Sermon Archive
Readings for 7 October 2007
Proper 22
Year C
The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.
O LORD, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?
Or cry to you "Violence!"
and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrong-doing
and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack
and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous--
therefore judgment comes forth perverted.
Look at the nations, and see!
Be astonished! Be astounded!
For a work is being done in your days
that you would not believe if you were told.
For I am rousing the Chaldeans,
that fierce and impetuous nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth
to seize dwellings not their own.
[Dread and fearsome are they;
their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.
Their horses are swifter than leopards,
more menacing than wolves at dusk;
their horses charge.
Their horsemen come from far away;
they fly like an eagle swift to devour.
They all come for violence,
with faces pressing forward;
they gather captives like sand.
At kings they scoff,
and of rulers they make sport.
They laugh at every fortress,
and heap up earth to take it.
Then they sweep by like the wind;
they transgress and become guilty;
their own might is their god!]
Are you not from of old,
O LORD my God, my Holy One?
You shall not die.
O LORD, you have marked them for judgment;
and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.
Your eyes are too pure to behold evil,
and you cannot look on wrongdoing;
why do you look on the treacherous,
and are silent when the wicked swallow
those more righteous than they?
I will stand at my watchpost,
and station myself on the rampart;
I will keep watch to see what he will say to me,
and what he will answer concerning my complaint.
Then the LORD answered me and said:
Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so that a runner may read it.
For there is still a vision for the appointed time;
it speaks of the end, and does not lie.
If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
it will surely come, it will not delay.
Look at the proud!
Their spirit is not right in them,
but the righteous live by their faith
[Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus,
To Timothy, my beloved child:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
I am grateful to God-- whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did-- when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.] For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.
The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" The Lord replied, "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.
"Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, `Come here at once and take your place at the table'? Would you not rather say to him, `Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, `We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'
Sermon
The Rev. Jack Zamboni
Commit your way to the Lord; put your trust in the Lord. (Psalm 37:5)
“The righteous shall live by their faith,” God says to Habbakuk. “I am reminded of the sincere faith ... that lives in you,” the elder writes to Timothy. “Increase our faith!” the disciples ask of Jesus.
Faith, faith, faith. Faith, today’s Scriptures tell us, as if we didn’t already know, is an important matter. Faith matters because it gives us strength; it matters because it shapes our lives. Indeed, it matters because faith gives us life. No wonder the disciples ask Jesus, “Increase our faith!”
The desire that the disciples give voice to is our desire as well. Often, our faith seems tiny, mustard-seed sized faith. We want our faith to grow so that it may be life-giving in the ways we hope faith will be. Whether we say it out loud as the disciples did, or whisper it in our prayers, we desire to have more faith.
Over the years of my priesthood, I have listened to a number of people speak of their desire for more faith in words that have gone something like this:
“You know, Father, I’m really kind of uncomfortable talking about this, because you see, I’m afraid that I don’t really have much faith. It’s more like what I’ve got is a bunch of questions. I’m sure everyone else in the church understands and believes all this stuff, but not me. And I’m afraid that I don’t have much faith because I have all these questions -- and after all, faith doesn’t question things, does it? Faith means believing, not questioning; believing what the Bible says and what the Church teaches, and frankly there’s a lot of it I just don’t understand, and some of it that I’ve got all these questions about, and parts of it that I just simply can’t believe, no matter how hard I try. And believe me, I do try, because I know I shouldn’t disbelieve it, because if I do, then I don't have faith, and I really want to have faith because I want God to be part of my life and make a difference in my life, but how can that happen if I have all these questions about my faith?”
Does any of that sound familiar to you? Maybe you’ve never spoken of it to a priest or anybody else. Maybe you haven’t said it quite clearly even to yourself. But my guess is that at one time or another in our lives many of us have had doubts and questions like these in our hearts and minds. I know I have.
Such doubts and questions arise in part because of the understanding of what faith is that many of us have inherited: the notion that faith is the acceptance of a set of ideas about God that we are “supposed” to believe without question. It is as if when we come to matters of faith, we are somehow to turn off the inquiring parts of our hearts and minds that began to develop when we were teenagers. We are, instead, to become again like little children who believe everything that Mom and Dad -- or in the Church, Father and Mother -- say.
But when these ideas become puzzling, or seem contrary to our experience or to other things we believe are true, then for adults, unquestioning acceptance will no longer do. And if we think
faith really is unquestioning acceptance of all these ideas, then we may find ourselves sitting in a priest’s office pouring out our fears and our questions, seeking, sometimes desperately, for a way that our faith can survive, and maybe even grow.
Fortunately, today’s Scriptures offer us another understanding of faith: “Put your trust in the Lord, ” says the Psalmist, and a second time, “Commit your way to the Lord; put your trust in the Lord.” The elder who writes to “Timothy,” says, “I know the One in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure God is able to guard what I have entrusted to God.” This is faith, not as unquestioning acceptance of a set of ideas and beliefs about God, but faith as a relationship of trust in God.
