faith

by Rev.  Mark J.T. Caggiano, January 3, 2010

Ephesians 1:3-14; John 1:1-18

We gather for the first time in the year of our Lord, 2010.  We have made our way through the first decade of the millennia.  Some might quibble that this does not in fact occur until 2011, but let us not be so terribly orthodox about such matters.  There has been ten years since there was a “19” in front of the year, and that is good enough in my view.  In either case, I am relieved to be out of 2009.  It was a bleak year for our country, a difficult period across the world. 

There were of course many blessings during the year as well, and many in my life.  I became your new minister, for which I am exceedingly grateful.  I have moved back into the Boston area, back to a place I lived for many years and I have loved always.  But before all of this, it was hard going.  Graduate school is a far cry from paying work.  And then, school was finally over and I needed to start looking for a position to called ministry.  A call is an official term denoting the nature of the ministerial position to be taken.  Some ministers are hired, such as assistant or community ministers, others are called, as I was.  Remember that word – called. 

Over a year ago, I began to search for a church, looking near and far for a spiritual home and a loving community.  I researched the open pulpits and other available opportunities.  There was not much, I must confess.  It seemed that ministers had hunkered down like the rest of us in a terrible economy.  People were waiting to see what might happen. 

And I further limited the list.  I was only looking in New England.  I needed to be near to my family and especially my two children in New Hampshire.  While New England is the motherland for American Unitarians; that makes it even more competitive with ministers attempting to return to a place where they do not have to explain what a Unitarian is.  Of course, they do not have that extra burden of explaining what a Christian Unitarian is, an explanation necessary for insiders as well as outsiders.  But, that effort in education is something I am more than willing to do.

The oddest part about this search process was that I did not worry too much about it.  By this, I do not mean to suggest that I am so wonderful that everyone would want me.  Underneath the process and paperwork, I should have been worried.  I should have been terrified.  I had spent the past four years rearranging my life, moving from one profession to another.  And while there we some doubt-filled days, I was not truly worried underneath it all.  I had not made these changes lightly or impulsively.  I undertook the ministry out of a sense of personal vocation.  I was called long before a position arose.  I believed that I had been truly called to become a minister, to become a servant of God at the request of God.

“At the request of God?” Please be assured I had a full psychological review before I was ordained.  I feel obligated to mention this because some people still shake their heads when they discover I left the law for the church; leaving the familiar social identity of lawyer to become something unfamiliar like a minister.  I could hear the unspoken question: Is something wrong with you? And explaining that it was a vocation does not move matters forward.  For some that makes it sound done right crazy. 

Yes, I stand here because I felt the pull to service by God.  There was no chorus of angels, no blind-struck journey to Damascus.  But in the quiet of my mind and soul, I felt that I needed to do this.  I needed to dedicate my life to worship and prayer, to the service of others and of God.

So when I sought out to find a position, I felt that I would find one.  Saying that one has a feeling about getting a job is akin to betting your life savings on a turn of a roulette wheel.  I had no scientific assurance of this vocation or the inevitability of finding a pulpit – in fact, as a new minister fresh from school I had every reason to believe that I would have great difficulty finding a placement.  I should have been lining up bartending jobs.  But I believed that I would find a place, I believed that I was called into service for a reason.  I had faith.  Faith in God, faith in my vocation, faith in the mission set out before me.

This sermon is the first in a series regarding the Seven Virtues.  And you may have guessed at this point that we will be discussing the cardinal virtue of faith.  I do not mean to imply in this sermon by any stretch of the imagination that I am the poster child for faith or that I am any paragon of virtue.  I was a handy example, no more.  Such matters of virtue are in the eye of the ultimate beholder.

What is a virtue? A virtue is simply a good habit consonant with our nature.  As a habit, it describes an ongoing propensity to act in a certain way.  As something good, it orients us toward a particularly noble or honorable pursuit.  A virtuous person has a habit, if not a certainty, of doing good.

But what does faith mean? One definition is the assent of the intellect to a truth which is beyond its comprehension.  It may also be understood as belief and trust in, and loyalty to, God.  The words are different, but these definitions encompass the same meaning.  God is a truth, the ultimate truth, one beyond our human comprehension.  Belief in God is an article of faith.

Faith in God is a good habit, an enduring sense that we can rely upon and hold onto our belief.  Yet we cannot simply declare our faith and be done with it.  There is more to the virtue of faith than, for example, throwing our hands up during adversity and expecting God to sort out the mess.  Faith requires follow through.

What do the scriptures tell us? In the Gospel of John, we hear the classic, mystical articulation of the meaning of Jesus.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Jesus is the Word, the word of God.  Within the darkness of our limited, material world, the light of his words shine brightly.  Provided we are looking.  Provided that we can tear ourselves away from our wants and look toward the needs of others.  Faith does not free us from concerns of the world, for in truth it opens us up to acknowledge the concerns of others.  Faith is not a crutch upon which we stumble forward, but is a gateway to a higher purpose, a better way of living.  Faith is the first step toward virtue, but it cannot be the last step.

