The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for June 11, 2006

Texts: Genesis 12:1-9/Matthew 6:25-34

Title: “How Do We Know It’s Faith?”

              Matthew 6:25-34 is one of the most memorable and beloved passages in scripture.  The counsel offered is just what the anxious soul wants to hear, “don’t worry.” 

              Scarcity, real or perceived, is preoccupying.  Will we have enough?  Retirement is looming for the baby boomer. Will our savings be adequate to guarantee the kind of retirement we hope to enjoy?  Faced with another mouth to feed the new parents review the list of additional expenses they have incurred.  Will their combined incomes bear the costs involved in providing their child with the kind of opportunities that will set her life on a solid footing? 

                 Scarcity is preoccupying.  What if we don’t have enough?  As a result of the storm countless citizens have been forced to reevaluate their financial situations.  Housing costs are much higher than they were. Employment in many instances is more tenuous than it was.  Gasoline and other energy costs, insurance, and property taxes have risen.  

                 Jesus’ followers approached him with scarcity issues.  And what was his response?  “Don’t worry about it.” 

I have to tell you that if he didn’t happen to be the Son of God Jesus would have received no better than a C-, if that, from the pastoral counseling faculty at my seminary.  I was taught that “don’t worry” is about the very last response the counselor should make if approached by a person in need. 

                Each novice counselor, and each of us have found ourselves in the counseling role at some point, succumbs to the temptation to get in there and fix things. “Don’t worry; things are going to work out fine.” You, the novice counselor, are approached by a friend who is stymied by a decision pertaining to a major job issues. Fully satisfied with her present employment, she has an opportunity to work for another company for much more money, but also promising much longer hours and much more stress.  For you the issue is cut and dried.  “Stop fretting over it.  Forget about the job and be happy where you are.” 

                 “Don’t worry.” How quickly you interpose your point of view, failing to take seriously the several issues that may have prevented your friend from acting.  How quick we are to solve the friend’s problem, when what the friend really wanted was someone to take seriously the stress the problem was creating for her.

Mind you, I am not charging Jesus with being insensitive to those who came with him with their concerns, but what I want to suggest is that the “don’t worry” solution seldom works when placed in our hands. 

                When we are struggling the last thing we want to hear from the person with whom we have shared our pain is “don’t worry.”  While Jesus might pull it off, we are not Jesus. 

               What worked for Jesus doesn’t work for us.  Why, however, might we take Jesus’ counsel seriously, while rejecting the very same counsel from a friend?  It’s the issue of authority, isn’t it?

              Why did Jesus get away with saying things that his contemporaries could not?  The audiences he addressed were quick to realize that Jesus spoke with an authority the others could not claim.  We know, of course, that it was the jealousy his actions sparked that made Jesus a marked man, and ultimately got him killed.

              “Don’t worry about your life.”  Can you imagine someone in the audience saying, or at least thinking, “Jesus, you don’t have a clue about my life.”  Jesus could get by making all those pronouncements because he was Jesus.  Those pronouncements carry weight with us, though we are several centuries removed from when they were spoken, and though the circumstances in which they were uttered vary greatly from ours, [those pronouncements carry weight] because we believe the words carry authority.  We listen to Jesus when we would reject out of hand the same counsel from someone else.

                 You and I turn to the passage and we begin to read, “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear…” At the very time we are reading those words we may be extremely worried about the very things Jesus is talking about, but as we read further the comforting reassurance of those words takes hold, and we begin to reconsider our circumstances in light of the passage. Circumstances don’t change, but as we look at our circumstances from the vantage point Jesus provides we begin to be aware of the birds, the lilies, and the grass of the fields, and we begin to think about the hand that created all those things, and the love committed to maintaining the ecology of life.

                It’s difficult, however, to maintain a hold on the realities to which Jesus points when other realities intrude. We live in frustrating times. There was a time not too long ago, although it seems very long ago, there was a time when the question which opens countless conversation prompted a rapid, rather automatic response.  Someone would ask, “how are things going?”  Without hesitation I could respond, “going well,” “just fine,” or something similar.  

