Luke
23:44-49
44
It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the
afternoon, 45 while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was
torn in two. 46 Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, "Father, into
your hands I commend my spirit." Having said this, he breathed his last.
47 When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said,
"Certainly this man was innocent." 48 And when all the crowds who had
gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home,
beating their breasts. 49 But all his acquaintances, including the women who
had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.
When I was in college I ate lunch almost every day in the cafeteria on campus. Some days I met Sallie and some of our friends in the library before walking over to the caf; some days I walked straight from class to lunch, maybe eating with a friend I ran into on the way or by myself in order to catch up on some reading for my next class. It didn’t matter when I went to lunch or with whom I went to lunch, the path I took to the caf was almost always the same, and along that path was the fountain in the center of Ben Brown Plaza.
When I was in college I ate lunch almost every day in the cafeteria on campus. Some days I met Sallie and some of our friends in the library before walking over to the caf; some days I walked straight from class to lunch, maybe eating with a friend I ran into on the way or by myself in order to catch up on some reading for my next class. It didn’t matter when I went to lunch or with whom I went to lunch, the path I took to the caf was almost always the same, and along that path was the fountain in the center of Ben Brown Plaza.
That
fountain isn’t really anything special—just a shallow, circular pool with a
pump and a few fountain jets at its center. In the winter it is an empty, blue
hole, but in the spring through early fall, the pool is filled with water, and
the fountain pumps that water through the jets into the air, creating a sort of
living centerpiece for the plaza. I can remember walking by that fountain so
many times on my way to lunch, thinking to myself, “Today, I’m going to walk
across that water.” Of course, I never did, maybe because I never tried. I
never tried to walk on that water, because I knew I couldn’t (it was physically
impossible), but I always liked to believe I could, because a part of me
thought that’s what it meant to have faith. That’s what I thought it meant to
believe, to so fully trust God that if I simply had the faith, I could walk
across the surface of that pool—just as Jesus had done on the stormy water of
the Sea of Galilee. I thought that was faith, but that’s not what faith looks
like.
Just down the road a bit
from us, in a little town called Atlanta, there’s a pastor who has recently
come into a bit of a situation. His ministry has hit a rather small, financial
snag, so he took to the internet to ask for help from his parishioners and others
who support his ministry. He’s not asking for much from them really: he simply
asked if some people would consider a $300 donation to his ministry. Let me
clarify: by “some people” I meant 200,000 people, if 200,000 people would donate
$300. In case you can’t figure that in your head, or if you don’t have a
calculator handy that’s $60 million. “Pastor” Creflo Dollar (and yes, that’s
his real name) is asking his supporters to give him $60 million dollars so he
can buy a Gulfstream G650 jet to travel around the world after his old jet (bless
his heart!) began having issues. Dollar went so far as to say that after having
issues with his old jet that he “knew that it was time to begin to believe God
for a new airplane.”[1]
Creflo Dollar is a leader
in the so-called “prosperity gospel” movement, a movement that claims God’s
desire for you and your life is health and wealth (mostly wealth…a lot of
wealth). His idea of faith is trusting God to take your tithe, your offering, and
give it back to you in such abundance that you’ll be rich. But let’s be honest,
that’s not what real faith looks like.
In
small, wood-framed buildings in the rural towns tucked away in the Appalachian
Mountains, some people will gather for church on Sundays. They’ll sing hymns,
pray, read from the Bible, and hear a sermon, but things get a lot more
interesting at the end of the service. While they might sing an invitational
hymn or given an altar call, the real call to faith comes coiled with rattles on
one end and sharp fangs on the other. Though there aren’t really that many,
snake-handling churches are still meeting and testing their faith throughout
Appalachia. It’s a sect of Christianity that is so intriguing that it’s the
subject of a reality show called Snake
Salvation on the National Geographic Channel.[2]
The motivation for
handling poisonous snakes (along with drinking poisons like strychnine) comes
from what’s called “the longer ending” of Mark’s gospel, an ending believed by
most scholars to be an addition and not a part of the original gospel. This
ending is footnoted or bracketed in most modern translation, but these
snake-handling Christians hone in on two of its verses as biblical backing for
their poisonous practices: “And these signs will accompany those who
believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new
tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly
thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they
will recover.”[3]
Picking up poisonous snakes, drinking strychnine, and leaving church
alive, that’s what these folks call faith. Is that what faith really looks
like?
Trying to walk on water,
cashing million dollar checks, picking up deadly snakes, drinking poison, is
that what faith looks like? Some of you might say, “Yes.” I mean, after all,
the Bible could be used in each of those situations to make a pretty good case.
We could use the Bible to say that faith is proven by telling a mountain to
pick itself up and go jump in the ocean, or a tree to pull itself up by the
roots and be planted somewhere else. We could use the Bible to say that faith
is found when one only has enough food for one day but he’s able to make it
last a whole week. We could use the Bible to say that faith takes the shape of
a handful of men standing against the strong army of a nation and proving
victorious. The truth is we could probably use Holy Scripture to justify
anything we want, especially when it comes to tests of faith. But the ultimate
focus of Scripture, the ultimate image of faith is found in the text before us
this morning, in the figure of Christ on the cross, crying in a loud voice, "Father,
into your hands I commend my spirit."
These are Jesus’ last
words before his death in Luke’s gospel. Matthew and Mark tell us Jesus cried
out from the depths of his loneliness and his abandonment with the words of
Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” John (as we saw
last week) tells us of a Christ in control, declaring, “It is finished!” But
Luke…Luke’s telling shows us an image of Christ upon the cross as one with
absolute faith.
