Wednesday, November 21, 2018

A Faith that Can Move Mountains


Habakkuk 2:2-5

Matthew 17:14-21



            A tourist came too close to the edge of the Grand Canyon, lost his footing and plunged over the side, clawing and scratching to save himself.  After he went out of sight and just before he fell into space, he ran into a scrubby bush which he desperately grabbed with both hands.  Filled with terror, he called out to heaven, “Is there anyone up there?”  A calm, powerful voice came out of the sky, “Yes.”  The tourist pleaded, “Help me!  Help me!”  The voice responded, “Are you a believer?”  “Yes, yes!”  “Do you have faith?”  “Yes, yes!  I have strong faith.”  The voice said, “In that case, simply let loose of the bush and trust that everything will turn out fine.”  There was a tense pause, then the tourist yelled, “Is there anyone else up there?”

            Faith.

            The New Testament, especially, is filled with references to faith.  I believe, and have preached to you before, that there is really very little difference between faith and works; if you have faith, you will do the works.  And the truth is that we fall short in both areas.  Fortunately, salvation, whatever that means to you, is more about grace than either faith or works.  None the less, faith remains something that we strive to increase constantly.  According to today’s Gospel lesson, even the tiniest amount of faith will move mountains.  Yet, we rarely see even that much faith.  The exceptions are notable because of their rarity.

            Rev. Charles Tindley was an African American minister born in 1851.  He is considered the primary ancestor to African American gospel music.  He was also a dynamic preacher and a man who put his faith into action.  He turned his church basement into a soup kitchen to feed people who were without jobs in the 1920’s.  He organized a savings unit to help church members make down payments on their first homes.  He trained and educated the young people in his church.  It was out of his experience, but more, out of his faith that he wrote his sermons and his music.  His was a faith that was big enough to move mountains.  As Rev. Henry Nichols tells it:

Tindley said one morning he and his family sat down…getting ready for breakfast, and his wife said, “There is no food here.”  He said, “That’s all right.  Fix the table.  Put the dishes on – we’ll have breakfast.”  And she looked at him and said, “But Dr. Tindley, didn’t you hear me?  There’s no food here.”  He said, “That’s all right.  Fix the table.  Let’s sit down and have a prayer.”  And so she did.  The children sat down, and I’m sure the children thought he was gone…and he said, “Let’s bow our heads.”  No food: empty plates.  And then he began to pray, “Dear Lord, we thank you for what we are about to receive.”  And just then, he said, somebody knocked on the door.  He stopped and went to the door, and one of the officers said, “Brother Pastor, didn’t know whether ya’ll had anything to eat this morning.  Brought you some food over.”[1]

            Faith.

            Dorothy Day, founder and organizer of the Catholic worker shared similar stories of times when their house community, a community built for the purpose of and dedicated to serving the poor and destitute in and around them, would be on its last penny.  Time and again they would spend that last penny on whoever came to them for help because Dorothy and the workers had faith that the needed money would always come.  And it did.  On one such occasion the electric bill had to be paid and there was no money at all in the house.  The bill was for $9.57, not much now, but a lot at the time.  The power company said that the electricity would be turned off if the bill was not paid by the end of the day.  So everyone in the house began to pray.  At 4:30 that afternoon, the mail arrived and within it was a check – for $9.57, enclosed with a note apologizing for the odd amount and stating that the donor had found that much on the sidewalk and had felt called to send it to the Catholic Worker community.

            Faith.

            A doctor who worked in a country in Africa wrote:

One night I had worked hard to help a mother in the labor ward; but in spite of all we could do she died leaving us with a tiny premature baby and a crying two-year-old daughter.  We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive, as we had no incubator.  (We had no electricity to run an incubator.)  Although we lived on the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts.  One student midwife went for the box we had for such babies and the cotton wool the baby would be wrapped in.  Another went to stoke up the fire and fill a hot water bottle.  She came back shortly in distress to tell me that in filling the bottle, it had burst.  Rubber perishes easily in tropical climates.  “And it is our last hot water bottle!” She exclaimed.  “All right,” I said, “put the baby as near the fire as you safely can, and sleep between the baby and the door to keep it free from drafts.  Your job is to keep the baby warm.”

The following noon, as I did most days, I went to have prayers with any of the orphanage children who chose to gather with me.  I gave the youngsters various suggestions of things to pray about and told them about the tiny baby.  I explained our problem about keeping the baby warm enough, mentioning the hot water bottle.  The baby could so easily die if it got chills.  I also told them of the two-year-old sister, crying because her mother had died.  During the prayer time, one ten-year-old girl, Ruth, prayed with the usual blunt conciseness of our children.  “Please, God,” she said, “send us a water bottle.  It’ll be no good tomorrow, God, as the baby will be dead, so please send it this afternoon.”  While I gasped inwardly at the audacity of the prayer, she added by way of a corollary, “And while you are about it, would you please send a doll for the little girl so she’ll know you really love her?”

