Awaken to Your Faith

David Horst

Third of a three-part series Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented World
August 21, 2011

My faith may be the size of a mustard seed but
even so ... it brings with it a beginning of love, an
inkling of love, so intense that human love with
all its heights and depths pales in comparison.
Dorothy Day

Anyone taken any leaps of faith lately?
        No? Well you’re here in church today! That certainly counts as a leap of faith.
        Yes, there’s comfort here; but there are also ideas that may challenge you and ask you to look at yourself and your life again – ideas that may raise the temperature of your comfort zone and get you up and out of your easy chair. At least I hope so!
        So take a leap of faith with me now, a leap of faith into faith – your faith with all of its questions and doubts, yearnings and hopes.
        What is faith? I have come to equate faith with trust: I trust that things are as they must be. I trust that things beyond my knowing will not harm me. I trust that all things are given and my task is to receive them as gifts – undeserved and unmerited, but gifts of life freely given.
        Faith is beyond belief. Beliefs are human inventions, useful as guides in the practice of religion but provisional: They serve their purpose and must be discarded because the deeper trust, the greater truth eludes us always.
        Faith is deeper than religion. Religion itself is a human construction. The words, music, images, and rituals are products of our marvelous human imagination through the ages; yet they are but symbols whose purpose is to direct our hearts and minds beyond the visible world to the mystery many call God.
        True faith is not a leap but a deep sense of being in time and place: An interconnection with all things and all people. A oneness, a love, a trust.
        If you could have trust in just one thing, what would it be?
          Where does faith come from? In the Protestant conception faith is a gift from God, a gift of grace that we receive through no power of our own. I find great comfort in this belief. I am open to the power and wonder of grace; and when grace happens one can only respond with wonder and with gratitude. It’s personal; no further explanation is needed.
        Growing understanding of our evolutionary history, however, does suggest a rational explanation; and I am open to the power and wonder of science as well. Some scientists seeking a socio-biological understanding of faith believe that a faith instinct became imbedded in human make-up as we grew and adapted through the centuries. Some go so far to suggest that one of the reasons we achieved our position at the top of the evolutionary pyramid is because of our unique faith instinct. More than the advantages of an opposable thumb, the ability to stand upright, to skills to cultivate food and cook it, and self-consciousness, faith enables us to be grounded in wonder as it protects us from fear of the unknown. Faith gave us an evolutionary edge.
        Sometimes I encounter people who mock the idea of faith and the faithful. Others say they have no faith and the whole idea is preposterous in our market-based, techno-driven, secular world. Yet I believe all people do have faith; but religious beliefs, doctrines, and creeds have encrusted faith to such a degree that we can no longer feel it or act upon it in an intelligible way.
        What beliefs do you still cling to that inhibit or prevent a deeper, more trusting faith?
        Must you have faith in something to be a faithful person? That is, faith in God? Many believe a faith God is not necessary to be a person of faith – simply have faith in faith is enough. All right, but then I must ask, What is your point of reference? Whether you are a die-hard atheist or a living-loving God believer, God is still the reckoning point. You may be running away from God or running toward God, but God just won’t go away.
        For you, is God the problem? Or is God the answer or where you look for answers?
        In his book, The Future of Faith, the popular and influential theologian Harvey Cox gives a broad sweep of Christian history from the time of Jesus and his followers; through the early Christian communities and Christian persecution; through the period of Christian imperialism during and following the rein of Constantine; through the Middle Ages, the Inquisition, the Reformation, the Enlightenment; through the radicalisms of the 19th-century; through the continued fragmentation of the Christian faith into the 20th-century; the failed hope of the Second Vatican Council; the “God-is-dead” controversy of the 1960s; the fall of Christianity in Europe and the rise of Christianity in the global South; and concluding with the decline of American mainline Christian denominations and the emergence of Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. 
        He divides Christian history into three broad periods: The Age of Faith, the Age of Belief, and the Age of the Spirit. The Age of Faith, during the first three centuries of the Christian movement, we consider the time of Christianity in its purest form. Jesus followers met in homes, women held leadership roles, the sharing of the Eucharist bound the emerging community together. The teachings of Jesus were of more concern than the beliefs about Jesus. Love was the law, and eternal life was the aspiration.
        But Christianity became laden with doctrines and creeds; corrupted by imperial ambitions; and infected by power and wealth. Prof. Cox calls this the Age of Belief, between the fourth and 20th centuries. Martin Luther and the Reformation he incited placed a check on the power and influence of the Church of Rome; but the Protestant reformers, too, shaped their own narrow doctrines and creeds and inflicted their own harsh punishments on transgressors and nonbelievers.
        Prof. Cox paints a pretty grim portrait of Christian history and, like so many, yearns for a return to the pure form of the faith; but he knows this is not to be – history moves on. We are in a different day and a wholly different political, economic, and cultural context. Belief in God may still be strong, but we live in a secular age.
        Yet he senses a renewal of the spirit and predicts we are embarking on the Age of the Spirit – an age when faith once again is the heart of religious life, not creeds, doctrines, or hard and fast – and narrow – beliefs. The barriers of formal religion are giving way to a renewed spirit that carries us to the heart of faith.
        In what ways has church life deepened your faith? In what ways has church life made you doubt your faith? Might you be a part of the renewal of spirit here that takes us all closer to the heart of faith?
My friends, we seek lives of wholeness. We want a sense of completeness. We want all the pieces of our lives to fit together in a beautiful mosaic: Good health, meaningful work, a home to live in, decent clothes to wear, good food to eat, a loving family, access to the arts and education, recreational opportunities, and a welcoming community. Much of what we desire are things; but I must remind you that the most meaningful things are not things.
        Today and for the past two Sundays I have put before you three essential religious ideas and practices that can aid you in the search for wholeness: The practice of mindfulness, the discovery of your spiritual gifts, and, today, the search for a place of deep trust I call faith.
        We seek wholeness, and in this complex and fragmented world the journey toward wholeness can be a rough road. But as people of faith it is a journey we choose to follow – body, mind, and spirit together. We seek nothing less than our salvation. Salvation! Yes, I’m talking about salvation – salvation in its original meaning as healthy or whole as the Latin root of salvation, salvus, suggests – not the guilt-ridden, worrisome salvation many of us grew up with. No great leap of faith is necessary, no supernatural power is required, no God/man need be sacrificed. What is required is a deep desire to be made whole, a constancy of thought and practice, and a community of sister and brother travelers walking together toward wholeness and salvation.
        All has been given to us, here and now. Awaken to your faith. Every day you are saved. Each moment is salvation.