Sermon: On Faith

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On Faith

By Charles Rush

September 15, 2002

all the virtues, perhaps none is so intimately associated with the core of what it means to be religious as “faith”. Once in a while, one of our young people will ask me, “How can you believe in something that you can't touch, feel, see, or hear, something for which there is no direct evidence? I guess you have a lot of faith.” It is a great question and implied in it is a silent petition. “How can I increase my faith?” “What can I do to believe?”

Part of the answer, of course, is that faith is not something that you exactly generate, so much as you discover it. For a whole bunch of us spiritual pygmies, we discover it only when we have no other resources and it is the only thing we can rely on.

This summer, I traveled briefly to Tuscany to visit some Etruscan archaeological sites. The Etruscans were the people that lived in the middle part of Italy before the Romans got there. We have some remains from 1500 b.c. but most of our artifacts come from 500 b.c.. They fought and traded with the Greeks, so much of their vases, the housing, their temples, look pretty Greek to ordinary people.

I went to see the remains from a temple that was dedicated principally to healing. People would come fairly great distances to this temple complex. When they got there, the priests would listen to their story and tell them what sacrifices that they needed to make, how to do them, and what remedies to apply. Some of these remedies were of a medical nature, some of them functioned like a religious talisman, to ward off affliction or provide a catalyst for healing.

Part of the ritual included making a stone carving or a cast replica of the part of the body that ails you. One fellow apparently had a broken arm that hadn't healed right and caused him a lot of pain. He had cast a replica of his arm showing the part of the arm that was mended poorly.

Then what you did, was put these cast objects on the altar, so that now the gods would know exactly what your problem was and would address it. It was a very moving site because we have discovered hundreds and hundreds of these stone carvings. There are many, many depictions of women's wombs. Were they having trouble getting pregnant? Was it complications from menopause? Ordinary medical difficulties? We can't say. There were lots of feet. Were they worn out from over exertion? Hearts, throats, teeth,… there was literally no part of the anatomy that was not represented.

You can look at a collection like that and just say, “Superstitious people, good thing we have doctors.” But, I saw the human and humane side, the simply profound longing on the part of people that have a problem they can't solve with technology and they are forced to draw upon the resources of faith. There were a few depictions of infants. So many infants died in the ancient world. I was at one graveyard in Sicily where all the people buried had been exhumed and examined. I asked one of the workers there, the percentage of babies and small children? “60%”, he said.

There is nothing quite like that feeling in the middle of the night when you have a baby that you can't cure, walking them around while they are crying, hour after hour and there is nothing that you can do to bring them any relief or comfort. Today, thank God, the Doctor's office is open in the morning and the ER is open all night. I think about those mother's in the ancient world and you know they just drew into themselves and found a connection in prayer and sent out as much healing energy as they could channel through their souls to those babies, and did everything they could.

People tell me that the most moving thing about visiting the site in France, Lourdes, (where the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared to a young teenage girl and established a site of healing,) is simply the hundreds and thousands of pairs of crutches of people that came there and left them in hopes of healing or as a testimony to the fact that they were healed. All of those people in need of a kind of healing that medicine could not provide, channeling their spiritual energy in faith. Is it encrusted with superstitious magic? Sure. But the deep humanity of it, the longing to be healed, relying on faith because all other options have failed. I think it is very touching.

And we know that sometimes it works. Even Doctors today write about the fact that it works. How it works is not so easy to say. But there is such a power to it, an ordinary power to it that I find remarkably warm and humane.

If you go to the hospital, I will almost always come and visit you there. And when I do, I almost always pray. That is just what I do. A lot of times, the prayer is just very simple and not dramatic. But there is a power to touch. Every once in a while, I see that. Someone, a few years ago, asked me to visit a relative, a young woman that was having anxiety attacks and sleeplessness. The Doctors were trying to get her medication right but they weren't having much luck, partly because she feared them. I walked into her room and one of her relatives said, “The priest is here to see you.” She was lying in bed shaking, a nervous shake. I reached out my hand to her and she gave it a real solid clasp, like she had just gotten hold of a spiritual life-line. She couldn't really talk but her eyes were full of worry and tension. I didn't have much to say to her and I didn't think it would be helpful, so I told her I was going to pray for her. I put my hands on her forehead and prayed for the peace of God to fill her heart and pour over her. Slowly she stopped shaking and just lay there still. Her breathing became regular. It was like her fever broke. I just stayed there with her for a while channeling peace. Said “Amen” and quietly walked away. She slept deeply that night. The woman next to her bed couldn't stop talking about it.

