Faith

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

What does mean to have faith?

Our Gospel story today is divided into two distinct parts.  The first part of our story takes place in Jesus’ hometown.  No matter what Jesus does there, nothing works.  In his own community, Jesus is a failure.

Why can’t Jesus do any miracles where everyone knows him?

In the second part of the story Jesus sends out his disciples.  These are the same disciples who continually fail, who never seem to be able to understand what Jesus is asking them to do.  They go where they are sent and cast out many demons and cure many who are ill.

Why are they suddenly so successful?

The answer is the same for both parts of the story.  Faith!

Why couldn’t Jesus perform any miracles in his home town?  Because they didn’t believe he could.  Jesus was just the carpenter’s son.  He wasn’t anyone special.  They were not able to believe that the boy next door was the son of God, or even a prophet capable of doing God’s work.  They had no faith in him so he couldn’t do anything.

Just after this, Jesus’ disciples, who usually can’t get anything right, were sent out to do Jesus’ work.  They did what Jesus said and it worked.  Why?  Because they had faith.  They probably still didn’t understand, but Jesus told them that they could cast out demons and they believed him.  They had faith in what Jesus told them.

Faith is not hoping God can, it is knowing God will.

According to our Gospel today, God’s ability to act in our lives is directly tied to our faith.  If we don’t believe God can do anything, he can’t.  If we do believe God can act in our lives, he will.

So what does it mean to have faith?  What do we need to have faith?

Do we need to understand everything Jesus tries to tell us?  Not if his disciples are anything to go by.  They almost never understood him, but they clearly had faith.

Do we need to be prepared for what we will face?  No, the disciples were sent with the bare minimum.  In fact, being more prepared would have made it harder for them to succeed.  And why is that?  They would have been tempted to depend on what they had instead of depending on their faith.

There is only one thing that we need to have faith.  And that’s faith.

If we want God to be at work in this community, we need to believe that God is working in this community, not hoping that he will.

So now we know what we need to have faith but that still doesn’t tell us how to have faith.

Having faith isn’t easy.  It takes practice and discipline.

If you believe that it is going to snow, do you go out in shorts and a t-shirt?  If the forecast says that it will be 30 degrees (Celsius) do you put on your winter coat?  No.  We all dress for the weather that we expect.

We need to do the same thing with God.  We need to act like we believe that God is working in our lives.  We need to look for how God is working in our lives and expect to find his work.

The more we do this, the more God will be able to work in our lives.

And the more God can work in our lives, the more God can work in this community.

Just remember: Faith is not hoping God can, it is knowing God will.

Thanks be to God.