Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 23], rcl yr b, 2021
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Ps. 125; James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:24-37
“Love bade me welcome,” begins George Herbert’s well-known and well-loved poem. Well-loved especially by philosopher Simone Weil, who called it “the most beautiful poem in the world.” Weil herself, after reciting it in 1938, reports that the poem brought her into a religious ecstasy, in which, she says, “Christ himself came down and took possession of me.”
Perhaps it should be no surprise that the poem could have such a deep effect on a person; it’s a conversation with God, in which, despite God’s welcome, the poet draws back, speaking of a variety of reasons why he wouldn’t be welcome; Love may bid him welcome, but his soul draws back. That is until the end of the poem, when the poet is finally fully present to God, to Love: “You must sit down, says Love, … So I did sit and eat.”
I like this poem for today’s readings because it gets at something central to the Christian faith, something foundational. The poet protests, speaking of his sin, and his shame, but Love speaks of grace, of what God has accomplished in bearing that sin, and shame, and blame. The poem makes clear that it’s God’s work in Christ that breaks down the barriers that keep us from faith, and that it’s God’s work that finally allows for us to finally be fully welcome, to share God’s life: to sit, and to eat.
Or perhaps, closer to the language of our readings, faith is a matter of trust, and a “yes” to God’s promise; and ultimately; our faith isn’t our own, but Christ’s own, and it is Christ’s faith that saves us.
Let’s flesh this out a bit through our readings. Let’s start with Mark, where we have a Jesus performing miracles. In the passage, Jesus first heals a child with an unclean spirit; then Jesus heals “a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech.”
These sorts of miracle stories are often hard for us; I know that many of you have trouble with these sorts of stories. Maybe because part of you feels that you have to believe in a Jesus who does miracles, while another part of you thinks that they are an impossible thing. This comes from a certain way of understanding what faith is, though; imagining that faith is about believing a whole bunch of things, strange (and sometimes wonderful) things, that faith is maybe making a long list of things we must believe in to be a Christian: “I’m told this happened, check I can believe that; I’m told that happened, check I can believe that; I’m told this other thing happened, I’m not so sure, ok I crossed my fingers, check I can believe that with my fingers crossed; I’m told that happened? I can’t believe THAT …ok … I’m about 75% Christian, give or take.”
Suffice to say I’m not so sure this is the right way to imagine the Christian faith, as if it were simply believing a whole long list of things, a matter of “intellectual assent,” as they say. But there is a moment where you may begin to trust. To trust the Scriptures and what they tell us about God; a moment when you might come, more importantly, to trust the God of Scripture. This is faith in, believing in, or trusting in the God who makes promises; and trusting that this God will keep his promises.
This is the way to read miracle stories. These are accounts of a God, who in Christ, is making promises—that there is healing, and there is wholeness at his hand. It’s a promise that begins to take shape in the present—that is, we can begin to experience God’s promise of healing and wholeness in the present. (And I’m betting you have.) But this is also a promise about a fulness yet to come. And it is this God, this Jesus, that we would have faith in, that we would believe in, this is the one we trust.
This is the faith of Psalm 125. We read in Psalm 125 that “The sceptre of the wicked shall not hold sway over the land allotted to the just.” On the face of it it’s false. The wicked did hold sway in Israel’s promised land. But it was nevertheless a psalm sung by Israel in exile, far away from home, when the “sceptre of the wicked” most surely did “hold sway over the land allotted to the just.” And it was sung by the Jews of Jesus’s day, when the land was ruled by the Romans. It’s a Psalm about trusting that God will indeed make all things well, even when the present looks very very dark. That “the Lord will lead [the crooked] away with the evildoers,” and that God’s people will know peace. This is the faith of those who “are like Mount Zion,” as the psalmist puts it, the “Mount Zion which cannot be moved, but stands fast for ever”: this is the faith of “those who trust in the Lord.”
But still, that trust, that hope, that faith, it can be elusive, can’t it; when we are overwhelmed with the darkness of the world, or feeling defeated by what we see in others and by what we find in ourselves. The good news here, though, is that it is Christ’s faith that changes the world. And that when we are in Christ, made part of his body in baptism, his faith becomes ours. We rely not simply on ourselves for hope and trust in God, because it is the faith of Christ that gives us hope and leads us into trust.
This way of speaking about faith is present in James. It’s most prevalent in other parts of the New Testament, where Paul especially writes of the centrality of Christ’s faith, and in particular Christ’s saving faithfulness on the cross. James is a bit more generous though, seeing Jesus’s faith in the whole of his life, including, and especially, in his impartiality: Jesus doesn’t just love the richest, he very clearly also loves the poorest.
The first lines of our reading from James should probably read more like this: brothers and sisters, “do not hold the faith of our glorious Lord Jesus Christ while showing acts of favouritism.” Our glorious Lord Jesus Christ’s faith, says James, does not show partiality to the richest, it does not ignore the poor. Hold that faith, says James—hold the faith of Jesus, the faith we see in the whole of Jesus’s life. Because that’s the faith that saves you.
Love has bid you welcome, to paraphrase Herbert. And though your soul may draw back, it is an invitation that is eventually irresistible. There is nothing to keep you from the faith that saves: because it’s the faith of our glorious Lord Jesus Christ that saves, as James so beautifully puts it. This is a Jesus you can trust, believe, have faith in, trusting that he is making all things whole and well; this is the Jesus who has already “borne the blame,” that is, accomplished all that needs accomplishing for us to come into his life. In fact, just as Simone Weil seems to have experienced directly on reading Herbert’s poem, Christ takes possession of us, not us of him. Because ultimately it is the faith of Christ that saves, that brings us into life; a faith that he would share with us, for our own sake:
“You must sit down, says Love … So I did sit and eat.”
The Revd Preston DS Parsons, PhD