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Editorial
Alwyn Thomson
Comment:
Politics: serving God and doing good!
Ethel White
From
the Director: Cultivating the common ground
David W Porter
ECONI
Statement: Confidence in God
October 2002
Postbag: Letters to the Editor
Why
vote?
Alison Laird
Communities
of hope
Lord Alderdice
Transformation 2003: Killing for God?
View
from the south
Patrick Mitchel
Church
& state
Esmond
Birnie MLA
Taking
the plunge
John Kyle
Faith
in politics
Interview: Rt Hon Paul Murphy MP
Your
kingdom come
Heather Morrow
ECONI
Statement: Forum for Peace & Reconciliation
January 2003
Bible
study series: Faith in the future
David
W Porter
Through
a glass, darkly
Changing Women, Changing Worlds Conference
Review:
A night in November by Marie Jones
Noel
McCune
Book
Reviews
Alwyn Thomson
For
God and His Glory Alone:
Study 3: Reconciliation
For
God and His Glory Alone:
Study 4: Peace
FAITH IN THE FUTURE
SHOWING FAITH WHERE IT MATTERS
David W Porter
In this second study in Luke we discover the kind of faith which
matters – a persistent, obedient, loving, risk-taking, grateful,
expectant faith, which works because its priorities are right. This is
the faith that we are called to discover, nurture, and to celebrate together
as God’s people.
They say your early forties is a difficult age. However, I recently read an article which gave me some comfort because it suggested that, in fact, we are all at a difficult age. Whatever decade you’re in, life has a way of every so often causing you to take stock, reflect in a new way, and face up to the challenge of coming to terms with who you are and where you’re going.
In the context of modern western life expectancy, forty is that point when the future begins to seem less than the past. However, to enter your forties as the twentieth century gives way to the twenty first, seems to present a peculiar dilemma in our times. You don’t fit the standard generational categories. You discover that somehow you’re an inbetweenie. Neither a baby boomer nor a generation X-er, you are someone born in the half-generation gap that sociologists are not very good at defining.
For me this presents particular insights. Listening to baby boomer church leaders, now in their fifties, talk about a crisis for the future of faith, I find myself in the middle of a debate. It’s like standing in between two generations with different maps trying to agree a meeting point. I understand the concerns of those who fear what the future is throwing up in its post-modern incarnation. Yet I share a sense of belonging which is rooted in the present – because as an in-betweenie, I am also shaped by that reality in our society. It is in this context that the people of faith of all generations are called to incarnate the gospel.
The challenges this presents to the church and the future of faith are immense. But it seems to me that in the gospel record of Jesus we begin to see insights from his ministry that are particularly pertinent to this world in which we now live.
A faith that works…
Jesus was not
only concerned with finding faith where it was least expected, he was
also concerned with seeing faith at work in people’s lives and in
the world. Showing faith and its intrinsic qualities becomes the touchstone
of Jesus’ ministry and is a theme that is very much in tune with
a world where faith needs to be seen to work.
Marxism developed the axiom that truth is measured by its ability to change reality, that something is true because it works. Many so-called Liberation Theologians or those who are just determined to see the practical effectiveness of the good news of Jesus have adopted this pragmatic test of faith that works – that it is demonstrable.
It is not that I would want to advocate faith as a fix-it charm which endows the holder with health and wealth; rather, as Christians, we need the reality check of an incarnational presence of the living God which works for people. This, we discover, is actually the gospel, the good news: it is good news precisely because it is true and it works. In the face of the critical scepticism of the Scribes and Pharisees Jesus acted in order that they might know – in Luke 5:24 we read that “They may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”
This visible faith was seen to work by the paralysed man, whose friends had faith and brought him to the place where Jesus was: Jesus heals him and he can get up and walk. Yet, the implication of what Jesus says in Luke 5:23 & 24 is that it is easier to say that someone is forgiven than to actually show it in how it demonstrably changes the reality of their situation.
This is the challenge for us. How does our faith and new relationship with God show in our lives? How does it demonstrably change the reality of the situations in which we find ourselves? A faith that works reflects certain characteristics; it requires that we get our priorities right and shows that it works in its results.
A faith that reflects…
As we see from the stories in Luke’s gospel where faith is mentioned,
faith that works reflects certain characteristics in the believer. Firstly,
it reflects persistence. The friends of the paralysed man in Luke
5:17-26, despite the crowds, despite all the obstacles to getting
into the presence of Christ, persevered. They were persistent even to
the point of going up onto the roof, taking off the tiles and lowering
him down through the hole into the midst of the gathering in the house
below.
Secondly, a faith that works reflects obedience. In Luke 7:1-10, the centurion, who had faith of a kind that Jesus had not found in Israel, knew what it was to be under authority(verse 8) and was willing to obey the word of God and the authority of Jesus.
Thirdly, a faith that works reflects love, as we see from the story of the prostitute in Luke 7:36-50. Her faith was such that, when all around her shunned her and considered her unacceptable, she recognised that acceptance was to be found in Jesus. God’s forgiveness worked to the depths of her need, and was reflected in her great love for, devotion to and worship of Jesus.
