The Proof of Faith
1992 (Year C) 11 October / Pentecost 18
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
Our world has a preoccupation with accuracy and proof. Everything has to be recorded, everything exact. Sporting events are scrutinised time and time again by replays looking at incidents in the minute detail. Commentators analyse political developments, wars and natural disasters. Videos give us instant access to family celebrations – you can watch your wedding for ever. It feels like a twentieth century obsession. It permeates all aspects of our lives. Through most of mine, I have longed for a time when what I believed could be treated in the same way. I’ve wanted just one chance to be Saint Thomas. Just to see the risen Jesus, so that I can touch the truth and point it out to all those who deride or mock.
Of course it’s not possible. My faith, like yours is not something which can be treated in such a way. It’s not clear cut, and it can’t be proved. For the most part, it’s a kind of great wobbly jelly. Sometimes it’s stronger, sometimes it’s weaker. It’s never constant, almost never certain and never open to the kind of scrutiny that we subject other things in our lives. It can never be demonstrated as you might a scientific theory or reviewed as we would a video.
But then very few people believe in God just because they’ve been shown things. And those that have come to belief in that way are often those who in the end will suffer disappointment. We come to faith, for the most part through other people. Their lives show us something of God. And then as we reflect on our own and the events which have happened to us we see that things begin to fit together in a certain way. The notion of God begins to make sense.
There are times though, when events do speak very clearly about our faith and none believers are quick to point them out. ‘Oh, they go to church,’ they say, ‘but they’re all show and pretence.’ Jeremiah knew them only too well. They were the ones who kept saying, ‘This place is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,’ as if the Almighty could be controlled by people saying particular phrases. And you’ve met them too. Their actions contradict what they say they believe. They are an embarrassment to themselves and to the rest of the church.
There is a connection between what we believe and what we do – one bears out the validity of the other. What we do doesn’t prove the truth of what we say, but if you can’t see the connections between the two you begin to doubt the truth of the belief.
Well what are the actions which do support the validity of our faith? The New Testament says that if we profess belief in God then we must necessarily love and care for our sisters and brothers. Anyone who doesn’t is a liar. But anybody might do that. They wouldn’t have to be a Christian. Anyone can love those who love them; the bible records Jesus as saying so. We are told to do more. Much, much more. We are told to love those who dislike us, who would seek our harm and who would hurt us.
It feels almost impossible and it’s certainly not what we would first choose to do. Much easier by far is to avoid those who we feel uncomfortable with and mistrust. As we begin to care for those who obviously don’t like us, we begin to move into God’s world and God’s values. We are often very uneasy there. Most of our lives we simply don’t see Him we feel very vulnerable; a great deal of what he has told us is far beyond our understanding.
Yet in the course of time, seeing how other people live, puzzling and reflecting on them, we still do not understand them completely, but we begin to see more and more. Some things begin to make sense. We begin to be convinced that the values of this world might not be all there is to life, for the reality is that the proof of faith is the product of reflective and hopeful lives.
The hope is that we will go out from this place and actually encounter God in those we meet this coming week. The hope is that no matter how, hard some things seem to be, we might see that this is not all there is to our lives. All this will show in how we live our lives and it is the lives we live which are the proof of our faith. Not only a proof to others. They also testify to the God we worship and seek to serve. AMEN