This week we tackled the topic of Faith. More specifically the question "What is Faith?" I decided to defer to several of you to help me answer this question and we got words like trust, confidence, belief, etc. It seemed that we had a pretty solid handle on synonymous words for faith, but when I asked if I could see individual's faith we hit a snag. Every person that I asked the question "Can I see your faith?" responded with blank stares and puzzled looks. This is where our sermon began in earnest.
Being 21st century, enlightened Americans, who also fancy ourselves as Christians, we tend to think of faith as merely an intellectual assent, a sort of mental excercise that once gone through is over and done with. Many of us tend to think of faith in these terms:
Yes, I believe in Jesus Christ,
Yes, I've asked him to be my savior,
Therefore, I have faith.
End of story.
Unfortuantely for us, this is not quite how the Bible understands faith. Our story of the blind beggar, (Bartimaeus), shows that faith is more than thinking, believing, trusting, or having confidence in, but that faith is also about action. Bartimaeus' faith was shown by his insistance to be known by Jesus and to in fact act Jesus for healing. In response to this bold and radical action in faith, Christ tells Bartimaeus that it was his "faith" that made him well!
This action of faith is what James talks about when he discusses faith without works being dead. The notion of a faith that drives the faithful to action is also what the Apostle Paul refers to when he speaks of the "faith" of the church in Rome and the proclaimation of it occuring throughout the world! Such a faith, characterized by action, would mark the people of God out, and truly make our faith known.
In Vacation Bible School last week, I conducted an experiment with the children, that involved water and rubbing alcohol. When several drops of water were placed onto a plate (the water had green food coloring added), we were left with a puddle. If another drop of water (or more) was added, the puddle just grew larger. When even one drop of rubbing alcohol was added, something amazing happened! The drops of water shot out away from the rubbing alcohol and we were left with a ring of water around where the rubbing alcohol was dropped. The moral of the story was that if we strive to be like everyone else around us, we will succeed and blend in, indiscernable from the rest of the world. If we strive to be like Christ, and live out our faith, we will stand out in a way that cannot be ignored!
My prayer for all of us, myself included, is that we act more like that drop of rubbing alcohol than that puddle of water. My hope is that people will not need to ask us to see our faith, because truly we will be living it each and every day, in a way that causes us to stand out as the people of Christ, Christians!
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