RETHINKING RELIGION. Rethinking Faith.
Isaiah 43:1-7 and John 12:1,12,20-33
Grace and peace to you from God the Father through Jesus our Lord, friends. Amen.
I’m a fan of the TV show “The Office.” Big fan. There’s an episode of that show which divides fans. It’s called “Scott’s Tots.”
The lead character, through the majority of the show, is Michael Scott, played by Steve Carrell. He is an excellent salesman, but we meet him, in the show, having been promoted to manager of the office, which is entirely above his abilities. He can sell; he cannot manage. He does not plan, he has no head for numbers. His employees spend most of their time, as the show unfolds, doing their jobs despite and around his antics.
But before Michael became manager, during his early sales years, on a sales call to a local school, he made a promise. He told a class of third graders that he would pay their college tuition so long as they graduated on time from high school.
Michael Scott is, again, horrible at long-term planning. He has no head for numbers. He hoped, by the time these third graders were in twelfth grade, to be fabulously wealthy. Instead, by the time this promise comes due, he is still simply the manager of a small branch of a small paper company, who regularly makes less than he did as a salesman, considering he doesn’t receive commission. He cannot keep this promise. So in the end, he faces these excited, grateful high school seniors, their families, and the school administration, and tells them, “I can’t do it. I can’t keep this promise.” That’s the moment which divides fans. Some people find that scene so uncomfortable, they won’t rewatch the episode.
As the episode wraps, though, we learn that the kids from that third class have a higher rate of on-time graduation than their peers. Michael’s promise - which would not be kept in the end - it still inspired those kids to work harder; dedicate themselves to their studies; to make sure that when the time came, they would be able to receive the benefit.
Promises have power. Promises create faith. Faith leads to action. Today we’re wrapping up our rethinking religion Lent message series, and we’re going to conclude with what is, in the end, the most important teaching in Christianity. We’re rethinking faith.
The word faith gets used in two ways in our normal speech. One refers to specific beliefs, or a system of beliefs. When people speak of “the Christian faith,” “the Jewish faith,” “the Muslim faith,” or even the words “atheism” or “agnosticism,” all of those refer to this first definition of “faith” as the things someone believes to be true.
Someone who holds to the Muslim faith believes a set of things to be true which are different from someone who holds to the Christian faith. A Christian holds that Jesus Christ is eternally God. He died and rose. A Muslim holds that Jesus is not God, but merely a messenger of God. That he did not die, but instead fooled his captors and escaped the cross. The atheist holds all of that to be nonsense. These different “faiths” make claims about what is true.
That meaning of faith is not what the Bible usually means when it uses the word “faith.” When the Bible speaks of “faith,” it very rarely means, “the things which someone believes.” Instead, the Bible almost always uses this definition: Faith is belief itself. Not the thing which one believes, but the belief.
Here’s a simplistic illustration. The first definition: A thing which is believed. I believe it to be true that chairs exist for people to sit in, including myself. But the second definition of faith is what I show when I actually sit down in a chair. I trust that what I believe to be true will remain true. If you want a little Latin this morning, theologians distinguish these two concepts with the names fides quae, F-I-D-E-S Q-U-A-E, and fides qua, F-I-D-E-S Q-U-A, no “e” on the end. “Fides quae,” the things believed. “Fides qua,” belief itself.
Now, so long as promises are kept, all is good. But when I find my fides quae unreliable - when promises are not kept - my fides qua, my trust, shrinks; maybe disappears. If I had sat down in one of these chairs when they arrived Wednesday and it had collapsed under me, I would not be so trusting of this one this morning. In that episode of The Office, those kids will not quickly trust Michael Scott again. They had great faith in him, created by his promise! When that promise was broken, they lost their faith.
Once one promise is broken, we may start distrusting all similar promises, even ones given by someone new. One chair collapses under me; I start treating all chairs with some suspicion. I get food poisoning at a chain restaurant; I stop going to any of their locations. A brother or sister in Christ, someone I go to church with, hurts me: I stop trusting all other believers.
