I don’t know when you’ll be reading this. I’m imagining a Tuesday evening with a cup of tea. Or perhaps a Sunday morning before heading off to church. You might be reading this online or possibly in newsprint. And yet, however this article reaches you, I want to share with you my sense of what I believe this moment in the life of our beloved church demands of us. There are at least three things: Fidelity, Imagination, and Bravery. This is the first of three articles exploring this path.
Fidelity
The first should come as no surprise. In fact, we should expect it. Fidelity, faithfulness, and faith are precisely what St Paul calls us to in his first letter to the Corinthians alongside the calls to hope and to love. Many of our English translations tend to collapse notions of fidelity and faithfulness into the word faith. And yet, somewhere along the way we have—accidentally or otherwise—collapsed the multivalent meaning of this powerful word to intellectual assent or belief.
Belief is one vital part of faith, even if it is not the whole. Faith, faithfulness, fidelity, is what happens when belief is lived out loud. This is what happens when our belief in the saving work of Christ, a salvation that is ongoing and dynamic, once and for all time, is embodied in our personal and common life. Faith in what God has accomplished (and is accomplishing) through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, is an invitation to participate in such a god-bearing life. Fidelity is what our love for Christ looks like in the quiet moments when no one is looking, and in the ways we live in relationship to one another and to God’s good creation. That is to say, our fidelity to Christ is always personal but never private.
Over a lifetime, faithfulness to God 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. As winding as the path may seem, our faith is born out on each step of the journey.
Our journeys of faith all start somewhere. Perhaps yours started at summer camp; maybe under the caring tutelage of a Sunday school teacher. For some of us, it was at the dining table as we read the scriptures out loud with our parents. Perhaps there was something beautiful about the way we took our days to God as we prayed with our parents, and later by ourselves, before bed. Our journeys of faith all start somewhere, all rooted in this overwhelming sense that the ancient stories of the God of Ruth and Rahab, of Tamar and Tziporah, still matter, still take place, today.
As I reflect on the various stories of faith folks have shared with me over the years, I’ve found myself wondering, how many of us belonged before we believed? How many of us experienced faith through the experiences of developing faithfulness long before we believed anything in particular? How many of us learned the practices of faith through—well—practice? Are there any of us who showed up to church fully baked? How many of us reached a certain point in the journey of faith and said “there is nothing more you can teach me,” or “there is nothing more to do,” only to hear that the love of Jesus call us to go where he would go?
Faith is a gift we receive. From others. From God. And, like our names, faith is a gift we live into. Faith is a gift we receive, not just as a label, but as an inheritance to be embodied in the world—a way of showing up–that says something about who we are, and what we are to be called.
And so this Thanksgiving, I find myself giving thanks. For the gift of faith. For teachers along the way. For those who sat with me in the midst of struggle and confusion, not trying to solve everything, but patiently waiting, patiently caring, patiently praying me through the storm. And, as I look to the church as it is and anticipate the church that is emerging, I feel honored (as I hope you do) to be a “God bearer” in this time. Even as the church is changing, we are called to be those who carry the flame of faith.
As we live our lives, as we come alongside others, as we bear witness to what God is doing in our lives, and the life of the world, we have the chance (and God’s own invitation) to keep that flame alive. How does this happen? By hiding it under a bushel? No. By sharing the flame—its light and warmth—a light that constantly points us to the One in whom we have faith. This One, of course, is the very same Jesus who embodies God’s faith through boundless grace (giving us what we don’t deserve) and mercy (sparing us from what we do deserve), and to whom we are called to respond, letting our little light shine.
