Losing Faith, Faithlessness, and Keeping Faith: Jesus and Peter

I have fallen in love with really only one car in my lifetime, a 1975 Alfa Romeo Spyder, lemon yellow with a black rag top. I knew it was old when I bought it, and I could see that the top was rag in more than just the name, but I had such loving expectations of driving with the top down, my senses fully engaged, the pleasure of feeling close to the road. I wouldn’t let anyone else drive it.

Some 10 or more years later I sold it, glad to get out of it most of my initial payment for it. I had put perhaps 3000 miles on it, and I don’t want to remember how much in repairs and tune-ups. The nice Bulgarian man on SE Foster in Portland who repaired it for me raced Alfas and told me they ran best on half jet fuel. Maybe so. But I now am driving a 2018 Honda CR-V with an extended warranty because I lost faith in old cars as transportation and I don’t have the patience to make them work as investments. I want a car I can rely on to get me where I want to go without letting me down.

Losing faith in a car that I loved was sad, but it does not compare with losing faith in people, in churches, perhaps even in God. When something or someone disappoints us deeply, abandons us, or rejects us, or just quits returning our calls, our souls are wounded and we lose faith.

I want to approach the topic of losing faith in God as gently and carefully as possible. I highly value honesty, and I believe with all my heart that God does, too. So the best first step when we lose faith in God is to say so to God. “I have lost faith in you.” And then to explain to ourselves and God what that means.

Numbness

It might mean that we don’t feel emotionally connected to God. We are numb. Perhaps we see that others do express a strong sense of emotional connection to God, and we come to church and the songs are all about strong emotions with regard to God, and we can’t in honesty join in. “Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.” Or “I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you, O my soul, rejoice.”  Or people share how God has lifted their hearts into joy or how a deep sense of peace has flooded their anxious spirits, and we just can’t relate. Our souls are troubled, our souls are exhausted, and our souls are numb. We feel so alone.

As anyone will tell you, this is a normal stage of life, one in which it is wise to sit quietly in your soul until it lifts, and if it does not lift, to seek professional help from a doctor or a counselor. Take care of yourself as if you were someone you love. See that you get good food, enough sleep, some outdoor time each day, moderate exercise. Do something you like to do. Keep yourself alive. These are acts of kindness that count as acts of faith. And, every now and then, write a letter to God.  There are Psalms and other passages of the Bible that are just this kind of letter to God.

Disappointed Expectations

Losing faith may mean that we become afraid that God is not who or what we wanted God to be.  Perhaps we expected God to be our loving and protective Father, and we experienced abuse and abandonment. What good Father would let those things happen? Perhaps we expected God to execute justice on evildoers, and instead we watched them prosper and ascend to power and prestige. What just judge allows the wicked to win? Perhaps we expected the compassionate Savior of the world to alleviate suffering and we watched horrific news stories of famine and disease or the illness of someone we love. In the book of Job, Job himself says to God, “I am a good person, and you’ve treated me worse than you treat the truly evil. What’s wrong with you?” Job teaches us that God welcomes honesty from humans. Job is angry for pages and pages, and God, while never settling Job’s questions, does show up and tell Job’s preachy friends to be quiet and listen to Job.

I myself have said to God, “If I claimed to be someone’s father, I’d never let this kind of stuff happen…” I had a friend tell me at a crucial period of my own life that I needed to forgive God for not measuring up to my expectations. I did come to a place of accepting that in a universe where God accepts human free will, a lot of suffering will ensue, and that God suffers with us and may in fact, through the work of Jesus, bear some of that suffering for us. This does not answer all my objections to the way the universe runs, but I can remain on speaking terms with God.

When we are fearful and angry about the way God runs the universe, we can still choose to do our best to make this world as livable as possible. In other words, we can still work at loving our neighbors, and these acts of love are acts of faith. 

Projected Faithlessness

Finally, I want to talk about when we are ourselves faithless, when we betray our relationship with God. There are some spectacular examples of this in the Bible, of course, in Judas and Peter, but I think we fall in and out of faithfulness every day. Indeed, there are times when we oppose God’s way of being in the world because it is so counter to our ideas of what will actually work to bring about God’s kingdom on earth.  And I think, when we are faithless, we tend to project that onto God and consider that God has broken faith with us as well.

It is common for us, looking back, to think that we would not have been as dull and dense as the disciples and the other followers of Jesus. We think we would have understood more of what Jesus was saying and been in greater sympathy with what Jesus revealed about God and how God works with humans and in human history.  

