The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for March 12, 2006

Texts: Genesis 17:1-7,15-16/Romans 4:13-25

Title: “The Paradox of Faith”

              There is one thing that can be said about the Apostle Paul without fear of contradiction.  Every word he spoke or wrote was in furtherance of one agenda, that agenda being reappraisal of the Jewish faith in light of God’s new revelation in Jesus Christ.  The reappraisal took many forms, but focused most explicitly on distinguishing righteousness under the law from righteousness conferred by faith.

              Did one’s adherence to the law equate to righteousness in the eyes of God?  Paul witnessed the perverse effects of that logic in his fellow Jews who exploited the law to excuse conduct offensive to God. Heirs of Abraham, and thus insiders with God, the Jews could boast that God had made them stewards of his law, stewards who preserved the freedom to interpret and apply the law at their discretion. Wholly rejecting that argument, Paul made Abraham his case in point, declaring in the opening verse of the lesson I just read, “For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendents through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” 

              The Jews as stewards of the law could not, by Paul’s reasoning, make proprietary claims to the promises of God. Before the law stood, Paul declared, Abraham’s faith stood.  Not by works of the law, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”    

               As an example of faithfulness before God Abraham may have shone up extremely well, yet we do well to assess the whole resume of that paragon of religious virtue.  Doing so we find that immediately after receiving his call from God, a call in which God promised to make him a great nation, blessing those who blessed him, and cursing those who cursed him, Abraham was faced with a challenge.  Forced to leave the land he occupied because of famine, Abraham shows up in Egypt.  An alien and potentially dangerous place, Abraham fearing for his life, instructed his wife Sara to say she was his sister rather than his wife, fearing that an Egyptian suitor might kill him to claim her.

               Abraham might well have deserved the accolades Paul showered upon him, but even the faith to which the father of the Jews laid claim was flawed. You may scan your Bible but you won’t find a soul who acted purely from faith.  In human hands faith is illusive. It is not something we own as a reward for personal virtue.

                There is a stubborn paradox surrounding the faith. Faith is the answer but we can’t really work our way to the answer through adherence to any sort of program or discipline.

                When I took freshman algebra in high school I was very surprised to learn that if I wanted a correct answer to any of the problems in my book, all I had to do was turn to the back of the book where the answers were recorded. I was not the brightest kid to enroll for the class by any means, but even I knew that the teacher wouldn’t accept my correct answer unless I correctly negotiated each of the steps that led to it. What is possible in mathematics is not possible in the faith.  We simply can’t work our way to an answer.

                Paul charged the Jews with being blind to that reality.  Taking great pride in their grasp of the law, an effort that for them converted to righteousness, the Jew stood aloof from those who failed to attain their standing. 

               Law can be taught, and the Jew Paul opposed was a dedicated student of the law. Now faith, on the other hand, is a different story. Faith cannot be taught.  You can teach Christian doctrine.  You cannot teach faith.

               Some of you heard the great tenor Placido Domingo in recital a week ago yesterday.  Make no mistake, Domingo is a student of his craft.  He studied and practiced very hard to get to where he is.  He is a dedicated performer. There are others, however, who have been equally dedicated, and who are equally experienced in the craft of singing, but these are men whose names have never appeared at the top of a recital program.

              You can teach singing, but you can’t teach what Domingo has.  Likewise, you can know your Bible inside out, but the faith the Bible celebrates cannot be mastered.

              Faith is a paradox. It is visible in action, but the motivation that inspires that action is purely personal.  There is not some generic thing called faith, instead there is the faith of Abraham, of Paul, of Jesus.  Faith is the individualized response that our experience of God calls forth. Yet the stories of how Abraham and Paul did their faith offers important clues to how we might do ours.

               There may be no class we can take that will earn us a diploma in faith, but Paul could use the experiences of Abraham to help the congregation in Rome gain a better understanding of what faith looks like. “Hoping against hope [Paul writes] [Abraham] believed that he would become ‘the father of many nations’ according to what God said.” At his age too old to father a child, Abraham nonetheless had faith that God would be good to his word.

                There being no curriculum for faith in existence, Paul could say, “See, here is what faith looks like in action.”  It is by observing faith in action that people like you and I gain a grasp, however imperfect, of its substance.

                Billy and Franklin Graham are in town for what is being billed as a “Celebration of Hope.”  It is his reputation, a reputation built over more than one half a century that draws people to the crusades of Billy Graham. He, and lately his son, Franklin, have filled arenas around the world with the devoted, the curious, and many of the skeptical who are fascinated by the Graham legacy, a legacy built on the foundation of faith.

                Billy Graham offers no curriculum for faith.  There is no curriculum for faith. There is no curriculum adequate to encompass the manifold ways in which God grasps the human heart.  That said, God wants to insure each and every one of us that he has provided us with the potential, our faith, to grasp the grace in which our lives are enfolded.

                 Yet if faith, the appropriation of God’s bountiful grace, is so important, why then does God appear to skimp on the materials you and I might use to establish a sound and lasting faith?  It is hardly sufficient for us to read stories of faith, or watch others put their faith in action. It is one thing to observe, it is quite another to possess.

                 The challenges of the storm have stressed our faith even further. Many of us feel overwhelmed by the devastation the storm has left behind.  Many believe that the federal government, principally FEMA, has let us down, our mayor finds himself fighting for his political life in light of the storm, the public utilities have drawn criticism, and complaints about insurance claims continue to be loudly voiced. Furthermore, the church’s response to the needs of its members has been judged to be less than stellar. Occupied as we have been with restoration, churches like this one have not sufficiently acknowledged the emotional toll the storm has taken on the members of the congregations.

                It is difficult for many to align what they know of God, with a tragedy that exposes nothing quite so clearly as the apparent absence of God. Exhortations from the pulpit to have faith, and trust that God will put things right, are not helpful.  But what would be helpful?

