Faith?

Jenni Berg 02/10/222

Readings - Luke 17:5-10

When I looked at the readings for today, I was tempted to skip them and find something else.  However I often find if I try to look deeper there is more to be seen than first meets the eye.  So, I looked at what several others have to say.  I have quoted widely from Marcus Borg, Bill Loader, Margaret Mayman , Jim Somerville and Karyl Davison.

Looking at the subtitles for these verses it might seem that those who translated the Bible didn’t know what to make of the first part of Luke 17 either.  The NRSV uses as its sub-heading “Some Sayings of Jesus,” while the NIV says “Sin, Faith, Duty”- all a bit of a mixed bag, which doesn’t give much of an idea of what the reading is about.

What we do have in this reading are some statements that at first sight don’t seem related.  And that are each a bit of a challenge on their own.  Starting at verse 5 may also confuse the issue.  The request of the disciples for more faith appears to result from words of Jesus in verses 1-4 about forgiving those who offend us.”  If your brother sins against you seven times in a day.. forgive him.”  “Keep on forgiving, “Jesus said in verse 4.   So, in verse 5, where this reading technically begins, the disciples reply, “Fine, Lord. We can do that as soon as you increase our faith.” But Jesus says, “Increase your faith?!  Why?  The smallest faith in the world can tell trees to walk.   You’ve got more faith than that right now so don’t tell me that you don’t have enough faith to forgive someone seven times in a row.”

In other words, what you need is not more faith but fewer excuses.

Then Jesus pretty much says, “Oh and by the way, WHEN you have forgiven someone seven times with the faith you already have, don’t come back to me expecting praise.   You’ll only be doing what you’ve seen me do, and I do what I’ve seen my Father do.  When you act according to who you are by grace, good, but don’t expect praise for it.  This is just how it should be.  

So, our first question is, what is faith? 

These verses can shed some light on what it is not, and some on what it is.  Each of the people I mentioned earlier takes something a little different away from them.

First, I’ll quote from Nev, from a recent In Touch

 It concerns me deeply that most people in our society have no idea of what the Christian faith is about.  Most of them think of it as being good and going to heaven and being bad and going to hell – and that Jesus dying on a cross somehow seals the deal and ‘when the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there’.  No way!  The Christian faith is about this world.  It’s the only world we’ve got!  

The Christian faith is about fullness of life here and now.  It consists of right relationships with God and our fellows, of loving God and loving neighbour. This is the way to fullness of life – the way of love, as over and against the way of violence and consumerism.

So, in this sense, faith is what being a Christian is all about, its about loving relationships.

The author of Hebrews says that ‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  But we know that faith is more.  It can somehow point us towards God, and motivate us, resulting in a change in the way we live our lives.

In his book ‘Heart of Christianity’, Marcus Borg devotes a whole chapter to faith.  He says that in Western Christianity faith has come to mean holding a set of beliefs.  For most people being a Christian means believing there is a god, believing Jesus is the son of god, believing that he died for our sins.  He acknowledges that for some Christians the list would be much longer.  Believing the right things is very important for some.  The problem is this can turn faith into a checklist of what we must believe.  In the Middle ages Orthodoxy meant right worship, but in the Reformation, it came to mean right belief.  This was partly because some groups were still deciding exactly what they believed.  But also, the Enlightenment changed the way we perceive truth.  In the Middle Ages, for example, people did not question the truth of Jonah & the whale- it was in the Bible, of course it was true.  But in the Enlightenment, they came to question the truth of this- could a man really live in the belly of a giant fish for 3 days?  The only truth that counted then, and in the culture of today, was that which could be verified scientifically.

So, faith became believing the right things & believing them no matter what, even if they can’t be scientifically verified.

Then Borg takes us back to the Middle Ages.  Here, there are four Latin words for faith.

Assensus, from which we get the English word assent, - giving one’s intellectual assent to a claim or a proposition.  in other words, believing it is true. The opposite to this is doubt or disbelief.  Borg had earlier experienced these doubts himself & prayed ‘Lord I believe, help my unbelief’.  Later he questioned, ‘Is this what God wants-of us- our mental assent to a long list of theological propositions?’  He notes that people can believe all the right things yet still be in bondage, still be miserable & unchanged, and that faith as assensus, does not have much transformative power.