Jesus, the beloved Son of God, said, “I do nothing on my own, only what I hear from my Father. So you can know that when you see me, you’ve seen God. This is how God is and what God does and how God does it.” Right away, we can see from the life of Jesus that God doesn’t deliver by some sort of formula. It’s not a matter of us “getting it right” or “doing enough” or “following the rules” and then God comes through predictably. Jesus did miracles, yes, but not all the miracles possible to do on earth. He brought some dead people back to life, but not all the dead people who died while he was here. He stilled one storm. He fed two crowds of hungry people and provided wine for one wedding. Yes, these were amazing acts, and they were not enough to set the entire world at ease and at peace. And Jesus said, “I am not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Well, you know the disciples immediately thought that meant he would free them from Rome but instead he freed them from the law, from sin, from judgment. He set them free to love God and to love their neighbors, and that really wasn’t what they’d wanted.

As soon as Peter identified Jesus as the Christ, or the one sent by God to be the king, Jesus turned right around and started talking about how he was going to be arrested and crucified. (Matthew 16, Mark 8) Peter took him aside and rebuked him for talking like that.  And Jesus turned around and looked at the followers, and then rebuked Peter right back, calling him his adversary. “You strive for the things all humans strive for, not what God strives for. You could trip me up.” I’m guessing that Jesus could turn to me every day of my life and say this to me at least once.

Later, on the final evening before his crucifixion, Jesus told his followers that he was about to be betrayed by one of them, and that he would be tortured and killed. (Luke 22) And they went right on to argue about who would have the highest position in the new kingdom Jesus would be setting up. They could not even hear what Jesus was telling them. It did not compute that the one God sent to save them would do so by dying rather than by killing their enemies.  I don’t think we are different from them. Jesus tells us that whoever would be greatest needs to serve all the rest, and we go on worrying about who is eligible to be on elders or chair a committee. Jesus tells us that no one can bear fruit who doesn’t die first, and we just do not hear him.

Jesus Prays for Us

So, in our faithlessness, where is the hope?  I find it in what Jesus says to Peter. I’ll paraphrase a bit, the way I hear it, “My dear friend Peter, you have no idea of how shallow your faith is, how quickly you will let fear overrule your brave intentions. In fact, in the next few hours, you will publicly say you don’t know me 3 times. You have been my adversary in the past, and you will be again. This adversarial spirit will sift you like wheat. You will see how much of your professed faithfulness is worthless. But I have prayed for you that the light of your faith will not be completely put out.”

See this? Jesus has prayed for Peter. Jesus has prayed for me. Jesus has prayed for you. In all our small and large betrayals of faith, all the ways we have proven that God cannot trust us to see rightly and do the right thing, Jesus has prayed for us. Jesus is praying for us right now. Each time I betray the first commandment to love God wholeheartedly, Jesus is praying for me. Each time I violate the commandment to love my neighbor as I love myself, Jesus is praying for me. Each time I treat myself worse than dirt, Jesus is praying for me.

St. Paul says, “Who is it that judges us? It is even Christ who died, who is now risen, and is at the right hand of God, It is Christ who intercedes for us” (Romans 8:34).  Jesus Christ is judge and advocate.

“If anyone sin, we have an advocate, an intercessor, with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous,” writes St John in 1John 2:1. This is an intercessor who prays entirely according to the will of the Father. They are on the same page with regard to us. Jesus is praying that the light of our faith will not go completely out and his Father is on board with granting that prayer.

Keeping Faith

And then Jesus says to Peter and us, “And when you have turned back toward me again, strengthen your brothers and sisters. That’s what you’re here for.”

If we judge God’s trustworthiness, God’s faithfulness, by our own, we will find it very hard to trust in God.  If we judge God’s trustworthiness, God’s faithfulness, by the actions of Jesus Christ on our behalf and his continual prayers for us in our weakness, we have the space to pause and turn again to strengthen our brothers and sisters, to love our neighbors. 

It’s not every day I can end a sermon with a slightly modified quotation from Neil Diamond ("Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show"):

Brothers and sisters
Now you got yourself two good hands
And when your brother or sister is troubled,
You gotta reach out your one hand for them
'Cause that's what it's there for
And when your heart is troubled,
You gotta reach out your other hand
Reach it out to Jesus up there
'Cause that's what he's there for

Take my hand in yours Walk with me this day
In my heart I know We will never stray
Hallelujah

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Peace and Justice/Just Us

Preached at Reedwood Friends, Jan. 6, 2013

Genesis 3, 4, 27, 32, 33

When Ken invited me to preach during Peace Month, he laid before me all the options—World Peace, the end of racism or sexism or prejudice of any kind,  or reconciliation between persons.  I actually believe all peace begins in the individual heart, that a heart at peace cannot hate or disparage or belittle or slander or badmouth another person, group of people, or nation.  So I chose the topic I think is most important, and also the one I am always working on.

