Christian Virtues Part I: The Virtue of Faith A Sermon by Rich Holmes on Hebrews 11: 1-3; 8-16 Delivered on August 7, 2016 at Northminster Presbyterian Church in North Canton, Ohio I begin today with a quote from the book of James. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no works? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you were to say to him, Go, I wish you well; keep warm and be well fed, but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by works, is dead. It may be that it was after reading this particular passage that Martin Luther famously called James an epistle of straw. For Luther hated James, and he hated it because he thought it supported a rather low view of the role of faith. Faith, Luther thought, was much more important than James seems to say in passages like these. Today, I begin a series of four sermons on Christian virtues. Next Sunday, I will talk about the virtue of hope. On August 21 st I will talk about the virtue of love and on August 28 th I will end this series with the virtue of humility. But we begin today with what might be the toughest virtue to talk about, namely faith. And it is the toughest virtue to talk about because while I am not one to disagree with Martin Luther, James seems to be right. Whether or not we have faith cannot possibly matter as much as we do, and if that is so, why should faith be considered a virtue? Aristotle, who had quite a lot to say about the virtues called virtues activities. And so, for Aristotle, it is the things you do that make you virtuous. If we call you courageous it is because you do not run away in battle. If we call you temperate or self-controlled it is 1
because we don t see you overindulging yourself. If we call you just it is because we see you dealing fairly with everybody. Virtues involved doing for Aristotle, but faith doesn t seem to be a doing. Now you may say to me, Pastor Rich, that is nonsense. Of course faith is a doing. If I didn t have faith in God I wouldn t be kind to my neighbors. If I didn t have faith in God I wouldn t have taken part in the Stark Hunger Walk this year. If I didn t have faith in God, I wouldn t volunteer at the Canton Health Center. There are so many things I wouldn t do if I didn t have faith. I understand. But I could also introduce you to people every day who do kind and just and compassionate things for others who have no faith, even if many of us would not do these things without our faith. So if faith is not a doing, then why should we think of faith as a virtue? Virtues, after all, are the kinds of things that make you a better person. Virtues are the kinds of things which we say make you a good person. If you are compassionate, kind and honest we think you are a much better person than if you are cruel, unkind and dishonest. But how does having faith make you a better person? Well, let me start by saying I don t think that faith makes you a better person if faith is just a matter of believing that God exists and that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and so forth. Faith is a more a matter of trust than believing that some statement is true. Now, that doesn t mean that you can t say the words I believe as an expression of faith. Here at Northminster, in fact, we invite you to express your faith each Sunday with confessions such as the Apostle s Creed, which, after all, begins with the words I believe as we say I believe in God the Father Almighty. But notice we say I believe in we don t say I believe that, and that s an important 2
distinction. Anyone can say I believe that God exists or I believe that Jesus is God s Son, but that is not an expression of faith. But to say I believe in is a statement of faith because it is a statement of trust in something or someone. If I say I believe in marriage or I believe in public schools I am not just saying that I believe there are such things, I am saying I put my trust in them, I put my full confidence in them. When I think about the difference between believing in and believing that, I think about the time I was mugged. Did I ever tell you about the time I was mugged? Well, it was right out here on the corner. A guy held me up and he said, Gimme your wallet! I said Ok, here you go. And he took my wallet and started to walk away. But then he turned around and he said, Hey, hey buddy, what s this? You ve only got five bucks in your wallet. Like I was supposed to apologize to the guy because I didn t have more money for him to steal. He said, What do you do for a living? I said, Well, I m a pastor at a Christian church. He said, No way, no way, I can t believe that. You see, I m a Christian too. He didn t see the irony in that. So I think this guy might have believed that God exists, but I don t know that he believed in God and he believed in Jesus. And if we think of faith not as belief that, but trust or belief in, then I think we can begin to see how faith makes you a better person. Imagine if you would that you had a spouse who did everything and more for you. They expressed their love and devotion and commitment to you in a hundred different ways every day. But in spite of all they did, you didn t trust them. For absolutely no reason, you had suspicions that they were being unfaithful to you, you followed them around to make sure they weren t cheating on you with someone else. You questioned 3
