GROWING FAITH
Isaiah 40:28-31, Luke 18:1-8
Rev. Bill Wills, Presbyterian Home for Children, Talladega AL
A Sermon delivered at Central Presbyterian Church, Mobile AL
August 24, 2008
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
The
central theme of the parable we hear today is about prayer. Jesus tells of a widow, whom we can assume
had children, since we know that widows and children were often
impoverished. She took her cause to a
judge who was not blessed with sensitivities toward God or man. He refused to hear her case, but she
persisted by coming back again and again.
Eventually, because of her persistence he ruled in her favor. The
parable has to do with persistence in prayer and in all matters of faithful
living. The parable teaches by contrast
– if an unjust and uncaring judge will respond to the
widow’s persistence, how much more will God, who is just and good, hear our
prayers and respond to our seeking after him?
And
he told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not
lose heart. He said, “In a certain city
there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man; and there was a
widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, “Vindicate me against my adversary.” For a while he refused, but afterward he said
to himself, “Though I neither fear God
nor regard man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her, or she
will wear me out by her continual coming.” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous
judge says. And will not God vindicate
his elect, who cry to him day and night?
Will he delay long over them: I
tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will
he find faith on earth?”
Some people are blessed with good and caring parents. I count myself among those and I hope you can too. With the passing of my years I became better able to see, more so than I could see when growing up, how wise they were. It is like Mark Twain said of his father, “When I was 18 I didn’t know how he could be so dumb. When I was 22, I couldn’t figure out how he had learned so much in just four years.”
My parents were married during
the great depression, and like most others who experienced that ordeal in our
nation’s history, their worldview was forever shaped by that experience. My father was fortunate in that he had a job
throughout that period. Our home was
modest, our car (note the singular – there was only one) was an older used car,
and our entertainment was made up of drives through the countryside, and
playing board games in the house or sports in the yard. We were the last folks on the block to have a
TV. It was commonplace to hear my
parents say, when asked about buying the newest thing, “not now”, or “not yet”,
or “maybe sometime.” The most troubling of those was that “maybe sometime.”
Unless our experience with our parents was not a good experience, time has taught us that while our parents were not perfect, in many ways they were caring and nurturing people. More and more, with the passage of time I cherish their memory and their example that you don’t have to have everything just now to be happy. They were happy with less, and when better economic times came, they were happy with a little bit more, but never a lot.
They never thought that you had to have everything and have it right now. They taught me that sometimes the best things are things for which you labor and for which you wait. They taught me that it was in the process of seeking that you bettered or improved yourself, whether you reached the goal or not. They taught me the value of persistent seeking. This is the point that Jesus made in his parable that we heard this morning – the value of persistent seeking.
Today’s society is immersed in a
different style culture as surely as a fish is immersed in water. Unlike the culture that grew out of the
depression years, ours is a culture of instant gratification and instant
credit. What we are taught is that we
must have the whole thing right now – everything, materially speaking just now! “The
credit card,” someone said, “is the
most marvelous invention since the wheel.
With it you can buy things you don’t need, with the money you don’t
have, to impress people you don’t know.”
Sometimes, this mindset gets carried over into religion. People want the whole enchilada quickly and just now. So religion sometimes gets marketed like a shiny new automobile with all the bells and whistles on it. But people who are (know it or not) seeking the Bread of Life are in some churches treated like consumers in a religious supermarket – “give them whatever it takes to get them in.” This was evidenced by a church signboard that read, “Hear our Paid Soprano.” Underneath was the sermon title, “What is hell?” Another church advertised, “Don’t say the church has failed you until you try ours.”
A pastor acquaintance of mine tells the story of the time when a friend said to him, “if I had faith like yours, I would be a Christian.” That embarrassed the pastor because it frequently seemed to him, after spending many years trying to walk the walk of faith, that while he had faith, it was often only like a tiny mustard seed. So the pastor explained to the friend that faith is not given at the beginning. We find faith while we are on the way. In the seeking, in hanging in there, in staying the course - is the finding.
If we bring our culture’s idea of instant gratification and easy credit into our religion we are going to burn out pretty quickly. “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Theologian William Sloan Coffin has a wonderful saying about faith. He says, “I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.” The fullness of faith is not revealed to us at the start. We are promised light for our faith journey that will guide our next step. It is our early, less developed faith that puts us on the road for this journey. It is our persistent seeking that keeps us there.
