Sunday, August 14, 2011 Reverend Jim Wood

“When Faith Comes Alive!”

John 1:35-42

Prayer:

Once again, Lord, I ask myself, “Who am I to speak to this congre­gation?”  Many of them are much wiser than I—kinder, braver, more tender and loving.  Yet for these moments the task is in my keeping, and I commit myself to do it as best I can.  Clear my mind of distractions; warm my heart with compassion; and fill my soul with faith in your goodness and power.  Amen.

Emperor Frederick II, who ruled the Holy Roman Empire during the 13th century, was an intellectual odd­ball.  In his quest for knowledge, certain reckless ex­periments he conducted are known as “The Follies of the Emperor.”

In one notorious experiment, Frederick wanted to learn what language had been spoken in the Garden of Eden.  He wondered, “Had it been Hebrew?  Greek?  Latin?”  He concluded that since Adam and Eve had no one else around to influence their ability to speak a lan­guage, he needed only to recreate the circumstances under which they had begun to speak and he would have his answer.  And so with enormous presumption, the Emperor isolated several infants from the moment of their birth so that they would never hear human speech until they heard their own.  Babies were taken from their mothers immediately at birth and were then cared for by nurses who had been instructed never to speak a word to them or in their presence.  Furthermore, the nurses were not to touch or hold them unless absolutely necessary.  The conditions of the experiments were carefully con­trolled and considered a success, except that sadly within a short time all of the infants died.

What was true for those unfortunate newborns is true for us.  We only become real persons in relationship with others who make themselves known to us, who touch and hold us.  We only become fully alive through discus­sion, encounter, mutual give and take and affirmation.  Without such communication and sharing, infants die, teenagers become warped and confused and adults lose their sense of identity, stability and the desire to live.  When prisoners of war were placed for long periods in solitary confinement, they became disoriented, they hal­lucinated and many simply gave up in despair.  It’s a fact that our sanity and vitality depend upon our being con­tinuously and variously spoken to by other persons.  Only then can we know for sure who we are and embrace life.  Only then can we in turn share ourselves with others, enter relationships of love and give our thoughts and feelings a language and a voice.

Ignazio Silone, the Italian writer, saw how essential such sharing conversation is and wrote:

Our spiritual situation today resembles a refu­gee encampment in a no man’s land …  What do you think refugees do from morning to night?  They spend most of their time telling one another the stories of their lives.  The stories may not be amusing, but they tell them to one another, really to make themselves understood.

And in one of his novels, Silone adds, “Two (persons) must be alone together, talking softly with many pauses.”

Not only do our self-understanding, self-esteem and our reason for living depend upon sharing our life with others, but so do the vitality and meaning of our faith.  That’s our first word this morning.  Only as we meet other persons face to face and talk together about the miracle of life, the problems of human existence, the love of God, the power of Christ, and the mystery of death will we know the depth and strength of our faith, how powerful it is and whether through it we allow God to blend the broken and scattered pieces of our lives into wholeness and fulfillment.

The story is told about a man who was in terrible physical condition.  He was tired and weak.  Finally, he went to see his doctor.

“Doc,” he said, “tell me what to do.  I feel drained and exhausted.  I have this chronic headache and I feel worn out all the time.  What’s the best thing I can do?”

The doctor, knowing the man’s wild lifestyle said, “I’ll tell you exactly what to do.  Each day after work, go home and get a good night’s rest.  Stop drinking, stop carousing, and stop running around all night.  That’s the best thing you can do.”

The man was silent for a moment.  Then he asked, “Doc, what’s the next best thing?’

We might as well admit it.  Broken relationships, hostility, and violence damage our world.  They reduce the meaning of life for everyone involved.  We know that trust in God’s ways of love and forgiveness is the answer, yet we continue to ask, “What’s the next best thing?”

But only as we take the risks of meeting with others and express our deeper feelings; only as we share our glory and crisis moments; only as we relate those times when we’ve been on the edge of discouragement and despair where it would be so easy to topple over; only as we express our certainties and doubts, our loves and loneliness, our delights and pain, our breakthroughs and reversals and our strengths and weaknesses; only then does our faith become more than mere intellectual acceptance and opinion, pious words or selfish gratifica­tion.  Until faith is shared, it does not have the smell of life about it.  Until we share aloud with someone else about what we believe and why—softly perhaps, and with many pauses—do we know for sure what we believe and how far it will take us into the darkness.

That’s why “faith shared is faith alive!”  That’s our other word this morning.  We see this displayed in the disciple, Andrew, whose contagious faith prompted him to bring people repeatedly to meet Jesus so they might discover the persuasion and power Andrew himself had received from Christ.  Our Scripture lesson this morning tells how Andrew, after meeting Jesus for the first time, could not wait to share the wonder of it with his brother, Simon.  You can almost feel the excitement in him as he tells his brother, “We’ve found the Messiah.”  Then Andrew invited Simon to come with him, meet Jesus face to face and discover first hand what Andrew was experiencing.  Later Andrew brought certain inquiring Greeks to meet Jesus, and we don’t know how many others were brought to Christ because of Andrew’s desire to share his faith with joy and enthusiasm.  Faith shared is faith alive and well!

