Matthew 14:25-33
And early in the morning he came walking towards them on the lake. But when the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’
Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind,* he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’
I changed a light bulb in my bedroom closet last week and it didn’t go as planned. I replaced a dead bulb with a faulty, energy efficient bulb, and when I flipped the switch the thing flashed like a seizure-inducing strobe light at a rave.
It took me a few days to get around to changing it again, but that faulty light bulb reminded me of something.
I can’t remember the teacher, but I know I was in First or Second grade. And I remember where I was sitting and in which Sunday School classroom at Providence Lutheran Church, in Holland, Ohio, at the time. And I remember that my Sunday School teacher taught us about faith by using the example of lights and electricity. She asked us to think about how often we go into a dark room and flip the switch on the wall and expect the light to come on and fill the room. “That’s faith,” she said.
And that’s not bad, really. Using her example, trust and expectation do, perhaps, equal faith – especially to a classroom full of elementary school kids. But my Sunday School teacher hadn’t been to or considered my bedroom closet on Redbird Trail and how easily my faith would be challenged – and lost – if it was as easy as flipping a switch.
This is a tough one – lamenting the loss of faith, I mean. I saved this lament for last in our series because it seemed like a good way to wrap up all that we’ve been lamenting over these last several weeks – war, greed, illness and grief. I saved this one for last because, it seems to me, all the rest of our laments – and there are so many more than just the war, greed, illness and grief, we’ve spent time with – all the reasons we have to lament are often also reasons we have for losing our faith, or at least struggling mightily with it, when the bad stuff hits the fan. Or, maybe when the light switch is flipped, but things don’t go as planned.
And loss of faith is quite a thing these days. It’s almost a movement, really, the way so many people are being drawn away or pushed and pulled away from engagement with faith – or with faith communities and congregations, at least – as most of us have come to understand them. There’s a whole category of people who identify themselves as “ex-vangelicals” often because of the experiences they’ve had in what they generically refer to as “white evangelical Christian” churches.
Some of these experiences are horrifying examples of physical, sexual, emotional abuse, of course. All of that destroys the faith of God’s people who suffer from it.
Some of these experiences stem from theology that’s simply incompatible with how people view and experience the world anymore – women still not allowed to preach, preside, teach, or lead; too much mischaracterization of sexuality as sinful; too much fear-mongering and proselytizing that pretends to be faithful evangelism and outreach. That stuff challenges the faith of the thoughtful and curious.
Some of the experiences that threaten our faith may be the result of simply being unable to ask hard questions about any of this – hard questions of the Church, hard questions of its leaders, and hard questions of the God we preach, teach about and worship. Lamenting, like we’ve been doing these last several weeks isn’t always encouraged or practiced or welcome in some circles.
And some of the experiences that drive people away from their faith are nothing new under the sun – the same things that have always shaken the faith of God’s people – war, pandemics, disease, loss of a loved one, unanswered prayers, the evil and ugliness of the world around us...
And some of all of this is that there just aren’t answers – easy or otherwise – to explain many of the experiences or to answer some of the questions that burden us as people on the planet.
But the reason I lament our “loss of faith” when it comes, isn’t because it shouldn’t happen. It’s more, for me, about the shame and guilt and pressure we inflict upon ourselves and each other when it does. The truth simply is that faith can be hard to find, hard to keep, hard to hold onto at times – and it’s always been that way.
The point of Adam and Eve’s story, way back in Genesis, is that they lost their faith in God’s promise to provide for and sustain them and so they took things into their own hands.
The Israelites did the same. They lost faith in God’s willingness or ability to care for them as they saw fit, and according to their timeline, so they created and lived by their own devices and their own vices, instead.
The disciples and other followers of Jesus did it, too. They misused and misunderstood so much of what Jesus was trying to offer them. When he encouraged them to follow they refused. When their friends died they blamed him. When he died they despaired. When he was raised, even, they refused to believe it.
And people! Jesus, in utter solidarity with all of that lost faith – and with yours and mine, too – lost faith, himself, at least once. In that moment on the cross, after all of his suffering, in the midst of his greatest despair, I believe his faith was lost … gone … decimated … destroyed when he cried out “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?!”
So, I want our invitation to lament our loss of faith or our struggle with faith or our hard, holy questions about faith to be – in and of themselves – strangely enough, expressions of the faith we can be so uncertain about, so unconvinced by, so unmoved by some of the time.
This may sound harsh – and hard to hear or believe, coming from your Pastor – and I may very well be wrong … but I kind of think that if you haven’t found faith hard to come by at certain times in your life – if you haven’t lost or left or felt lost or left by your faith or by our God at some point – then maybe you’re just better than the rest of us – but it may also be that you’re not doing it right.
Because the truth is – no matter how great your expectation, no matter how deep your trust – if it hasn’t happened to you yet, I’m here to promise you it will. The light switch won’t work. Sometimes the bulb of your faith is faulty or burned out altogether. Sometimes the power is just out. Sometimes darkness is all there is and feels like all there ever will be.
And sometimes darkness is exactly how, where, and when God shows up for us. In the emptiness. In the void. In the doubt and fear and uncertainty we’re running from or feel so self-righteously indignant about in those moments when we’ve given up, chucked it all, thrown in the towel.
And that’s worth lamenting because it’s sad and scary. Not because it’s sinful, mind you. But sad and scary, for sure.
But tonight we’re called to acknowledge it. To give it a voice. To lament it. And to be as patient as we are able letting hope hold us when our faith can’t, until faith – however great or small – finds us by the light of God’s grace.
Amen
