email when you get home.
“Faith.”
What is it? (Mary and Brian have
heard this stuff before, as have many of the campus ministry students. That is why I can only preach this sermon in
the summer when most of the students are away.)
Within the writings of Christianity there
are four differing ways of under-standing “faith.” Each of these understandings has a basis in
scripture and each is informative in some way.
My complaint (and the complaint of a guy by the name of Marcus Borg) is
that in modern religious speak one of the under-standings has come to overshadowed
the other three. That one does stand
somewhat opposite the other three.
The winner in most surveys is to speak of
faith as believing that which it would otherwise be impossible to believe. You are going to be asked to do that in just
a few minutes. You are going to be asked
to receive, in faith, a piece of bread and a sip of wine along with the
assertion that it isn’t merely bread or wine but that it is for us the very
body and blood of our Messiah. Quite
often we hear faith defined as the ability to believe things that others will
find impossible to believe. We do it
every time we break the loaves and pour from the chalice. We do it when we take a few ounces of tap
water, transfer it to that ceramic bowl, and pour it over the head of some
unsuspecting child.
The Latin word is assensus. This is where you could write in the margin
of your bulletin. A-s-s-e-n-s-u-s. It means to give intellectual assent to
something that is being proposed. Faith
as intellectual assent is important.
When asked, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ?” it is faith as assensus
which is being asked for. This faith
involves our cognitive skills. It is a
faith of the head.
There remain the three other
understandings. Each of these three
would better be understood as matters of the heart. Emotional in nature, they involve faith as
Trust; as Fidelity; and as Vision.
The Latin word for faith as trust would
be Fiducia. F-i-d-u-c-i-a. Faith, spoken of this way, is the ability to
set aside our anxiety or our worries. It
is the confidence that God has and does take notice of us and our plight. When Jesus wakes in the back of the boat he
asks the disciples, “Why are you afraid?”
As Pastor Hartsell pointed out last week, there were plenty of reasons
for them to be afraid. There was a whale
of a storm going on out there. There
will always be reasons to be afraid.
Faith is the confidence that none of those reasons are as strong as the
God who says to us, “Be not afraid.”
Next Latin word also begins with an
“F.” Fidelitas. F-i-d-e-l-i-t-a-s. In this case, faith is remaining true to the
one whom we claim to be our Lord and Master.
Talking the talk is easier than walking the walk. Walking the walk is faith as Fidelitas; it is faith as faithfulness to God. You know all those stories in the Bible which
speak of adultery? Well, some of them
are talking about relationships between human couples. But a whole bunch of them address the
relationship between God and those who claim to be God’s people. If you haven’t read Hosea recently, let that
be your homework.
Faith is fidelity. Fidelity of the heart, of the tongue, of our
hands, of the way we live our lives.
And then there is Visio. V-i-s-i-o.
Some look at the world through rose colored glasses. Christians look at the world through the eyes
of Christ. The vision we have is vision
shared with Messiah. When Jesus looked
out upon the crowd he didn’t see pick-pockets and pan-handlers. He saw children harassed and helpless, like
sheep without a shepherd.
My complaint with that whole series of
books referred to as the “Left Behind” series has to do with visio – with a
vision in which the world is seen as threatening and hostile. Seeing with the eyes of Jesus is seeing sin
as the enemy, not the person trapped in sin.
Seeing as Jesus would see is loving persons so that they will be free to
change, not expect them to change so that they will be more lovable.
Trust-Fidelity-Vision – these
understandings of faith are matters of the heart. These ways of defining faith are not limited
to what goes on inside our head; they are connected to the organ which pumps
life to every cell of our body.
I am not discounting faith as
assensus. I hope I made that clear
already. But it can’t stop with the
head. It must move on to the heart.
“Daughter, your faith has made you well;
go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Faith is what matters. Faith is what Jesus wants to see in his
followers. If you have had times in your
life when you wondered if your faith would match up to this nameless, bleeding
woman, maybe the problem wasn’t the depth or strength of your faith but your
struggle to understand what faith actually is.
It “is” a number of things, to a number of people. The complex understanding is to embrace faith
as all four: intellectual assent – trust
– fidelity – vision. A simpler option is
employed by the woman in Mark 5 and she is the example for all to follow.
Join us in affirming the faith of the
Church, the faith in which we baptize Caroline Grace.
Come to the table, where your faith will
receive the outpouring of Jesus presence among us.
Your faith brings these gifts into your
life. Go in peace, healed of that which
disquiets you and puts you ill at ease.
Amen.
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