Faith, what a nice idea.

 

Honestly, who here has ever witnessed a miraculous healing?  Now, I’m not talking about reading about a miraculous healing in Chicken Soup for the Soul?  I am talking about a full blown leprosy cure like the one that Naaman received.  Now, I’m sure that out of the hundreds of us here today a few of you have probably either experienced or witnessed a miracle at some point in your lives. 

 

I want to share something with you.  I too have had the privilege of witnessing a miraculous healing.  I have a friend at seminary whose Mom had been fighting cancer for the past two years.  She had done everything medically possible to get rid of her cancer, but it was of no use.  The cancer persisted.  A month ago I received a very joyful email from my friend proclaiming that her mom had gone to the hospital for some more scans and the doctors could not find any cancer.  It was a miracle!  Now, simply telling you this story does not do it justice, so I brought the email with me today to read to you.  I hope I did that email justice… there are a lot of exclamation points in here!

 

Like my friend’s mother’s miracle, the Bible is so full of accounts of miraculous healings.  For this reason, it is temping to conclude that the purpose of faith is to heal.  But if that were so, if the final purpose of faith was to heal, then every person in the Bible who had faith and asked for healing, or for release from hardship would receive it.  So I looked through the Bible to check up on this and found that God actually said no to a few people of faith when they asked for healing or for release.  Jesus asked God in the Garden of Gethsemane to keep him from suffering, and God said no.  The Apostle Paul asked Christ three times to remove what he called “the thorn in his flesh,” which is thought to be a physical ailment of some sort, and three times Christ said no to him.  Job sat in mourning and penance for days on end pleading to God to alleviate his suffering, and God actually gave him more suffering. 

 

Can Faith heal our physical ailments? Yes, the Bible tells us it can, but apparently, the primary purpose of faith must be something different than simply healing our ills.   

 

So let’s look at what happened to Naaman and to the leper and try to find out exactly what faith did to them other than bring about a miraculous healing.  After Naaman was healed he exclaimed, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel.”  We are told that the leper in Mark spread the news about what Jesus did so much that Jesus could not even remain in town any longer.  He was as popular as a rock star!

 

Here we see the purpose of faith fulfilled.  Both Naaman and the leper were moved by faith to a different place then where they started.  Naaman for the first time experienced a relationship with a God that he never knew.  The leper was moved to proclaim to his entire town the work that Christ had done for him and so many came to God because of his witness.  They were both healed, but the purpose of the faith given to them was not satisfied by simply curing their diseases, it was satisfied only when it moved them and people around them into a loving relationship with their God.  And that is the purpose of faith… to move us into a loving relationship with our God.

 

 

And this is precisely why faith is so much more powerful than simply being a healer of our ills.  This is why faith is much more powerful than simply being a nice idea.  When you have been moved to believe that God has grabbed you into a loving relationship that cannot break you will not be able to remain in the places that life tries to put you.   

 

And perhaps some of you have already experienced the power of this faith that moves us?  Perhaps you’ve had a health crisis that began as an experience saturated with fear and anxiety, then faith came with its assurance that God does not fade as health fades, and you were moved to a place of comfort and strength.  Perhaps you’ve experienced anger or hatred toward a person or a group of people who hurt you, then faith came and reminded you that all people are God’s and that God seeks to gather all people to Himself, and you were moved to a place of understanding and forgiveness.

 

And if this sounds strange to you, that faith has the ability to move you from one place to another, think back to a time, when somebody you love forgave you for hurting them.  I can personally think of a few times. Did that forgiveness leave your relationship where it was, broken and awkward?  Did you remain alienated from your beloved?  After being forgiven, did you continue to harbor anger and judgment against yourself for hurting your beloved?  Or did that forgiveness move you.  Did it draw you nearer to your beloved? 

 

God’s gift of forgiveness through Jesus Christ is no less creative than forgiveness in our own relationships.  Faith in that forgiveness is not simply a nice idea.  That faith actually does something to us.  It moves us to places that we otherwise might not have ever reached.      

 

An outstanding example of one who was moved by faith is Martin Luther King Jr.  And since February is Black History Month, his example is highly appropriate.  Here was a black man who grew up Atlanta, Georgia, during a time when segregation, discrimination and hate towards African Americans was at its peak.  Here was a man who was told his whole life that he was worth less than other people, that he had fewer rights than other people, and that he could not accomplish as much as other people. 

 

Life told MLK all of this, but Faith told him something different.  Faith told him that God gathers all people to Himself.  Faith told him that Christ’s forgiveness extends to all people.  Faith led MLK to proclaim, “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”  Life did not move MLK to this new vision.  Life in the south, in fact, told him it could not and should not happen.  Faith, however, moved him to a different vision. 

 

In this way, faith is more than just a nice idea.  It is creative.  It does something.  It moves us.  When we have this faith that because of Jesus Christ, we and the entire world have been grabbed by God, we too will not be able to remain where life puts us. 

 

Life may try to tell us that our value as people depends on our accomplishments, or our successes, or the amount of “stuff” that we own.  Faith, however, moves us to a place where accomplishment and success are the last things we will look to in order to assess our value.  Instead, in faith we see that our value has already been given to us in our relationship with God.

 

Life may also try to tell us that we should fear loss, whether it be loss of health, loss of ability, or loss of economic or social prosperity.  Faith though moves us to a place where we depend on God for our hope, and for our strength, and for our prosperity, and so the fear of loss cannot rule over us. 

 

Is faith more than just a nice idea?  Oh yes.  The faith that we have been claimed by God as God’s own is probably the most dangerous force on earth.  It moves us from thinking that we are estranged from our God to knowing that we have been united with God.  It moves us from seeing others as having lesser value than ourselves to knowing that all people, like us, have been brought into God’s family, and so there is no such thing as greater or lesser value.  Finally, it forces us to look at a world that teaches us to accept social and economic hierarchies and tell that world (as MLK did), no, we will not accept anything that is not true.     

 

Faith did not stop at simply healing Naaman and the other leper, faith is not that safe.  And faith will not stop by simply healing your ills; it will not be that safe for you either.  Faith is more dangerous than that, it will pick you up and move you.  So allow this faith that tells you that you are God’s own to move you; let it show you who you really are.  Let it tell you who your neighbors really are.  Let God move you from grief to hope, from fear to strength, and from sorrow to joy.  Listen to that faith that promises you that in Jesus Christ our God has gathered you and all people to Himself and allow that faith to place you in that space of fearlessness and love that God intended you to reside in since the beginning of creation.