Faith Walking

Pentecost 2B 6/14/09

2^nd Cor 5:6-7

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from God’s Son, Jesus, the Christ.

Two quick stories about faith—

A priest, a pastor, and a rabbi went fishing one day. They packed up their gear and piled it into a boat, and pushed just off shore where they reckoned the big lunkers were hiding.

As soon as they got to the fishing spot, though, the priest exclaims, “Oh drat! I forgot the bait back there on shore!” Before the other two could say a word, the priest hopped out of the boat, walked across the lake, picked up the bait can, walked back over the water, and got back in the boat. The trio commenced fishing.

Well, the sun got high in the sky and the three got thirsty. “Oh,” said the rabbi, “I got just the thing in the trunk of my car.” And he gets out of the boat, walks ashore, grabs a six pack from his car, and skips back over the water to the boat. And they get back to fishing.

Finally the priest says, “I’m hungry—where’s the lunch?” The pastor says, “Oh, I left the picnic basket on the beach. But no big deal, right? I’ll just go get it!” So, the pastor hops out of the boat and promptly sinks to the bottom.

And as bubbles from the submerged pastor gradually break the surface of the lake, the rabbi looks at the priest and says, “Didn’t we tell him about the stepping stones?”

A preacher was driving through the countryside on his way home from a visit to a homebound parishioner, when suddenly the car sputtered to a stop. A quick check of the dashboard confirmed the diagnosis—the car had run out of gas.

The good news was there was a farm right across the street. The preacher found the farmer working on a tractor, and asked if he had any gas. The farmer answered he indeed did have a barrel of fuel, and the preacher was welcome to some. Did he have a container?

The preacher did not, so the farmer told him to wait there, he’d see what he could rustle up from in the house. He was back in a few minutes with a bed pan. All he could find, he said—filling it with gas and handing it to the preacher. Who immediately carried it to his car and began pouring the fuel from the bed pan into his tank.

Just then, another car passed him. He waved, the occupants waved back. In the car the driver said to his wife, “Now that’s what I call faith!”

Faith. What do we call faith? How shall we describe it? It’s what enables the farmer to plant the seeds, knowing that they will sprout and grow and flourish, even though he does not know how it happens. It’s beyond his control, yet he trusts in it—that’s faith.

Faith is what enables one to look at a tiny, tiny seed, and know that, despite its tinyness, when it is sown, it will grow into a tremendous plant, with room for both birds and their nests in its branches. Anticipating a bright future—and that’s faith.

Faith is what made it possible for the Israelites to sing psalms that lamented life’s ills and trials, but in the very next breath, extolled the vastness of God’s mercy, and the wonders of God’s creation. Hope in the future. That’s faith.

Faith is what sustained the church in Corinth as it struggled with false teachers who accused their founder, Paul, of not being a bona fide apostle, and his associates of skimming off the top of the collection for the poor in Jerusalem. Paul called upon the Corinthian church to remember what he had taught them—to be unshakably devoted to the gospel proclamation. Faith is that as well.

Faith is what made it possible for Paul himself to trust in God’s plan for him. To trust that a fragile human vessel such as he could successfully bear the treasure of the good news to the world. Paul was anything but successful—from a worldly vantage point. He was beaten, imprisoned, stoned, and ill-treated, but that didn’t stop him from spreading the good news. He just kept on preaching, unafraid. Now, that takes faith.

Like the faith that empowered Jesus to obediently become the small seed of a new and grand reality—to die and be buried, then rise up to fill the world with the good news that in him, all are made new! Jesus’ selflessness models for us faith that is a deep and abiding trust in God’s goodness and grace, even in the face of evil and condemnation. It is hope beyond hope. Knowing your dream will come true. It’s confidence.

St. Paul wrote, “We are always confident…for we walk by faith and not by sight.” That’s the NRSV translation. And it’s likely a good word for word translation—that’s why we use this translation in worship. And it’s a vivid metaphor—walking by faith, not by sight. We can understand it.

