For this season of Lent through Easter Sunday, we are focusing on the theme, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” The inspiration for this 7-week sermon series comes from the hymn of the same name.
This hymn was written by Isaac Watts, one of the most recognizable of all the hymn writers. He was born in England in 1674. His hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” was published in 1707.
We began this series last Sunday by focusing on when Jesus was sent into the wilderness and faced three major temptations that were presented to him by the devil.
The first temptation was for Jesus to turn stones into bread but instead Jesus resisted by relying on God’s Word. The second temptation was for Jesus to jump off the Temple and command angels to come and save him but instead Jesus resisted by not putting God to the test. And Jesus was able to resist the third temptation which was to inherit all the kingdoms of this world in exchange for worshiping the devil.
By resisting all of these temptations, Jesus was able to set the course of his ministry by leaning on God and fulfilling the purpose for which he was sent, to offer his very life for the sake of the world. When we survey the temptations that come our way and lean on God to resist those temptations, we too can live out who God has called us to be.
For this Sunday, we are invited to survey our faith, and for this we turn to our appointed reading from Genesis, chapter 12 where we have the story God calling Abram, who had no children at that time to step out in faith and become the father of a great nation. Abram must have been wondering how God was going to pull this off since Abram and his wife were unable to have children at the time.
In addition to Abram and Sarah who stepped out in faith in our Old Testament reading, we also have our Gospel reading from John, chapter 3, where Nicodemus also stepped out in faith when he met Jesus one night to ask him some very important spiritual questions. It was risky for him to do this because of how other religious leaders would have reacted to him doing this.
Both of these scripture readings invite us to survey our own faith. Like them, are we willing to step out in faith?
I envy people who make faith seem so easy. There are just some people who have absolutely no problem in believing that God created the world in 6 days or that God parted the Red Sea so that the Israelites could escape from slavery in Egypt or that Mary the mother of Jesus was a virgin when Jesus was conceived.
And when I ask them why they just seem to believe all of these miracles that we find in the Bible, the response I usually get is a very simple one where they say, “well, it’s easy because the Bible says that these things happened so they must be true and that’s good enough for me.” And that’s all well and good but doesn’t that beg the question, “But how do you know that the Bible is true?”
I mean, it is a book that was written over many centuries, in different languages, and by many different authors. And then it wasn’t until three centuries after the last of these books were finally written that the early church fathers finally settled on which sacred books would be included in what we know today as the Bible. I guess, my point is that the bible didn’t just fall from heaven one day. It was a work in progress.
I said that I envy people who make faith seem so easy, but actually, now that I think about it, I really envy people who have a faith in God even though they still have many unanswered questions about their faith. I envy them even more because these are people who because of their unanswered questions could just stop going to church or reading their bible altogether, but they are still hanging on to their faith.
I find that refreshing, actually. I find that honest and genuine. And I wonder how many churches make room for people like that who might not believe everything we say when we recite the Apostles’ Creed or who are skeptical when a scripture is read in worship about one of Jesus’ healings.
Recently, I watched an interview of Noel Gallagher who is a prolific music composer and musician. He was asked if he believed in God because he is known to be an atheist. I was expecting him to just say that he is still not a believer but he caught me off guard with his response.
He said that his wife and father-in-law go to church every Sunday but that he doesn’t attend with them. But he also said that even though he isn’t a believer, that there are a lot of times where he feels that attending church and going through the rituals every week would be a source of comfort to him. I just thought that was a really interesting response because I respected his honesty and his openness to the idea that maybe church wouldn’t be so bad after all!
It seems to me that there are more of these kinds of stories of faith in the Bible rather than stories where people just believe because the Bible says you should believe.
So when Abram and Sarah would later laugh at the thought that Sarah would give birth even though she was barren, that to me feels real and genuine. And when Nicodemus sneaks out in the night to ask Jesus some spiritual questions, that feels real and genuine to me.
These stories that we find in the Bible remind us that God is more than willing to meet us where we are than what we might think. And so, if you’re not sure if every single story in the Bible is factually true or if it really happened at all, you’re not alone. God can meet you there. Still unsure if you even believe in God? You’re not alone. God can meet you there.
Whenever someone says how faith comes easy for them because they simply believe the bible, I have to wonder if they are reading the same bible that I’m reading!
Have you read the psalms and not just Psalm 23? That’s a beautiful psalm of the psalmist faith in the Lord who is a loving shepherd, but we also get Psalm 22 right before it where the psalmist cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This psalmist is basically saying, “why aren’t you answering any of my prayers? And why are you so far away from helping me?”
I think these two psalms are back to back for a reason. Yes I love Psalm 23, but I equally love psalms like Psalm 22 because they are so real and genuine. God can meet us there in our doubts and our questioning even when we are shaking our fists at God.
There is this wonderful ebb and flow that we find in the psalms ranging from, “everything is going great in my life and I love and worship only you, O God,” to another psalm that is more like, “my life is so crappy right now that I don’t even know if you even care anymore, O God.”
These many different kinds of psalms are what feel real and genuine to me. They are not faking it. They are saying how they really feel in that moment.
Maybe this is why God doesn’t give up on Abram and Sarah when they are called to begin a new nation. Maybe this is why Jesus doesn’t turn Nicodemus away who comes to Jesus in the cover of night. That feels genuine. That feels real. Jesus meets us where we are.
So here’s the interesting thing about Abram and Sarah. Even though they doubted God, they ended up becoming the parents of a great nation that became the people of Israel.
And here’s the interesting thing about Nicodemus. He shows up again at the end of John’s Gospel because he ends up being the one who risked his life by asking for Jesus’ body after he had been crucified.
Faith takes time. Faith is about exploring. Faith means asking questions like we are inviting our 6th through 9th grade confirmands to do as they prepare for church membership. Faith allows for us to express our doubts where we join some of the psalmists in asking, “God, are you even hearing this prayer?”
I like Nicodemus. He wasn’t afraid to ask Jesus questions like “what do you mean Jesus, how can somebody be born a second time? Everyone knows that you’re only born once.”
See what Nicodemus was doing there with that question? He was doing what we tend to do when we assume that spiritual truth is only about cold facts and taking things literally. Jesus was inviting Nicodemus to see faith in a much more dynamic, creative, and multi-dimensional way.
“The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
It sounds like this response from Jesus helped Nicodemus to look at his faith in a new way and would eventually lead him to be the one who took Jesus’ body from the cross to place him in the tomb.
This is how it is with faith. When it’s real and genuine, it allows room for our questions and our doubts. And somehow, God can use that and lead us into an even deeper understanding of who God is.
Jesus helped Nicodemus to see that eternal life isn’t so much about a destination, but it’s really a way of life in the here and now that continues into eternity. This way of life includes asking questions about things that are too mysterious to fully comprehend. It provides plenty of room to express our doubts and sometimes even our frustrations with God.
And maybe that’s why it’s not a coincidence that today’s invitation to survey our faith falls on this particular Sunday when we celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Sometimes, we don’t really need text book answers. What we’re really hungry for is the presence of the Risen Christ through the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup.
Come to the table with your questions and even your doubts and be born again.
When I Survey My Faith
Faithful God, you know our fears and our doubts. You know our hopes and our dreams. You know when we have a strong faith and when we have a wavering faith. You know our brokenness and our sins. You know all of these dimensions of who we are, and yet you still love us. In this season of Lent in which we are surveying our faith, may we respond to your invitation to be born anew. Lead us so that we might grow in what it means to have a Loving, Learning, and Living faith. Amen.
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