What is Faith?

'Faith Beginnings' 'What is Faith?'

preached by

The Revd Dr Paul Weston, Tutor at Ridley Hall

Matthew 15:21-28 21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22 Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." 23 But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." 24 He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." 26 He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." 27 She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 28 Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly.

Jesus said to her, 'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.'

I imagine that we will all relate to that statement of Jesus in different ways. Many of us would love to live as if something like it were true of our lives. We possess that desire to lay hold of something ultimate in life with the kind of assurance and confidence that can say: 'This is what holds my life together: this is the foundation upon which everything I am and do is built.'

But Jesus' words also raise particular questions of course in the context of worship. For what does it really mean to have 'religious' faith? For example, must I believe all the dogmas of the Christian church before I can say that I have 'faith'? For many this seems like an impossible hurdle: like racking yourself up in order to believe what you know you really cannot. It reminds us of the exchange between the White Queen and Alice in Alice Through the Looking Glass. When the White Queen told Alice that she was 101 years, 5 months and one day old, Alice said:

'Oh, goodness me, I can't believe that'!

'Can't you?' questioned the Queen in a pitying tone, 'Try again. Draw a long breath and shut your eyes.'

Alice laughed, 'There's no use. One can't believe in impossible Things.'

The White Queen replied, 'I dare say my child, you haven't had much practice, have you? Many years ago when I was your age, I always thought of impossible things a half hour every day. Why sometimes I thought of as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'

Is this really what 'faith' is about'? And if not, what then is it? And how do you know when you have it?

As is so often the case when we turn to the life and teaching of Jesus in the gospels we find ourselves on the end of some surprises - not least so far as understanding 'faith' is concerned. Perhaps the first surprise is this:

'Faith' is not essentially about 'being religious.'

Sometimes people say to clergy, 'I wish I had your faith' - as if faith were somehow the exclusive preserve of the 'professional' Christian. But that understanding is far removed from the story in Matthew 15. For here Jesus is commending the 'great faith' of someone who is actually a complete outsider to religious practice and devotion. Jesus himself is at this point in Matthew's gospel outside the boundaries of Jewish territory in Tyre and Sidon - perhaps seeking some peace and retreat before the inevitable journey to Jerusalem and the suffering entailed with it. Those whom he meets here are therefore all to some extent 'foreigners' to God's people and promises. But this particular woman (being a 'Canaanite') would have been doubly marginalised by civilised religious society as something of a 'pagan' renegade. Certainly no-one of Jesus' day would have remotely thought of her as 'one of God's people'. She would not therefore have been naturally considered a person of 'faith'. Perhaps this is the main point of the story. It certainly explains the disciples' reaction to her when they came to Jesus and urged him, 'Send her away, she keeps shouting after us'. It also helps to explain Jesus reply (directed to the disciples, but surely also within the woman's earshot) when he says, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' She was therefore not one of those to whom Jesus had primarily been sent. The first surprise then is that Jesus commends 'great faith' in someone so unlikely.

In fact the only other person of whom Jesus uses this kind of language in Matthew's gospel is another complete 'outsider' - this time a Roman Centurion, who asked Jesus to heal his servant 'at a distance' (Matt. 8:5). To add to our surprise, Jesus actually never uses this kind of language of any of his inner core of disciples. Yet, hadn't they left all that they had in order to follow him? Surely they had shown a greater measure of faith?

Here then is the first surprise about 'faith'. Whatever else it is, it is clearly not the exclusive preserve of 'religious' people. 'Faith' doesn't appear from this story to be something to which you 'graduate' after a period of apprenticeship and initiation. In fact, this encounter suggests that it has more to do with beginnings than endings, with starts rather than finishes.

What then was it about this Canaanite woman that made Jesus say to her: 'Great is your faith'? And what do we learn about 'faith' as a result?

'Faith' involves a growing recognition of who Jesus is.

