Faith and Humility

The faith that lives within me has grown and sometimes waned with my years.  When I was a child, I accepted the faith of my parents, went to Sunday school, sang in the choir, served as an acolyte and watched my church community do what church communities do:  rise and fall in relation to their own faith, or lack of it.  The amazing thing about churches is that they develop their own politics that generally have nothing at all to do with faith, but is connected tightly to power.  Those who achieve power are not necessarily the most faithful in the congregation.  We have all seen instances where the need to continue to use or gain power is more the issue than faith.  Trusting in God sometimes becomes a side issue in the management of churches.  The real issue, however  before us as Christians is always the same:  how do we acquire and exhibit our faith?

            I once served on a vestry that was given an unrestricted gift of $25,000.  There was a strong difference of opinion on the vestry about what to do with the money.  One group wanted to do something to help the hungry in the town and another group wanted to put new carpeting in the church.  There was no compromise offered by either side.   The argument went on and on, became somewhat public in the church, and eventually the money went to replace the pledges of the people who left the church because of the argument.  There was no faith at all attached to this dispute.  It was simply about one group getting power over the other, and a horrible example of what happens when we demand our own way.

            When I went to college and left home, my faith deteriorated markedly.  It wasn’t until I was married and had children that a desire to return to church came about.  Our kids were baptized and Rosie was confirmed, and we began to follow a faith.  That faith was markedly improved from the way that I followed God as a child.  I began to see a change in my own life and a renewal of the beauty that faith can produce.  It was also there for me during the changes   that happened.  When my father died, I watched my mother cope with the way that her life changed.  She was remarkable in her ability to lean into the changes that were required of her.  I was sometimes touched deeply by her ability to live the life that was in front of her, rather that the life that she felt that she was owed.   She lived with us for awhile, then went on to live with her sister, who had also lost her husband, and they seemed to find comfort in one another.     

            Later, when the television station that I was working for went bankrupt, I was out of work and wondering what to do.  The idea of ministry occurred to me, I don’t think entirely of my own volition.  I talked to my rector and had a meeting with my bishop, who approved me quickly and I found myself in Virginia Seminary that fall.  This was in the days when this kind of thing didn’t involve elaborate hoop jumping.  I think that I knew immediately that I had done the right thing.  Ministry appealed to me and the three years of seminary education passed quickly, with a lot of family turmoil.  Rosie had to work outside the home, the kids schooling was disrupted and sometimes chaotic, but somehow the money was produced to get us through these years and we eventually arrived at our first parish.  I saw in hindsight that faith was what had gotten us there and I began my ministry enthused about this new work.   Faith isn’t visible very much in the good times.  It is when the world falls apart that sometimes we can see what faith offers.           

            In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus in Capernaum encounters a Roman centurion who asks him to heal his slave who is sick.  He humbly tells Jesus that he is not worthy that Jesus come under his roof, but that his dear slave needs Jesus healing touch.  Jesus is amazed at the centurion’s faith and heals the slave.  The slave needed desperately to be healed.  Your faith has made you whole, said Jesus on a number of occasions.  Here he is again at the bottom of someone’s life, bringing hope out of faith.   As elusive as a firm definition of faith is, looking for it with humility in the darkness is a good place to start.  It seems to shun the light that is produced by our pride.  Maybe that is what is happening in our churches.  When the power struggle produces chaos, faith and humility might be the great healing force that gets us back on track.