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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Jesus Is the Brains of Our Outfit

Preached at Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends

July 21, 2013

God gave me a song on Tuesday of last week as I thought about Yearly Meeting.  I hummed it cheerfully and worshipfully, and then realized I was singing this: “It’s time to play the music, It’s time to light the lights, It’s time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight. It’s time to put on makeup, It’s time to dress up right, It’s time to get things started on the Muppet Show tonight.”  As I chuckled over the incongruity of this song with the seriousness of our purposes here this week, I moved on in my mind to this line: “Why do we always come here, I guess we’ll never know, It’s like a kind of torture To have to watch the show.”

The Muppet Show included so many divergent personalities and agendas (I think particularly of Sam the Eagle and Gonzo the improbable Turkey) and frequently incorporated explosions, unexpected intrusions, diversions and hecklers. 

I began to think we might be able sincerely and worshipfully to open YM sessions with the Muppet theme song and that the Muppet Show might be an appropriate metaphor for the part of the Body of Christ called Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends. We are all part of the show—performers, organizers, audience—all brought together to participate in the kingdom of God together—perhaps even to party together. (I plead with you to see me as Kermit, not Miss Piggy.) The incongruity between who we actually are and the way God sees us working together as part of the one Body of Christ is worth a response of laughter and an even more important response of awe and wonder and gratitude.

At least one of the times Jesus showed up after his death and burial, he made a point of displaying his wounds to prove his identity. The glorified physical body of Jesus still carries those wounds.  The Church is the body of Jesus in the world since the ascension; this is both a metaphor and a spiritual truth. We too, the body of Christ spiritually, carry wounds, and we count on the power of the resurrection to glorify us and our wounds to bring glory to God.  This is one way the Church reflects the resurrected Jesus—wounds abound, yet through these shine the glory.

An Old Testament picture that points to this truth is the story of Gideon, the pitchers of Gideon’s small army with the torches inside, which the warriors broke to reveal the hidden light.  A New Testament picture is the cracked pots of Paul—1 Cor 4:5-7—“we publicize not ourselves but the chosen and anointed messenger of God, Jesus, our owner; and we are your servants to further Jesus’s interests.  Because God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to enlighten us, to give us the truth that the face of Jesus Christ shows us the glory, the praiseworthiness of God. And we have this storehouse of truth in frail clay containers so that the excellence, the superiority of the power, the energy to do good things, may be recognized as God’s, not ours.” 

And we share in St. Paul’s personal experience: “that in my weakness, God’s Grace is sufficient, that God’s strength is made perfect through weakness, and I can glory, I can rejoice that I am weak, broken, infirm, wounded so that the power, the energy of Christ may enter into me and take possession of me.  Therefore I willingly choose weakness, lack of capacity, insults, calamities, harassments and persecutions, entrapment, and anguish in order to advance Jesus’s interests. For when I am powerless, then I am strong and able to accomplish good things.” (2 Cor. 9-10)

The cracks in our clay are how Jesus gets into us and how Jesus shines out of us.  This is true individually, and it is true of our lives together.

Sometimes we are actually blind to how Jesus uses our weaknesses or those of other people to advance His purposes.  Like Paul, we want Jesus to fix us up so we can do more for Jesus, as we see it.  We also want Jesus to remove the horrible flaws in those around us so that we don’t have to deal with them and we don’t have any conflict.  And yet what we have just read suggests that Jesus has other purposes for where we come up short of our ideal as individuals or together.

Remember that together, Christians are the body of Christ on earth since Jesus physically ascended.  Jesus is the Head of this body—not the executive director, not the CEO, not the president, not the superintendent, not even the Presiding Clerk, but the actual brains of the outfit.  Jesus chooses who is included in his body.  Jesus chooses.  The rest of us do what we’re told by the Head.  And yet, we are weak and we see through a glass darkly, and we run headlong into conflict.  What then?

Paul speaks to our condition. 1 Cor 11:17-19, 31-33: “Now this I am telling you is no commendation, namely that you come together, not usefully, making things better, but instead making things worse.  I hear that when you gather publicly as a church, there are divisions, tears, schisms among you, and I partly believe it, because there must be dissension, diversity of opinion and aims, so that those who are authentic and genuine, full of integrity, will be recognized and known among you…If we would just doubt ourselves, be willing to question our own opinions and aims, if we would just judge ourselves, we would not be judged or censured. But when we are judged or censured, God trains and disciplines us so that we will not be condemned as alienated from God. Therefore, when you come together to celebrate Jesus’s death and resurrection, and to commune with God, wait for each other to catch up.” Wait for each other to catch up.

This reminds me of some lines from a love song by Bruce Springsteen: “if as we’re walking a hand should slip free, I’ll wait for you, and if I fall behind, wait for me…So let’s make our steps clear that the other may see, and I’ll wait for you, if I should fall behind, wait for me.”

1 Cor. 12:3-7, 12-27

“I tell you, no one can say ‘Jesus is the Lord, Jesus is the person to whom all things belong, Jesus is the person to whom I belong, Jesus is my Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.