For this woman it starts with that inner intuitive 'prompting' which makes her leave her home to run after Jesus and call out to him, 'Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession' (v.22). There is of course a real note of risk in her coming to Jesus. She is stepping out of her 'security-zone' and is willing to chance everything. She could of course have been wrong about Jesus' ability to help her (for she presumably had only heard about him by hearsay). She was also risking her reputation amongst her own kind. How would they respond to her? Like the disciples, they would dismissed her as a foolish nuisance. But her intuition grips her, and drives her forward. She is soon down on her knees, imploring Jesus: 'Lord, help me!' (v.25).

The story teaches us that this woman's 'faith' appears to have little to do with her achieving some sort of intellectual agreement with a set of beliefs, or dogmas. In fact it appears to have little to do with 'getting our heads around' a set of abstract ideas or notions at all. It is much more like an intuitive perception - a kind of 'sixth sense' - about this person Jesus: an inner prompting which compels us to go after him, to engage with his words and character, to 'relate' to him. And in the process, of course, this seeking after Jesus can even encompass the hard questioning and even the awkward silence which this woman encountered when the questions she asked of him did not immediately seem to receive the reply she desired and was anticipating. There has to be room for hesitation, silence, and even doubt in the picture of 'faith' given here.

The extraordinary and compelling attractiveness of Jesus' teaching and life is something you find again and again in the gospel narratives. Listening to him was like listening to a live performance with all its resonant depth and splendour after you've 'made do' with a life-time of scratched 78 records. Faith grows when we become open and vulnerable to the words and character of this 'Other': when we listen to his words 'softly', and allow them to change us, refocus our own questions, and enable us to respond to the God who is at work, speaking in and through him.

How does this intuition about Jesus begin? For some - like this woman - it springs out of sense of need. Her daughter was suffering. For others, the discovery of Jesus can be sparked by the lives of others. Many people are 'prompted' to seek Jesus because they have seen an indefinable 'quality' about his followers - a 'centredness', a security - that raises inviting questions which point to Jesus as the one in whom 'other-dimensional' answers may be found.

'Faith' therefore has to do with personal encounter rather than with theoretical engagement. In fact, as Blaise Pascal the 17th century French philosopher put it, the search for 'faith' which assumes that it will be born out of an examination of religious 'theory' is likely to 'miss' God altogether. 'God conceals himself from those who examine him,' he wrote, 'but reveals himself to those who search for him.'

But 'faith' is also not just about the intuition to seek.

'Faith' consists in taking Jesus at his word.

This story illustrates clearly that 'faith' is characterised by a willingness to grasp what is being offered in the encounter with Jesus. What stands out is the woman's dogged persistence. She is out of her depth spiritually, culturally, and theologically. And Jesus' words only serve to reinforce this sense of exclusion in her: 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel', he says. Then comes her heartfelt plea: 'Lord, help me'. Then once more, his words appear to reinforce the distance that separates them. 'It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.' But she keeps going; and her reply is a triumph of faithful persistence (mixed even with a bit of cheekiness?): 'Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table' (v.27).

She is prompted to seek, but she also desperately wants to find.

Martin Luther said of her that she 'catches' Jesus in his own words. He means I think that she is reflecting back to Jesus the implication of his own teaching, and by doing so is including herself amongst its beneficiaries. For didn't he say that he had come for the 'poor', the 'wretched', the 'sinners', and those who were 'outcast'? So she senses in him the saving power that could transform her life and the life of her child - even though she doesn't naturally qualify - and she holds him to his words. She will not let him go before she has found her peace and satisfaction in what he offers.

' "Great is your faith!" says Jesus. "Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly.'

Perhaps here then is the final surprise. 'Faith' in this story is not primarily some settled and serene conclusion reached at the end of a chain of philosophical reasoning. No, faith is rather the readiness and eagerness to receive what is offered to us in Jesus Christ. It is the hand that grasps the gift of God in Jesus and makes it our own. This is biblical faith.

Maybe then the real question for us today is not 'Do I have faith?', but 'Do I hunger after God and his salvation?' The testimony of Christians up and down the ages is that the prayer, 'Lord help me' is met with the gift of faith to believe in the one whom God has sent: Jesus Christ.

Prayer: Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us your gift of faith, that we may recognize in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection the salvation you have promised; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.