I can still remember it as though it were yesterday.
It was a late fall afternoon, early October. Outside on city boulevards, leaves were turning golden yellow, bright brilliant red, rusted orange. There was a chill in the air, but the sun was still shining, taking the edge off. I walked into the student centre, off University Avenue in Kingston Ontario, to find a friend I had come to know through a campus Christian group.
We had decided to meet up, to check in on how things were going after the first month back. We talked about classes and roommate situations. Somewhere along the way I began to share a number of questions I’d been wrestling with. Questions of faith and doubt. Questions of suffering and injustice. Questions of what it looked like to follow in the way of Jesus.
I had grown up in a pretty rigid understanding of Christianity, where everything once seemed black and white. The problem was that the world I was coming to experience outside of that bubble had more shades of grey than an E.L. James novel.
I was confused. And I was scared. And so I reached out to this friend, hoping for some solace, hoping to hear them say, “those are good questions, questions I wrestle with all the time.”
Instead, they said:
“Andrew, you need to have more faith.”
I came into the conversation seeking comfort, solace, and what I received was the sense that I was a failure. But what was I failing at?
Was I failing at faith?
Or
Was I perhaps failing at certainty?
I guess it all depends what we mean by faith.
Faith is what St. Paul calls us to in his first letter to the Corinthians when he declares “These three remain: Faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love.” And yet, what we lose in this one word, are its multiple meanings. Sometimes when we translate faith as meaning “intellectual assent” or “belief,” we forget about faith’s other contours: fidelity and faithfulness.
Faith and belief (that is, faith and certainty), are not one and the same.
If we are to believe theologian Paul Tillich, doubt is not the opposite of faith, but an element of it. A life of faith can include doubt, even as we seek to live faithfully in response to the God who first loved us.
That is to say, that faith, faithfulness, fidelity, is what happens when our beliefs are lived out in faithful relationship with God, with one another, and the world God loves.
Fidelity to Christ grows like a mustard seed through the fertilizer of questions and of doubt.
There are so many beliefs, so many certainties that we have held, many of which have not proven to be true.
Yesterday during the Wise Elders forum, those gathered spoke to a number of them. Not so long ago, people had confidence in our growing prosperity, that it was possible for most everyone to get a decent job that would pay the rent and buy the groceries. Not so long ago, folks believed that the church they experienced in childhood would carry on in that same way.
And now, in this day and age, we find ourselves contending with some of these misplaced certainties, some of these troubling questions, the mismatch between what we believed, and what is happening. We’re in the thick of pulling apart some of our strongly held beliefs and assumptions, asking if they are now, or ever were central to the life of faith.
The life of faith, it turns out, is not a straightforward path.
When my friend and I met that October afternoon, I was trying to cope with the mismatch between a number of beliefs I hadn’t before questioned, and the reality I was experiencing. When I shared my story, what I wanted more than anything was a sense of reassurance. Reassurance that God would be with me, with us, even in the midst of uncertainty. I received the opposite. I was looking to know whether this mismatch was going to resolve, whether I was going to be okay.
It was a long time before that moment came. Fast forward a number of years, and for some reason I can’t explain, I find myself in seminary.
I mean, I could explain it – the story about the voice I heard in the back of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in downtown Toronto telling me to go to Seminary; the story of thinking that was crazy; the story of making the altogether stupid mistake of sharing this vision with prayerful friends, friends who remind me that while I might be crazy, it still might be the voice of God, and maybe I should get over myself and do something about it.
I could explain it, but I won’t. For some undisclosed reason, I find myself in seminary.
One night I find myself walking home from class, anxious and overwhelmed.
To be more honest, I was walking home after a pint with classmates, after class. I was walking with one of those classmates, who happened to be someone I’d been in conflict with for several weeks.
And, out of nowhere, I can’t even remember what we were talking about, I start sobbing and weeping uncontrollably, feeling so unworthy, so unloveable, so deeply and profoundly turned around and lost. Right there, in the middle of a soccer field in downtown Toronto. As I utterly break down this person, who in that moment, I really didn’t like, didn’t want to be with, stops, reaches over and holds me.
He just holds me. Eternity passes. I cry uncontrollably for what seems like forever. And when the tears break, he wipes the tears away with his sweater. He doesn’t try to fix anything. He holds me. He stays there until I’m ready. Checks that I’ll be okay to make it home alone. My face is raw, my stomach still heaving. I’m not sure what, if anything I mumble, as I walk off into the night, towards my apartment, my bed.
The next morning, when I wake up, even before I open my eyes, I can feel the sun warming my skin, illuminating my room. And in that glow, a tingling in my hands and feet, an overwhelming sense of God’s love coursing through my veins. A feeling I can’t explain. Won’t ever be able to explain.
On one hand, nothing has changed. The world is still as it is, and not as it ought. On the other hand, God’s love, through community, is more present and real than it’s ever been.
A word of hope. The feeling of being held. The reminder that I do not walk this way alone. The reminder that God, above all, is faithful, and nothing can change that.
And isn’t that, in some ways? Isn't that the opportunity we embrace with World Communion Sunday? The Work of the Wise Elders. The work of churches seeking the Good of the City, the Good of Creation, arm in arm, side by side?
When we come together; when we hold one another; when we walk with one another over snowy peaks and through shadowy valleys; when we share stories of God’s faithfulness in times of joy and times of sorrow; when we bear witness to the hope that is within us; when we remind one another that our faith is in the God who looks death in the eye and says “We beg to differ.”
Over a lifetime, God's faithfulness to us, and through us, to the world, transforms every aspect of our being.
We experience ups and downs, to be sure. There are moments, as in a labyrinth, when we feel closer to or further from God. And yet, as winding as the path may seem, our faith is born out on each step of the journey.
Isn’t it here that God’s love, through community, is more present and real than it’s ever been?
Isn’t it here, in this wide community, where we retell and rehearse the reality of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, that we are transformed through our encounters with God and one another?
Isn’t it in those moments where we hold another’s story, honouring it, and responding in love, that we learn little by little, mustard seed by mustard seed, what it is to live a faithful, God-bearing life?
