O God of love, grant us the gift of your grace,
mercy, and peace ☩
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
We’re all here this morning because of faith. When times are tough, we sometimes hear “You’ve just got to have faith.” As an introduction to the Creed, I invite us to “proclaim our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed.” In this morning’s reading from 2 Timothy, we heard St. Paul write of how the faith was passed down from grandmother Lois, to mother Eunice, and then to Timothy. But this all begs the question: what is faith?
Typically,
faith is defined as something that we have or something that we do. Faith is
either way of saying religious convictions, thoughts, and ideas, or we say that
someone is faithful, meaning they engage in certain practices or rituals, or
live by some sort of code of ethics. This though is a modern and cultural way
to understand faith. Going back just a few generations, and certainly to the
pages of Scripture, would give us a very different way of approaching faith.
And this is certainly a
situation in which human progress is a myth. We have not evolved and become
more enlightened, instead, we’ve lost our way. Think about how when we look at
screens, whether it’s a phone, computer, or television – the light dilates our
eyes and we soon struggle to see reality because our vision has become so
warped by the screen. This is a metaphor for how we live in and interpret the
world.
We see everything through the lens of science
and rationality. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with an intellectual approach
to faith. I generally read 50-60 books a year, I have no problem with thinking
when it comes to faith. The concern is that faith is reduced to being only a
set of thoughts, and we can take it or leave it, as seems best to us. This
ignores the body and heart in faith. We rarely, if ever, consider what faith
feels like in our bones, how faith is bound up in our emotions, or how instead
of faith being something we opt into, that faith is actually something that we
are a part of.
One
way of defining faith is that it is the gift of God’s love that has been poured
into our hearts, bodies, and minds by the Holy Spirit. This is a better, but radically
different way of considering faith – faith no longer seen as the product of our
thinking or our doing, but something that we are given. When St. Paul says that
he is reminded of Timothy’s faith, he speaks of it as an inheritance from Lois
and Eunice. And then St. Paul’s choice of words is very telling. He does not
speak of a faith that was thought by Lois, or held by Eunice, or that is performed
by Timothy. No, the translation we have this morning puts it as a faith that
lives in us. The Greek word that St. Paul uses is a compound word made of “in”
and “house.” So we can say that faith is something that is at home within us.
And
if faith is something that dwells within us, it means that it is not the
product of our own making. Rather, faith is a way of saying that love which
created, redeemed, and is blessing all things lives in us. Faith is the
awareness that every bush around us is aflame with the Spirit of God. So
instead of us being the subject of faith, the ones doing the faithing by thought
or deed, we are actually the object that is being faithed. The one doing the
faithing is Jesus Christ. St. Paul alludes to this when he notes that calling
that Jesus Christ gave us is “not according to our works” and “was given to us
before the ages began.” It is not our faith in Jesus that makes us holy, gives
us purpose, or saves us, rather it is the faith of Jesus that makes all things well.
It is Jesus’ faith towards us and living within us that is the deepest and
truest meaning of “faith.”
This,
I realize, might be the first time that you’ve ever heard these ideas – and I assure
that I’m not just making something up or sharing with you some crackpot idea.
Just because we’ve thought something our entire life doesn’t mean that it’s
more than a fleeting thought compared to the sweep of time. For nearly all of
the Christian tradition, except for our modern and intellectually-biased
approach to it, faith has not been centered in the head, but is something that
has been known also in our bodies, felt in our emotions, evident in our
decisions, clear in our actions, manifest in our thoughts, and ever-present in
our senses.
And when we do use our
rational mind, this makes sense. Why would a God who gave us bodies and
emotions want us to have faith only in our ideas? As we all know, our minds are
as easily corruptible as our bodies. We notice a sore back, an achy knee, a
bleeding finger and know that it has been damaged, but we so often miss when
our thoughts have been corrupted by bias, selfishness, and ignorance. A faith that
is centered only in the mind has no depth of root to withstand the doubts and
challenges of life. And, again, a faith that is the product of our own making
is easily lost. But faith that is the work of Jesus and is given to us is never
lost, at worst, it sometimes needs to be rediscovered within us.
We might wonder, what
then does this sort of faith look and feel like? Here, we turn to the greeting
that St. Paul uses in this letter. It’s not just a throwaway line to start things
off, it is the foundation upon which the letter rests and it is a description
of the fruits of faith. St. Paul writes: “Grace, mercy, and peace from God the
Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” Grace, mercy, and peace – this is what the
faith of Jesus looks like as it lives within us.