Of course, that doesn't happen every time. And no one can answer why it happens so dramatically in one place and not at all in another. Right. The point is only that it can happen at all and that we have this resident spiritual capacity to actualize and we don't use it enough. What is it that you need to step out in faith about?

Faith is an important spiritual tool we can exercise and we do it all the time. As the platitude says, there are no atheists in fox holes and I suspect that every one who parachutes out of planes calls on God in faith. Every kid says a quick prayer in faith as they visualize themselves making correct answers before exams. As my friend James Dunn from West Texas loves to remind the United States Congress every time he is asked to testify on legislation regarding school prayer, “As long as we have tests, we'll have prayer in public school.” All of you know as leaders how critical it is to exercise faith, having a vision that you can point toward, a future that you want to take your company towards, a future you can take your family towards, living daily only partially realizing that vision, sometimes watching it come together like our wonderful building next door that has been years in the making. Faith is what gets us through when almost none of the vision is actually being fulfilled in our midst, but we keep moving towards that future anyway.

It seems to me that Christianity doesn't so much create the reality of faith as give it shape. Jesus gave us a broader vision, including more people, stretching ourselves in service outward. And we need that because left to ourselves, the vast majority of us would only envision ourselves in the BMW and do what we had to get there. And that is fine, it is just not enough.

We need to stretch ourselves. A few years ago, I was looking over the family mail and I saw a completed application to become a foster-parent, filled out in my wife's hand writing. I brought it to her and said, “Dear, what is this?”

She said, “I've been thinking about it and we need to become foster-parents.”

I said, “We do?… What gave you that idea?”

She said, “I was listening to the Minister at my church.”

I said, “Woah, woah, woah… Kate, let's get one thing straight, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to everyone else.” I thought you would enjoy that. I'm not any better than anyone else when it comes to walking the walk. I can talk the talk but the other piece is still quite challenging. I had a very solid list of reservations, “We already have 4 frisky kids, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah.”

Long story short, Kate says what harm could come from just checking it out, an argument you can't refute and I hate that because I know I'm sunk.

Classes, fingerprints, F.B.I. background check… next thing you know a case worker calls us with a kid for a few days. It was late at night. The case worker comes in with this 4 year old child, dressed literally in a rag, and she is so nervous that she is just squatting on the floor and she has wet her pants.

I have to tell you that for many days, I'd fretted about this moment, anxiously. What would you do? What would you say? Moments like these, I think are filled with the warm smile of God, because when I actually got there it was so obvious.

We put her in the hot shower, got her some warm jimmies, I made some food. She looked like a cat that hadn't eaten in a week. Then Kate and I told her she was safe in our home, over and over, and we tucked her in some tight clean sheets, said a prayer for her. Boom, she was out.

She came to us from an abandoned bus in Elizabeth, no heat. Her parents were probably nice people but they were heroin addicts and after a point, neglect becomes a way of life. Turns out she had a brother who was in a foster home somewhere in Newark. The case worker had no idea how long she would be with us. They were trying to contact family members.

She didn't speak much English and what she did was filled with that lovely urban Jersey dialect. “Can I axe you a question?” she said. “Axe away” I used to respond.

We got her in touch with her brother, had her brother over, arranged to take him on a family vacation, then he was with us for some time, somehow he just stayed for the rest of the summer. No family members appeared. This was probably longer term.

One day, we are at the pool, summer is almost over and a group of women are asking Kate if she is going to keep not only Jessie, the little girl but also her brother Gio. Kate was remarking how much easier it is in the summer but school with special needs children, homework and all the other social issues around school structure would be another thing. Rebecca Arnold pipes up. For those of you who never knew Rebecca Arnold, she was a member of Christ Church for many years, very bright, and rather loudly proclaimed that she was an atheist to anyone who cared to listen. Rebecca pipes up,” get the church involved. That's what they are there for.” The atheist is the first one to call on the Church. Dorothy, God bless her... I always paid more attention to what she did rather than what she said. She, too, was involved in God's conspiracy of goodness, sometimes even the catalyst.