Next we heard from the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians:

In him [, meaning Jesus Christ,] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.  With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Understand the words of Paul: God, through the life and teachings of Jesus, delivers us from sin and offers forgiveness of our transgressions.  We are given insight into the mystery of God through the lessons of Jesus.  And we must have faith in what we have learned.  But faith is not the only thing we are expected to have.

I was reading a little C.S.  Lewis this week and came across an account of the rhetorical tension between faith and love.  Lewis came later in life to Christianity and spent a good deal of time articulating his new faith for the apparently incredulous academics surrounding him at Oxford.  On the subject of faith, Lewis suggested it to be the art of holding onto things your reason has accepted in spite of your changing moods.  Faith should not desert us when times are bad, because faith is not about the granting of our hearts’ desires.  Our faith should lead us to God and no where else.

 Should we merely have faith? Should we merely be charitable? C.S.  Lewis stated that this was like debating which blade of a scissors was more important.  To be a faithful person, one must be filled with faith.  This includes the faithful observance of the teachings of Jesus.  If I am placing my trust in God, I must furthermore place my trust in the word of God.  This light shines in the darkness of our world, and the darkness will not overcome it.  The light shines forth from the lessons of Jesus, the call to service, the call to self-sacrifice. 

Paul says,

[W]hen you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, [you] were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God's own people, to the praise of his glory.

Marked with a seal through faith, but now what? Many would say you are done.  Your ticket punched for heaven, there is nothing left to do but kick back and count our blessings as they pile high.  If the life of Jesus has any meaning, we must do more than this.  If the Sermon on the Mount is to be more than hollow words, we must live our faith, not merely mark its inception.  For followers of the teachings of Jesus, faith is the threshold to the Christian life, not the final step to take as a Christian.

What of my faith during my search for a pulpit? Didn’t I expect good things to happen to me just because of my faith? It was always possible that I would not find a church – it was in fact likely.  But my faith was in my vocation, not a job description.  If I ended up as a faithful bartender for a while, then so be it.  We can serve God in many ways and follow a virtuous life always.

Faith does not deliver us from every evil, for into every life some difficulties will fall.  Faithful people will lose jobs.  Faithful people will become sick.  Faithful people, like all people, will die.  Faith guides us through our lives, even when we are faced with adversities.  We also hopefully surround ourselves with people of faith.  In the fellowship of faith, we garner strength to fight illness and to contend with adversity.  We sit in witness of each others’ struggles and, through that same faith, should respond to these difficulties with our comfort and support.

Being called to ministry is in this manner no different than being called to God.  Jesus serves as the light in the darkness for us and we as his followers must shine forth that same light.  Faith lets us understand the meaning of Jesus and reminds us to follow his example within the wider world.

A few weeks ago, I received a call from a local rabbi.  He asked if I would be willing to give one of the prayers at the ecumenical service for the incoming Mayor of Newton.  I said yes, and then was told the service occurred on New Year’s morning.  Not much of a sacrifice, so I rolled out of bed bright and early on the first of the year.  I was happy to see a large turnout for a holiday morning.  Joining me in worship were several other clergy members.  A Catholic priest gave the homily.  A cantor from a local synagogue sang the psalms.  And there was a Baptist minister giving a reading, a Muslim reciting from the Qur’an, and a Lutheran minister closing our session together.  I led a communal prayer, calling us together as a community in support of the mayor and in support of peace and prosperity.

The meeting was a gathering of people of faith in support of the new mayor and the City.  Although we came from different religious communities, we invoked the name of God together for a common purpose of new beginnings and new possibilities.  I do not believe that anyone in that room expects that our prayers and blessings alone will change the course of the City’s future.  These prayers to God and petitions for blessings merely begin the process.  Virtue is a good habit, a persistence of behavior that grows from attentiveness.  And faith is no different.  Faith in God is merely a threshold over which we must step with action.

This attentiveness stems from a belief in the significance of Jesus and his teachings.  Belief and loyalty to God are part of a faithful life, but only a part.  There are of course seven virtues, suggesting that no one virtue will completely reflect a virtuous existence.  Some may take on greater significance within that life, but each virtue presumes an attention to detail beyond any single facet of the jewel of Christianity.

As we close this morning, remember this.  God gathers us to him through an invitation cast into our dark world.  Faith gathers together believers, sharing the word of God and sharing the lessons we learn by and through its light.  Faith is the spark that leads us to God.  Faith alone may start the fire, but living a wider life of virtue will kindle a true blaze, one that shines forth the light we receive from God.

So ends our sermon.