Faith

Passage: Luke 7:1-10

Ryan Bell has embarked on a radical experiment.  He’s decided to spend the year as an atheist.  Bell is a former pastor, seminary employee, and religion columnist for such news outlets as The Huffington Post.  In a recent blog post he writes,

“Since [I resigned my pastorate] I have been a religious nomad. I have struggled to relate to the church and, if I'm honest, God. I haven't attended church consistently; I struggle to relate to church people, preferring the company of skeptics and non-church-goers. I haven't prayed much and, without sermons to write on a regular basis, I haven't studied, or even really read, the Bible.

So, I'm making it official and embarking on a new journey. I will ‘try on’ atheism for a year.”

Bell’s post has sparked a flurry of online debate about whether or not you can “try on” either belief in God or an absence thereof.  A CNN post provides a sampling that includes the positive:

“Bell should be applauded for his attempt to ask the hard questions. Whether he'll be a theist or atheist on the other side of this journey, I don't know. But it is a good thing that he is wondering.”

And the skeptical:

“It’s not a set of superficial practices, it’s a mindset. What’s he going to do at the end of the year, erase his brain?"

At the heart of the debate is the question of what constitutes genuine faith in God.

This is precisely the question addressed in the three episodes recorded in Luke 7.

The first is the account of Jesus’ encounter with a Roman centurion.  In it the centurion sends a delegation of Jewish elders to appeal to Jesus for healing on behalf of the centurion’s servant.  Through his emissaries the centurion says both, “I am not worthy to have you come to me in person” and “If you only say the word, my servant will be healed.”  In response, we’re told, Jesus is “amazed at the centurion’s faith” (and obliges by healing the servant from a distance). 

In the second episode Jesus encounters the funeral procession of a widow’s only son.  He tells the mourners not to cry; then commands the dead man to rise.  He complies, returning to life.  Everyone who has seen it responds by declaring, “God has come to help his people.”

In the third episode Jesus has been invited to dinner by a Pharisee named Simon.  A woman known to have lived a sinful life crashes the party.  She proceeds to fall at Jesus’ feet weeping; she pours perfume on his feet; and then she wipes the mixture of tears and expensive fragrance from his feet with her hair.  Simon, a man of religious and social principle, disdains the woman, and disdains Jesus because he allows the shameful display.  Jesus confronts Simon.  He says, “You have failed to live up to your own standard for hospitality by refusing me the common courtesy of a handshake and a towel for my feet.  And you have betrayed your religious standards by putting yourself in a position to judge.”  He then turns to the woman and says, “Go. Your faith has saved you.” 

Faith, in each of these instances, is not an intellectual or religious exercise.  It’s a response.  These people meet Jesus, and see him for who he is.  He’s not a quick fix.  He’s not a spiritual guru.  He’s the embodiment of the power, and love, of the one true God.  

They respond with humility because, as CS Lewis says,

“In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison— you do not know God at all.”

They respond with joy because in Jesus God is doing something new.  Jesus breaks the barriers of race, gender, and even religious observance that have kept people outside the circle of God’s grace.  And Jesus breaks the power of sin, disease, and even death.  Faith is seeing God at work, and recognizing that what you see is God at work.  You either see him or you don’t.  When people encounter Jesus in the Gospels, many are unable, or unwilling, to see.  But those who see him for who he is are changed forever as they are compelled both by his power and his by love.  True Faith isn't a religious addendum to your life.  It's a relationship at the center of your life.  It's like true love.  Either you have it or you don't.  If you can turn it on and off, it isn't the real thing.