               The question “how are things going” is in most instances merely a means of opening conversation.  Conversation doesn’t typically stay there very long.  These days I am finding I don’t want to deal with the stuff the honest answer might prompt.  I don’t want to talk about the state of my recovery and restoration, our recovery and restoration, for the zillionth time.  “How are things going?”  I can’t honesty tell you how things are going in the space of a minute or two, furthermore most of the time I am not inclined to allocate more than a minute or two to a conversation on that subject anyway.

                   Can any of you relate to any of this?  I’m plain sick of talking about recovery. I am tired of dealing with levees, my property in Lakeview, this property, the future of Lakeview, and all the rest that goes with it. I want things to be back the way they were.

                  Don’t worry.  It’s difficult not to worry these days, and that is the case if our attention is focused exclusively on New Orleans and Lakeview. Iraq, Iran, the instability of gasoline prices, immigration and a host of other issues are still waiting in the wings.

Don’t worry.  The words ring mighty hollow if the speaker lacks credibility, if the speaker is not in touch with the issues that keep people worried.

                  We gather here because Jesus has credibility.  Though we may be immersed in a thicket of despair over our personal and community state of affairs, there is this other perspective that Jesus lends to our lives.  Each of us is here because we have bought into that perspective, at least to some extent.  How we look at reality is informed by what Jesus taught us.

                  On more than one occasion over the past several months I have heard various people make the following statement [and I am paraphrasing]: “I don’t know how people without faith can manage in times like these.”  “I don’t know how people without faith can manage in times like these.” The statements were statements of faith disclosing confidence in Jesus.  But what supports such statements? It is one thing to say that my faith in Jesus helps me to pull through. But let’s challenge ourselves to say more. Can we say more?     

                   Jesus said, “don’t worry.” Because we accept his counsel we approach our challenges with a different attitude.  But can we substantiate the faith that is in us?  How do we know that what we have is faith, and we are not merely voicing conventional piety?    

                     There is a revealing tale on the subject that comes later in the Gospel of Matthew.  I’m sure you know it.  The boat in which the disciples were sailing was being “battered by the waves,” when in the midst of their distress the disciples  saw Jesus walking to them on the water. Peter, seeking to verify that it was the Lord indeed, spoke up.  “Command me to come to you on the water.”  All went well at first, Peter making his way to the Lord, but when the strength of the wind asserted itself, he began to sink. It is one thing to voice the faith it is another to live out of it.  Peter was a man of faith, it is just that he had some problems substantiating it.

                     “I don’t know how people without faith can manage in times like these.”  We are here because we believe that our faith offers resources that help us to cope in times like these.  But is each of us prepared to make a case for specifically how our faith helps us to cope? We might learn a great deal on the subject from each other if given an opportunity to share our views. We will not have an opportunity this morning to open that discussion. Instead, let us allocate some time to reviewing some of the key marks of faith as identified by one of the last generation’s key spokesmen in the Christian tradition. 

                   Faith, German theologian Gerhard Ebeling wants to stress, is not merely some becalming reassurance that all is well.  Faith, instead, is based on a God who has acted and continues to act in history.   Faith is grounded in “the God who keeps his word.”  Not some generalized conviction that everything will turn out alright in the sweet by and by, faith is grounded in the experience of a people who in weal and in woe discovered that God could be trusted. 

                  In this entire country there exists no group of citizens who face as much uncertainty as we the citizens of greater New Orleans do.  I need not review the sources of the uncertainty, for you know them all too well.  Wishing will not make the uncertainty and frustration go away, but we worship a God in whom no uncertainty dwells, a God who keeps his word.  In God our future is secure.  This we know because God’s grace is secure, proven so generation to generation.

                  “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Uncertainty about that next step did Peter in, and he began to sink.  It didn’t have to be that way.  Ebeling writes, “The certainty of faith is a certainty that concerns our very existence, it is taking sure steps although no road is visible, hoping although there is nothing to look for, refusing to despair although things are desperate, having ground under us although we step into the bottomless abyss.”

                   The certainty of faith is for many of us hard to come by.  The wind and the storms of life are too immediate and imposing to disregard. Yet faith is not based on the insubstantial stuff of wishes and dreamy speculation, faith is a road that leads into the future God is even now preparing.