We also watch faith come alive in the apostle Paul as he moves out to share that faith with others, enduring all kinds of hardship, challenges, harassment and opposi­tion.  There’s a wonderful accounting of this in the six­teenth chapter of Acts.  When Paul and his missionary companion, Silas, reached Philippi in Macedonia, they sought a place for prayer and worship of God.  That’s what took them to a riverside where they met some women of the city.  The two men sat with the women and began to share their faith story about Jesus and God’s saving love.  The Scripture reports that God opened the hearts of the women and one, a wealthy woman named Lydia, received Christ, was baptized along with her family and became a follower of the Way.

When we share our faith with others, we awaken to greater assurance and find how our trust and commit­ment to God grow in constancy and certainty.  Faith shared is faith alive.  When we’re alert to the opportuni­ties and openings that come in meeting and talking with others, as Andrew, Paul and Silas were, God uses that sharing to touch hearts and change lives in decisive ways.

A colleague tells of a young woman who was a music major at Indiana University and an accomplished violinist.  She had grown up in a Jewish family but had not changed her heritage of faith.  One day she presented herself for membership in the United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Indiana, and then she shared with the pastor of that church her journey of faith that led her to make that decision.  She had recorded her experiences in a journal and she gave the pastor permission to read and quote from it.  This is what she wrote, in part:

Something very strange happened to me tonight.  If I were to explain it to someone, I know I couldn’t, so I’ll try to write it out on these pages.  Perhaps it will pass, but it seems too emotionally exciting that I don’t really want to lose it.  Right after dinner I came upstairs to my room to study some music history for my exam tomorrow, but I never quite made it.  That girl from down the hall, Nancy, passed by my door, and I was deter­mined to finally find out what it is that seems like a light around her.

The journal entry goes on to describe how she approached Nancy and asked her the secret of her inner glow.  In the process, this neighbor down the hall told her about her faith in Jesus Christ and this was the reac­tion as recorded in the Journal:

As Nancy spoke, I was filled with a strange feeling.  I can’t really describe it, but it was somewhat like the anticipation I feel when something great is about to happen to me musically, only this was greater.

Some months later this brilliant student and musician accepted Christ and joined the church.  There were no buttonholing and no patronizing “Are you saved?”  There was only a simple sharing by another student of what Jesus Christ meant in her life.  And by that quiet witness another person found the joy of believing and the assurance of salvation through God’s love in Christ.  One theologian puts it this way: “The world hears the Gospel when it sees it.”  Faith shared is faith alive.

That’s how it happens time and again.  The Christian Gospel began in friendship—Andrew telling Simon, and Simon sharing with others, and those others sharing with yet others how Christ makes all the difference, how a life lived in God’s love is full and exciting.  There’s no such thing as a solitary Christian.  While it’s always very per­sonal, our faith is never private.  An authentic faith with the smell of life about it, with the peace of Christ in it and with the light of God upon it is a faith that is shared in the language of love and friendship.  Didn’t Jesus tell us, “… let your light so shine before others, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven”?  In truth, each of us is a light bearer; an evangelist, who is to pass on the good news, simply and honestly as we tell our own faith story, breaking the silence of the no man’s lands between people, and lis­tening with a love that builds bridges between us, redeems the loneliness of our fragmented world and welcomes Christ’s coming between us and within us with wholeness and peace.

I have shared the following with you from this pulpit before, the words of Tim Hansel who, in his book You Gotta Keep Dancing, passes on this bit of prose written by a friend:

There isn’t much that I can do, but I can share my bread with you, and sometimes a sorrow, too—as on our way we go.

There isn’t much that I can do, but I can sit an hour with you, and I can share a joke with you, and sometimes share reverses, too—as on our way we go.

There isn’t much that I can do, but I can share my flowers with you, and I can share my books with you and sometimes share your burdens, too—as on our way we go.

There isn’t much that I can do, but I can share my songs with you, and I can share my mirth with you, and sometimes come and laugh with you—as on our way we go.

There isn’t much that I can do, but I can share my hopes with you, and I can share my fears with you, and sometimes shed some tears with you—as on our way we go.

There isn’t much that I can do, but I can share my friendship with you, and I can share my life with you, and I can share my Lord with you and often a prayer or two—as on our way we go.

When these kinds of sharing take place, faith comes alive.  Amen to that!

Let us pray:

Go with us, loving and gracious God, that we may go with you.  In weakness make us brave and in strength keep us gentle.  In ignorance open our minds to your leading, and in knowledge bend our hearts to your will.  Finally, make us bold in sharing the glad, good news of Jesus Christ with others.  In his name we pray.  Amen.

 

 

Remember Stephen Minister at Prayer Rail