“There are distinct gifts, charismas, but only one Holy Spirit gives them. And there are diverse ways of serving others, but only one Lord Jesus directs the servants.  And there are distinct, diverse kinds of works, but only one God works all God’s works in and through individuals and groups. But the Spirit is obviously present in each person to help individually and to bring people together usefully to make things better.

“For as a body is one and at the same time has many members, and all the members of that body, though there are many, are one body, so also Christ.  Truly therefore, in the one Holy Spirit, we are all immersed into Christ’s one body; Christ’s one body overwhelms us.  This is so whether we are Jews or Gentiles, whether we are slaves or free, whether we are Quaker or everyone else.  Christ’s body includes us across divisions.  We have all been given the one Holy Spirit to drink into our whole selves. 

“Because a body is one and at the same time has many members, if the foot says, ‘I am not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,’ is that therefore true?  And if the ear says, ‘I am not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,’ is that therefore true?  A body needs more than a hand, more than an eye in order to live.  God has put all the parts together according to God’s best idea and for God’s delight.

“And the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you.’ Nor can the head say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you.’ In fact, some of those parts of the body that seem weaker than others are actually necessary, and some that embarrass us are worthy of great honor, and some that we think ugly are actually lovely. The parts WE think lovely are the parts that are strong and sufficient, without need, but God has commingled the body together and given abundant honor to the needy, weak, insufficient parts, so that there should be no tearing, no dissension in the body but rather the various members should care for and promote the interests of the other members.  When one suffers, all suffer; when one rejoices, all rejoice.  Now you are the body of Christ, and each one has an assigned part.”

Last year, we came to yearly meeting after the letter from OneGeorgeFox had jarred us into awareness of significant differences in our yearly meeting, chasms that for many looked unbridgeable. Would we survive as a single yearly meeting, and if so, what would we look like together?  The past year of tension has been anguish, and yet we have been patient to see what God will do.  This year, the conflict is still present, and again we will talk about how we are not like each other as we address the revisions to Faith and Practice.  The potential is still here for tearing apart, for dissension, for schism within NWYM.  We feel trapped in a narrow place.

If we listen well to Paul, we know that this is the exact moment when the power of God can be revealed through us. This is the crack in our clay that the light of Jesus can shine into and shine out of.  This is the persistent ache in our body about which God has told us, “My strength is made perfect in your weakness.” We have the choice individually and as a congregation, as a yearly meeting to lean into the truth that “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to enlighten us, to give us the truth that the face of Jesus Christ shows us the glory, the praiseworthiness of God. And we have this storehouse of truth in frail, clay containers so that the excellence, the superiority of the power, the energy to do good things may be recognized as God’s, not ours.” 

There is much good we do. We send ambassadors who take Jesus with them to other countries.  We reach out for Jesus’s sake with showers, laundry, clothing, and meals to those who live outside on purpose as well as those who are looking for a permanent home. We make outsiders welcome in our churches and our communities.  We make it possible for young people to experience the ministry of our camping programs.  We help young people go to college and seminary.  We help those coming out of prison re-enter the outside world.  And we are doing all these things together as a yearly meeting.  Each ministry of an individual church is something we are all doing as part of the body of Christ.  We care about and for each others’ churches as well as the individuals we know and love. We are compelled to share the good news that Jesus Christ is alive and present today to teach us himself; to share that we identify ourselves as Friends of Jesus when we do what Jesus tells us to do individually and corporately; and to share that this Friendship is open to all. We confess that Jesus is God’s anointed, God and human together in one person, whose death and resurrection bring us into a family relationship with God Almighty and with each other.

Let us add to the good we do an affirmation of commitment to each other, commitment to caring for and promoting each others’ interests, weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice.

Let us add to our speaking, our doing, our studying, and our faith the central goodness of love, agape.  As Paul wrote, “Love is long-term, not losing heart, suffering hard times and troubles with patience, slow to anger, slow to punish; love uses kindness. Love does not boil over with zeal or envy or anger; love does not brag; love is not puffed up with pride; love does not act disgracefully; love does not demand its own way; love does not burn with anger; love does not count up evil.  Love cannot thrive in injustice but rejoices together with truth and openness. Love protects and endures, love trusts, love hopes, love abides.  Love is never powerless, is never without effect” (1 Cor. 13). Love instead is always powerful, always effective.

As we spend a few minutes in silence so that we can hear from Jesus, the brains of our outfit, please feel free to come forward to pray if you want to.  I will close this time with a blessing.  After the service, we will meet in the dining hall for ice cream, after the manner of Friends.

This yearly meeting is where we gather to love each other, to listen to Jesus together, and to make plans to obey what Jesus tells us to do.  We’re getting ready to take our show on the road.  So…

It’s time to play the music, It’s time to light the lights, It’s time to get things started on the most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, Friends-relational, this is what we call our yearly show!

(All scripture quotations are based on Strong’s Concordance.)