Recent Sermons
St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
For More Information Contact the Office
Notice any errors? Have a suggestion? Or a comment? Then ....
Lent 2 B - The Faith to be A Disciple
St. Andrew's Church
12 March, 2006
Today's readings are all about faith. Many Christians think that faith is primarily about believing in a set of statements about God and about Jesus and about following a set of rules about our behaviour. If you're a believer, they think, then we must agree with our minds about who God is and about what we will do.
Today's lessons show us how they have got it wrong. Faith isn't primarily about believing certain doctrinal statements or creeds and about following a set of rules. Faith isn't about believing this and so about God as it is believing in God. The first engages simply your mind. The second engages your heart and mind and your whole being. That is the true meaning of faith. Faith is about putting your trust in God - even when your mind hasn't figured it all out. Such faith is a risk, it is a step out into the unknown, it is about being vulnerable.
When God spoke to Abraham and Sarah and told them that they would have a child after they were over ninety years old, they did the same thing which any of us would do. They fell on the floor and laughed. Yet Abraham had faith in God, even though it didn't make too much sense, and, indeed, nine months later Sarah was delivering her son whom they named Isaac, which means laughter. Abraham decided he would trust in God and his step of faith literally meant he had to step out on a journey leaving behind his life of ease and wealth to cross a desert into a land which God would show him in the future. That involved his whole being in faith. That was putting his faith in God, rather than simply believing about God.
Jesus didn't make too much sense to Peter and his disciples either. They were on a high after the success of their ministry in Galilee. Hordes of people were following them, they were healing and preaching and they were so popular. But it was all a little too heady for Jesus. He knew that his disciples needed to know the cost of following him. They needed to know that their path would lead to suffering and even the death of Jesus, before they could truly experience the new life of resurrection. They, too, he said, must pick up their cross and follow him.
God, it seems, doesn't just want us as fair-weather friends. God doesn't simply want a nod of the head, or intellectual assent. God needs the whole of us. We need to put out faith in God with our very lives. As Jesus gave his life for us, we need to give ours to God.
This doesn't mean that we need to waste our lives. It does mean that we must dedicate our lives to God through service to God's kingdom. It means that we must give our selves, our souls, our time and our gifts in order to build the kingdom while we live on this earth. That's what we are for. It is who we are created to be.
In Jesus' time and in the centuries which followed that sometimes literally being put to death for your faith. That sort of test of faith still happens in some places today. For most of us, however, the testing isn't done by our deaths, but by the living of our lives. The testing is in the daily choices which we make which have to do with our resources and our relationships. And not only the relationships which we have, but the ones which we daily need to forge.
This is the season of Lent and you need to ask yourself: How do I use up your life? How do I spend it? Whom do I serve? Where is my treasure? Will I pick up my cross and follow Jesus? For that is the cost of discipleship. Amen.