Promises have power. Promises create faith. Broken promises kill faith. Fulfilled promises sustain faith.
The Christian faith - the fides quae of Christianity, the things which Christians believe - center on God’s promises. God promises that he has forgiven us. God promises that when we die, we will go to be with him in joy and peace. And God promises that one day, he will raise us up, just as he raised up his Son Jesus, to everlasting bodily life in a world free of pain and suffering and all the consequences which sin brings into our lives. Those are big promises. But is the Promise-maker reliable?
To determine whether a person was reliable, we would look at their past actions. God does not expect us to act differently regarding him.
God does not tell us that our faith in him is to be blind and irrational. He does not present us with a black box that might have a million dollars, might have an angry snake, inside, and tell us to stick our hands in there. To accompany his promises, he gives two types of evidence that underscore his reliability. One, he tells us about his past actions. Two, he shows us his ability to carry out what he has promised.
In the Bible, we find, over and over and over, a reliable God interacting with unreliable people. They turn from him; he turns to them. They stop calling on him; he calls them back. The experience is not always pleasant for his people, no. But he never promises that it will be. In fact, his promise regularly is that our lives in this world will feature trials and troubles. Thus Jesus says in our Gospel reading: “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me.”
God’s promise is not that life in this world will be easy and happy at all times. His own Son experienced no such thing. But he does promise that he will provide us with everything we need for daily life. And he has done so. We are all alive today because God has done that in all of our lives. I know some of you have experienced hard times. Times of scarcity, and lack. You are still alive. God has kept that promise; God will keep that promise.
He made other promises. He promised to Adam and Eve that one of their descendants would crush Satan’s head, would “drive out the prince of this world.” He promised to the Hebrew people that the Savior would come from among them. He promised to David that he and his sons would sit on the throne. He kept all of these, and more. He has never broken a promise.
If you had a friend like that, you’d take their promises seriously. But if an otherwise completely reliable friend promised something impossible, it would still be fair to doubt. So as a second grounding for our faith, God shows that he has the power to carry them out.
He has the power to raise the dead. Our Gospel reading reminds us of this when it starts, “Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.”
God has the power and willingness to forgive. Simon Peter denied him Jesus times; Jesus restored Peter’s position in the church and led him, years later, to write two books of the Bible!
Before Jesus’ death, God spoke from heaven to confirm that what Jesus said about his death - that it would be the ransom for all people - was true. Jesus tells the crowd - tells us - “This voice was for your benefit, not mine.” We need to hear God’s confirmation that Jesus’ death did what he claimed it would do.
God has the power and the willingness to carry out every promise he makes, and his track record is perfect. So when he promises in his Word that you are forgiven, he creates the faith which believes that.
When he promises in Baptism that you are his child, washed clean and adopted into his family, he creates faith which believes that. When he promises that in the Supper, his Son’s body and blood are present to strengthen and comfort you, he creates faith which believes that. Your faith - fides qua - in these things is not something you made happen. God gives you faith by giving you promises.
Our Old Testament reading is full of examples. God says to his people - to us - there, “Do not fear.” To not fear is to have faith. Why should we not fear? Because God has promises for us. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.” That’s a promise. When we face situations that could sweep us underneath, like roaring floodwaters, God is with us. “I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead.” What does God mean here? He means that all the world is nothing to him compared to having you. Jesus did not come into this world to conquer and possess it, capable though he would have been! He gave all that up - lived life without even a place to lay his head - so that he might have you. “I will bring your children from the east and the west. I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’” God promises there, to the one who is lonely and abandoned, that in his Church he will gather a family for them, from north and south, from east and west, all to be his children together.
Faith is trust. Trust leads to action. For those third grade kids, their trust in Michael Scott led them to study. To work hard. What actions arise from faith in God? Fundamentally, one action. Faith leads to love. And as the apostle Paul writes, “Love never fails.” Love comes from God, who is love. It is his love which creates our faith. Our faith in his love leads to our own love in which we show our faith in his love, which faith shares his love with others, that they might also have faith and love. Faith is everything, dear Christian. And faith is God’s gift to you. Amen.