Wrestlers wrestle. Artists create. Teachers, teach. Scuba divers, dive. Toddlers wonder (and believe me, they do, you’d be surprised at the span of questions that get hurled my way very often). Comedians, satire. Christians doubt. The life of a Christian swings back and forth between faith and doubt, joy and sorrow, mystery and revelation, hopefulness and hopelessness.
These are all ingredients of living in a world where death and grief are ever so close to knocking on one’s door. Yet, we also live in a world inundated with the beauty of God’s creation, the excitement of a budding romantic relationship, the joy of travel, the thrill of that first bite of a barbequed tenderloin steak, the smell of nana’s biscuits, and the contentment of belonging to a community of faith (such as St. John’s) where at our best, we hold together and support each other in times good and bad. The Samaritan guild and Daughters of the King could tell you something about this, for instance.
I believe that we all desire to live, to build, to flourish in all that we do. Yet even so, it’s complicated. Life is complicated. How much more when you add following Jesus, who emptied himself, and took on the form of a servant (Phil 2:6-11 RSV). Life was complicated for the first followers of Christ, too, as we see in the Gospel reading today, their plea to the Lord is: “Increase our faith!”. This plea for an increase in faith is striking. Mainly because the disciples are the ones to unanimously recognize and name what they lack in their lives presently, not Jesus. Jesus responds compassionately to their plea in a way that affirms their desire, their inner longing to be more like Jesus in their lives. This indicates to us that responding in faith, particularly in moments when we feel inadequate or over in our heads, is God’s will for our lives. Interestingly enough, we are not told which of the disciples made this utterance, yet it is suggested that it was a unanimous plea amongst them.
This lets me know another thing about Jesus- Jesus responds when we are vulnerable about our inadequacies to Him. He acknowledges them and adorns those vulnerabilities with His all-sufficiency, dignity, and care. In other words, when you pray today in your private place and say: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (a prayer common in the Orthodox tradition known as the Jesus prayer) God responds with God’s prevailing love and all sufficiency. Another example, when you pray: Lord, I know that this is the right thing to do, but I lack the faith to do it, I lack the faith to know that you will continue to be with me (or any such utterance of vulnerability with and to God), that God will respond. The Gospel lesson today teaches us that Jesus is bound to respond in faith to our faith and invites the disciples to enact their faith, because faith without works, of course, is dead (James 2:14-26). SO....
now that we’ve gone down that path, what are we gonna do? Paul directs Timothy and perhaps sheds some light for us, too: Paul states in 2 Timothy that Jesus abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. He spends his last days on earth writing to Timothy in this letter from the chambers of his execution unit. Paul is awaiting an imminent end to his life at the hands of a ruthless empire (which many first-century Judaic Christians had hoped, by the way, that Jesus would overthrow). Paul is at the end of his life's ministry, an end to all the work and hours he had devoted to spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And yet, we witness a Paul who fervently encourages his protege, Timothy to, to sum it all up, keep the faith. He tells Timothy not to be ashamed of the testimony about the Lord or of him (God’s) prisoner, but to join with him in suffering for the gospel (2 Tim 1: 1-14). Scholars are led to believe that this was a setting of mass persecution of Christians. Many had abandoned Paul, and many were led to shame because the Good News appeared to be no less good. The Good News was under attack.
Perhaps for us today, this apparent end might look like the abrupt ending of a career, the ending of one’s ability to physically be mobile, the ending of one’s clean bill of health, the ending of a multi-million investment deal, the ending of one’s marriage, the ending of one’s independence, the ending of one’s pride and joy. You see, in many ways, life is about endings. In the death and resurrection of Christ, endings are in fact turned into beginnings; the closing of one door is the opening of another door that transcends time. The door of eternity and the door of the present in which God promises to be with us. Jesus has overcome death, and so Paul in his letter to Timothy reminds him of this prevailing victory. Exhorting him to persevere in faith. Elsewhere in the Scriptures, Paul tells the Romans that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us.
My question is then, if this were a letter (or in our modern context) an email, or a text, or a Facebook message, or a Snapchat etc. that was coming from you, to whom would it be addressed? Who could you say you looks to you as an example of faith, by virtue of your obedience to God? If the answer is no one currently, who would you like to share your faith in God with today and going forward?
This reminds me of a time in College in Stellenbosch, South Africa when I was given an opportunity of a lifetime, upon being identified by an Anglican Priest after a talk I gave about an anti-apartheid activist, to travel and live in an ecumenical monastery in rural France for a period of three months with many other young men and women from all over the world. That Summer I had roommates from Lithuania, Singapore, the Philippines, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Columbia and many other countries. We lived together a life of prayer and simplicity, sharing everything but the bed we laid on. It was beautiful and very uplifting time. When I came back home, however, I was faced with a major challenge to my faith that prompted me, and others around me, to travail in prayer and tears. I had been given a letter of suspension with no grounds, even though I had received permission from the Dean to travel.
Nevertheless, through much persistence, tears and the support of others, I was able to graduate on time, was on the Dean’s list and barely scraped through my Hebrew class. To God be the Glory!
This is all to say that when living a life of faith, opposition will come, but when it comes, the question is to whom will you cling? Where will you be standing? And in whom will you put your trust?