However, there are some things we can & should affirm as the bare minimum of being a Christian:  the reality of God, the utter centrality of Jesus, and the centrality of the Bible.

The 2nd word is fiducia, and its closest meaning is trust.  The opposite is not doubt, but anxiety or worry.  In the storm when the disciples were afraid the boat was about to sink, Jesus asked ‘why are you so afraid-where is your faith?’

The 3rd word is fidelitas – fidelity or faithfulness, here regarding our relationship to God, and it has the same meaning as in a marriage.  The opposite is unfaithfulness, or adultery, or in a Biblical sense, idolatry- giving one’s allegiance to something other than God.  

Borg says the opposite to idolatry is being faithful to God & not to the many would-be gods that present themselves to us.  Christian faith means being faithful to Jesus as lord & not to the seductive would-be lords of our lives- power, affluence, achievement, desire etc

The 4th is visio, and this means seeing: a way of seeing the whole, as what is.

There are 3 ways of seeing ‘what is’: firstly, seeing reality as hostile, -out to get you.  There have been forms of Christianity that have seen reality in this way- as if God were out to get us, and unless we performed the right sacrifices & rituals, he would get us.

Secondly, reality is indifferent.  The universe is made up of swirling force fields of matter and energy, but it is indifferent to our hopes and dreams.  Neither hostile to nor supportive of the universe.  If God created it, he is no longer active or caring.  

Thirdly, reality is essentially nourishing & lifegiving.  It has brought us & everything into existence & nurtures us, it is full of wonder & beauty.  This is the version Jesus held, and spoke about when he said ‘look at the flowers, look at the birds, God cares about them, he feeds them & clothes them, he sends his rain on the just and the unjust alike.’

Faith as visio can make a difference in our lives, it can lead to radical trust.  It leads us to the kind of life Jesus lived.

So, we have 4 Latin words for faith: assensus, fiducia, fidelitas and visio.  All but the 1st are relational words. Fiducia- a relationship of trust. Fidelitas- a relationship of love & loyalty, visio a relationship of life-giving nurture.

Assensus is the only one that involves giving intellectual assent to a set of theological propositions.

Jesus said ‘“If you had faith the size of a[a] mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

So, we try to increase our faith, believe more & doubt less, in fact try to believe things which are unbelievable.

Perhaps Jesus meant you don’t need more faith, you just need the tiniest speck.  In the Bible the mustard seed is mentioned 5 times.  2 as an amount of faith, and 3 where it is planted in the ground and becomes a large bush, or a tree where the birds can nest.   A mustard seed is something small that can grow big if put in the ground.  If packed away it will only stay the same size.  Perhaps Jesus is trying to tell us that we don’t need a lot of faith but just a tiny bit, and if we put it, not in ourselves & our ability to believe, but in God, the one who gives us life, the one who loves us, the one we can trust completely, the one who can move mountains, then it will grow.

So, where we put the faith we have is important.

Karyl Davison says that in the early church, a buoyant faith propelled the movement initiated by Jesus and his disciples.  Despite experiencing both explosive growth and brutal persecution, their sharing in the living spirit of Jesus united Christians, and faith meant hope and assurance in the dawning of the new era of freedom, healing and compassion that Jesus had demonstrated.  

Within a few short decades of the birth of Christianity, church leaders began formulating orientation programs for new followers who had not known Jesus or his disciples personally.  Emphasis on belief began to grow, replacing faith in Jesus with tenets about him.

We now live in a new Christian era, one that often looks to the early church and the ‘age of faith’ for inspiration and guidance.  There are some striking similarities between the first and the emerging third age. 

Creeds didn’t exist then, and they are fading in importance now.  Hierarchies had not appeared then, and they are struggling now.

Faith as a way of life has once again begun to identify what it means to be Christian.  The experience of the divine is displacing theories about the divine.

This passage from Luke presents ‘faith’ less in terms of our assent to certain propositions or doctrine, and more in terms of our steadfast devotion to Christ and to the Christian life. 

God is present to the world in and through people.  When we follow the teachings of Jesus  the world sees God’s presence among us.  And the world is changed.  This is faithful presence.  This is what the church is called to do.

So, faith is devotion to the Christian way of life.

