March 19, 2011
-
Believing without seeing
Being a people of faith should influence the way we understand the world around us. As a people of faith, we express a belief in what we cannot see or prove. At the very core of our faith is our belief in God. We cannot see God, we cannot prove God, we accept the existence of God on faith. Because we believe in God based on faith, we understand in very many different ways. God is revealed to us in a variety of ways which creates a different picture of God for each one of us. The fact that we understand and picture God in so many different ways does not diminish God or make God any less real. It confirms the vastness of our God, God cannot be fully understood or accurately pictured.
I do not believe God was any different in ancient times than God is today. Our sacred stories speak of having conversations with God and having encounters with God that sound like God was much more directly involved in the lives of the faithful. I do not believe God came up to Abram and spoke to him about this plan to travel to Canaan and establish a new nation. I don’t believe God gave Abram a map that provided him with information on places to stay and eat on his trip to the Promised Land. I do believe Abram felt a pull to take his family and his possession and travel to a new place. I believe Abram was convinced this call was of God and that God would bless the move. Abram and Sarai are credited with having acted in faith not for having obeyed a god they saw or following the directions that God handed them. We are the children of this faith, we are to act when we feel God moving us even though we don’t see God and we don’t have a completed plan signed by God in our hands.
Our faith instructs us to live life in a whole new way. We live trusting in an unseen God, a God we cannot comprehend, and we cannot accurately describe. The ancients found this very difficult to do so they began to write rules for how we are to behave. They then had interpretations of the rules, and they created priests to apply the rules and exact punishment for those who violated the rules. The people liked this better because they could understand the rules, even if they couldn’t keep them, and they could see the priests and hear them speaking to them directly. It was a lot easier to have the rules and priests than it was to live by faith.
God saw that the people were losing their faith and were being oppressed by the rules and by the priests. The priests, being human, worked the rules and their position to exploit the people. Instead of bringing the people into a relationship with God, their creator, the priests were using the rules to drive the people away from God. God knew they only way to solve this abuse of the people was to send the message directly to the people in a way they could understand. God sent Jesus.
Jesus came to remind us we are a faith people, trusting in God even though we cannot comprehend God or see God. We are to trust that God desires to be in relationship with us, to guide us, heal us, and empower us. The people of Jesus’ time had trouble understanding what Jesus was telling them. Some wanted him to be God because they could understand him and they could see him. Jesus was clear, he was not God, he had come to point the people to God. Jesus did not desire that the people worship him, or obey him. He desired that they come to know God as he knew God, as a loving parent, ever present to care for us. Jesus said to think of God as your Daddy, and I am sure Jesus would have been just as comfortable referring to God as Mommy. To think of the Divine Creator of all that is as Mommy or Daddy is not to diminish God but rather to allow us to approach God without fear, as a child approaches a loving parent. We do not need to have someone interpret God for us, we do not need to have rules to please God, we need to have faith. Jesus came to restore our faith in God rather than placing our faith in rules or priests.
The sad truth is the followers of Jesus soon developed a religion very much like the religion Jesus came to liberate us from. They created rules, they gave power to priests, and they convinced the people that they needed listen to them to please God. They made religion burdensome, and they made some people feel unworthy of God’s love. Due to our lack of faith in the unseen God, we permit others to tell us what God wants and how we are to please God. God wants us to have the faith necessary to trust God to speak to us directly, to show us the way we should go, and to live our own lives of faith unburdened by what others think we should believe, do, be, or any other limitation on our relationship with God.
This church is called to go out in faith, trusting that God will lead you to where you are supposed to go, that God will bring you the leader you are supposed to have. Do not allow yourselves to be bullied or intimidated into believing that God will speak only through a select few or that God isn’t speaking to you, or that you are not worthy to be part of the discussion. Trust more in your faith than in what you can see. Amen.
