The Life of Faith

1989 (Year C), 24 September /
Pentecost 19

St Peter de Beauvoir Town and All Saints Haggerston

I had an aunt who always seemed a trifle eccentric; sometimes she was just muddled at others downright stupid. Her saving graces as far as her nephews and nieces were concerned were that she always laughed and treated us both kindly and well.

She was a good deal older than my mother. and during the war served in the Land Army where she learnt to drive. What kind of driving test she took I have no idea – she drove army vehicles. I knew she had a driving licence which she kept renewing. She never drove after the war because she and my uncle never had enough money to buy a car, but she always had this licence.

My uncle died before she did and shortly after his death she decided that she needed a car to get about in.

The fact that she hadn’t driven for years didn’t daunt her – she even made it harder for herself by buying a Renault with the funny gear stick. She didn’t bother with any driving lessons – just got in and started to drive off very jerkily and couldn’t understand why none of the family would drive with her.

After a few months she persuaded my mother to go on holiday with her in the car. Not for them a fortnight on the east coast of Yorkshire or to the Lakes. They went to the south of France trying to remember to keep on the right side of the road.

Now you might say this was just stupidity or just downright irresponsibility, and you may well be right, but it seemed to the family that the one thing they shared was faith – it may have been misplaced but what they were embarking on was a journey of faith.

To have faith is to have trust and commitment – the letter to the Hebrews says it’s to be sure of things we hope for; to be certain of things we cannot see. To have faith alters the way we behave – my mother and aunt would never have gone to the south of France without it, and people throughout history would not have behaved in the ways they did unless they too had faith.

Forms of faith are like shells on the seashore. Whether seen or not they lie, ready to be grasped by those who choose them. None are alive unless they are brought to the spirit of life. They are like the stars, some have shone and are now burnt out; others are only just reaching their peak. They are present in earthly lives but they reach out to the eternal. They cause our hearts no rest until they find their rest in God.

Some people, of course declare faith to be meaningless, because we cannot speak plainly and properly of it. And because we can’t touch it or examine it in the way we do other things, then say it’s pointless. They deny that we are anything more than a heap of fat, water, muscle and bone.

It is strange but many of those who profess no religious faith often surrender themselves to baser forms of myth – they have faith in money, they believe in the superiority of one person over another, one system of government over another, one country being better than another or any one of thousands of other inferior faiths.

No faith can be proved in the way that we would perhaps like it to be, for there are no certainties. My mother would no doubt claim that her faith in my aunt was justified and proved when she returned safe and well from the south of France – the rest of her family merely said she’d been exceedingly lucky. And although faith can’t be proved, misplaced faith is always seen for what it is – empty and deadening.

To have faith does not mean that we close our eyes to the things which trouble us, shrug our shoulders and turn away. Faith must face up to those things and we must use our God given senses to try and sort out the problems.

For faith is that which brings meaning and fullness to life, it brings life to life. It adds dimension, brings new understanding and depth to the ordinary things in our lives.

It transforms them, and it has transformed resurrected lives we are called to lead. It doesn’t make those lives any easier – the same problems are there whether we have faith or not – perhaps because of our faith they may even be made harder.

Faith has shone and continues to shine out in the lives of countless people and we have all been enriched and encouraged by them, for the faith which finally brought them to God will help us achieve the same end. AMEN