I just did not believe that God could do this.  The only way God could answer would be for a package to arrive from my home.  I had been in Africa for almost four years and I had never, ever received a package from home.  Even if a package did come, who would send a hot water bottle?  We lived on the equator!  Halfway through the afternoon, while I was teaching in the nurses’ training school, a message was sent that there was a car at my front door.  When I got there, the car was gone but in its place was a large package.  I felt tears pricking my eyes.  I could not open the package alone, so I sent for the orphanage children.  Together we pulled off the string, carefully undoing each knot.  We folded the paper, taking care not to tear it as some thirty or forty pairs of eyes focused on the box.  From the top I lifted out brightly colored knitted shirts.  Eyes sparkled as I gave them out.  Then there were cotton bandages for the leprosy patients, a box of mixed raisins that we could use to make buns on the weekend.  Then, as I put my hand in again, I felt the…could it really be?  Yes, a brand-new, rubber hot water bottle.  I had not asked God to send it; I had not really believed that God could.  Ruth was in the front row of the children.  She rushed forward crying out, “If God has sent the bottle, God must have sent the doll too!”

Rummaging around in the bottom of the box, she pulled out the small beautifully dressed doll.  Her eyes shone!  She had never doubted.  Looking at me she asked, “Can I go over with you, and give this doll to that little girl, so she’ll know that God really loves her?”  This had obviously been sent months before.  As Isaiah 65:24 says, “Before they call, I will answer.”

            There are less dramatic stories of people who don’t get exactly to the dime what we might think they are needing, but who none-the-less live day in and day out by their faith.  For these people, often people who have very little in the way of material possessions, faith the size of a mustard seed is more than enough.

            Truthfully, some people, preachers, pastors, and others have mis-used this passage in Matthew that declares the faith of a mustard seed could move mountains.  Especially faith healers who earn their money and power through miracle healings - for them, it is easy to blame those who do not experience these miraculous healings by saying they simply did not have enough faith.  But faith, like everything else that is good in this life, is a gift from God.  It is one we can cultivate, but more it is a gift we must pray for and be grateful for when it comes.  It is nothing less than abuse to blame someone’s suffering on their lack of faith.

            If faith, then, is a gift, what do these stories mean for the average person, for you and me who do not seem even to have the faith of a mustard seed?  When I was working on my doctorate I took a class called Spirituality and Justice.  In class we spent a lot of time talking about the culture of despair that exists here in the United States.  It is hard for us, though we are the wealthiest people in the world, to hold on to our faith and our hope, especially if we care about justice and care about the people in this world.  This is a dark time in which justice seems hard to come by.  Many, many people are hungry; many are dying in wars or in political situations or just out of blind hatred that they had no hand in creating; racial motivated killings, theologically motivated killings, many suffer abuse, torture and betrayal by those closest to them.  Children especially suffer in today’s world, in which child slave labor and child prostitution, human trafficking, shootings at our schools…among many other things – all of these are higher than ever before and the large majority of the hungry in the world are under 12 years of age.  How do we hang on to our faith and our hope in light of these realities?

            My first wish in telling you these stories of faith is that they might help you find hope.  We do have a God whose eye is on the sparrow and who does and will watch over us as well.  We do not have to be afraid because our needs will be attended to.  All of us worry.  We do not usually have the faith to believe that we will be taken care of, and there are reasons for that lack of faith.  There are people who don’t have enough, there are people who struggle to survive, times feel hard and dark.  Still, in our faith journeys, we are called not to always be “realists”, but instead to live, to risk, to love from a place of hope and faith.  My hope is that when you are struggling to be faithful and hopeful, when you find yourself in despair or depression that you will remember these true stories that I have shared with you today, or stories like them.  If you can’t remember them, I hope you will call me or one another.  Part of what can keep us in a place of despair and depression is the fear that we are alone or that something is wrong with us to feel this way.  You are not alone, and these feelings make sense.  So when you go through a hard time, call one another, share with one another.  We all need to work together to remember stories of faith and hope.  God has promised the resurrection after death.  It is a promise we can count on.

            Second, I hope that these stories of a faith that will move mountains will inspire all of us to “act as if” we too had that kind of faith.  Take the risk of caring for someone you think you can’t afford to help.  Take the risk of speaking out against an injustice trusting that your voice will make a difference and help change the world.  Take the risk of thanking God for providing for your needs, for the world’s needs, trusting that the provisions will come.  Even if you can’t believe it, even if you can’t find the faith, act as if you have it.  Act as if you live by faith and soon it will no longer be an act.

            Finally, I hope these stories will encourage you to pray for your faith to be increased constantly.  Faith is a gift wanting to be given.  Don’t be afraid to ask for it.  Others have asked and have been given faith in abundance.  The gift is there for you as well.

            As today’s passage in Habbakuk said, “There is still a vision for the end, and it does not lie.  If it seems to tarry, wait for it: it will surely come, it will not delay.”  That vision for the end is of resurrection.  That vision is of new life.  And it does not tarry or delay.  It comes daily to those with eyes of faith.  So pray for that faith, support one another in finding that faith, act out of faith even when you can’t muster it.  God is here.  God is love.  God will bring more than enough to the world this day and always.



[1] Reagon, We’ll Understand it Better By and By (Washington: Smithsonian Institute, 1992), 46

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