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
