The Object of our Faith

Text: Mark 9:14-29

Dear saints in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

How strong is your faith? Do you think of yourself as a person with strong faith or do you struggle with faith? Your answer to that question might change on a daily or hourly basis. How strong, would you say, is your faith today, right now?

On a pretty regular basis I hear people say things to me like, “Don’t worry about me, Pastor, my faith is strong…” or, on the other hand, “You know, Pastor, my faith doesn’t feel so strong right now…” Everyone goes through times in life where they might fall into either one of those extremes. Most of the time, I imagine, we are somewhere in between the two. Whichever part of that you fall into, however, wherever you would put yourself on the spectrum of faith and strength, our gospel reading today has something to say to you: the strength of your faith does not matter.

In our gospel reading today a man brings his son to Jesus hoping that Jesus might heal him. The boy has a demon, an unclean spirit, which makes him unable to speak. This spirit also seizes him, throws him to the ground, causes him to foam and the mouth and become rigid, and even throws the boy into fire and water seeking to destroy him. All this, the father explains, has been going on since the boy was just a little child. I can only imagine the distress, anxiety, turmoil, and stress that this father and the rest of the family have been through because of this boy’s condition. On this day, however, there is reason for hope. Jesus is near.

When they left their home that morning to come find Jesus the man’s faith was probably as strong as it could possibly be. He was confident that a single word from Jesus would be enough to rid his son of this evil spirit forever. Their ordeal would soon be over. Salvation had come. Brimming with this confidence and filled with this hope they make their way to find Jesus.

When they get to where Jesus was supposed to be, however, they run into a problem. Jesus isn’t there. Jesus had gone up the mountain with three of his disciples, Peter, James, and John, and had been transfigured before them. Up there on the mountain Jesus revealed His glory to His three closes disciples, Peter, James, and John. When the man and his son arrived, then, Jesus was not there.

The man is undeterred, however. He is still confident, filled with hope, and strong in faith. Jesus may not be there personally, but 9 of His disciples were there and that was enough for him. Peter, James, and John were up on the mountain with Jesus, but the others weren’t. All 12 of Jesus’ disciples had been commissioned and sent out by Jesus to preach and cast out demons. They had all dealt with things like this before and had actually been rather successful in doing it. The man was confident that they would be able to heal and save His boy.

But then another problem popped up. One by one the 9 disciples who had not gone up the mountain tried to cast the demon out of the boy. One by one they all failed. Try as they might the boy remained mute and was still afflicted with an evil spirit. Up to this point the man had been confident that his boy would be saved, but now the doubts started to creep in. “They are not strong enough,” the man thinks to himself, “the evil spirit is too powerful. Perhaps even Jesus can’t save my boy.”

Crowds had gathered around by now and the news of the disciples’ failure spread through the crowd like wildfire. The scribes from Jerusalem, who would do anything to discredit Jesus and His teaching, were there too and they were thrilled to see that the disciples were unable to help the boy. The man, hearing the crowds murmur about what had just happened and hearing the scribes crow about Jesus wasn’t everything that the people thought He was, feels his faith and hope slip away second by second, moment by moment. He feels like a fool for trusting Jesus.

That’s when Jesus showed up. Jesus walks right into the middle of the crowd and takes command of the situation. “What are you arguing about?” He asks. Then, from the midst of the crowd, the man who brought his boy to be healed speaks up, he explains the situation and tells Jesus that the disciples were too weak to cast the demon out of his boy. “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us,” he says.

Notice here how far the man’s faith seems to have fallen. He’s not so sure anymore that Jesus can help. He’s not brimming with the confidence he had when the set out from home earlier that day. He’s not holding out hope that anything can be done for his boy. “If,” he says, “you can do anything have compassion on us and help us.” 

Jesus responds, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”

Those are beautiful words, “All things are possible for one who believes.” What reassurance those words gives us, what hope! But for this man who brought his boy to Jesus so that he might be healed and is now filled with the doubt brought on by the disciples’ failure these words lay everything on the line and he has to ask himself, “Do I even believe?” He once believed, but now it doesn’t seem so clear. He cries out, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

Now, that doesn’t sound like strong faith, does it? If anything that is the definition of weak faith. It hardly seems like faith at all, actually. He says that he believes, but in the very next breath confesses that he does not believe.

