MERRITT ISLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH AUGUST 7, 2016 “FAITH IS A VERB”

Do you know what a “Mosh Pit” is?  How about “crowd surfing?” Crowd surfing sometimes takes place within a mosh pit.  It’s usually done at a live music performance.  Somebody jumps on stage and jumps backwards into the audience.  In the best of circumstances, the audience catches that person and the person is passed along over the heads of the folks in the audience.  One might call that an act of faith, but I think it has more to do with poor judgment.  It also an abusive overuse of the word faith and tends to muddy the real definition.

Of course there’s the story of Peter with the other apostles in a boat in a raging storm.  They look up and there is Jesus walking on the water toward them.  Peter, true to character, says he wants to walk on water too.  Jesus encourages him to get out of the boat and focus on Jesus.  Peter steps out, walks a few feet and then his focus is interrupted as he glances down at the water.  He suddenly becomes fearful and starts to sink.  Getting out of the boat was an act of faith.  The fear that followed it is something that we all experience when we step out in faith to move closer to Jesus. 

The author of Hebrews certainly talks a great deal about faith, and although this morning’s passage from Isaiah doesn’t specifically use the word faith, the last two verses actually describe “faith”:  “¹⁹ If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;
²⁰ but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” 

You see faith begins with being willing and obedient.  “Faith” is not simply a belief set that you can internalize and separate from the way you live your life. 

You can’t just read John 3:16 and say I believe that Jesus died to wash away my sins.  I’m saved.  Yes, Jesus died and then he rose from the dead to inaugurate a new life; a new life for you and me; a new life that begins in the midst of our daily life.  Here and now.  And living that life requires willing obedience to the laws and precepts, the discerned will, of God.

For Isaiah faith was not an individualized thing.  The covenant was between the Lord and the nation.  Being faithful to the covenant meant that the whole people as a society, as a nation, had to be willingly obedient to the Lord.  Their faith wasn’t tied to politics or military adventures or even protection from natural disasters.  Faith was defined by a whole way of life, not some kind of divine intervention when things weren’t going their way.  Faith for Isaiah meant a way of life that neither feared nor trusted any form of human might.  The only one to be feared and the only one who could be trusted is the Lord. 

In the Gospel lesson Jesus continues the message that we heard in last week’s reading.  Last week we heard Jesus warning us about the pursuit of too much stuff.  It’s not why we are here.  It’s a form of idolatry.  In today’s Gospel he says: “³⁴For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

In the time of Isaiah, faith, that is trust, in God was rooted in God’s acts in history for the people.  Those acts were self-evident.  They were part of Israel’s historical record.  From the time of Christ until this very day, we are called to have trust in a God who did something totally outside of human history; totally outside of human experience. 

Few would argue about the life of Jesus as an historical fact.  But what happened to Jesus is not something that we can read about and say, “Oh yeah.  That happened.”  He lived on earth in the form of a servant and was crucified on a cross.  It is not self-evident that the foolishness of the cross is truly the wisdom of God.  It is not self-evident that the crucified Jesus is the risen and ascended Lord and that what happened to him was the supreme act of salvation for us.    

I hesitate to say this because it can too easily be misunderstood.  If we accept the Gospel call to faith, to trust God, then we are in a different situation than was Isaiah whose faith was rooted in the historical experience of the people of Israel.  We are called to an event that happened within history but which destroyed history.  We are called to faith in a resurrection that calls us to new life; a resurrection that is beyond the grasp of human history; a resurrection that is beyond all of our experiences. 

The call of the Gospel is a call to trust with our lives the miraculous power of a God who can raise up life from death and who, as He has raised up Jesus can raise us up also. The hope of the New Testament is that the work of salvation begun in Christ is not simply the fulfillment of the history of a people related by blood but the refining of …  what ? … the refining, the completion of those called together in faith – YOU – the church of Jesus Christ. 

Faith is faithfulness, it’s trust, in God as Christ’s Gospel leads us in our obedience to the way of salvation begun in Christ.  Faith is not an end point.  It is the beginning.  Faith leads us to live devotedly as Christ has shown us how to live.   When we do that, when we fearlessly live as Christ’s disciples in the face of ridicule from the world, then we have entered into God’s new creation.

A sermon like this might end with reference to a life lived consistent with the beatitudes or that “love your neighbor as yourself” stuff.  I could craft a consistent conclusion with those tools.  I am interested in the “Great Commandment,” but not as a rationale for social work or drive-by mission work. 

I am interested in the first part of that commandment.  We sort of rush past it.  When the lawyer asked Jesus what is the greatest commandment, listen again to Jesus’ answer: [Matthew 22]^37”He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” ³⁸This is the greatest and first commandment.’”  You know it wasn’t a new commandment.  It’s said four times in the book of Deuteronomy. 

In fact, I think I prefer what is says in Deuteronomy 30.6:

“Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live.”

This is the FIRST commandment.  This is part of both the history of Israel and a requirement for living faithfully as part of the new assembly of God’s people.

If you’re looking at your watch and wondering whether I’m about to start a new sermon, RELAX.  There really isn’t time to go into it this morning.  In fact I would require a lengthy series of sermons and classes to adequately explain that command. 

My concern is this – and the core of what I want to try to bring home to you this morning – too many people make a mental exercise of  nominal faith and then want to go forth into mission and ministry without ever considering their relationship with God.  In fact after a while they may think that God is an afterthought and going to church – worshipping in the assembly as God’s new people called together by Christ - is simply a convenient venue for fellowship and announcements.

The first steps of the faithful aren’t just good works.  The first steps of the faithful are the opening of your heart in prayer and fellowship with God.  It concerns me that so many people are afraid to pray, don’t want to pray, say they don’t know how to pray. 

If you want to know where Martin Luther King’s strength came from, read his prayers.  If you want to know where Mother Theresa’s courage came from, read her prayers.  If you think that you are too upset to talk with God; too frustrated with God for letting so many things in this world go wrong, read the book of Lamentations.  If you want to know what kept Jesus going throughout his ministry, pay attention to the number of times he went off by himself and prayed.   And if you can’t start anywhere else then read the prayer that our Lord left us. 

“Faith” is a way of life not a once and done decision.  “Faith” requires that we live in faithful obedience to God in the knowledge that God has vowed that nothing including death can separate us from God.  It’s tough to trust someone that you don’t know first hand.  Talk to Him in prayer. Ask what He wants of you.

Deuteronomy talks about the circumcision of the heart.  It starts with the opening of your heart to God.  There’s a theological strain that builds its faith from a verse in Colossians [1:27] that essentially says that by faith Christ is in us.  Christ is in us.  So many images of evangelism focus on letting God into our hearts.  One of my favorite theologians is a now deceased German Jesuit, Karl Rahner, who believed that the message of Deuteronomy and the message of Colossians come together this way:  we must cut away all the scar tissue wrapped around our hearts and let the Christ within us out to serve the world. 

Faith is the starting point, and then we must  with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, open our hearts.  Then we begin a conversation with God.  We ask God what is demanded of us.

It begins with your heart.  When you let Christ out from within the prison of your heart’s scar tissue, everything else will follow.  You will love God.  You will love yourself as a precious part of God’s creation.  And you will love your neighbor. 

Faith starts as you open your heart and follows with prayer.   Amen.