                  We might start by clarifying one point that cannot be stressed enough.  God is no more absent now than on that late winter day one year ago when we gathered, our lives, homes, church, all in one piece.  It should also be stressed that the storm is not divine retribution for the sins of gulf coast residents. But all that begs the question, why have we been put through this ordeal? The best and most faithful minds the church has put on the case have never been able to adequately explain how a God who loved creation into existence, could be so heedless of the welfare of the world’s displaced and suffering. Don’t expect the likes of me to resolve that mystery this morning. What I as your pastor can do, however, is, to the best of my ability, address these questions out of the tradition in which you and I stand. 

                  Faith has been put to the test. But the faith to which any of us lay claim is not our exclusive property, it is the faith of the church, and as the church we are in the same business as the Apostle Paul was.  As a repository of the traditions surrounding God’s encounter with humanity, our charge is to remember and pass on the stories through which the faith is expressed.

                 Paul found the past predictive of the present and the future. When Paul addressed the Romans on the issue of faith and the law as he did in our morning’s lesson he reached back and buttressed the argument he wished to make out of the tradition in which he and the Jews in the Roman congregation stood.  He used Abraham as a model, a paradigm, for what his audience might attain if they applied the lesson of Abraham. This was no step by step “faith for dummies” approach to the faith, instead Paul offered Abraham as a case study in faith from which he drew lessons appropriate to the audience he was addressing.

                Faith cannot be taught, rather it is nurtured in a supportive environment like this one where the scriptures are read, prayers and fellowship is offered, and meaningful service opportunities are provided.  The church is not the only venue where this occurs, it may not even be the best venue, but there can be no doubt that this is the place where we are most intentional about learning the faith and passing it on to future generations.

                The crisis occasioned by the hurricane has challenged the faith of many of us, and whether you are satisfied or not with the church’s response to your particular spiritual and emotional needs, know that the God who in Jesus Christ founded the church has not forgotten us, and it is, yes, our faith in that reality that keeps us coming back here Sunday after Sunday.

                 Great paradox attaches to the faith. In his letter to the Ephesians Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, [and than he adds] and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” The grace of God is freely and universally dispensed, but how is it apprehended?  Through faith, and faith is a gift. But what sort of gift is it?  That is the question we are left to ponder. How is it my gift, your gift?  I would ask you to consider that is our gift as a legacy of the church datable all the way back to a time when there was no church, just Abraham and God one on one, Abraham, “hoping against hope” that he would become what God said he would become, “the father of nations.”   

                 Faith is certainly an individual endowment, but it is one the church is privileged to preserve on behalf of the individual believer in whatever state that individual believer’s faith happens to be. Your faith may have offered you little consolation even before the storm, but as long as there is a church you will never be left to find it, or attempt to hold it, on your own. This church, Jesus Christ’s church, the repository of the tradition upon which our faith is grounded, prays with you and for you, God’s own hand is extended through our outreach.

                  Paradox, the faith may be a paradox, but the paradox readily dissolves when God’s hand touches a life, and God’s house offers the very best place to be touched.

PRAYER

              Robed in holiness our fives senses cannot penetrate, O God, we must accept on faith that you are present to hear our petitions, sufficiently moved by them to act upon them. Reality for us is easily defined, it is the data daily experience presents. Yet we know that another reality engages us, a reality revealed to us through Holy Scripture, your living Word.  We know that as citizens of this land we identify with a particular history written out of the experiences of our forbears.  Likewise, we know our baptisms, O God, make us citizens of another realm, a history of salvation inaugurated when God covenanted with Abraham.   We know, O God that you have been faithful to the covenant you sealed with Abraham, faithful to the subsequent covenants you made with Moses, David, and faithful to the decisive covenant you made with the world through Jesus Christ.

                Lord, you remain faithful even as we struggle to discern where we fit in your plan. Yet our very struggle is itself pleasing in your sight for it demonstrates that we take you seriously, that our relationship with you, however limited, is sufficiently valued by us to motive us to gather here. Lord, we have allocated but a short time today to build on our relationship with you, but we know that such limits as we impose are meaningless in your sight. The hand you extend to us is not shortened merely because we are disinclined to reach for it.

                     Preserve us, O God, from the negativity to which we so easily succumb.  Repeatedly tested by adversity as a result of the storm, we are impatient to reclaim what we have lost, and we are frustrated that that can’t happen. Days pass but nothing seems to change, and change is what we crave, some relief, some suggestion that new possibilities will present themselves, not later, but sooner. Abide, O Lord, with those who struggling to cope, who feel they are marking time rather than living. May your peace displace the anguish that so many have been forced to bear.

                     We pray your blessing on those who live in harms way today; for those assigned to peacekeeping missions, for those who live under the threat of terrorist’s acts, for those who expose themselves to violence in the course of reporting the news and for those who at the risk of their lives carry the gospel into inhospitable regions.   

                   Grant wisdom to all those in share of the New Orleans restoration effort, representatives of federal, state, and local agencies challenged to draft plans to protect and rebuild our city.  May their efforts breed confidence in our city residents that will spur private initiative to build back businesses and neighborhoods. 

                    Even as the city prepares for an impeding mayoral election, we know that no candidate can succeed amid a divided electorate.  May our candidates place unity, programs to benefit all constituencies, ahead of narrow, partisan ends.  May the issues that must be addressed not be obscured in a stream of political rhetoric.

                   Lord Jesus Christ, head of the church, we pray for strength and courage to follow the agenda you have set. May your word inspire us to undertake new forms of servant hood with renewed veal to serve.

                  God of grace, hear these prayers, and all unspoken prayers offered in your name this day.  May Jesus pray in us and through us..