But look at what Jesus does. Jesus does not proceed to lecture the man about his faith that seems weak or even non-existent. He does not explain to everyone there that they really ought to trust him more. He doesn’t chide or scold the man for struggling in faith. Jesus, having heard the man’s seemingly weak and conflicted confession of faith, steps in to heal and save. He turns His attention to that poor boy who has been afflicted so terribly for so many years and says to that unclean spirit that has been afflicting him, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” With that the spirit came out. Jesus took the boy by the hand, picked up him from the ground, and returned him to his weak in faith, doubting, questioning, and uncertain father. Remarkable.

That is the whole point of this story and that is what you and I are meant to take out of this today. The strength of our faith does not matter. Having strong faith does not save you. Having weak faith, faith that struggles to believe, does not condemn you. Faith in Jesus, whether it is strong or weak, is what matters. Faith in Jesus, whether it is strong or weak, is what saves. In other words, it is the object of our faith, the thing our faith believes in, trusts in, and clings to, that matters, not our faith itself or the strength of that faith.

Having “strong faith” means nothing. I can have strong faith that my football team, the Edmonton Eskimos, is going to win the Grey Cup this year. I can have strong faith and believe that with all my heart. But unless the team that I am believing in figures out how to play better, stops losing games they should win, and beats all the other teams that would also like to win the Grey Cup this year my faith is meaningless. Believing in something doesn’t make it so.

That is the difference between our faith and the object of our faith. Faith itself, simply believing in something, does not accomplish anything. The object of our faith, the thing that we believe in, is what makes the difference.

Even though he was conflicted and filled with doubts this man who brought his son to Jesus still, by the grace of God, trusted in Him. That trust, that faith, was shaky at best and had been reduced to a fraction of its former self, but it was trust and faith that believed and trusted in the right thing, the right one, Jesus, the Son of God in human flesh, who had the power to heal and save.

Our faith can be just as shaky, just as weak as that man’s faith was. Events transpire in our lives sometimes leaving the same doubts and concerns in our hearts and minds too. But the object of our faith, the thing that our faith clings to, is not its own strength, but Jesus Christ the crucified and risen Son of God who has the power to heal and save. Our faith clings, even in the midst of doubt, to Jesus who died for us. Our faith clings, even when conflicted, to Jesus who rose from the dead for us. Our faith clings, even when guilt plagues our conscience to the point that we think that God could not possibly love us anymore, to Jesus who takes away our sin. Our faith clings, even when everything around us seems to suggest that we should give up hope, to Jesus who has promised us life in His Kingdom. He is the object of our faith.

So how strong is your faith?

If your faith feels strong rejoice, be glad, and give thanks to God because He has given you faith to trust in His Son. What a blessing! But also know that the strength of your faith won’t save you, only Jesus will save you.

In the same way, if your faith feels weak rejoice, be glad, and give thanks to God because He has given you faith to trust in His Son. This faith, weak though it may be, saves as it clings to Jesus, the Son of God who died and rose for us. In Jesus name, Amen.

How can this be?

Text: John 6:51-69

Dear Saints in Christ, grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

“How can this be?” That’s essentially the question that the crowds who have been listening to Jesus in our gospel readings the last three weeks finally end up asking in our reading. “How can this be? How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”

In one sense it is a good question, a great question really. If you and I had been there among that crowd and had stood there listening to Jesus talk extensively about how He is the Bread of Life that came down from heaven and that everyone who eats the bread that He gives will live forever and then if we heard Him conclude the point that He has been making for 30 verses now by saying that the bread that He gives for the life of the world is His flesh, we would be asking the same thing, “How can this be? How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”

What Jesus is saying here defies any logic, any human understanding. Anyone who heard this surely would be wondering the same thing. In that sense “How can this be?” is a good question. At the same time, however, it is entirely the wrong question and that is proven by how Jesus answers (or doesn’t answer) the question that the crowds have put to Him.

The crowds asked “How?” but Jesus answers with “Why?” He says, “Truly, Truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you have no life in you.” Jesus does not explain how this can be or how He intends to give His flesh to these people for them to eat. Jesus doesn’t delve into a discourse about His divinity (He isn’t merely a man, after all) and explain the power and authority that He has as the Son of God that enables Him to do this. He does not answer the “How?” question. He answers the “Why?” question. Why does this man give us His flesh to eat? The reason, Jesus says, is simple. Without it, without His flesh and blood to eat and drink, you have not life in you. With it, with His flesh and blood, you have eternal life and He will raise you up on the last day. That is the “why” and  that is what really matters.

