Faith is a journey.
Have you ever wondered why people say that? It’s a bit cliche, but also powerfully meaningful. When I hear the word faith I automatically think about my belief. Primarily my belief in the ways, person, and spirit of God or lack thereof. We think our faith weak because we don’t fully comprehend or believe God will accomplish what we ask or what he claims he will do. On the flip side, we consider our faith strong because we’ve been a believer for many decades or have accomplished some amazing work.
If faith is, in fact, a journey and we are on that journey, it implies our faith changes, grows, is sometimes redefined, matures or perhaps dies down, needs pruned or produces fruit. Faith rarely stays stagnant because like the Word of God, faith is living. When we view it as such, depicting faith like a mustard seed doesn’t seem so far fetched. It starts as the smallest of all seeds planted in the reception of belief, it is nourished in baptism and discipleship and has the potential to grow into something large and life-giving to those around in a very ordinary way.
Faith Heals a Leper
I don’t often stop to think about my faith. Most days it just is what it is. But one day on a drive home from errands I was listening to a scripture reflection on a passage from Luke 17 concerning Jesus’ healing of ten lepers on the road between Samaria and Galilee. In summation, Jesus healed all ten, but only one returned to throw himself before Jesus’ feet to give thanks and praise—the foreigner. This one returned foreign leper was the only one Jesus attributed to being made well because of his faith.
God healed all the lepers, but this one was deemed well because of his faith. They all had some semblance of faith because they weren’t healed until they began doing as Jesus said, walking to the priests. Healing must have happened somewhere along the journey, not immediately.
Did they know they were going to be healed and so went, or did they expect that Jesus intended the priests to heal them when they arrived? What were they hoping for? Why did they do what Jesus said? Was the one who returned the only one who had the “aha” moment of realizing who truly healed them? Did the others attribute it to the priests? The story kind of implies they didn’t even realize they were healed. Maybe they didn’t return because when, like us, we feel better we feel invincible again and get on with life, no need for God. Besides, who goes back and thanks the doctor? For whatever reason, according to Jesus the reason was faith, this one man did not forget, not notice, or neglect the pain in which he’d been rescued from and came back to Jesus. That’s when Jesus says, “Stand up and go; your faith has made you well.”
The Faith Story
Faith stories can be multi-faceted because faith is complex. If faith is truly a journey, that means when we first encounter faith in the Bible it will look different then how it is depicted further in the story. Stories build. The faith story builds and grows too as it expands in meaning and depth. As it matures, it reveals its purpose and intention. The Bible is God’s story showing us our journey toward holistic redemption. This means from beginning to end our view of who God is, how we relate to him, and what he plans for the future is illuminated step by step.
For the Hebrews, faith looked like faithfulness through obedience; to keep the Torah, obey the law, to observe God’s holy days. Their communal obedience was their knowledge of faith. Their faith was solely directed to an unseen, holy, somewhat distant yet present God who demanded obedience and loyalty or else abandonment to their disobedience. Distance from God was the ultimate punishment. This was Yahweh.
Then Jesus comes on the scene. His death and resurrection introduced faith as a personal response to the grace offered through himself. This faith implies forgiveness of sin, belief in the death and resurrection of Christ and empowerment of followers through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Faith is now directed to a personal and communal God who lives within so we can bear fruit, act justly, love God and others, share the Good News by proclaiming the Kingdom of God. It is no longer distant or feared, it is a hope of more to come. This is the age of the Church.
A Hidden Facet of Faith
We still view faith’s complexity through both of these lenses and both are true of our present-day faith. But there is a third element of faith that I’d never considered until hearing the story of the lepers. I’d heard this type of faith countless times through Jesus’ healing stories but never stopped to consider it’s meaning. This story illuminated a facet of faith that wasn’t born out of obedience to the Torah and it definitely wasn’t faith responsive to salvation. So what is this faith that healed him?
This isn’t the first time in the gospels where Jesus uses this phraseology, “Your faith has healed you.” When healing the woman who suffered years of hemorrhaging he says the same to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.” The centurion who seeks Jesus to heal his servant gets this response, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.” Furthermore, the Canaanite woman begging for even the crumbs of Jesus’ healing for her demon-possessed daughter, a story in which it seems Jesus is cold and rebuking, he commends her replying, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
These are the stories that fuel us to pray for healings today. We think, “If I just have faith, God will heal.” So when he doesn’t, we think, “My faith must not be strong enough. I don’t believe deeply enough.”
