Working on Faith

Readings:
Psalm 125
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
The Epistle Reading: James 2: 1-10 & 14-17 
 
What does it mean to have faith? If you have faith in someone you trust them. You know they will do what they say; you know that you can count on them. For those of us who are religious, faith is also about trust: trust in God and God’s teachings as expressed through scripture and in the life of Jesus Christ. Faith in the Trinity - the Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit is a lot harder than faith in a person you interact with daily. 

Einstein did not create a formula to prove the existence of God nor can Artificial Intelligence like CHAT GPT do it. For fun, I asked. It answered that it was a deeply philosophical and theological question that has been debated for centuries. It listed several philosophical approaches such as St. Anselm’s, that said if we can conceive of a higher being, then that being must exist and the teleological argument that the complexity and order in the universe imply the existence of an intelligent designer, among others. However, it was sharing different people’s theories and noted that, ultimately, it comes down to what the individual believes and experiences. 

So congratulations for being here as a person of faith or a person open to the idea of faith! If you think about that, in our modern world where AI could have written this sermon for me (it didn’t) and Amazon can have almost anything you want at your door step in the next three days, having faith in the Creator God is a huge accomplishment. 

Whew. Maybe we should just sit back in our pews and rest on that one. We’ve made it!

But James reminds us in Chapter 2 verses 14-17 that for those of us who get there, faith alone is not enough. “What good is it my brothers and sisters if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

So just like we have to exercise our bodies to be healthy, we have to exercise our faith as well.  Faith takes work beyond belief. It is both a letting go of having to have all of the answers and an embracing of the love of God. To work that faith we need to make space in our lives for worship, quiet contemplation and study. We need to tune out much of the information coming at us to tune in to our Souls where God lives and is waiting for us to listen. And yet that is not enough either. We need to live our lives as the beloved of God by putting our faith to work: taking action for others. Faith inspires us to action, following the model that Jesus set for us, particularly helping those who need it most. And while no one can do everything, everyone can do something. 

One of the ways we can work our faith is to consider creation, this amazing,  beautiful planet that we live on that God created with absolutely everything we need: clean water, plants and animals to eat, rocks and trees to provide shelter, friends and neighbors to encourage and support us, and even plants to provide medicine.  When we consider that creation, we also have to consider what we humans have done to upset that balance: using up too many resources, polluting the environment, harming one another and destroying portions of the environment. 

Human caused climate change is devastating our planet. Famines have been triggered by once-in-a-century or once-in-five centuries droughts or flooding. Death and suffering have been brought by hurricanes and heat waves: the death of people, fish, plants and animals. 

The poor of the world are hit hardest by climate change even though they have contributed to it the least. The countries with the fewest resources are hit the hardest. They cannot just pick up and move or buy more food and rebuild. They do not all have governments who can step in to help like we do but even our own government cannot keep up with the pace of floods, fires, hurricanes, and droughts.

Frankly, thinking about this is so overwhelming, that we just want to stop thinking about it. We might even be grateful that we are living now rather than 50 or 100 or 500 years from now. But then we remember our children and grandchildren: the future. What will the world be like for them?

My students have often bemoaned what is happening to the planet and the fact that they are expected to clean up a mess that they did not create. They cry out that it is not fair and they are right. 

In order to keep our faith alive, we have to exercise it; we have to work it. And when it comes to fighting the challenges in our world today from: climate change, war, violence, prejudice and poverty, it feels completely overwhelming. It would be easy to say, what possible difference can I make? But we can’t.
Remember the story of the old man on the beach picking up starfish and tossing them back into the water? Someone said to him, “there are too many, how can you possibly make a difference?” He answered, “I can make a difference to this one,” as he tossed it back into the sea. 

There are big ways to make a difference: donating or volunteering to help non-profits who help people who are hungry, suffering from war and disease, who need housing, education or to rebuild their lives. Helping organizations that sequester carbon, plant trees, clean the waters or support pollinators. I bet all of us do some of that on our own or through the Neighbors in Need, One Great Hour of Sharing or other offerings that we collect through church. There are many wonderful organizations that make a difference, but we can still do more. 

Pay attention to what is happening at the state and national level to help the planet and all those in need and contact your legislators with your opinions. Help with a local river or lake clean up. Deliver meals on wheels or work at the food bank. Tip well when you can to thank those who serve you.

But most of all, what we can do is live into what Jesus told us to do: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And who is our neighbor? All of God’s people- whether they are like us or not, whether we agree with them or not. They are all the dearly beloved of God, just as God created them. Imagine how different the world would be if we could strive to love and care for all people in the way we love and care for our families? If we could change our hearts, we would change our actions. We would not walk by someone in need, we would check on them even if we personally did not have the ability to help them. 

And we cannot stop with people. We need to love all of God’s creation: the land, the waters, the animals that swim in the sea, walk or slither on the land and those that fly through the very air that we breathe. If we love this beautiful place where we live, we will treat it differently; we will preserve it. Center for Action and Contemplation teacher Brian Mc Laren says, “What you love, you try to save, and that’s why so many of us see the natural world around us with such tenderness, with such grief, sometimes with such anger, because what we love is passing away.” And if we do not love a place because it has become polluted, we can act to change that. God created a beautifully resilient planet because he knew that we would make mistakes and wanted to give us the ability to fix them.

Proverbs reminds us that “the Lord pleads the cause” of the poor and all in need and notes that those who are generous are blessed for they share their bread. We are tasked with putting our faith to work in having hope when others see none and putting that faith and hope into action. Your work may come in sharing your bread or your time, your talent or your prayers, or all of the above. If you smile at one person who is having a hard day today, you have made a difference. If you plant one tree or pick up one piece of trash, you have made a difference.
 
God calls us to live and work our faith in communion with the earth and all on it. As author and social critic bell hooks said, “To live in communion with the earth fully acknowledging nature’s power with humility and grace is a practice of spiritual mindfulness that heals and restores. Making peace with the earth we make the world a place where we can be one with nature.” And I would add: one with each other. It is a lofty goal, but one that our faith guides us to work on. Amen.

Pastor Michelle Fountain

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