Margaret Mayman also sees that Faith is a Way of Life. The apostles came to Jesus asking for ‘faith’. Luke seems to be suggesting that they thought of faith in quantitative terms, as a commodity, rather than as a way of life.

 “Increase our faith” they asked. “Give us more of it.”

Jesus’ replies, "More faith? You're not using the faith you've got now! If the faith you had now was as big as a mustard seed, you could put it to work planting mulberry trees!” More faith? You haven't yet put to work the faith that is yours, for faith is a Way! A way by which life and work are done, it's not a warehouse of expendable resources.

It is a way of seeing. It is a way of being.

Then Jesus immediately changes the subject from faith as quantity to faith as quality. He tells the story of the master and the slave.

Mayman  says -I am uncomfortable about the Bible's metaphor of the master-slave relationship to model our relationship to God. But Jesus used images drawn from the lived reality of first century Palestine. Chattel slavery was as universal in his time as wage slavery and bonded servitude are in our time. Jesus talked about and used the life of those around him to talk about the Reign of God and its eternal truths. He is not endorsing inequality, oppression and abuse in this story.

Jesus is asking, “Does anyone in the domination system thank the servant because the servant does what servants are for? When you've finished all your work in this domination system, you are still good-for-nothing. You only did your job.”

A rather harsh and dreadful God, if we're talking about God. But we’re not. Jesus is not.

We're talking about a lifestyle of faith, faith as a way to do our work, as committed now to Liberation as we were once committed to Domination.

Faith not done for prizes, but for the joy of it, knowing whom it is that we serve, with whom we are in right relationship.

And Jesus, says, Faith is the Life we are called to as Friends of God, not as slaves. Faith is not a commodity, but a community.  As we encounter Jesus the Christ, risen and present with us, as we are repeatedly touched by divine grace, we are progressively shaped into Christ's image.  To be Christ’s people. to do Christ’s work of love and justice

So, faith is a community doing works of love and justice.

Bill Loader looks at this in a slightly different way.

In Jesus time slavery was common. In the world of slavery and servitude, you don’t treat slaves as equals; Their role is to serve you, you don’t thank them.

This seemed to be the opposite of the gospel of love that Jesus was preaching. But these values of superiority have been dominant throughout Christian history. Those passages which command wives to obey husbands, slaves to obey masters, and children to obey fathers, reflect this kind of influence.

Probably most of those listening to this story would have agreed, especially those who had power. They would be happy to hear their views and prejudices affirmed by Jesus. Then Jesus turns the prejudice back onto the listener: so you, when you have done all you needed to do, don’t make special claims! You have done only what was expected!

This brings everyone down to the same level, the level of the servant.  It removes the idea we achieve value by doing good, as though we deserve a bonus for being decent, caring human beings. This would have been, and still is, confronting and frustrating to the listeners, and sounds harsh. It gives us no credit.

What is our value if it is not in what we achieve? This is a question which goes to the heart of being human. It is crucial for us all, especially for those who are unable to achieve much, in worldly terms, through no fault of their own. When we make achievement the measure of worth, some people will always come out very low on the scale. Jesus’ comments subvert that system. Jesus was suggesting God is like a caring parent, who loves all of us.  We are valued because of who we are. The less we try to make ourselves deserving, the more value we can give to others, and the more energy and time we have for them.

Luke placed the saying about transplanting trees before this theme. The tiny mustard seed is enough to bring about the change. It is not about vegetating the sea, but about encouraging what seems impossible. Things do not have to be the way they are. No matter how dire the situation, change is possible.  A new approach to human dignity and value is a huge ask in a world where the poor are exploited and where anger explodes in terror which disregards human life. We are surrounded by many systems and structures of violence.  Jesus crashes our pretensions of superiority to the ground, and we find ourselves reaching out to all whom terror violates. Seeds of hope and change are present. Mountains wait to be moved. The world does not need great achievements as much as an assertion of our humanity, of being what we are made to be and reflecting in that the true image and glory of God, which is its own reward.

So, Faith is accepting the intrinsic value of all people and being agents of change in our world.

It’s all a bit like the shell, isn’t it?

I think Walter Wink describes faith very well, in describing what he calls transfiguration:

‘It is living by vision: standing four square in the midst of a broken, oppressed, dehumanising reality, yet seeing the invisible, calling it to come, behaving as if it is on the way, sustained by elements of it that have come already, within and among us.