February 17, 2008

The story is told of a man who had fallen off the edge of a high cliff. During his fall he managed to grab hold of a tree root growing out of the side of the cliff. As he dangled there holding on for dear life, he began to pray. Then he heard the voice of God asking him, “Do you really believe in me?” “Yes, I do--I really do!” the man said. “Do you trust me?” the voice asked. “Yes, yes, I trust you,” the man answered. “Then,” the voice of God said, “I will see to it that you are saved. Now, do what I tell you to do. Now, let go!”[1] Such is the nature of faith. Faith let’s go. Fear holds on.

Fear is an enemy of the spiritual life and a defeating force over meaningful human existence. As Emerson said, “Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.” Fear drives our lives and decisions more than we may be aware or acknowledge. “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” is a revealing question that brings to light the fear that grips us and troubles us when we honestly and prayerfully let the question do its work in us.

Fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of honest emotions, fear of change, fear of making decisions, fear of being different, fear of becoming involved. We fear for our children, for our families, for our communities, for our schools, for our careers. We fear the economical heath of our country, the social well-being of race relations. We fear sharing our faith with someone, afraid we will be mocked or made fun of or misunderstood. We fear living and we fear dying. Fear is brutal. It batters us, beats us, and breaks us.

We fear darkness. And in darkness was where Nicodemus came seeking Jesus. He came in the darkness of night out of fear, and the Light of the world invites him to let go and move from fear to faith. Not “faith” as subscribing to a set of claims believed to be true. Nicodemus was a Pharisee whose head was full of beliefs to which he was clinging so tightly that he couldn’t grasp what Jesus was talking about. Jesus speaks of spiritual, interior rebirth and Nicodemus thinks only of a literal, physical second birth. Jesus speaks of the uncontrollable Wind of the Spirit and Nicodemus can’t feel it passing by during his night-time conversation with Jesus. Nicodemus stays with what’s in his head when Jesus shows him the way of the heart.[2] And even that move from head-belief to heart-faith is another fear we face and it keeps us from the vibrant life of faith.

Over 80 years ago our American Baptist predecessor Harry Emerson Fosdick when he was the founding minister of New York’s Riverside Church, wrote an essay titled “Adventurous Religion,” in which he said that we have moved from vitality to rigidity in Christianity and our understanding of “faith” has changed from its New Testament meaning. For Jesus and the first followers “faith” was a personal venturesomeness involving self-commitment, devotion, loyalty, courage. It wasn’t faith in formal creeds--no creeds had yet been written! It wasn’t faith in the New Testament--there wasn’t a NT at the time! It wasn’t faith in the church--the church was not yet organized. Faith was a personal relationship with Christ and what Jesus stood for. “Jesus invited the first disciples to begin a spiritual adventure” in a new, untried way of life. “We ask people first to accept a formula” of beliefs (about such items as God, Christ, sin, human nature) “instead of summoning them to undertake a life” of faith. And in the words of Fosdick, Our “organized, institutionalized, creedalized, ritualized-religion has become for multitudes a stuffy and uninteresting affair…When Christianity forgets that (all its formulas, summarizing experience up to date, are sign-posts, not boundary lines), becomes preservative instead of creative, rests in assumed finalities instead of daring new sallies of the Spirit, retreats into supposed citadels instead of taking the open road, it not only is false to its historic origin in Christ, who did the very opposite, but…dooms itself to stagnation and decay.”[3]

Jesus calls Nicodemus and us to let go and move from fear to faith as an adventure in the company of Jesus. And we would let go if we weren’t afraid.

Fear keeps us being admirers of Jesus and not followers of Jesus. Nicodemus admired Jesus, but would he become a follower? Would he move to faith or stay in fear? Three hundred sixty-five times the Bible says, “Be not afraid, fear not.” Someone passed along to me these words, “If I feed my faith my fears will starve to death.”

Faith is being born from God, being begotten by God, being born anew of God’s Spirit. There is nothing we can do or have to do to bring about this rebirth. We are born again from above. It is God’s doing within us. Faith is opening up to receive this spiritual rebirth and to receive life itself from God. Faith is living by the Wind of the Spirit.

Faith trusts a loving God who gave his son to this world--a loving son who gave himself for this world. Faith is trusting in God who is not about condemnation despite our rebellion, but about salvation and filling people with a never-ending life.

Faith is trusting and obeying God with Abram. God calls Abram leaves his country, his kinfolk, and his father’s house and sets out for a new land. Responding to the call of God in our lives, we leave behind our past life, the familiar, the comfortable, the known--we let go. And go with God into the unknown where the promise of blessing waits for us.

Faith is trusting in God as our help when we lift our eyes unto the hills. On an email I received this week from a friend was this bit of wisdom: “Don’t tell God how big your mountain is--tell your mountain how big your God is!” We trust God, maker of heaven and earth and bigger than all the mountains of life, as our support and strength. We trust the living God who will not our foot slip as we scale the mountain, and who never sleeps and forever watches over us. Faith is trusting in God who shades us in the heat of the journey, who will keep us from all evil and keep our life.

Faith is also faithfulness to God. Moving from fear to faith is a response of trust, of allegiance, of commitment to God and the holy ways of Jesus. It involves courage and loyalty. Faith is a way of life, a quality of life, an orientation of the heart. It is centering and staying centered in God. It is being Christ-like in our relationships, our actions, and in all the demands and decisions of life.

In her very honest and refreshing spiritual autobiography, Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott begins by saying: My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then help me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear. When I look back on some of these resting places…I can see how flimsy and indirect a path they made. Yet each step brought me closer to the verdant pad of faith on which I somehow stay afloat today.[4]

Nicodemus may have found his own lily pads, also. As John’s Jesus-story tells it, Nicodemus moved from being an admirer of Jesus in darkness to being a defender of Jesus before the Sanhedrin. And by the end of the gospel, he appears with Joseph of Arimathea as timid followers of Jesus. They came to claim and prepare the body of Jesus for burial. There is no indication he ever reached that final form of faith in freely, fully, fearlessly confessing Jesus as Messiah and Lord, but at least he was moving in the right direction, with the possibility he may move from fear to faith.

It is a movement we each can make through the hard time of fear. We may not make it with huge leaps and bounds into the realm of faith, but the wind of the Spirit can take us from one lily pad of faith to the next and somehow stay afloat today.

[1] John Powell, Reason to Live, 97.

[2] See Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, 26

[3] Fosdick, Adventurous Religion and Other Essays, 1-14.

[4] Ann Lamott, Traveling Mercies, 3.