Tuesday after the Third Sunday in Lent: Faith, to act or laugh

Faith is an odd thing.  We often want it to be so like science.  One hypothesizes God and/or God’s will and then gently, but clearly, proves it…or does not. Then we know just what to do or how to be.

My younger brother often jokes that he is going to heaven on the family plan.  I hope so. His image is that my faith practice may be enough for us all.  I hope so. I wonder, with one brother already gone before us, will we one day more deeply reconnect in the heart place of God, will we all?  Will the unhealed places of this life one day be full and whole?  I wonder.  Is this faith or just wonderment?  I must admit that while my brother’s faith is hidden to me, his ethics are not.  They are clear and sharp often.

In today’ reading from Romans 4:13-25 we are still reflecting on Abraham and his faith.  Paul uses the image of “faith reckoned to him as righteousness.”  It is credited to him.  Southerners use the word reckon, but to us it means something like: I believe that to be the truth or the facts. “I reckon so.” We will say.  But Paul’s use is deeper.  It is here used to mean was credited to Abraham.  Like when I don’t have the cash in hand to buy something and I use credit.  I might have the cash elsewhere or tied up or not at all. Yet I am loaned what I need to get through this moment. Except it is not loaned here, it is fully credited.

Abraham was as imperfect as you and I are, but he had faith. He could not always do the right thing, but he had faith.  He tried to trust God’s promise that he would father by his legitimate wife, when he had not for so long.  He doubted enough to say, Lord when? So what is this faith he had that was “reckoned to him as righteousness?”  It was not science for science would be in full doubt by now.  

Faith is not the lack of puzzlement but the willingness to puzzle through and on.  It is a trust beyond what seems sometimes correct reason.  It is somewhere between inner knowing and hopeful trusting. Some say it is a gift from God given to one and not another…but given not on merit but on holy whim or plan.  Abraham was willing or able to listen and puzzle and hope and act as if.  He acted as if what was promised was a surety when it did not appear so.

We see this at play in John 7:37-52.  Remember Jesus has slipped into Jerusalem for the Feast of tabernacles.

^“On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”  

We are told he is speaking here of receiving the Holy Spirit in our lives. Like Abraham perhaps?  The world about him responds variously. They wonder variously.

Some say this is really the prophet...the Christ.  But from Galilee, others wonder? The scripture says nothing about Galilee.... And they missed him.  I wonder where I might have been in that crowd for it mirrors life today.

‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ This is my hopeful place.  If like Abraham I am willing or able to listen and puzzle and hope and act as if, then I will live in touch with this living water.  There will be for me a daily inner fountain to refresh me in better and deeper wonderment about God’s good and intention for my life.  That is what it means to call Jesus the Christ, the messiah. In him I encounter the hope of knowing God and acting as if.

And by the way, there is a little Sarah in me.  I often giggle behind the screen and hear myself say, “Yea, right, at my age? This will be interesting”