Sermon - A Living Faith

"A Living Faith"

A sermon by Rev. Dr. Thomas Evans for Edgewood PC, Birmingham, AL
Sunday, November 9, 2008

Text: John 7:37-39

“Crocodile Tongues! One thousand slimy crocodile tongues boiled in the skull of a witch for twenty days and nights with the eyeballs of a lizard. Add the fingers of a monkey, the gizzard of a pig, the beak of a green parrot, the juice of a porcupine, and three spoonfuls of sugar. Stew for another week and let the moon do the rest!”

These words are from my favorite book as a child-- James and the Giant Peach. In it a miserable unloved young orphan boy with two detestable Aunts goes on a wild adventure with an oversized peach and some gargantuan insects. His escapade begins with an ancient wizened man who brings this amazing potion full of those gnarly elements. But it was the description of the potion after it had fermented that captured my imagination as a boy. While James stared at it, “He noticed thousands of little green things were slowly stirring about and moving over each other as though they were alive. ‘There’s more magic in those things in there than in all the rest of the world put together the old man said softly.’”

When Jesus spoke of living water that living potion came to mind.

John’s gospel tells us that Jesus spoke the words about living water on the last day of the festival of Succoth. For seven days water was carried in a golden pitcher from the pool of Siloam to the temple to commemorate the miracle in the wilderness when Moses used his staff to bring water from the rock. This seminal event became a metaphor for God’s blessings. Without water the body very quickly breaks down with hallucinations headaches seizures heart rate increases all after only about a 10% loss. Imagine how refreshing that miraculous water from the rock must have been for the Israelites. All this from an inert lifeless cup of H20 so what could water that was alive do?

Perhaps drinking this living water was the early church’s secret. They didn’t have committees or buildings. They didn’t have seeker sensitive services, youth groups, worship bands. They didn’t have organs or choirs. There were no white elephant sales or Vacation Bible schools. They didn’t have marketing plans or church growth consultants. It was actually difficult to join the church. However despite ‘lacking’ all the modern ‘advances’ in AD 100 there were about 25,000 Christians. Two hundred years later there were 20 million. (The Forgotten Ways, Hirsch). That living water of the Spirit was some potent stuff!

Over the course of many centuries the very nature of the church has been confused with Books of Order, women’s parlors, and decorating committees. All these elements can enhance our experience of church but they can also confuse us. We will explore a living faith as the essence of church and hopefully gain some clarity. The church pours into us living water which gives a living belief spurring us into the world with a living hope.

Stan Ott a Presbyterian minister and consultant who is leading about 20 of our churches in a transformation process observes that involvement in the church does not necessarily equate to spiritual growth. In fact he cites one study which discovered that the majority of Protestants have not grown in their faith from age 20 to about 60. The results are disturbing because churches are taking up more and more of our time. Programs can actually distract us from growing in the faith. A well organized church impresses us and can draw us in but are we being formed into mature passionate loving disciples of Christ? The church’s task is not to keep us busy in committee meetings or bake sales but to pour into our hearts this Living Water.

This begins by sharing absolutely, unconditionally the love of Christ, encouraging and equipping us into prayer, and blessing us with profound passionate, joyful, and challenging worship of Almighty God. But if the activities and ministries of the church simply keep us busy rather than pour in living water than living belief fails to form.

The institutionalization of faith since the early centuries while it helped transmit it to future generations it also carried the danger of substituting believing things about Christ for believing in Christ. The church in its quest for doctrinal truth domesticated Jesus into a list of facts that we have to adhere to- fully human fully God of one substance with the Father without sin and so on. While the doctrine concerning Jesus is factually accurate Jesus himself believed there was a better way to convey his nature to us, because he knew the limitation of a doctrine of ideas. Instead of using dogma Jesus used images such as bread, good shepherd, light of the world and more. It is that vital free flowing Spirit which Jesus promises us which reminds us that God cannot be trapped in a box but like divine quicksilver eludes our doctrinal snares.

Perhaps this is the point behind John’s glorious description- ‘and the word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth’. Words have powerful force to convey understanding and are one of the great blessings God has bestowed upon the human creature. What would we be without them, yet there are also clear limitations and we can easily substitute the printed word for the Living Word.

An idea based theology can convey many glorious truths about God but its power of resolution can achieve only so much detail. At some point as we attempt to delineate finer and finer points of theology we actually become less accurate. Something like trying to focus a microscope on the slide of an amoeba. The image becomes sharper as you get closer but as you continue to turn the knob it becomes blurry again and soon, ‘crack’ you have broken the slide and indeed can see nothing.