We still love to ask “how” though, don’t we? We human beings have kind of an obsession “how.” There is a show on TV called “How It’s Made.” There isn’t really anything particularly special or exciting about this program, it is just a series of video recordings of everything from crayons to kayaks to cars being made on an assembly line with a rather monotone voice describing the whole process to you, but it is fascinating to watch. I’ve found myself more than once captivated by the opportunity to learn how things are made. This is a result, I suppose, of the curiosity that comes along with our human nature. That curiosity is a good thing, a blessing given to us by God, however, it can become a problem for us. Our curiosity, our obsessions with knowing “how,” can cause us to doubt and question God’s own words that He speaks to us. That is exactly what happens in our gospel today. The people asked “How can this be?” and they ended up walking away from Jesus.

The “How?” question that the crowds asked when they heard Jesus talk about His flesh being the bread that He gives for the life of the world betrays what they think about who He is. “How can this MAN give us his flesh to eat?” they wonder. For them Jesus is just a man. They made that clear earlier in the conversation too when (in our reading for last week) they grumbled about Jesus because He said that He came down from heaven. They knew (or thought they knew) His mother and father and were certain He had not come from heaven. “Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph?” they said.

For them Jesus was not the Son of God in human flesh, to them He was just another man. For them the words that they heard Jesus speaking were not the Words of the Son of God, to them they were just the words of another teacher. As such, they did not believe He had come down from heaven, they did not believe that He could give His flesh as the bread of life, and they walked away from Him leaving the promises that He was offering to them sitting on the table.

You and I know that Jesus is God’s Son. The Holy Spirit has created this faith in our hearts. We know that His Words are true. Again, the Holy Spirit has caused us to know this. And we know, because the Holy Spirit testifies to it in the Scriptures, that our Lord Jesus does give His flesh and blood as true food and true drink under bread and wine to give life to the world. We know and believe these things.

At the same time, however, the temptation always remains to doubt. Our minds, seeking to be wise by worldly standards, begin to question if the words we read in Scripture could really be God’s Word. Ideas from out there in the world creep into our minds suggesting that perhaps these are just the word of men, the disciples of Jesus for example, who did their best to get everything down right, but made some mistakes along the way or that the words of the Bible were true for people in one time, but might mean something different for us today or that some parts of the Bible (the New Testament for example) are true, but other parts (like the Old Testament) are just made up stories. The source of these ideas and this kind of thinking is none other than Satan himself. He always wants us to be wondering as we read and hear God’s Word, “Did God really say that?”

What our readings today teach us is, first of all, the danger of this temptation to doubt God’s Word as we will see the crowds walk away from Jesus not believing in Him, but also the source of real, true wisdom. Our Old Testament reading today ends with these words, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”

Under the guise of wisdom and understanding Satan tempts us to believe that we somehow know better than God, that we understand this world, our lives, and everything about them better than He does. He tempts us to put God and His Word to the test of our human reason and understanding by questioning the truthfulness of His Word in the name of wisdom. This is, of course, is a lie and it is foolishness.

Wisdom, real wisdom, wisdom from God, begins with fearing Him. This fear is not so much a terrified fear (although as sinners who deserve God’s wrath and judgement there is an element of that kind of fear too), but it is more a reverent, awe-filled kind of fear that comes from knowing a God who loves and forgives so deeply. Wisdom begins with this kind of fearing God, respecting Him as the source of everything that exists, the giver of life, the just law maker, and (above all) the forgiver of sins. Wisdom begins with understanding and accepting that God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. It begins with accepting God’s Word as God’s Word and believing it because it is God’s Word. From there wisdom flows. When we come to His Word, His banquet table, as simple, unlearned people lacking in sense He fills us with His Wisdom to know the depth of His love for us that would send a Saviour to us to give His flesh for us on the cross and rise from the dead that we, who have no life in us, might live in Him.

“Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood,” Jesus says, “has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.  For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

In these words it is as if Jesus, the real wisdom of God, is setting a table before you and inviting you to come, sit, and eat. He offers to fill you with His goodness, His love, His forgiveness. He offers you His life. He offers to you freely everything that He has won for you by His death on the cross and His rising from the dead. To respond to this invitation by asking, “How can this be?” rather than by coming, eating, and rejoicing in these gifts would be the height of foolishness. And yet, that is too often exactly what we do.

