“Faith”
Sermon Transcript for April 13, 2008
By Pastor Bob Coleman
The sermon’s already in progress. The message for today began
with the witnesses that you heard earlier, including even the video. When it
comes to this time, a challenge that is given to all of us, literally scores,
over a hundred volunteers are participating in a variety of ways throughout
this campaign. There are also charges given to me as the Pastor. And as the
Pastor bringing messages in the next three weeks called “Stewardship Servants”.
Everybody jumps to a conclusion that it’s talking about money. Well, I’m
not going to avoid it but there is something even greater. It’s at the
foundation of all the ministries we have, stewardship included. And that’s
the word “faith”. The word faith is one like love and joy and hope
and peace that traditionally have a response but it takes a lot more study and
time to get the heart of the matter. I want to share with you today something
about my faith and your faith and all of God’s children’s’
faith and God’s faith in just a few moments.
So let me cut directly to a quote in Scripture which I’ve seen in a new light. You’ll hear it and most of you will say, “I have heard that.” And you will stop at one point because that’s where it is usually interpreted. In Ephesians 2:8 Paul is writing to the Christians at the church of Ephesus giving instruction as he does in most of his epistles. And this one is to be helpful to them in their hearing of what it means to be saved. And so the verse goes like this, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this not from yourselves. It is the gift of God.” Most people know that first part and stop with “for it is by grace you have been saved”. Then we assume the next phrase “through faith” means our faith. I want for us to think differently about that today, that it is God’s faith and grace that the Scripture is pointing to. For then it concludes after the words grace and faith “and this not from yourselves. It is the gift of God”.
Faith and grace—consider both of them as a gift from God. Being saved by grace, yes! By the very title of this church’ it’s what it is founded upon. But the one thing I want us to think about and I struggle with is there are so many times today in the church we do it ourselves. I’ve used it in this way. That if you just have enough faith or if you have the right faith, you can do anything. But only what is given to us by God’s spirit is truly the faith that we can speak of. In fact, when you say, “If I just had more faith…” that’s actually a false premise. The assumption is that you can have this little faith or you can have this amount of faith. The truth of it is scriptural based where Jesus, in response of a question asked of Him by the disciples as recorded in Luke 17 starting with Verse 5, the apostles, the disciples directly asked Jesus, “Increase our faith (i.e. we’ve just got a little bit’ we’d like some more. As if there is a quantifiable piece of faith.) But Jesus responds, “If you have the faith as small as a grain of mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea” and it will obey you.” Well, we all jump to the “Well, it doesn’t take much and that little grain of mustard seed and it’s an inspiration that it grows to be such a big tree.” But what Jesus is saying is “you’ve got all you need. You don’t need more faith, you need to live in the faith that you already have that God has given you by the Spirit. Jesus was telling us not that we need more or better but that faith is already there. Rather He was saying, and this is a modern interpretation, “Come on you guys. You don’t need more faith. You need to function with the faith that you have. God has given you sufficient faith.” By God’s Spirit we technically have all the grace we need to be saved and we have all the faith we need by which to live. We have what we need.
It’s not how much faith we have also in response to what God is doing or can do in our lives because if we say, “It’s my faith and I have enough” then it is all in our control. Instead we need to reflect clearly and the Scripture for today is from Romans 3:3. And the setting or the understanding of it is the question, “What if some did not have faith,” Paul says in this chapter. “Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness?” Hear that again, “What if some did not have faith (or might I say enough faith), will their lack nullify God’s faithfulness?” The response by Paul is “not at all! Let God be true and every man a liar.” Or, as Eugene Peterson does in his more modern translation, “Do you think your faithfulness cancels our God’s faithfulness? Not on your life! Depend on God’s faithfulness. God keeps His word even when the whole world is lying through its teeth.” He has a direct way of saying it, doesn’t he?
Faith is given by God to us and ultimately what is behind that gift is God’s own faithfulness as we’ve sung already this morning. Faith does not spring forth from our inmost self. Faith is not something we can create or that is based upon how good we are in our actions outwardly or how loving we are in our thoughts inwardly. No matter how much spirituality we practice or how many loving deeds we do, it does not increase the faith that God has given us. What we tend not to do is use the faith we’ve already been given and live fully in it.
Faith comes from outside of us. It lodges within us. And, if you wish, our awareness grows like the mustard seed. The faith is already there. It’s not our senses which give us faith but the Spirit through the word of God. And then it lights up and directs our outer and inner senses and even our reasoning. We can’t have the right faith. We can’t classify it as orthodoxy--the right beliefs, and check them off and say “You have a good enough faith if you believe these things.” Nor is it orthopraxy, as the word is used, if you do all the right actions does it mean that you have more faith or a better faith. The answer is simply, God gives us the faith. It is not quantifiable but it is a reflection and a response to God’s faithfulness in us.