                 Faith, again, is not placid acceptance of what is, but an active participation in what God is doing.  To doubt is to be mired in the negativity of past or present, by faith we are made active participants in the new things God is doing.  Faith has a future, while doubt has merely a past. Faith looks beyond the waves and the wind, knowing that the same arm that reached out across the water to lead the Israelites to safety, the arm that steadied David when his life was falling apart, the arm that reached out to Peter, and the arm that braced Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, is there to brace us amid our turmoil.

                  The future has been a prevailing concern for most of us since the storm.  There is much, much uncertainty and hand ringing about the future.  I personally have had my fill of speculation about the future.  Jesus was absolutely right: “Today’s trouble is enough for today.”  We can resign ourselves to another day just like today, or we can participate with God, who is only source of lasting hope and freedom, in creating something new. There is a future, and it only exists because our God is creating it.

                “Do not worry about your life.”  That counsel of our Lord Jesus is grounded in the experience of people like Abraham who by faith responded to God’s call, picking up all that he had to move into a future unmarked on any map. 

                  What we have, friends, that the unbeliever does not, is the confidence to trust Jesus’ counsel, that tomorrow, like to today, is a day that the Lord has made. Gerhard Ebeling reminds us that the “essence of faith is participation in the future God is creating.”  That is, we, through the courage that faith inspires, are invited by God to be co-creators of the future. By faith we consign the past to the past and live into the future with the confidence God inspires.  We can live with confidence, friends, for our faith is grounded in the God who reigns, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.             

PRAYER

             Sovereign God, who reigns from eternity onto eternity, we pause amid this small piece of eternity in which we are privileged to live to consider eternal matters, the unfolding of your divine providence in events touching our lives today.  Through the witness of Holy Scripture and your Spirit given access to a world beyond the power of our mortal senses to grasp, we take our place alongside Abraham and Sarah, David, Moses, Paul, other saints living and dead, in the great saga you are directing. Bearing the great wound of mortality, our sin, we, like those who passed this way before us, live our lives as seekers, restless until we find our rest in thee.  Our errant wills seek that permanent dwelling place you provide but our wanderlust carries us away. Great God, in the company of your son we would travel, his counsel abide.  May we accept no substitute for his company, set no course that carries us away from thee.

               Lord Jesus, even as the raging seas were becalmed at your command, so may the seas that rage within us be calmed.  We live in stressful times. Forced to cope with new challenges, our patience is frayed. We are impatient for change, but nothing seems to change except the pages on the calendar.  Even as we confront new challenges, and are preyed upon by mounting frustration, we turn to you, O Christ, for counsel and direction. Grant us wisdom that we may properly allocate our time and energies to maximum effect, and where we are slow to grasp what you would have us to see there intervene to guide us. 

                Prosper, O God, the initiatives we are taking in outreach to our community.  Our hospitality has opened doors, and we pray that future efforts will only make our hospitality more visible.  Be with each person who is part of our outreach efforts that their efforts may not only be personally rewarding, but also personally enabling as well, a means of integrating the affirmations of faith made here on Sunday morning with the lives they live in the world the other days of the week.

                  Lord even as we claim a personal faith, we are often slow to examine what our faith really means.  Our faith often lacks the personal substance that would distinguish it and give it an identity. Instead of statements of personal conviction we have nothing to offer but platitudes on the subject of faith. Lord, forgive our sloth in study and inquiry, our failure to grow as persons of commitment.

                 Lord, this week will see the opening of our denomination’s General Assembly.  We pray for the elected commissioners who have been chosen by their presbyteries to attend.  We pray for the national staff who have worked diligently to prepare for the event.  We pray for outgoing Assembly moderator Rick Ufford-Chase, and our own Jean Marie who will complete her term as Vice Moderator.  Abide with her in the coming days, particularly when she rises to speak or preach before the Assembly. Even as we pray for those who will gather in Birmingham, we pray that your Spirit will enfold the Assembly that the work done and decisions made their may fulfill your will, and bring unity to the church.

                     We pray for stability in Iraq in these tense and dangerous times.  Even as the career of one terrorist came to an end, we know that others are eager to wear his mantle.  O God, in your mercy deliver this world from the oppression it must suffer at the hands of terrorist and tyrants.  Hasten the day when peace may at last take root and grow.

                         Abide with all who gather here this morning, particularly those bearing special burdens.  Hear our prayer, O God, for we pray in the strong name of Jesus our Savior…