After Jesus said these things many, John tells us, of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him. Why? Because they just could not see how this could possibly be. In their own “wisdom” they walk away from Jesus, the source of all wisdom, who is God Himself in human flesh. And look what they left on the table when they walk away from Him: eternal life, resurrection on the last day, His abiding presence in them and with them and their abiding in Him, forgiveness of sins, peace, joy, and, yes, even wisdom. Wisdom, human worldly wisdom, cast these things aside for the sake of understanding. Faith, however, rejoicing in God’s Word and promises, clings to these things as our sure hope.

When those who were offended by His words and refused to believe His teaching had left Jesus turned to the twelve, the “faithful” twelve who just the night before had been terrified when they saw Him walking on the water, and said, “Do you want to go away as well?”

As he often did Simon Peter spoke up on behalf of the rest and said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life?” Peter and the others did not understand how Jesus could give His flesh for people to eat. They struggled day by day, moment by moment to believe and trust in Him. More often than not their faith failed (as it had on the boat!). But they trusted in His Words, the words of eternal life. They had heard His Words and knew that no one in the history of this earth had ever spoken like this. They heard His Words and, by the working of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, they knew these were not merely human words. These were the Words of God. They might not understand it all, they certainly did not know how it all worked, but they knew that no one had ever spoken like this before. Even if they did not understand them, these were words worth believing.

So it is with us who, by God’s grace and the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, fear God and His Word, who trust in His wisdom. We often don’t understand, we struggle, we doubt, we question. But it always comes back to this, whose Word is it? Are these words, the words we read in Scripture, the words of our Lord Jesus that we recorded there, just the words of some man or are they the words of the Son of God? The answer is clear, these are the Words of God. And if these are the Words of God are they not worth believing even if we don’t understand them? Of course they are, these are the words of eternal life.

Thanks be to God that we, by the working of the Holy Spirit, have believed and come to know that He, our Lord Jesus, is the Holy One of God who gives His flesh as our bread of life. There is no life in us apart from Him, but with Him and in Him we have life, abundant life, eternal life, and we will rise with Him on the Last Day. In Jesus name. Amen.

How Can This Be?

Text: John 3:1-17

Grace, mercy, and peace to each of you from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

“How can this be?” Nicodemus came to Jesus at night and that is what he was left saying and thinking to himself. “How can this be?”

Nicodemus knew that Jesus was a teacher sent from God, but he did not understand (yet!) that Jesus is in fact the very Son of God, being of one substance with the Father, who stood there before him in human flesh. He looked at Jesus and saw a teacher. A good, holy teacher sent by God, but just a teacher. Nicodemus was a teacher too. He was an intelligent and learned man. He knew the Holy Scriptures inside out and backwards probably. He came to Jesus that night in secret to learn more about His teaching, but he could not wrap his head around what Jesus was saying. Jesus just kept talking about the necessity of being “born again” and all Nicodemus could say was “How can this be?”

You don’t have to be a highly educated teacher like Nicodemus to understand the impossibility of being born again. Nicodemus puts the question to Jesus rather sarcastically, “Can a man enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?” The answer is obviously no. Nothing about what Jesus is saying here makes sense according to any kind of worldly, human reason or intelligence. But faith in Jesus, faith in the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is not about what makes sense to you and me, faith is trust in what this Triune God has done for you, me, and every other person on this sin infected planet through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

You and I know what Jesus was talking about when He told Nicodemus that he needed to be born again. We know, thanks to hindsight and the gift of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus was referring here to the water of baptism where the Holy Spirit is poured out on believers and they are “born again” as children of God. We are not stumped like Nicodemus was by Jesus’ words. But Nicodemus teaches us an important lesson today. A lesson that is particularly relevant on Trinity Sunday. That lesson is that our reason and intelligence, our ability to think, learn, and understand, must remain the servants of God’s Word rather than trying to become the masters of it.

