To listen to this homily, click here.
Story of trying sushi for the first time. Warning that a little wasabi goes a long way!
The readings this weekend are all about faith and how a little of that can go a very long way! Faith can accomplish great things that seem impossible to others.
But what is faith? Often reduced to a caricature of one extreme or another.
- faith is blind, naive, step off the cliff and hope for the best. ignore reason and look at it as a form of spiritual superstition. Sometimes see people who reduce their faith to a magical routine of reciting certain prayers, certain ways or who believe with no interaction or discernment on their part (story of guy asking help from the flood)
B) Faith is for those who aren’t smart enough to understand. For the simple and old- fashioned. Unscientific. Faith is considered below reason; either be reasonable and skeptical or faithful and gullible.
As with so many things, the truth is in the middle.
Faith is not a passive thing where we just hope for the best as if we just placed an uneducated bet. Faith does not run against our reason/logic but uses it and then rises above it! Imagine how sad it would be to only have faith in the things you could completely understand or explain. Imagine if we only accepted the things that we had experienced and verified for ourselves. It would be exhausting and impoverishing to discard so much.
Faith is much more than a mysterious unknowable thing or an intellectual exercise where we unlock the answers to all the questions we have.
Faith is an attitude of trust in the love God has for us, in the plan he has for our world and our lives, and our willingness, especially when things seem unknown and uncertain, to have confidence in the power, wisdom, and wisdom of our God. Faith is a living, dynamic relationship. It is also messy, with ups and downs, joy and sorrow, confidence and questioning.
We see that in the first reading, where the prophet Habakkuk looks around at all the death and destruction, the turmoil and uncertainty and says, “lord, how long will this go on?” “Where are you in all of this?” “Why are you letting this continue?” In response, God says, don’t worry, sit tight, wait for me to make it right and solve the problem. I will keep my promise but it will be in my time, not yours. I can see further down the road than you can and what looks like total loss will eventually work out. It’s ok to have questions and to cry out to God but we also need to be willing to wait and see, to have trust and confidence that God will get us through whatever is testing our faith rather than demand he change things to the way we want them.
Faith also starts small. Jesus uses the image of a mustard seed which is about the size of a gnat or fruit fly. Faith is taking one thing at a time and not getting too far ahead of ourselves. One of the great examples of this is St. Francis of Assisi who we celebrate this week. He lived a life of extravagance and wild parties until he began to hear God’s invitation to grow in faith. it started with working on his own life and finding a way to think of more than just the next fun time. Slowly, one small step after the other, Francis built a relationship with God and the church, then he invited others into that faith, a few at first, then more and more, both men and women. Over time, that small seed of faith that changed his life also changed the church for the better. The Franciscan order is now 800 years old, stationed all over the world, and bearing good fruit on a scale Francis could never have seen or predicted. But it all started with his yes to live for more than riches and a good time. A little faith goes a long way…
One last point that I would make: faith is like a spiritual muscle; the more we exercise it, the more it grows. And if we do not exercise it, it will grow weak and die.
At the end of the gospel today, Jesus reminds us that no matter what we do or accomplish through our faith, the glory belongs to God. He is the one who accomplishes all that happens. Faith is his gift and his work. There is nothing we can do or accomplish that would cause God to be in our debt. As long as we maintain this attitude of humility and turning it all over to God, the good and the bad, the glory and the shame, the highs and the lows, we can be sure that our faith will grow and we will be in the right place to receive what God has ready for us. It may take longer than we like, it may look different than what we imagined, but our trust and confidence in God will be rewarded with the things that we need to enjoy the things we have right now but more importantly, the things that are yet to come in the kingdom of God.
So let us join the apostles today and pray that the Lord increases our faith. Just a little will go a long way and accomplish things that we and the world never thought possible!