Just as the word ‘tree’ can never fully convey understanding to one who has never climbed a trunk, lazed in its shade or gazed at its majestic beauty so to words about God can never fully convey the essence of God. Thus a word made flesh, that is a word made alive that is a Living Word has so much more power. Jesus called us not simply to believe him but to believe in him for his life disclosed the inner nature and character of God. Ask yourself is it more important to agree that Jesus is one hypostases of the eternal triune God or to know and feel the impact that where he went the blind received their sight, the hungry were fed, the lost were found, sinners were forgiven, and the dead became alive!

Once the word becomes a Living Word inside of us we grow a Living Hope. We see the opposite of this Living Hope all around us. Cynicism doubt and fear are the signs of a desiccated hope which simply becomes wishful thinking which we see operating in our schools, the bond crisis, the failure to forge an new Alabama Constitution and more.

It is easy to stare out a window, longing waiting for something to magically change but such hope is timid and passive and has no conviction behind it. Yet the words of that hymn, “Live into hope the captives freed” remind us that a passive hope is perhaps no hope at all. A living hope bold declared in the face of slavery that somehow someday freedom will come and people went to war to see it change. A living hope builds a camp on the Cahaba even though the stock market is going south. A living hope buys the field in Anathoth even though the Babylonians have just destroyed Israel. A living hope believes that America is not fated to be a country divided by race and sees it come to pass in the election of our first African American president.

A living hope believes that churches are not simply repositories of like minded people, or the destitute huddling together in fear of the world, or people of another age clinging to the past. A church that lives in this hope is one filled to the brim with passionate disciples willing to act and to risk based on that hope that God has an awesome profound future for it- which brings us to stewardship.

We have all heard that phrase from Christ where your treasure is there will your heart by also. Today I want us to think of it this way; Where your heart lives, where your hope abides you will invest all your treasure for this pearl of great price. From what I have seen Edgewood is or perhaps could be this pearl of great price, a sacred treasure. From my brief visits whether on a Saturday with Angel Food ministries, a Wednesday sharing about GA, the faithful willing service of your members such as Rick Frennea, the glorious warm heart of your music director, Amanda Klimko, or the penetrating inquisitive mind of your pastor Sid Burgess and many more whom you know about God has truly blessed Edgewood. But seeing the financial challenges that plague Edgewood every year I wonder whether or not you might be attempting to lease this pearl of great price with an option to buy. I cannot know the answer to this question. Only you in the pews can so I ask you to prayerfully consider it.

However perhaps a living hope might be best understood through the story of Natascha Kampusch who despite spending almost half of her life inside a cramped basement "dungeon" she said the constant of her life has been the quest for freedom. But this hope did not remain dormant in her heart, she acted upon it.

On Aug 23 she emerged from the house of her abductor, after her 8 years of imprisonment in his basement. She tells the story of her escape,

I saw him on the telephone. I just ran into this garden area, jumped over several fences, ran in circles, panicking, to see if there was anybody, anywhere. I ran panicked into the gardens (of nearby houses) and talked to people. They had no mobile phone and simply moved on shrugging their shoulders, so I simply jumped over fences into several gardens, panicked like in an action film. I rang the bell at this house, but somehow it didn't work. Then I saw somebody was pottering about in the kitchen. The woman was so stunned, she didn't immediately react. ... She didn't let me in. ... I told her that he could kill us. Despite this, the woman was very concerned I would step on her lawn. A failed attempt could have meant I would never come out of the dungeon. It seemed like eternity to me, but in reality it just took 10 to 12 minutes.

But Ms Kampusch has not remained satisfied with her own freedom. "I am a great lover of freedom. I am thoroughly drunk with the thought of freedom.” She said that she is planning two projects, one in Mexico to help women who are taken from their workplace, tortured and raped, and another in Africa. "I want to help people starving in Africa because I know from my own experience what it is like to be hungry,"

Ms Kampusch exemplifies for the church how a living faith can be forged into a living hope that hopes for all people. James Henry Trotter lived that same hope when he grabbed that potion from the old man. That living potion grew gargantuan insects and a colossal peach and in the end we are told made him the happiest boy in the world-the living water of which Jesus speaks depends not on fermented crocodile tongues but nothing less than the Spirit of the living God! May we all drink deeply of this living water to forge a living faith so we might have a living hope. Amen.