As a child, like many or most children, I felt unjustly treated, shamed, bullied, and lied to.  As a result, I conceived a huge passion for justice.  My favorite Bible story was the sudden justice delivered to Ananias and Sapphira when they lied to the Holy Spirit and Peter and dropped dead.  But as I grew up and recognized some of my own unjust, shaming, bullying, and deceptive actions, I became more of a fan of mercy.  As GKChesterton wrote, “For children are innocent and love justice; while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy” (On Household Gods and Goblins, 1922).

As the wise writer Jeremiah wrote, “The human heart—i.e. “the seat of internal processes, including both feeling and thinking, as well as dreading, ruminating, aspiring, and so forth” (Dr. Joel Hoffman, “Five Bible Images You Probably Misunderstand,” Huffpo)—what we might more accurately call the self—is is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9).  Or as Bob Dylan wrote, “Heart of mine, so malicious and so full of guile, Give you an inch and you’ll take a mile.” Or as Jesus pointed out, “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies; these are the things which defile us, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile us” (Matthew 15:19-20).

There are two responses that will make the rest of this sermon hypothetical rather than useful.  One is resisting this point.  My self isn’t desperately wicked, my self isn’t malicious and full of guile, my self is not the seat of all those awful sins. I have some good qualities! But this is a serious problem in the way of a peaceful heart. If we have never noticed that a large part of our internal processes are self-justifying, we will not ever ask ourselves why we need to justify ourselves, and we will not ever see that we might at some time have done something despicable and harmful to another person. St. Paul writes to Timothy about those who speak lies in hypocrisy, having their consciences seared with a hot iron (2 Tim 1:3).  We can for a long time avoid an accurate self-understanding that includes our potential for evil.

Another unhelpful response is yes, I am a terrible person and there is no hope for me.  St. Paul writes to Titus about those whose conscience is defiled, which means it is unhelpful in sorting things out, and that lovable apostle St. John writes, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”  Sometimes our consciences are poorly trained and either let us off the hook too often or keep us on the hook too often.  Neither is helpful.  We need to submit our consciences to the guidance of Jesus, who promises to lead us into all truth, and who can retrain our consciences.

So the first step to a peaceful heart is an accurate self-understanding, which includes submitting our consciences to examination by Jesus and living into the repentance and discipline Jesus prescribes.  Let me encourage you to let down your guard and invite Jesus to examine your selves, your consciences, your hearts.  Then please be obedient to what he prescribes for you to do.

A second step toward peace is laying down our swords.  A vivid bad example of a heart not at peace is provided by the interpersonal conflict between Cain and Abel.  Here is the whole story from Genesis 4: Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground.  Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and bel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions.  And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.  So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.  The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him.  Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.  When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”

Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who came upon him would kill him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

This conflict seems to have existed without Abel knowing about it.  Both brothers offered the fruits of their work to God, and God accepted only Abel’s. God tells Cain, “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” And, as the saying goes, the proof was in the pudding.  The reason why God accepted only Abel’s offering is made clear when Cain throws a fit.  Instead of looking inside himself to see what might have made his offering unacceptable, Cain solves the problem more primitively and eliminates the competition.

A question for us to consider is this:  Is there someone in my life who stands between me and my goals or hopes? Does the person who stands between me and what I want actually represent something inside me? A fear, a shame, an unwillingness to risk?

I recently had to confess to a close friend that I had blamed him for years for an action he took that I believed stood between me and my goals.  I had to admit that what really got in my way was my own ambivalence and fear.  It was much easier to blame someone else.

As a woman in a patriarchal culture, I have wanted to blame men in general and specific men in particular for the fact I have not achieved my dreams.  I was brought up short in this pattern by a young woman who said, “My real barriers are inside me.” 

Another step toward peace is laying down our shields. Another vivid bad example of hearts not at peace comes from Genesis 3.  Just after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God comes to visit them as usual.  They are hiding in the trees and have become afraid because they are naked, as Adam says.  When God asks Adam, “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat,” Adam answers: “The woman whom you gave me to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.”  Adam manages in this statement to admit what he did but blame both Eve and God for his disobedience.  When God asks Eve, “What is this that you have done?”, she replies, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” She also admits what she did, but she passes the blame on to the serpent.  The serpent is speechless. 

More questions: Is there someone in my life I blame for the fact I have made mistakes or strayed from the right path? Does the blame I place on another person allow me to avoid confronting my own contribution to the conflict? Does blaming someone else help me to avoid shame?

It is possible to work for years to come to terms with admitting what I contributed to an estrangement—what I did wrong, in other words.  I can pray for justice, work to forgive, apologize for what I can see I did wrong, and still feel that the other person blames me for everything, and this is not fair or just. I have to admit that I am still more interested in being heard than in listening, that I want to explain why it isn’t my fault, or at least isn’t all my fault, and I want the other person to admit his or her errors of judgment and behavior also.  Can I move into actual reconciliation?  Not with my shields up.