Nicodemus came to Jesus that night with good intentions, I think, but as He spoke with Jesus his reason and intelligence became a barrier for him. His intelligence and knowledge, his certainty that human beings are only born once, prevented him from hearing what Jesus was saying to him that night. The same danger exists for you and me. We are not all religious teachers like Nicodemus was and most of us are not nearly as learned or intelligent as he likely was, but God has blessed us with reason and intelligence in the same way that He blessed Nicodemus with reason and intelligence. We, like Nicodemus, are able to think logically, to figure things out, to understand and solve complex problems, to read, to study, to add, to subtract, and to do all kinds of others things. This is a gift from God. He has blessed us with minds that think, understand, and inquire. But there is danger when this gift runs amok and leaves us wondering “How can this be?” when we hear God’s Word.

The Holy Trinity, which we celebrate in particular today, is a perfect example. Using the gift of reason that God has given us we know that 1+1+1=3, but God’s Word reveals to us a God that is three in one and one in three. The Athanasian Creed is so long because for centuries people tried (and still do try!) to rationalize and understand this mystery according to human wisdom and intelligence. Every such attempt led people away, however, from how God has revealed Himself to us in the Bible.

God’s Word says clearly and emphatically that there is only one God, but also insists just a emphatically that this one God consists of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are not to be confused with one another or divided from one another. This defies any kind of human reason or understanding. There is no arithmetic, new math, or fancy counting that can make sense of that and there are no illustrations (clovers, apples, and the sun included) that can explain this quandary away. One in three and three in one makes no sense. God’s Word demands, however, that we worship this God who is one in three and three in one because this Triune God is the source of our life, salvation, and hope for life everlasting.

This is where our reason and intelligence must take a back seat and become servants. God has blessed us with these gifts, but they were never intended to be used to second guess God’s Word as He speaks it to us. That doesn’t mean we turn our brains off in church, however, or that we are brain washed into believing some ridiculous truth. It is with our brains and our intelligence that we read, hear, and understand what God’s Word is saying to us in written and spoken language. Our reason and intelligence are part of the process, but they are meant to be servants, not masters, of God’s Word.

If we let our reason and intelligence be the masters of God’s Word the danger is that we will miss the point altogether. It’s not just the Trinity or new birth through baptism that defy human logic, every aspect of our salvation defies human logic. First, that God would love a sinful broken world so much, a world that rebelled against Him in the beginning and then proceeded to repeat that rebellion again day after day, so much that He would send His one and only Son defies logic. Second, that through this Son’s death God would reconcile that same sinful and rebellious world to Himself and win the victory defies logic. Third, that this Son would break every rule of nature that is known to man and rise from the dead defies logic. Fourth, that He would pour out His Spirit on His people in the water of baptism, speak to them through the words of an ancient book, and feed them with the very body and blood of Jesus under bread and wine defies logic. And finally, that He would give each of us the sure and certain hope that someday after our bodies have been laid in the ground and decomposed to almost nothing He will raise US from the dead to life everlasting again defies all logic.

All of this would quite rightly leave us saying “How can this be?” And we all undoubtedly have times where we wonder exactly that. But faith, the faith created in our hearts by the Holy Spirit speaking through God’s Word, flying in the face of all reason, intelligence, and logic, instead of wondering how says, “I believe…”

In giving us brains and the ability to reason, think, and understand God has bestowed on us a wondrous blessing. But it is important that we see how that blessing is properly to be used. Our reason and intelligence are not gifts God has given us so that we can question, doubt, or speculate about the truth of His Word. Our reason and intelligence are gifts given to us so that we might prosper in this life, enjoy the living of this life, and serve our neighbor in every way. This is the purpose of the gift.

In the end Nicodemus, it seems, overcame the barrier that his own reason and intelligence had created for him. He did, as far as we can tell, come to have faith in Jesus. But it was no through figuring it out or being convinced by logical arguments that Nicodemus came to faith. It was through the death of Jesus. When Jesus hung dead on the cross and His body needed to be taken down and laid in a tomb it was Nicodemus, along with Joseph of Arimathea, who stepped up to do that job. Having seen how Jesus had saved the world from sin and death through the most illogical and unreasonable means possible, through a cross and death, Nicodemus through His actions, “I believe…” No one other than the Holy Spirit could have granted that faith to Nicodemus.

May God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit likewise grant us the faith to believe in a lifesaving gospel that defies all logic and reason. May God grant us a faith that clings to the words of Christ even as our minds clamour for a more reasonable answer that makes more sense. May God grant us the faith to confess the Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity, the God who defies all logic, and came to save us. Lord grant us this faith always. In Jesus name. Amen.