Title: Epiphany 6c
Author: St. Paul’s, Monroe
Date: February 13, 2022 ---
Opening
There was an absolutely stunning performance at the Olympics this last week. Actually probably more than one but one stood out for me. Nathan Chen won the gold medal in figure skating with a performance that was utterly stunning. Spinning so fast around and landing on a skate with the grace of a ballet dancer.
I didn't have a sense that the athlete had been focused on his own prowess or his own skill. He seemed to be operating on the energy from something beyond himself. He had put his fate in the hands of another with whom he had an ultimate trust.
Image of the “Knight of Faith” (S.K.)
In the opening collect of our liturgy today we heard: O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you. The Lord is the strength of all who have faith in God not in their own gifts. Nathan Chen seems like an image that works for me to illustrate that text.
I met a similar image in a book that I was assigned in my first semester of college. It was written by a Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, and its title was Fear and Trembling. In that book he introduces the concept of a person who lives by true faith. He calls such a person a knight of faith. In all the years since I have never forgotten the image he uses. It's the image of a ballet dancer.
The goal of Fear and Trembling is to illuminate the difficulty of faith. ... only the knight of faith can dance perfectly, doing what perhaps no dancer can do: he does not “hesitate” in the moment between landing from his leap and assuming the position from which to reengage ... Alexander Jech University of Notre Dame
Note: Johannes remarks that he has never met a knight of faith, but that he would not know such a man if he saw one. Outwardly, the knight of faith is just like everyone else: simple, philistine, and bourgeois, perhaps a shopkeeper, showing no sign of infinitude or sorrow. Because he has made the infinite leap of faith and regained the finite, he is able fully to delight in the finite pleasures of this world. ... Most of us cling to the joys and passions of this world and don't bother even to involve ourselves in the dance. ...
Jewish Legend
I later encountered a similar concept in an ancient Jewish legend. It is called the “Lamed Waw”. [Re. Numbers in Hebrew.] The legend has it that at any given time there are 36 righteous persons living in the world. They are as it were secret Saints. You can't tell them apart from anyone else. They look just like you and me. But it is because of their righteousness, their faithfulness, that the world is sustained and not destroyed.
Faith as trust
Faith can be understood as a Leap. For Nathan Chen or the knight of faith it is sudden. In most cases faith is hidden beneath the ordinariness of lives. The world is supported by the faith of 36 righteous ones but we cannot know who they are because they look like everyone else.
Faith might also be understood to be more gradual, something one grows into through a lifetime. Faith might be understood as the steady commitment to becoming more and more fully what God has made us for.
Early Greek theologians understood the life of faith to be something like what happens in education. As one understands more and more, our actions become more informed by the marks that God intends for us. It’s the model of Christian education. It understands the life of faith to be one of lifelong formation.
Faith as developmental
When I was in graduate school such a view of the Christian life and faith was put forward by a writer, James Fowler. His signature book was titled Stages of Faith; the Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. He described the development of faith as a progression from one stage to the next. It moved from a stage that he identified with an infant up through the various stages of life too the wisdom of old age.
His outline of the stages begins with a faith which is built on separating the difference between fantasy and reality. It is a stage that develops the ability to trust.
In the next stage, logic and reason begin to take shape and stories and myths are understood in literal ways. In this stage one develops a sense of justice.
At the next stage the various narratives become fashioned into systematic principles. The virtue of conformity is held in especially high esteem at this stage.
The next stage develops the ability to be self critical. It's when people of faith are able to see outside the box as it were. As one is able to reflect on one’s own beliefs, there is an openness to a new complexity of faith, but this also increases the awareness of conflicts in one’s belief.
The next to last stage that Fowler identified is moving to be able to see that life is very much made up of mystery. The logic and principles that were used to understand life in an earlier stage are now found to be inadequate.
The final stage recognizes that life is fundamentally paradoxical and more importance is placed on community than on individual concerns. The individual would treat any person with compassion as he or she views people as from a universal community, and should be treated with universal principles of love and justice.
It has been helpful in my life to recognize that the characteristics of "faith" are different for people at different ages and that people experience and understand their faith in different ways. Faith is a full color experience, more a rainbow and less black and white.
Life of faith
Last month I talked about faith in the context of baptism. Today I am thinking of faith as the way we live our lives. Looking at the big picture while embracing the details of the life we actually live.
Paul is talking about the centrality of the resurrection. For him it is either at the center of our life of faith or our faith is in vain. Whatever we are about as Christians the resurrection is at the heart of it. As some put it we are an Easter people. And our task is to put that into practice.
Sermon on the Plain
And putting it into practice is precisely what we are faced with as we hear from the sixth chapter of Luke. It is commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Plain, in contrast with Matthews's account of the Sermon on the Mount.
We have an example from the Gospels where Matthew and Luke have similar or parallel passages. This sermon, which contains what in Matthew we call the Beatitudes, is one of them. The Lord’s Prayer is another. It appears in Matthew and also in Luke. Interestingly the church has most often quoted and paid attention to the passage in Matthew rather than in Luke. Matthew and Luke are the only Gospels to contain birth narratives and there the church has blended the two stories.
In the Sermon on the Plain, from today's gospel passage, we hear an ancient pattern that presents blessings and then woes. We might think of it as blessings followed by curses. Blessed are you when you do such and such, but cursed if you do this other. Matthew follows the same pattern but there are more of them and they are spiritualized. Here in Luke's version it is stark and to the point. Blessed are the poor. Woe on you if you are rich. Blessed are the hungry. Blessed are those who weep.
Closing
If we have ears to hear we will recognize that in these words we hear of the dramatic importance of the choices we make. If any person we meet might be one of the 36 righteous ones upon whom rests the very existence of the world we live in, we will respond to each of them as if they themselves were Christ. If the poor are blessed, if we exploit them for our own wealth our very life of faith is put in jeopardy.
This is good news and not bad news because there are people of faith like Nathan Chen among figure skaters. Some of them are prominent and we recognize them. Many more appear to be just like you and me. That there was a Mother Teresa helps to sustain my efforts to be a servant. That her life of faith was a struggle in many ways not unlike my own makes it clear to me what my task is.
A woman in my congregation in Hawaii was flying home one day from a visit to the mainland. Suddenly and unexpectedly a part of the fuselage blew out and several passengers disappeared out the airplane to perish below. The plane landed safely with all the rest of the passengers safe. But it forever changed the life of the woman in my parish. From that moment on for the rest of her life she knew her life had a purpose and her only responsibility was to be faithful in carrying that out.
May the hidden Saints illuminate your life will blend in with that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us. May you be blessed in the beginning and in the end.
O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Note:1
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi6_RCL.html Jeremiah 17:5-10 / 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 / Luke 6:17-26 / Psalm 1↩︎
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