Think for a moment about the relationships of trust you have with other people in your lives: a spouse or partner, friends, parents, siblings, co-workers – anyone you have grown to know and trust over the course of time. The faith you have in such people is not chiefly concerned with your ideas you about them. Rather your faith is that they are people you can count on -- count on to do what they said they would do, count on to be faithful in support and help in times of need, count on to be there to love you and care for you.
So also, faith in God is this kind of relationship of trust. Faith as a trusting relationship with a God who can be counted on is what the Bible speaks of, not only today, but again and again. That is why the biblical pattern of God’s dealings with human beings is covenant -- a relationship of mutual care and trust. God makes covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, indeed, the whole people of Israel. Jesus makes a new covenant in his blood, the covenant into which we are baptized, the covenant whose sacrament we share at this Altar.
The God who makes covenant with us is the God we can trust with our lives. This is the loving God we count on to be faithful, present, active in our lives. This is the creating God we count on to work in partnership with us, making new and wonderful things in lives that we could not possibly make alone. The faith Scripture invites us to is a trusting relationship with this God who can be counted on; the God who is for us not only parent, but co-worker, friend and lover as well -- the one with whom and to whom we can entrust our whole being.
And because this one to whom we entrust ourselves is the inexhaustible creative power of the universe, this relationship of faith can lead to extraordinary transformations of our lives -- changes as great and miraculous as a mulberry tree being planted in the sea. Such wondrous change is possible not because our faith is somehow “big” enough to have such power-Jesus says that a mustard seed’s worth will do. Faith can work wonders because trust in God allows the creative power of God to be set loose in the world in partnership with us. This is as much true of congregations as it is of individuals. As we “commit our way to the Lord and put our trust in the Lord,” we open ourselves for God to work in us and for us together with God. This is the power of faith which is trust in God.
And so, now we come back to the question we started with: How does this faith, this trust, grow and increase? Faith increases when we begin to act as if we really do trust God’s faithful, creative, love -- even when we don’t quite yet feel that trust. Acting in trust thus often precedes feelings of trust. Just as we grow in trust in human relationships by discovering through experience that the person we hope we can trust is trustworthy so it is with us & God. You can never know for sure that a chair is strong enough to hold your weight until you sit in it. So also, when we act in trust that we can indeed count on God, we learn that our trust is not misplaced, that the chair of God’s love and faithfulness does indeed uphold us. We come to know God as the One in whom we can put our trust, the One who desires our good, and works with us to create wholeness and wonders in our lives.
Oddly enough, one way that we can begin to act as if we can really trust God is to bring God our questions. When we bring God our questions about faith, our questions about life, our questions about God, we are acting with that little mustard seed faith. We are trusting that God cares enough about us to want to hear our questions, that God wants to respond to our questions, that God can use our questions to open our hearts to God and God’s heart to us, that God wants to form a relationship with us that begins with the reality of where we are -- questions and all.
And those questions matter, for our questions include not only questions about ideas and beliefs about God we might have, but deeper questions as well. As I’ve listened to people over the years, I’ve found that underneath the questions about ideas and beliefs, there is almost always another layer of questions, questions of relationship, questions of hope and fear and sorrow and joy and love: Questions as intimate as: “Does God, can God really love me?” Questions as passionate as Habbakuk’s questions about the seeming triumph of violence, injustice, and evil in the world; Questions as terrible as Jesus’ dying words on the Cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
To ask such questions is indeed an act of faith -- that even when we feel unloved, forsaken, or overwhelmed by life’s injustice, we trust God enough to bring our questions to God, we trust that God care about us enough to help us make something of whatever in our lives has made our questions so urgent.
And as we trust God enough to ask the key questions of our lives, we discover, like Habakkuk, that our trust is not in vain. We find that God’s love and care for us is real and present and can be counted on. We learn that even when we don’t get the answers to our questions that we would like -- even when it seems we get no answer at all -- we nonetheless come to know God as the one who desires our deepest good, the one who works with us in partnership to transform our lives. When we act as if we can put our trust in God, we discover that God can indeed be trusted.
If you want a tool to help you in learning to live in trust by acting as if you could depend on God, I commend to you this morning’s Psalm, (Psalm 37:1-8) printed in today’s bulletin. It is one of my favorites, for praying these words has taught me what I need to do to grow in trust again and again. “Put your trust in the Lord and do good; “ “Take delight in the Lord, who will give you your heart’s desire.” “Commit your way to the Lord and put your trust in the Lord, who will bring it to pass.” And finally, because all this often takes time, “Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for the Lord.”
This week, our new Assistant Bishop, Sylvestre Romero, spoke to a clergy gathering and one thing he said really struck me. “God is always on time,” Bishop Romero said. “God is never late. But also, God is never early.” Since our sense of the right time is not always the same as God’s, trusting often means we need to wait.
The words of Psalm 37 direct us as simply and clearly as any I know into the ways of living in which we can grow in trust in God. I invite you to take these words home, to pray them slowly, patiently, again and again -- and then to live in the way that they lead you. I trust that God will use them to increase your faith.
For past week's readings and sermons, please visit the archive of sermons