We put a blurb in the bulletin. So many of you responded, among them Bev York. God bless Bev York. 2 days a week for 4 years, a retired special ed teacher showed up and did her deal with homework, patiently teaching those kids.

There were so many small kindnesses and things you did to include them. I remember the second day that Jessie was with us, in the very beginning and we were over at Ellie Fischer's house and Jessie fell asleep in her bed and we discovered in the morning that she had lice. Oh please no. I had to call Ellie up. But Ellie just rolled with it.

I remember coming to coffee hour in the beginning and the kids were totally overstimulated by coffee hour, acting out. I'm trying to talk to people with a four-year-old kid just spazzing out on my leg. Everyone was, no problem.

They had no sense of boundaries. I remember Kathryn Radutsky calling me at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Jessie, our foster daughter, had just walked a few houses over to their house, waked up their son Jack. Of course, I don't even know she's gone. Kathryn says, “no problem… we'll feed her breakfast and send her home in a while.”

They kids never had anything when they were living in the bus, so the first birthday party they went to was a small disaster. When they found out the presents they brought to the party were for someone else, not them, they cried and wouldn't let go of them.

They got over that. I remember one of those parties, this one for Emily Loughlin, and Carly Baker was teaching all these 5 year-old girls cheers from cheerleading. Jessie was so excited about cheerleading. And it was so wonderfully normal kid fun.

I think of so many of you that asked them over to play… Emma Olcott, the Jacobsen family taking including them in movie outings. It was so, so very helpful.

They had no concept of animals or nature. I remember visiting Wilbur Nelson at his camp in Maine, patiently walking them around, pointing out deer and Moose. Visiting Vivien and Cary Hardy in Vermont, sledding in the winter snow.

The school system was wonderful going out of their way, always saying, this is just our job.

You know, way leads to way and the next thing you know, they can pack their backpack, do the family chores, bring home their papers from school, read, play football, soccer. Day by day, with the support of the community, they become normal American kids. There was a day I knew Gio was fully integrated into our community, the day we were at the shoe store and he only wanted Nike tennis shoes. A couple years ago, he didn't even know what Nike meant.

All these things were indicators that they were becoming ordinary, normal kids. Change happens and the vision does get realized a little bit at a time. And that is what faith is like. It is what happens when you are living out the vision. That, by the way, is a large part of the answer to the question, “how can I increase my faith.”

Gerard manly Hopkins, the great poet and mystic, asked by someone how he could learn to believe, said, “Give Alms.” Faith comes through obedient service to others.

Pascal told a group of people that wanted to believe and could not, “act as if you believe and believing will follow.” Just do it…

So what I am saying, also is, ‘thank you'. And to remember that the goodness of faith does tend to grow in new directions once it has been released. Our foster-children were up for adoption last fall, but the couple that wanted to adopt them decided not to. It was very difficult on the kids emotionally.

After that didn't work out, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law were up visiting over Christmas. They run a children's summer camp in the Pisgah Forest in North Carolina, wonderful people. One night they told us they had been talking, and that they had been actively in prayer together over something they wanted to talk to us about. These are not the type of people that say casually they have been praying about something. What could it be? They wanted to adopt Jessie and Gio. They had two adopted kids already and wanted four. And they already knew them. Long, bureaucratic story short… today they are in Carolina living on a camp with the 14 horses, the sheep, cows, and chickens.

My wife asked Gio to call her after he had his first sleep over because then he would be really moved in and have a friend. He called the other day. His new best friend he met, not at school, not around the corner from where he lives, but at the Episcopal Church that their family attends. And who knows, he might just grow up thinking the Church is a pretty good place to be and get some spiritual grounding, all because of all of us together.

We can't save the world but we can do our part. You have a lot of talent and God can use you. Don't be afraid to stretch a little bit. It will strengthen your good side and challenge you productively. There is something in your life, something near at hand, where you can make a difference. Step out in faith. It is a blessing.

Amen