Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Ephrem Arcement
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 7 B
Click here for an audio of the sermon
The entrepreneur and author Eric Sinoway once said, “Inflection points come in all forms: positive, negative, easy, hard, obvious, and subtle. The way you respond – whether you grab hold of an inflection point and leverage it for all it’s worth or just let it carry you along – is as important as the event itself.”
It’s probably not an overstatement to say that the building blocks of history are founded on a series of inflection points were major insights by prophetic visionaries and heroic acts by courageous people of faith bend history in new directions. It seems that the creative force embedded within nature searching for new possibility, while there all along, is only exploited for all its worth by few. But when it is…when it is seized, harnessed, and leveraged for all its worth, a whole new era can awaken. It was Martin Luther King, Jr who memorably proclaimed, “We must move forward in the days ahead with audacious faith. The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Implicit in these breakthroughs toward greater justice, though, are the many obstacles along the way. And for many, if not most, of the human family, life is more characterized by the obstacle rather than the breakthrough. And, in such a place, the temptation will always be to see only the infinite series of obstacles along the horizon…to feel the weight of the burden of trying to overcome them…and to fall into despair.
But this is why history is so important to the journey of faith. We must remember…and constantly remind ourselves…that history has proven that there is something in the force of life itself that has within it the capacity to overcome and transcend any counterforce that tries to keep it stuck or that seeks to annihilate it all together. When we look back at creation’s long journey to becoming what it is at this point in time, we see a slow but steady progress from primitive life forms to human consciousness, from slavery to freedom, and from overcoming one obstacle after another. But the journey has never been one straight line of progress. There has always been a zigzagging, forward and backward move toward wider and wider vistas where each obstacle faced teaches an important lesson for life’s success and forward movement.
With this truth in mind, we hear the sacred stories of our faith and recognize these inflection points in our own sacred story. And we see that they call to us to awaken to that hidden potential which is in us all. Our Judeo-Christian tradition has named it “faith.” But what exactly is faith? Too often our minds default to something quite other than what is meant in our sacred texts. Often, we think in terms of faith’s objective meaning as in the content of one’s belief…like a creed. But this is only rarely the meaning that the Bible conveys. Faith, according to scripture, is almost always described in the subjective sense…as an inner disposition of courage and conviction. Biblically, faith is more like trust than belief…and this trust is the total response of one’s life to the prior initiative of God who calls out to us to do the impossible.
Too often, though, our response in the face of the impossible…to life’s obstacles…is to cower and run in the opposite direction…and to see these obstacles as something to be avoided at all costs. But to a person of deep faith, an obstacle is an opportunity…an opportunity to transcend and grow…an inflection point that breaks open new possibilities that wouldn’t have been known in any other way…. And what the gospel teaches us is that the only way to transcendence is by this faith that can look the obstacle straight in the face and see through it.
We encounter this kind of faith in the young David staring down the giant Goliath who wants him dead. We encounter it in St. Paul staring down the litany of obstacles standing in the way of his apostolic ministry. And we encounter it, most supremely, in Jesus staring down a storm and bringing it to complete stillness…and then staring down the cross and bearing it…for the joy that was set before him. In these cases, faith isn’t the opposite of doubt. Faith is the opposite of fear. It’s that intangible quality that seizes upon us in the moment of life’s greatest need and says, “Yes, we can do this,” when everything about our circumstances says, “No, you can’t.”
But where does this courage come from and is it really something all that exceptional, reserved only for the “heroes of faith?” Isn’t the whole point of Christian life really about making this particular quality accessible to us all?
Interestingly, recent rereading of St. Paul’s understanding of faith has led some New Testament scholars to translate some very important passages of his differently. Traditionally, we have understood Paul’s understanding of salvation as being received through our faith in Christ. But the phrase pistis christou can also be translated as the “faith of Christ.” And in certain instances, these New Testament scholars say, it should be. This has now become so widely accepted that the recently published updated version of the NRSV now adopts this line of interpretation. For instance, Galatians 2:16 now reads, “we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by doing the works of the law.” And a little later: “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
What may seem like playing with semantics really has profound implications for our understanding of faith. It is precisely this quality of life…this courage and daring tenacity in the face of the crosses which stand menacingly before us…the faith that causes us to rise up and move into the storms of life with confidence and fearlessness…just like Christ did…and then the early Christians after him when their lives were on the line…that makes us Christians. This kind of faith is the Christian’s most distinctive quality. This and the love that motivates it.
So, from where does this faith come? Faith is not something for which we have to grasp or for which we must strive because it is a gift already given. This faith to turn history to new and more expansive realms of peace and justice is a divine power which, through our baptism, has been wedded with our deepest selves. It is our truth and our most fundamental identity. We are all heroes of faith…though only some have realized it. To be a Christian is to be graced with this transcending force, this obstinate hope, this relentless optimism…for it is the very faith of Christ himself which overcame even death rising up within us.
This heroic Christian courage became very real to many of us monks who visited the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Museum in Cape Town just a few weeks ago. Here was a man with seemingly insurmountable obstacles trying to guide a people seemingly stuck in a system of injustice and oppression. He could have played it safe and kept quiet and held to the status quo, but there was a force that rose up within him that demanded justice and peace for all South Africans, not just some. Like David, like Paul, and with the faith of Jesus himself, Archbishop Tutu stared down the cross he was called to bear and broke open new possibilities of freedom for his oppressed flock…and helped usher in one of the most significant inflection points of South African history.
Christian faith means that God is at work in the history of our lives motivating, directing, and encouraging us to do the impossible so that God’s beloved kingdom may reach to the ends of the earth. This isn’t a faith for a chosen few. Each of us who bear the name Christian bear also this inner force to conquer the unconquerable. Historians may not write our story in their history books, like they have done with David, Paul, Jesus, and Desmond Tutu, but we are all called to do our part to shape the course of history and bend it toward greater justice and peace. This bending is never easy. Expect to be confronted by a multitude of obstacles blocking your path. Your own personal Goliath may stand before you. But stop, be still, take a deep breath, and remember the One who is in you, then call upon the name of the Lord, and march forward to claim your victory! But this isn’t just about you winning a battle and proving how great your faith is. It’s about courageously leading the human family to its next inflection point in history where God’s kingdom breaks open to new possibilities, until all people know the freedom of the children of God.
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