Like love, God is patient and kind. He will support us and help us grow our faith – to stretch our minds and hearts as we experience more and more of God’s wide universe. God doesn’t want us narrow-minded and subservient, but joyful and loving, free to serve one another as God’s love was freely poured out for us on Calvary.
Having said that, still the apostle Paul tells us that we will never have the full view of God’s universe, even at the end of our journey here on earth, “For now we see” says Paul “in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; but then I will know fully even as I have been fully known.” (I Cor. 13: 12)
Faith is not a finished product. It is a project you undertake. A famous professor at an Ivy League School, when he was younger had studied for the ministry and was ordained. He took a teaching position and as fame came to him and the years passed, he left his faith behind. Later he said, “It was as if I had put my faith in a drawer and one day when I opened it, there was nothing there.” How unfortunate. Even in matters of faith, the old adage applies, “If you don’t use it you lose it.”
What is needed from our side is an undertaking of what might be called our faith project. This project is always under construction. Faith being formed in us is surrounded by something like that yellow construction tape that reads, “work in progress.” This is the type of thing that is found in the biographies of all the great saints of our faith. (1) They have found something, but they still seek. (2) They are filled, but they are still hungry. (3) They believe, but they say, “Lord help thou mine unbelief.” (4) They do great acts of love and mercy, but know full well their shortcomings.
God does not call us to have complete or unshakeable faith. He calls us to act on the faith that we have, however little, rather than concentrating on the faith that we do not have. Faith is voluntary participation. You may not pray like Peter or preach like Paul, but you can do what you can do for the increase of the love of God and neighbor. It does not take perfection from a man or woman to be a Christian, just all of his or her faith that they happen to possess at any given time. It was the conviction of the early Christians that the acceptance of the attitude of faith released new powers in the human spirit.
Willa Cather was called by some, one of the most interesting women writers in American literary history. She made this observation about literature. She wrote that “The peculiar quality of a first rate writer can never be defined, but only experienced.” Doesn’t that also apply to Christian faith? It is not something you finish and then get on to other things. All the creeds, and confessions, and thick books about the experience of God in Christ for the Christian can never define it. It can only be experienced one day at a time. And no matter how long you live, there is always something more wonderful and more mysterious yet to be discovered. There is always something more to challenge you to be more than you ever thought you could be.
There is a true story that illustrates this point quite well. A husband and wife who were traveling around the world and while in Korea they saw a boy pulling a crude plow in a field, while an old man held the plow handles and directed it through the rice paddy. The husband was amused by the sight and took a snapshot of the scene. “That is very curious,” he remarked to the missionary who was their interpreter and guide. “I suppose they are poor.”
“Yes,” said the missionary. “That is the Chi Noui family. When the church was built they were eager to give something to it, but they had no money, so they sold the only ox they had and gave the money to the church. This spring they are pulling the plow themselves.”
The husband and wife were silent. Then the wife said, “That was a real sacrifice.” “They did not call it that,” said the missionary. “They thought it was fortunate that they had an ox to sell.”
The two tourists did not have much to say, but when they reached home, they took the photograph to the church and told their pastor about the incident. They told him that they never knew what gratitude or joy or sacrifice really meant until now.
No matter how long we live, there really is always something more wonderful and more mysterious yet to be discovered. And if we look through the eyes of faith, there truly is always something more to challenge us to be more than we ever thought we could be.
And so, our Lord asks us, “When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth – in you and in me?” Pray that you may be able to answer at least this much, “Yes Lord, it is only like a mustard seed, but you have promised you can do great things with even that.” And then pray “Lord, send my roots rain.”
CLOSING PRAYER
Our gracious God, we come before you in prayer because we know you and we trust you. You have been consistently gracious and loving toward your children forever. From our thankful and faithful hearts dear Lord, we pray for light for our journey for each of us. Grant that we may never lose the way through self-centeredness and so end up lost in the far countries of the soul. Grant that we may never drop out of the race, but that we will ever press forward to the goal of our high calling – growing faith with every step along the way. Grant that we may never forget that hard work is the price of all things of value, and that without the cross, there cannot be the crown. So keep us and strengthen us by your grace so that no disobedience and no weakness and no failure may stop us from entering into the blessedness which awaits those who are faithful. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.