Faith is a funny thing. There are so many different things we can mean when we talk about faith. We can mean a religious tradition, our personal beliefs, our trust in God. And many times, our the notion of faith gets misused, as if all the bad things that happen in someone's life are somehow due to lack of faith. But I think that frequently the way the Bible talks about faith is not entirely (if at all) about an individual person's faith.
Today, we look at what it means for God to be faithful in times of peril. What does it mean for God to protect us? To help us explore what this looks like, we look at readings from both the Hebrew Scriptures as well as the Gospel (see 1 Samuel 17:32-49 and Mark 4:35-41). Our music as well contributes to our understanding of faith and faithfulness as we consider the poem/hymn "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
Today also marks a further shift in my local congregation towards a new normal -- bulletins, hymns, and multiple scripture readings. How do all of these pieces come together to give us a more complete understanding of God's ongoing relationship to humanity?
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This month, we have been talking about faith, but not really in the usual sense. We haven’t so much focused on our faith and what we can do with it as we have explored God’s faithfulness and what that does for us.
For me, I sometimes get a little uncomfortable when we start talking about faith. There is a history of misunderstanding or outright misuse of the idea of faith. On the one hand, we talk about the faith of those who have come before, the trust that they had that God would provide. For some of us here, we can look at these walls around us and see a living example of the faith of those who came before, who acquired this land and built this space with their own hands to provide a house of faith not only for themselves but also for those who would come after. That is a faith to look up to and to seek to emulate.
On the other hand, we know stories of faith healers and those like them, who turn our everyday circumstances into a matter of faith. If we just had a little more faith, our job would be okay, our relationships would be okay, the cancer would go away. We could take up our mat and walk. And for the most part, those who say such things are well meaning people.
It is a tricky balancing act between being faithful and trusting in God and worrying that we don’t have enough faith because life doesn’t always work exactly how we think it should. This is one reason I find it is helpful to look at God’s faithfulness when we talk about faith. I find that our faith is mostly about trusting in God’s faithfulness. Not that such faith is necessarily any easier.
Over the last two weeks, I have tried to help us explore some of the ways in which God remains faithful in ways that we can see and recognize around us. We talked about how God draws us together and makes us one family united in Jesus. We can look around ourselves on any Sunday and see familiar faces. But we also recognize that we all come from different places and different experiences. Even so, God calls us together into one body, one family, united in Christ to continue his ministry of love in the world, united with all the other Christians meeting in their places of faith both near and far.
Last week, we talked about the ways in which God provides far more than expected. The tiniest seeds can provide shelter and shade and sustenance. Jesus reminds us that it is the same with the kingdom of God. Just the tiniest seed of hope and faith can lead to big changes in the world, changes that can’t always be predicted judging by what we are able to see. But every act of hope and love we live in the world plants a seed for God’s kingdom to take root.
This week, we are beginning to expand our worship a little more, moving in the direction of a new normal as the health conditions continue to slowly improve in our area. I find that reading more than one scripture in worship each week helps us get a better picture of humanity’s relationship with God through generations. We can see both how the ancient Hebrew people understood their relationship with God as well as how those who followed Jesus understood some of those same stories through new eyes.
Our first reading today is from a story that is familiar. The story of David and Goliath is one that many of us likely learned as children, though there may be those who didn’t hear it until much later. The figure of David in the Bible is a complicated one. From humble origins as a shepherd to terrible acts as king, he is often lifted up as a Christ-like icon from the Hebrew scriptures. In fact, Jesus is spoken of as the son of David.
While some of the stories later in David’s life turn him almost into a villain, here we get a sense of why he is lifted up as a model of faith. The Hebrews and the Philistines have been at war. One of the Philistine’s, Goliath, is a giant of a man, most likely just under 7 feet tall. Twice a day for forty days (there’s that number again), he would come out between the two armies and call out for the Israelites to send a challenger so that the battle could be decided in single combat. Now the king at the time, Saul, was the largest man in his army, and therefore the obvious challenger, but he was afraid of the Philistine and would not fight him.
As described, David is still quite young. He has been a shepherd and is in the army as something of a squire perhaps rather than as a soldier. But he ultimately steps forward and volunteers to face Goliath. The king offers him armor and weapons, but David shrugs them off, feeling overwhelmed and weighed down by the heavy equipment. Instead, he faces Goliath as a shepherd carrying only his staff and his sling and a handful of stones.
While the story itself is meant to show that Saul is unfit to lead Israel and that David is the obvious choice to be the new king, I want to draw your attention just to the first few verses of our reading today. I do this cautiously, because the story is not really about faith, so I don’t want to turn this into a lecture about how we should all have faith like David. At the same time, this is one of those examples of people in the past displaying their trust in God’s faithfulness. Perhaps that is a fine line, but one I think we owe it to the story and to ourselves to walk.