Fourthly, a faith that works reflects risk. The woman with the haemorrhage in Luke 8:43-48, whose faith resulted in immediate healing, took the risk of touching the hem of Jesus’ garment. In reaching out of her anonymity to touch Jesus she could no longer remain hidden in the crowd when he realised the power had gone out of him (verse 47). Once she had engaged with him she had to make a public declaration of her faith and of her healing.
A faith that works reflects gratitude. In Luke 17:11-19 ten men are healed of their leprosy but only the Samaritan among them comes back to give thanks. He praises God for his healing and returns to thank Jesus for what he has done in engaging with him and acting in his life. Those who were from the people of faith are so smitten by their physical healing they carry on their way.
And a faith that works reflects expectancy – Luke 18:35-43. espite all that the crowd said to him, despite all that they did to try to keep him from being an embarrassment at the great moment of Jesus’ entry into Jericho, the blind beggar calls out expectantly. When Jesus asks, “What can I do for you?” the beggar says, “Heal me.” He has the expectation that his faith would work.
Requires that
we prioritise…
This faith does not occur in the absence of effort. In Luke’s gospel
Jesus has much to say about the practical consequences of following him.
A radical reprioritising of our domesticated lives follows from choosing
to put the kingdom first.
In Luke 12:22-34 Jesus expresses his exasperation in the search for faith in terms that resonate with the angst of our times. Worry, strife and fear are the counter evidence of faith. Indeed, they cannot deliver on the very things that people strive for – clothing, food and even life expectancy itself. Despite the benefits of technological and scientific advance, many have found the headlong pursuit of material security that has marked the prosperous one third of our world a profoundly empty experience. It is Jesus who speaks to the depths of our motives. Where is our heart? What we love, where our treasure is proves once again to be his critical concern.
Striving for God’s kingdom is the work of faith. Failure to allow faith to fundamentally alter our motives for living will always undermine our faith and the witness we bear to it. A working faith will always be evident in how we conduct ourselves in the basic business of living.
Faith has tangible
effects…
This faith that shows itself, this faith that works, has results. Luke
tells us in 5:24;
7:10; 8:48;
17:19
and 18:42
of the health, wealth and well-being which the people encountering Jesus
receive as a result of their faith. However, we need to be careful not
to define health and wealth as the only measures that we are showing faith
and living in faith in our world.
Indeed, faith that works is sometimes faith that can see beyond the present circumstances to that wholeness which will only come when the kingdom is revealed in all its glory and there will be no more sorrow, or sickness, or pain and we will be renewed and remade in God’s image with new bodies - new creatures to live and to serve God for his glory forever. This is the faith that keeps us going, not just the instantaneous signs of God’s healing.
This healing and hope for wholeness comes from the faith that this future with God, this salvation is ours. Faith that works results in salvation. In Luke 18:42 the blind beggar is told clearly that his faith has not merely healed him, it has saved him.
A faith that works results in forgiveness - as Jesus says to the paralysed man in Luke 5:20. It was evident also in the life of the sinful woman in Luke 7:47. The faith that works deals with that deepest sickness, the moral and spiritual sickness of our souls, of our hearts, and brings us to that word of forgiveness, of acceptance before the living God.
Ultimately, a faith that works results in contentment. We see in Luke 12:22-34 that when we make the kingdom a priority, we do not need to worry about clothing or food or material well-being. We can be content with what God gives us when we learn to live at peace with ourselves and the world in which we live.
Finally, faith that works results in peace. Note how Jesus sends these various people of faith that he encounters on their way, having healed and restored them. It is to the two women, and the women only, that Jesus says, “Go in peace.” Imagine what this means to the prostitute, regarded by the men as a woman beyond the bounds of respectability, who is kept imprisoned there by the men who abuse her. Jesus receives her act of worship and to this troubled woman he says, “Go in peace: your sins are forgiven.”
The woman who has been bleeding for 12 years, is not only marginalized because she is a woman: she is excluded from an embarrassed, polite, religious society because of her ailment. In a real sense she has become invisible and untouchable as well as incurable. Jesus says to her, “Go in peace.”
Out there
So once again we’re brought back to an awareness that showing faith
and the results of faith will take us beyond the boundaries of our comfortable
limits. The faith of the future must reflect different priorities to those
of the world, it must show characteristics of authenticity which run counter
to many of the ways of the world and must be shown to have effect where
it matters.
Dare I suggest that where it matters most is not primarily in the comfort of our church buildings as we dutifully attend on a Sunday morning, but in the awkwardness of our workplace on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings? Faith matters, not in the escape route of persistent busyness with church activities but rather in that most intimate place of relationships, where our ability to abuse and misuse one another often astounds us. That’s where faith matters.
Showing faith matters less with the person who comes and this week professes their conversion to Christ, who can demonstrate all that that means in a change of lifestyle, than it does in standing alongside those whose wounds are not so easily healed: those who need more tending, whose wounds are constantly being reopened by the pain of their life. This is where faith that works needs to be shown to have results; this is the challenge of faith in the future.
Can we find within ourselves a faith with the strength to go beyond the boundaries, which is ready to be shown where it matters? If our churches, our congregations, our ministries are to have any future in this world, then that’s where we need to be. We live in a generation that demands it, that requires, as a test of our authenticity, to see that we do indeed have faith in the Saviour of the world.
This is the second in a series of three Bible Studies previously given as talks at the 2001 Methodist Conference.
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