A sermon preached on Sunday 7 October 2007, at Eucharist by Alison Webster

Readings:

2 Timothy 1: 1 – 14
Luke 17: 5 – 10

The boy is running for his life. Bullets rain down. Jet fighters scream overhead. He is very afraid. But at least his father is holding his hand. Then he looks up at his father, and his father looks down and meets his gaze as they run. What the boy sees is something he has never seen before. He sees fear. And in that moment his mind is made up. He thinks: I must do something. I will fight the injustice. I will resist.

A woman regards herself in the mirror. A bruise is forming beneath her left eye. It is the shape of a familiar hand. Her lover's hand. As she stares, unthinking and numb, a remembered image replaces the one she sees in the glass. It is her younger self. Free and flourishing. In that moment she knows she must regain the personhood she had before. She decides to leave.

A word struggles to the surface of the young girl's consciousness. She doesn't know how she knows but she knows that what she feels is love. The object of her love is not one she would have anticipated. This love is not convenient. It is not advisable to love the one she loves. It gives her an identity she did not desire or aspire to. It frightens her. But to deny it would be to deny her self. She decides to embrace it.

This sermon is a reflection on the nature of faith. And it begins with a simple conviction. The conviction is this: that small things matter. And that hidden things matter. In our three opening stories note the importance of internal shifts; emotional shifts; shifts of perception. They work like keys, opening the door to radical change and transformation. I must do something. Enough is enough. I can no longer ignore how I feel. Momentous and life-changing moments on the inside. Imperceptible, sometimes, from the outside.

The apostles said to the Lord, 'Increase our Faith'.

Whatever lay behind this request for the apostles, we cannot but hear it from within our cultural frame of reference. For we are, in this part of the world and at this point in time, a materialist and a possessive generation. So 'increase our faith' sounds something like 'increase our shares', or 'Increase our capital', or 'Increase our bonds and securities'. In other words, give us more of it.

To which the reply comes, 'If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea', and it would obey you.'

I believe this to be one of those radically liberating messages of Jesus that we have, as usual, managed to turn into something that enslaves us with guilt. For we tend to interpret it like this. There's a tree over there. If I had enough faith I could command it to do things that trees do not usually do – ie move of its own accord. We make faith into a mind-over-matter kind of will-power. Like the supernatural power that is supposed to be available to us to bend spoons by simply holding them, or to smash glasses by simply looking at them. I stare and stare at my wine glass and will it to break, and it doesn't. So I conclude that my faith can't EVEN be the size of a mustard seed. And if it isn't even as big as that, it must be non-existent. I am without faith.

This conception of faith can have outworkings that are spiritually abusive. Someone is ill, for instance, and prays for healing. She does not get better. At least, she is not cured of her illness. And so her fellow Christians conclude that her faith must be defective. They tell her so. And what she has so far called religious faith is destroyed. The so-called 'prosperity gospel' works in the same way. If we are materially poor but we have great faith, then God will bless us with earthly riches. Those who pray to God but remain poor do so because their faith is defective. Those that become rich do so because God has rewarded them for their great faith. Exported by wealthy nations to developing ones, this theology is nothing more than an abusive justification for human-made inequality.

The problem with understanding faith in this way is that it makes faith into a 'thing'. It is a materialist notion of faith. It takes a mysterious divine gift and makes it into something which human beings can control. Whether we have it or not is up to us. We can have a 'lot' of it, or a 'little' of it depending on how hard we try. It is our responsibility. It's all about us, not about God.

I prefer to interpret Jesus' parable in a different way. Rather than saying to ourselves: I cannot move mountains and I cannot uproot trees, therefore I have no faith, I think we should ask ourselves a different question: when have I felt, within myself, a stirring of love or of life? Or, when have I seen change and transformation in another? It may be the tiniest glimmer; the slightest change. But when we see it in others, and when we feel it in ourselves, we should know that this change is happening because faith is already there. And faith is kindled as we trust the promptings of life and love, and respond to them.

When we follow love, we are manifesting faith, but we can follow love only because faith is already within us. When we embrace life we are manifesting faith, and faith is the hidden thing within us that enables us to do it.

The message of today's Epistle bears out this interpretation. It speaks of faith as 'the good treasure' that is entrusted to us; the grace that is given to us before the ages began, and it urges us to 'kindle the gift of God' that is within us. Not that might be within us if we try harder, or that could be within us by way of some spiritual privilege or special training, or that is in some people and not in others, but that is within us.

So there is Good News here about faith.

The Good News about faith is that it is a gift that every human being has been given. It is already there. We do not need to rush around looking for it.

The Good News about faith is that it cannot be grasped and possessed. It is safe from the greed of those who would have more than their fair share and deprive others. It cannot be bought or sold, and it cannot be earned. It can only be kindled. Kindling faith is about discerning and following the promptings of the heart. The promptings of the heart move us to become the people we were born to be. They move us to work for the liberation of others, so that they too can be who they were born to be. Kindling faith is stretching and expanding to accommodate what moves us, and to change in the process.

The Good News about faith is that it predates and can exist outside of the confines of religion. Faith is not about intellectual conviction. It is not about following or buying into complex schemas or creedal statements invented by well-meaning theologians. It does not disappear with our mental capacity. It is simply knowing. A visceral knowing. A knowing in our guts. Knowing that we have life in us because the divine is within us; knowing that the love in us is of God.

So, let us go back to the beginning.

40 years on, the boy is now an artist. He works to end war and hatred across the world.

It is one year on for the woman in the mirror. Now she lives without her lover. She finds strength enough – just – to take one day at a time, and to survive.

20 years on, the young girl is now a woman, living in a place where her love has civil and legal protection, and can be honoured by others. She played a part in bringing that about.

For those with eyes to see, mountains have been moved. Mulberry trees have been uprooted and planted in the sea.

So my message is this:
Follow the life in you.
Follow the love in you.
Honour the mustard seed.


Amen