Our personal faith is based on God’s faith in us. And hear the key difference. It shifted not from us being the center but to God being the center. Consider that God has faith in you individually. That’s what our baptism means. When we are baptized, it isn’t just our faith stepping forward. It is our response to God’s faith already there for us. There is as much if not more action on God’s part in our baptism than in our own action. It’s a very singular, very direct, and very personal just as in Jesus’ baptism when God’s voice said and a dove from heaven came down as a symbol, “You are my beloved child in whom you are well loved.” We are God’s beloved in our baptism. God is saying to us, “Now here is your opportunity. By faith you can say “No” to the way of confusion and destruction of this life; you can turn toward the direction of God to say “Yes” to Jesus Christ.” God’s faith is being expressed in our baptism. God’s faith in you is being expressed.
But God doesn’t stop with just the individual relationship because we are united and connected with a community called the church, the family of God. So God expresses faith in us in our communion. And this is where we go from singular to plural. Even though we may come forward and receive the bread and dip it in individually, it is still a corporate experience. It is when God says to the community, “You are my people. I have faith in you.” Think of that! If we believe fully that God has faith in us, well, what can stop us? Not stop us for our own desires necessarily or even necessarily our own dreams, but that we can move forward as God’s people to do God’s will.
Another way to express God’s faithfulness in us and His expression of faith is in what I referred to last week as “resurrection living”—the Kingdom living here on earth. Now that moves us from just the sense of right spiritual faith with God to an action beyond ourselves. That’s what this church and all churches are called to do—to focus on God’s gift of faith through the baptism, receiving by grace the gift of that faith, and helping people to grow in it so that they can commune with God and with each other and then be in action to the world and the community around.
That leads us to our vision for Grace United Methodist Church. You’ve heard from three of your own today in their own personal words how God has been faithful to them through Grace. Our vision for the future is expressed to continue to receive and grow children, youth, and adults as gifts from God. As surely as God gives us grace and gives us faith, God gives us opportunity of people of all ages by which we can grow from them and we can grow with them and serve them in the name of Christ. These gifts that come to us are what we understand as God’s movement in the broader community. People are always looking for something greater than themselves and we have what they need and we need to help them when they come here to be open and to find the gift of God’s grace and the gift of God’s faith in them.
God’s vision for us is to help people to find the saving grace, to grow in that grace, and to be prepared to serve in God’s Kingdom as disciples of Christ. It’s foundational, it’s what we are called to do, it’s what we are meant to be. Just last night, and I wish I could always share. You know, one of the pieces that a person who sits, unless they are a former pastor, retired, you can have some awareness of this, or the wife or the widow of a pastor. There is so much more that goes on than what you see on the surface. That’s true in this church. Just the surface events or the surface actions are a slight beginning. It’s like the iceberg concept. There are things that go on all the time that are God’s action of faith in us moving.
Just last night a young college student came here after experiencing a life-changing event on a mission trip. He said, “I grew up in the Methodist church, but I guess it really never made a difference until I went on this mission trip and it’s changed my life.” He was directed because it his Methodist background by the chaplain at Franklin College to come here and he did. He works on Sunday. He said, “I’ll probably only be here about four weeks because I’m going on an internship for this next year if that all works out.” But he came and I said “Welcome”. He was greeted by others. He felt welcome I believe because after words here is what he said to me, “I felt you were talking directly to me.” And I said, “Well, that’s God speaking, not me because I really don’t know you. I don’t know what your needs are but God does.” He said, “You know, I’ve never been baptized even though I grew up in the church. I want to be baptized. Is it okay for me to be baptized here?” So I said, “Let’s meet this week.”
You see, God is moving all the time to express God’s faithfulness in people one at a time. It is up to us to be ready when that movement happens in a person’s life. It may be that he will be baptized here. If that works out we will celebrate what God is doing in his life. The power though is that we are here for people like that. We never know when they are going to come or when it is going to happen to the person who has been here for decades and something new—God touches their heart and the vision is opened up and we are, in response, being faithful to God’s faithfulness. It’s all resting upon God.
Will you consider that today? Think about God’s faithfulness and faith in you. Does it change how you view yourself? It takes it out of the realm of you having to do it right all of the time. God loves you, God has faith in you and God has saved you by God’s grace even before you are aware. What a powerful gift! It should relax us. It should free us up individually and as a community to fulfill God’s vision for us. And we need to be constantly in prayer checking that vision that it doesn’t get sidetracked from God’s will and direction. That’s always a good challenge.
So I leave you with that today. And I want us to take a moment in prayer as we consider, “How have you seen in your life God expressing God’s faith in you personally and in this church?” For I believe that is the foundation of all of the ministries that we have. It’s not just stewardship or the capital campaign. The heart of the matter is not money. The heart of the matter isn’t what programs we print or publish or carry on. The heart of the matter is the Spirit present expressed as God’s faith in Grace United Methodist Church, God’s faith expressed in each of you.
Let’s join together for a moment of silent prayer. “Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Your faith, oh God, in each of us! So great we can’t fully envision or imagine it all. But help us to drink it in, help us know that you have faith in us and we have enough faith to live out our lives. Let us respond to your faithfulness by our faithfulness. This we ask in the name of Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
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