Certainly Eric Weihenmayer can relate to it. And not only because he is blind. But mainly because he was the first blind climber to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. To accomplish this, he had to be led first through the Khumbu Ice Fall—a glacial obstacle course filled with crevasses and huge blocks of ice that shift in the warmer temperatures of the day. Passing through the ice fall entails both dodging falling ice the size of houses, and crossing over crevasses on aluminum ladders. The method of climbing the mountain requires that climbers cross the ice fall almost daily for the month or more it takes to attempt the summit. And that’s basically the easy part!

Eric also had to do some very difficult technical climbing, being talked up steep rock and ice faces by his companions, and this at high altitude, in severe weather conditions. Every step he took was a leap of faith. He walked by faith and not by sight.

What does it mean for us—walking by faith? We aren’t blind but we’ve all had experiences of being in the dark without a light, especially since the ice storm this past winter. When I think of walking by faith and not by sight, I relate it to me getting up in the middle of the night to get a drink or whatever. I don’t turn on the light because it might wake my wife, and so I strike out in the dark. Confident that I know where the furniture is and can touch the various pieces along the way. And hoping that there aren’t any shoes or laundry baskets left in my path. Like Eric Weihenmayer, who always believed that he would make it to the summit of Everest—I have faith that I will make it to the bathroom and back to bed. I walk by faith and not by sight in the dark of night.

Now perhaps you think of a less literal application of this metaphor. Maybe walking by faith and not by sight was you following your spouse to a new state and new job, and trusting in your spouse to be doing the best thing for your family. Or maybe it was having an operation that your doctor recommended, even though you couldn’t even pronounce your condition. For many of us here, the walk represents our jobs—which we trust will still be there tomorrow, though recent economic trends prove that even the companies perceived to be strong, can overnight go belly up.

So, what is St. Paul getting at in 2^nd Corinthians? And how should we apply it to this time and place? A different translation of the passage may help. Instead of “walk” by faith, the NIV says, “for we live by faith, and not by sight.” Like I said, walking by faith is a great way to illustrate what Paul was talking about, but living by faith better reveals the gospel message behind it.

If we live by faith, and not by sight, we don’t take what we see as being the true reality of our lives—we trust, we have faith, that what God has done and is doing in our world has positive effect and will ultimately result in a transformed creation. Everything old will pass away, and all will be renewed. The summit of Everest for us is being “in Christ” — for it is what enables us to live in that new reality even now, seeing things and each other, no longer from a human perspective, but with the eyes of God’s grace. And that makes a whole boatload of difference.

Living by faith and not by sight means that we look beyond what we see people and situations are, and instead, relate to them as if they were already made new. Remember G-Ray specs? Same kind of deal! When we see things as they ultimately will be, now, and live accordingly, things change. People whom we dismissed as unimportant, are infused with worth. Things we thought so important that we were ready to do battle to preserve, are the things we now consider to be rubbish. And the destructive things we do, to the creation, and to each other, weigh even heavier on us because they push us away from that kingdom reality. Living by faith is not always easy.

It has its challenges. We are constantly tempted to “do as the world does,” placing the emphasis on our needs and desires, and discounting what is of no value to us. We are tempted to think we can manage our lives through the accumulation of wealth and possessions. But that’s not living by faith. That’s living by doubt.

It’s like the farmer who plants the seed, then fertilizes, waters, sprays pesticide, uses a grow lamp, waters some more—all the while thinking that it is only by his effort that the seed will ever release its potential. All the while envisioning, not the abundance of the anticipated harvest, but the possibility of agricultural disaster. That’s no way to live.

Better to live by faith. Jesus said, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could move mountains. He didn’t mean it literally. He meant faith—even a little bit of it—can do some pretty miraculous things. From a Red Balloon Rummage sale for the hungry and homeless to a Red Cross Blood Drive. From Anne Marie House to Antrim Girls’ Shelter. From forgiving the debt load of third world countries to ending the genocide in Darfur.

We are called to put our faith into action. To get out of the boat even if we don’t know where the stepping stones are. To fill the gas tank with a bed pan, even though people will think us mad. And we needn’t fear or doubt. Because it’s not on us—God is the one at work, through us, with us, and in us. And in the end, God will prevail. Until then, we push the boundaries of our earthly existence, walking in faith towards a sure and certain future with God. Thanks be to God! AMEN