There wasn’t a magic prayer or a secret code to unlock the healing power of Jesus. There isn’t one today. These people didn’t come to Jesus and say, “I have faith, so you should heal me or my family.” The only offering these ordinary persons brought before Jesus was their utter desperation and pleading. They had no idea what to expect, I am sure there was fear of rejection in the mix. They didn’t have superpower faith that floored Jesus. Their faith was likely mustard seed proportions if that.
These people were the least of society; the lepers, they were outsiders of the Jewish faith; foreigners, they were an authority; the Roman centurion, they were chosen; a daughter of Israel (bleeding woman). There were countless others, prostitutes, tax collectors, religious leaders… faith didn’t discriminate.
Healing Faith Acknowledges the Person of Jesus
Their commonality was their need and the work Jesus desired to accomplish through them. There is a reason Jesus healed and performed miracles and attributed them to faith. This faith he commended was fertilizer giving fodder for “the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God.” The act of coming to Jesus was the faith they had—a full belief in the Son. This faith was their acknowledgment that God was acting on behalf of the people through his Son who tied together with the Jewish tradition of being chosen as God’s people to the opening introduction to the Kingdom of God and its advancement through the Holy Spirit. Their faith was in Immanuel, God with us. Faith was their simple acknowledgment of the person Jesus, the Son, God living among them, who was able to heal.
Their faith is visibly seen when they desperately asked him to be real for them in a tangible way. This is the first time any God/god in all history became touchable, ‘normal’, like us, approachable. It’s unheard of. For them to believe Jesus in this way was ground-breaking, head-line making faith. This was the Kingdom of God breaking into a sin-bound world. Would you have had that kind of faith?
The woman who poured her expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet knew this. She could see God’s stepping down to heal sin, injustice, pain and she was willing to risk it all to be with him. Jesus says to her, “Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” This faith shakes the system because it fully embraces the Almighty God, once unable to be looked upon and only to be feared as in Hebrew understanding, to suddenly becoming one of us, accessible, loving, caring, humble, healing, a forgiving God for the people. It’s revolutionary and controversial. So was the faith these men and women risked. When we look at the social and political implications of them addressing and seeking Jesus over the current social norms, the right religious acts, or Ceasar, their faith truly was great and potentially perilous.
When we see Christ in this manner and believe, it truly makes us well. It reminds us of the relationship humanity once enjoyed with God in the garden— a personal, intimate, loving, mutual, relatable, giving relationship. Jesus becoming human rekindles this forgotten love, alludes to what we once had and helps us remember we are not forgotten, abandoned or invisible to our creator God. This faith allows hope to creep out of the recesses of our hearts. This is a faith worth falling before Jesus in pity and desperation at all costs. The healings are not the point of the story. The faith of embracing God among us, attentive to us, personal with us, and restorative to us is the point of this faith that heals us. It’s healing our relationship through the Son.
This story encourages me to not neglect this part of my faith journey. I may face sickness, loss, pain, hurt and sins but each day I walk in faith with Jesus I am made well. His being with me is my healing. This is the hope we have to face the pains of life.
Ongoing Faith Story
In one month the church calendar will begin again with Advent. It is a seasonal reminder of God’s becoming humanity so that we may have faith; a faith that heals, a faith that is dicey in light of social norms, but worth the risk. Advent also launches us into an ongoing faith story of “being confident in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” as well as moving toward “our full assurance of faith.” Faith continues to be a pilgrimage for followers of Jesus. It still involves risk and vulnerability.
This faith Jesus proclaimed through healing introduces us to how the Kingdom of God will unfold here and now. We, the Church, are part of the redemption story. We are healed by faith to be healing faith for others. We are ambassadors of God now indwelled with the Holy Spirit to walk among humanity so as to see people, not to forget them, to serve them and be attuned to their needs and live presently engaged among them. The Son heals us to himself, the Holy Spirit furthers that healing to the ends of the earth through the advancement of the Kingdom of God with the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Our faith journey opens to us the fullness of the triune God via the Hebrew story of Yahweh, the fleshly historical Jesus, and the advancement of the Kingdom of God through us; the Church.
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