I knew a married couple who fought bitterly over their understanding of the grace of God. The first accused the second of believing she was saved by good works and the second accused the first of believing that once he was saved, he could behave any old way.  Underneath this theological argument were two people disappointed in each other and disappointed in their marriage who were fighting each other to avoid admitting any disappointment with themselves. Failing to be a good spouse was too shameful to be looked at squarely. After years, their hearts softened and with the help of a counselor, they could lay down their swords and shields, accept grace from God and each other, and extend grace to each other.  Their essential characters are not changed, but their demeanor toward each other is so vastly different it is like a miracle. 

More questions: Is there someone in my life who has failed to measure up to what he or she should be or believe or do? Is it possible that my disappointment with this person masks some sort of disappointment with myself?

And now, a good example of brothers laying down their swords and shields that starts off, of course, bad.

Genesis 27, 32 and 33 tell the story of twin brothers, Esau and Jacob.  They were nothing alike, and seemed to be struggling for top dog status even in the womb.  Esau is famous for trading his rights as first born to Jacob for a bowl of soup, and Jacob is famous for cheating Esau out of his blessing as first born by deceiving their blind father Isaac.  Add into all this the fact that the dad favored Esau and the mom favored Jacob. And that Esau was a man’s man while Jacob could hardly grow a beard. Trouble everywhere. 

Esau’s original response to Jacob was this, “Soon my father will die and then I will kill my brother Jacob.” Esau felt like Cain, that if he could simply remove the competition, he would regain all he had lost of God’s blessing and his first-born rights.  He blamed Jacob for all he had lost, even though to an outside observer, he seemed pretty careless with his birthright and maybe should have partly blamed himself. 

Their mother heard of Esau’s threat, called Jacob in and warned him.  “Your brother Esau is consoling himself by planning to kill you.  Flee to your uncle’s and stay awhile until your brother’s fury lessens, until his anger turns away and he forgets what you have done to him.”  So Jacob took off.   Jacob’s essential trickster character remained constant through his time with his uncle, and he became rich at his uncle’s expense.  God told him to go home, and he and his wives and children and servants and animals took all his property and started for home. 

As he neared home, he began sending messengers to Esau, announcing his arrival and reporting back to him how Esau took the news.  They told him, “Esau is coming to meet you with four hundred men.”  Jacob was scared. It sounded to him like a fighting force.  He split up his wealth so that at worst he would lose only half.  He sent presents ahead to Esau of herd after herd of livestock with space in between.  He prayed for God to protect him from his brother, and in that prayer he said to God, “I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant.”  This prayer reveals that at long last, Jacob is telling the truth about himself to God, a truth that he may have been avoiding his whole life by clawing his way to wealth and position through hard dealing and deceitfulness.

That night, Jacob wrestled bodily with God.  Symbolically, this is the same wrestling match that he had been engaged in his whole life.  When the Spirit he was wrestling puts his hip out of joint, laming him for life, this was the same limp he had been covering for his whole life.  God blessed him with a change in name, symbolizing a new view of himself, a change from “Cheater” or “Supplanter” to “One who strives with God” –a change from “low-life” to “full human being.”

In the morning, Jacob saw Esau approaching.  He knew he had done Esau wrong, and he approached him as a supplicant, bowing seven times.  And here is the surprise.  Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.   

Who knows what process Esau went through to move from wanting to kill Jacob to welcoming him home like the father welcomes home the prodigal son in the parable told by Jesus.  It is clear that Esau no longer feels himself held down by Jacob’s tricksy manipulations.  The yoke of anger and hatred has been broken off his neck.  He is forgiving, even to the point of allowing Jacob to try to make things right by giving him gifts.  As my daughter Liz pointed out to me, Esau is the first example of an outright forgiveness in the Bible.

More questions:  Is there someone in my life who makes me feel inferior?  Is my conflict with that person standing in for admitting my own sense of worthlessness, my shame at somehow not measuring up? If I just admit the truth about myself to God, what does God say to me?

Here are the signs that my heart is not at peace:  I am competing for attention, blaming others, judging and criticizing others, and cheating to get ahead. 

To have a heart at peace means that I no longer am acting in my own defense. I have wrestled with God, admitted to God my worst stuff, accepted that God values our relationship because God values me, not my innocence, not my perfection, not my achievements, not my rightness, not my religious devotion.  God values you and me, knowing full well how easily we make mistakes, how easily we slip into self-justifying and blaming others, how easily we try to cover up for ourselves.  God values us and loves it when we get honest and open and accept God’s love without trying to earn it.  God loves us because God is love.  And there is enough love for all.

Pray for justice when you are in conflict with another person.  If you pray for justice, God will be help you be just, which involves seeing both the other and yourself more clearly.  And then lean into the help Jesus gives to repent and forgive.