them about everything they did. You even hired a private detective. I think your spouse would be right to be hurt and disappointed in you if they found out that you had this attitude about them. Or imagine that you had a child and you did everything you ever could to show your love for a child that you have. Every day you worked hard to provide for them, to feed them, shelter them and show them affection. But for no reason at all, the child believed that you were out to get them and to harm them in some way. You would think there was something seriously wrong with this child. If faith were just a matter of belief, it wouldn t do anything to make us better for having it or worse for lacking it. But since faith is a matter of trust, I think we are right to be disappointed in people like this spouse and this child when they lack a certain amount of faith. And we are disappointed not just because we think they should have such faith, but even because we might think that they even owe it to the person who has been kind, affectionate and loyal to them. Well, what is true about the faith we put in each other is also true about our religious faith in God. Whenever we lack faith in God s promises or God s goodness or God s love, I can imagine that God says to us, What have I ever done to deserve this? I have created the heavens and the earth, I have given you life. I have given you health, I have given you rain and sunshine and fertile soil to bring forth the harvest. I have given you energy, intelligence, and imagination to conquer all the world s problems. What have I ever done to deserve your lack of trust? When we look at faith by itself, it may be that faith is not a doing. It may be that faith alone does not put food on any hungry person s table, or medicine in any sick person s body, or a roof over any homeless person s head. But that doesn t mean we are not better people for having 4
faith or worse for lacking it. Just as that spouse owes trust to his or her spouse who has done so much and the child owes trust to the parent, we owe trust to God who has done more for us than we could ever ask for or imagine, and I think it hurts God whenever we lack that trust. Sometimes I hear people not only question the claim that faith is a virtue as James seems to do, but they even call it a vice. In our New Testament reading for today, the author of Hebrews calls faith the conviction of things not seen. And in expressing agreement with this view, the apostle Paul says we walk by faith and not by sight. But I once saw a person wearing a t-shirt that said I walk by sight and not by faith. I don t know what that means, but I suppose it means that in this person s mind you shouldn t believe in anything you can t see for yourself. You shouldn t accept anything as true that you haven t first verified for yourself. Only believe what you can see for yourself. That s something I hear people say over and over again, but hearing it over and over again doesn t make this piece of advice any less absurd. If you only believe what you could see for yourself, then you better not go out to lunch after church today. After all, I doubt they re going to let you back in the kitchen to see for yourself that the cooks aren t poisoning your food. If you only believe what you see for yourself, then you shouldn t ever take your car to a mechanic. After all, when you drive away how do you know the mechanic didn t cut your brake line or plant a bomb under the hood? Did you physically stand there and watch them do the work? If you only believe what you can see for yourself you better not go to the doctor next time you re sick. After all, did you sit next to the person who s treating you in all their classes in medical school, did you actually watch them study and take all their exams? How do you know they are qualified to treat you? We walk by 5
faith and not by sight a hundred times a day in a hundred different ways. If we didn t, it is hard to see how we could even function as a society. And here s what I think God deserves to know from each of us. If we place our faith one hundred times a day in imperfect people, why can t we place our faith in a perfect God? If we place our faith a hundred times a day in those who have proven to let us down on occasion, why not place our faith in the one who would never let us down? Why not? I know a story about a little girl who lived with her mother and one night while they slept their house caught on fire. The mother who had her bedroom downstairs, was able to get out through the front door, but the little girl s bedroom was upstairs and so she couldn t get through the front door, and she had climbed up to the roof for safety. The mother heard the girl calling for help and so she stood under her daughter and said Jump! Jump my daughter and I will catch you! The little girl couldn t see where her mother was standing because there was so much thick black smoke that was rising up from the house below all she could do is hear her mother s voice, but her mother could clearly see where she was, and so she called to her again, saying, Jump, jump and I will catch you. So the little girl answered her mother and said, Mommy, I m too scared to jump, I can t see you. But the mother called back and said, I know, my love, but I can see you, and that is all that matters. And this was enough for the little girl to jump to safety right into her mother s arms below. If you are having trouble placing your faith in God because of what you cannot see, maybe it will help to know that God can see you. God can see all the things you have questions about. God can see all your struggles. God can see all your pain. God can see you. And maybe knowing 6
that will be enough to give God our trust, and to give God the faith that we give so freely and so generously to others who are so much less deserving. 7