Grace can best be summarized
in a verse from chapter 5 of St. Paul’s letter to Rome – “that God shows love
for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Grace is the
unearned, unmerited, undeserved, unconditional, and unasked for love of God. Because
God’s love for us is completely independent of our earning it, it means that it
can never be lost. Grace assures us that no matter how big our failure, no
matter how sincere our doubts, no matter how lukewarm our belief, no matter how
far away we stray, we are always loved by God which seeks to bring us home. As
St. Paul says elsewhere in Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able
to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing and no
one can ever diminish God’s love for us. This is what we mean by grace.
This is a deeply beautiful
truth and when we catch glimpse of it in life, that’s why it feels so good. You
know those moments when things just feel “right,” that’s when our senses are
picked up on the faith of Jesus coming through in us as if to shout “hold onto
this, for this is truth!” For some it’s the bliss of holding a baby, or eating
a meal made from the produce of your garden, or walking hand-in-hand with a beloved,
or singing a hymn that reminds of you attending church with someone who helped
you to grow in faith. The word for grace is linguistically related to the
concept of joy, so when you feel that sense of joy bubbling up, that is faith
every bit as much as reciting the Creed.
Mercy flows from grace.
Mercy can be understood as compassion, or even pity, for someone who is
suffering. Because of our rebellion against God, because of our insistence on
cutting across the grain of love instead of going with it, because of our
selfish desires and actions, because of the reality of death we are in need of
deliverance from things bigger than our ability to address. God’s decision to
save us and help us can be described as mercy.
In the Hebrew mindset, this
is often called “loving-kindness” or “faithful love.” God saves us and shows us
mercy not because we’ve said the right prayer, but because God loves us. This
is what a God of love does – loves. And in this love, God has paved the way for
us to follow Jesus in the way of love, in having compassion instead of judgment
towards ourselves and others. Genuine faith comes not from us figuring things
out intellectually, but from coming to see that our story is not what we make
for ourselves, rather our story is that we are the beloved of God and there is
nothing that we can or need to do in order to deserve or keep this love. We do
not need to attempt to be perfect, or to get it right, or to figure it out – that
is not faith. Rather faith is when we find comfort in being loved and take the
risk of loving ourselves and others just as God loves us.
The result of mercy is
that we can be at peace. In the time of Scripture’s writing, peace was always
short-lived and fragile. War was normative, and so those brief periods of time
between invasions and battles were known as “peace.” Peace was about rest,
tranquility, and security. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Hebrew word shalom,
which means well-being, wholeness, and health; it’s a similar feeling. Peace is
when things are as God intends them to be.
But if we are constantly
trying to force things to be as we want them to be, we will not have peace
living within us. St. Augustine famously said, “Our hearts are restless until
they rest in God.” We experience peace when our hearts rest in God, trusting
and knowing that we are loved, that we are enough, that nothing in all creation
can change the fact that God is love and that God’s got the whole world in those
almighty and tender hands of love. Compared with the grace and mercy of God, all
the things that we strive for and stress about are nothing. When we come to
trust that this love is the truest thing about ourselves and the world, then we
encounter that peace which passes all understanding. And this peace passes all
understanding because faith is about so much more than our understanding. Faith
is when the love of God is recognized and received as a gift, which results in
the sort of peace that can only come from him who is our way, our truth, and
our life.
Grace, mercy, and peace
are how God invests in us, planting within our hearts, bodies, and minds the
gift of faith. The fruit of this gift can be tasted and enjoyed in each and every
moment. The best way to receive this gift is to use a posture that the Church
has taught us – open hands. When we approach the altar to receive the gifts of
God, we do so with open and empty hands. This is not only the posture for
receiving Communion, but for receiving the fullness and abundance of life and
love that God intends for us. This is why practices such as prayer, silence,
partaking in the liturgies of the Church, rest, generosity, and service are so
important – they open us to the faith of Jesus that dwells within us.
There’s a reason why we hold our palms open to receive Communion instead of taking it with our hands – it’s a metaphor for faith as something to be received, not taken or grasped by our own doing. And then, having received the grace, mercy, and peace of Communion, like faith, it is taken into our very bodies, giving us nourishment and sustenance. Grace, mercy, and peace then become not only the gifts that we are given, but they become the currency by which we grow in faith and love others. Today and always, know that my prayer for you is grace, mercy, and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ.