Really, when one looks at
the whole of Luke’s gospel, it shouldn’t surprise us too much that the last
utterance from Jesus on the cross is one of exemplary faith. Luke is full of
stories of faith, stories of forgiveness, of people being saved—made whole—by
their faith. It starts early, in chapter five, when some men were trying to get
their paralyzed friend to Jesus. We’re told that when they couldn’t get through
the crowd and into the room where Jesus was, they went on the roof and lowered
their friend down to Jesus. Luke says in verse
20, “When he saw their faith, he
said, ‘Friends, your sins are forgiven.’”
Then, in chapter seven of
Luke, we’re told of a centurion (i.e. a Roman/Gentile) who comes to Jesus
because he has a slave who is sick and nearly dead. Jesus is amazed by this
man, and he turns to the crowd that was following him and said, “not
even in Israel have I found such faith.” Not even among the
elect people of God had Jesus found the kind of faith he saw in this Gentile
soldier. In that same chapter, we’re told of a woman “who was a sinner” and
how she came off the streets to wash and kiss Jesus’ feet and anoint them with
ointment, and even though the Pharisee Simon—whose house Jesus was in—judged
this woman in his mind, Jesus said to her in verse 50, “Your faith has
saved you; go in peace.” Then, in chapter eight, we hear about a woman
who had been hemorrhaging blood for twelve years until she touched the fringe
of Jesus’ clothes. When she came out from the crowd, trembling and declaring
what had happened, Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you
well; go in peace.”
There are two other
stories Luke tells us of Jesus declaring forgiveness or salvation in light of
faith. In chapter seventeen, Jesus heals ten lepers, but when only one returns
to thank him, Jesus says to him, “your faith has made you well.”
And in chapter eighteen, when Jesus gives sight to a blind beggar on the way to
Jericho, Jesus tells the man, “Receive your sight; your faith has
saved you.”
It should be noted that
in all of these stories, the ones whom Jesus proclaims as having faith are
“outsiders”—the ones judged by society as “unclean,” sinful, unfit, even
enemies. So of course if Jesus says these folks have faith surely the disciples
are spilling over with faith, tripping over it as they follow Jesus, right?
Well…in at least three places in Luke’s gospel, Jesus talks to his disciples
about their faith, and it’s not exactly what we might call a glowing review. In
chapter eight, the disciples are out on the lake in Galilee, when a storm comes
up. Jesus was asleep in the boat. The disciples become so afraid that they wake
Jesus up, and Jesus rebukes the wind and calms the storm. The first thing Jesus
says to his disciples after calming the storm: “Where is your faith?”
Then in chapter twelve, Jesus is teaching about the uselessness of worry, how
God cares for the birds of the air and the flowers in the field, so surely God
will care for us, when he gives a little jab to his disciples in verse 28, calling them “you
of little faith!”
One gets the feeling the
disciples have kind of had it with Jesus’ bragging on others’ faith while
running down his closest followers for their apparent lack of faith when, in
chapter 17, they say to Jesus in verse
5, “Increase our faith!” It’s
really a demand: “Increase our faith!” One gets the sense they’re saying, “If
we’ve got such little faith or none at all, then help us have more! Increase
our faith!” Jesus’ response in the following verses, though, likely didn’t help
their feelings a whole lot: “If you had faith the size of a mustard
seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the
sea,’ and it would obey you.” If faith was an award that came with a
trophy in Luke’s gospel, the disciples couldn’t even win for losing.
Faith isn’t identified
among the Pharisees, the Scribes, or even Jesus’ disciples for Luke. It isn’t
exemplified in the religious elites, the biblical scholars, the wealthy, the
privileged—not even among the chosen people of God. For Jesus (in Luke’s
gospel) faith is found in the most unlikely places: in the strenuous efforts of
friends caring for one another, in the kindness of a master for his servant, in
the selfless, vulnerable acts of humility (like washing someone’s feet), in the
quiet, hidden acts of trust, in returning thanks (even to a stranger, even when
others won’t). It’s found in the longing to see with our eyes wide open, free
from our own self-caused blindness. It’s found in the dying Son of God, who
even in the final moments of a tortuous death finds the strength to express his
trust in God.
That’s what faith looks
like. It’s not the ability to do wonderful acts of miraculous power (like walk
on water). It’s not the expectation of wealth in exchange for a small,
financial sacrifice. It’s not the courage to handle venomous snakes and consume
poison, hoping you’ll survive. Faith is giving yourself—your whole self—to the
God who has given all of himself to us. It’s giving food to those who are
hungry, water to those who are thirty, shelter to those who are cold. It’s
stepping out of your comfort zone, trying new, challenging things that will
broaden your horizons and help you see the world as Christ sees it. It’s giving
of yourself—your time, your money, your resources, your talents—and not because
you expect something more in return, but because you know that what you have
was already given to you for a purpose bigger than yourself. Faith is trusting
that when all else fails, when the storm rages, when the world is dark, and
you’re left all alone, there is one who will never fail you or leave you to
suffer alone. Faith is being able to live a life of joy, heartbreak, love,
rejection, hope, and sorrow, to face death and say, “God, into your hands I
commend my spirit.”
That’s what faith looks
like, like Christ upon the cross, willfully surrendering his life for the sake
of us all, showing us that faith, the way of God’s kingdom, is found in
self-emptying love. May we all find that faith, the faith to love God so
completely, to trust God so total, that even in the face of death, we trust
God. May we have the faith of Christ as we have faith in Christ. Amen.
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