You see, Saul is nervous about letting David face the giant. Goliath has been fighting for years, and David is still only a boy. But David argues that he has tended his father’s sheep for years. In doing so, he has had to defend the flock from lions and bears, chasing the animals off when he can and fighting and killing them when necessary.
Then he says, “The Lord, who rescued me from the power of both lions and bears, will rescue me from the power of this Philistine” (1 Samuel 17:37, CEB).
David knew that God is faithful. He knew that he could trust in God to continue to be faithful. God would protect him now just as God had protected him before. God was with him when he protected the flocks. God will be with him as he faces Goliath.
Of course, we know that things are rarely this easy. This is why I remind us that this particular story is about highlighting that David should be king rather than Saul and not really about having faith. It is too easy to take these words and decide we should blindly enter any situation simply because we trust that God will get us out of it. We know that God is always at work for good in the world, but that good does not always come when and how we expect it.
Turning to our Gospel story today, just look at the disciples. Again, here is a group of people of faith, those closest to Jesus. They have seen something in Jesus, something about him that makes them believe in him and follow him. Jesus has just been talking to them about the nature of the kingdom of God, and now they are traveling across the lake. A great wind comes up, blowing the little boat around and creating waves that threaten to capsize the boat, filling the boat with water, and Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat. Finally the disciples wake Jesus up. “Don’t you care that we’re drowning?” (Mark 4:38, CEB). Some of these men are fishermen. They no doubt understand the predicament they are in. They are certainly aware of the dangers of being out on the lake in weather like this. This is not an irrational fear. This is not like king Saul, leading his army into war but unwilling to engage in single combat himself. These are men who know the water and what will happen if things don’t change.
As soon as he awakens, Jesus commands, “Silence! Be still!” The gospel writer makes it clear that Jesus is speaking to the wind and the water, but given his next words, it is not hard to imagine that he is speaking to the disciples as well. He turns to them next and asks, “Why are you frightened? Don’t you have faith yet?” (Mark 4:39, CEB). This seems an odd thing to ask the men who are traveling the countryside with him, men who have seen the miracles he has performed, men who have heard his teaching, men who think that he is leading them on the correct path to live a life of faith in relationship with God. “Don’t you have faith yet?”
Taken at face value, the faith of David in the face of the Philistine and Jesus’ rebuke in the face of the storm, it reminds me of folks who live in places frequented by hurricanes who figure they’ll just wait it out. Folks who see the flooded bridge and figure they’ll trust that it is okay. Maybe things will work out, and maybe they won’t. But is that really the same thing as faith? Is that really what Jesus means in this instance? Is that really what David means in his monologue? Just trust in God and blindly go into every dangerous situation?
I think each of them meant something a little different. Like I said before, David’s story isn’t really a story about faith. His story is about setting up the next king of Israel. It makes more sense to think of him as the main character on your favorite TV show. No matter how dangerous the situation seems, he is going to escape to fight another day. At the same time, it is a story of faith, of God’s faithfulness. David knows that God has been with him other times he has faced dangerous foes. He knows that God will be with him no matter the outcome. He figures it will be in his favor, but even if it isn’t, God remains faithful.
I think this is the nuance that Jesus is talking about when he questions the disciples' faith. It is less a question of, “don’t you trust that you will survive” and more a question of “don’t you trust that I am with you.” God’s protection isn’t always about protecting individuals from harm. Sometimes God’s protection is simply the promise that God will be with us, even if we do come to harm. God's protection is a promise that his kingdom is coming into the world. It isn't always about the individual; sometimes it's about the people.
This is the message I get from our first hymn today. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” started as a poem written by a black man to celebrate the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. It was a poem about recognizing God’s faithfulness, God who released him and his people from captivity. A God who was with them through all of the horrors of enslavement. A God who brought them forth into a new world. I feel like the poem acknowledges that trusting in God was about having faith as a people, not necessarily about individual faith. And it also acknowledges that having faith does not mean that all pain and sorrow will cease. It is a faith based in reality, a faith that understands that God doesn’t always directly stop the pain, but God always sits in that pain with us, working toward a better tomorrow.
It is also a faith that points to the promised land that is still yet to come. Even as it was written to celebrate release from enslavement in honor of the President who worked to make that happen, it was also written during the same time period that memorials and statues honoring the Confederacy were popping up all over the South. It is a song of faith for all that God has done, and a song of hope for all that God continues to do.
What does it mean to have faith through the horrors of enslavement as it existed in our country?
What does it mean to continue to have faith when there are signs all around that some people don’t want that way of life to be over?
What does it mean to continue to have faith when your personal safety isn’t guaranteed?
This is the type of faith that Jesus was talking about. He never promised the disciples safety, but he did promise to be with them. He promised to guide them and give them strength. He promised that the kingdom of God was coming into the world.
As the kingdom of God spreads, as more people are called to participate in this family, as more seeds are planted, the world will grow into a better place. Jesus promises that he will be with us every step of the way. God is faithful. Let us trust in that.