Faith, Hope and Love
A Sermon for Evensong
Some
words from our second lesson this evening: “When evening had come, Jesus said
to his disciples, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him
with them in the boat, just as he was.”
More than once in St Mark’s Gospel, things seem to be going well for
Jesus, he is accruing a good crowd of followers; he’s building a good base for
his work of preaching, healing and teaching; he’s gaining a reputation
throughout the country. And then he
simply turns around and goes in a different direction, leaving behind all the
advantages he’s been building up. In our
reading tonight, Jesus and his disciples leave the crowd behind. It’s not easy to build up a following of such
a size that it can be called a crowd.
Yet Jesus simply leaves them.
Surely now is the time to care for the crowd, to let the people know
that Jesus is interested in them, to build them up into a tighter community of
people. With crowds behind him, surely
Jesus can influence government policy and start to have a real and lasting
impact on the life of the nation and the world. But no. Jesus waits until evening, waits until the
crowd are preparing for sleep and, under cover of darkness, leaves them behind
and goes to the other side. Every
leadership expert, every church growth theorist, should be tearing their hair
out! But what I want to suggest this
evening is that this is not a mistake on Jesus’ part, however counter-intuitive
it seems to us. Rather, it fits with the
whole tenor of Jesus’ teaching and the way in which we see God working. Above all, it helps us to see the three great
theological virtues of faith, hope and love.
First,
then, Jesus taking his disciples to the other side is an act of faith. It is faith that God is calling him on, faith
that does not lean on success but is attuned to the call of God. Faith in God is not the same thing as success,
indeed faith in God can and often does undermine the very way in which we determine
success. The disciples, perplexed at
leaving the crowd, the result of hard work and a growing ministry, find
themselves heading for unknown territory.
When a storm arises, they might well have thought that this was a sign
that they should return to the work they were doing. Yet Jesus rebukes them – ‘have you still no
faith?’
Jesus’
parables also capture this faith.
Planting seeds is an act of faith: faith that the harvest will come;
faith that what is needed will happen. I
love the description of the faith of the farmer, who scatters seed on the
ground and then sleeps and rises and does nothing more until the harvest. And faith is also seen in the story of Abram
in our first reading. Faith in
journeying, leaving behind securities. Letting
Lot choose which part of the land to have is an act of faith. Faith as we see it in Jesus and Abram is a
giving up of success, it is a leaving behind of things that have given us
security, it is to trust in the God who calls us to the other side.
This faith
is not given to us alone. It comes with
hope. Jesus taking his disciples to the
other side of the lake is also an act of hope.
It is hope that in a different place, in the unknown territory on the
other side of the lake, God will still guide him. This hope is far from our desire for
control. We cannot make God present in
different places, we rely on our hope that he will be there. In St John’s Gospel, Jesus says that “the
Spirit moves where it wills … and so it is with everyone who is born of the
Spirit” (John 3.8). To move with the
Spirit is to let go of control, and to trust in the hope of the presence of
God. The disciples, caught up in the
storm are rebuked for their lack of faith.
They are equally lacking in hope.
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” they say to
Jesus. The storm in moving to unknown
territory finds the disciples without hope.
‘Why are you afraid?” asks Jesus, where is your hope?
This
hope is also seen in Jesus’ parables.
Jesus is clear that the farmer who scatters his seed and waits for it to
grow “does not know how” it grows. Here
is the danger of too many accounts of leadership and church growth – they want
to know how it happens. But we don’t
know how growth comes. We are simply to
sow in the hope of the harvest. Abram
also demonstrates this hope. Having in
faith given Lot the choice of the land, Abram is shown the whole land, as a
place for his descendants. But it is not
for him, not for now. He is to live in
the hope of the land. Abram gives up his
claims to the whole land, and in doing so is promised an even fuller
possession. This is the pattern of
hope. Giving up control, and trusting in
God.
In
crossing to the other side, then, we are shown faith and hope. Each is intertwined with the other. And inseparable from them both is love. Love is the point of the movement, the reason
for the crossing. Jesus, in taking his
disciples to the other side of the lake demonstrates the nature of God’s
love. On the other side of Lake Galilee
is Gentile territory. Jesus is taking
his mission of preaching, healing and teaching to those who are strangers and
outcasts. To those who are separate from
God’s people, seeking to bring them in. Here
we have the reason for going across the lake.
It was not to get rid of successes for fear they might undermine his
faith. Nor was it to test the hope of
the presence of God, and to surrender control.
Jesus takes his disciples across the lake to widen the circle of his
presence to those who are outside and estranged. In this movement we see the very nature of
the love of God, as it continually seeks those who are outside.
This too
can be seen in the parables of Jesus we have heard tonight. All seeds are sown, as we have seen, in faith
and hope. But the point of sowing is not
to exercise faith and hope. Rather the
point of sowing is the harvest, when the fruits of the seeds can be used by
others. And we have the parable of the
mustard seed as well, both to demonstrate the faith in sowing such a small seed
to produce such a large tree, but above all to demonstrate the provision of
that tree for all of the birds of the air.
The unfolding of the seed into the tree is a picture of the movement of
God’s love, stretching ever outwards in order that others can make their home
in it. Abram too shows us the love of
God, in his generosity in giving to Lot, and in the way that the promise of the
land is not for him, but for those who will come after him. It points us back to the way in which God calls
him, not for Abram’s own sake, or for the sake of the people who will be
descended from him, but so that in him “all the families of the world shall be
blessed” (Genesis 12.3). The call of
Abram, for the blessing of the whole world, shows us the love of God, ever
moving outwards to reach those who are outside.
In our
readings this evening, then, we see faith and hope and love. And we are brought to a better understanding
of each. We see faith in moving on, in
trusting that what is left behind is enough.
We see hope in going to unknown territory, trusting that God will be the
same there, that though we do not always understand, God will suffice. And we see love in going to others, to the
strangers and the outsiders. Faith, hope
and love that undermine our categories of success, our need to control, and
draw us ever beyond our limits. These
three virtues challenge us in two ways.
First,
they challenge us to be critical of the worldly virtues of success and control
and looking to ourselves. We can see
these antitheses to faith and hope and love simply by picking up a newspaper
and reading about our world, or contemporary politics. We can also see them in our church and in our
own lives. The story of Jesus taking his
disciples across the lake challenges us to be critical about the ways in which
faith and hope and love are exercised in our own lives and in our church and
the world.
But
secondly, the virtues of faith and hope and love challenge us to ask about the
call of God on and in our own lives.
Where is God calling us to leave behind security and success, to give up
control, and to more outwards to those who are strangers? Where is God calling us to learn more about
faith and hope and love? These are not
virtues that we can learn by listening to sermons, or even to readings from
scripture. They have to be learned by
doing, by following the call of God, by leaving things behind and venturing
through the storm to the other side of the lake.
“When
evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let us go across to the other
side.’ And leaving the crowd behind,
they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.”
Given at Derby Cathedral 16.6.13.
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