As we crossed from Zimbabwe into Zambia we drew in to the side of the road. The view of the Victoria Falls to one side, and on the other deep down into the canyon of the Zambezi river, would be reason enough for anyone to pause, but in fact we had stopped to allow our teenage daughter to join the queue for the bunjee jump. Nothing was going to persuade me to fling myself into a ravine on the end of a long piece of elastic, but if she wanted to do it, I was happy to take the photograph. In the event, a slightly subdued voice from the back of the car announced that she had decided not to jump after all, and we drove on.
It’s a matter of faith, you see. I had no trouble believing in my head that the elastic would save me from plunging to a certain death, but I couldn’t internalise that belief to the point of betting my life on it. Nor could Mary then, though she plucked up the courage to do it a couple of years later. When we recite the creed, it feels like giving our assent to a series of intellectual propositions, and at one level that is what it is, but when our faith is put to the test it doesn’t feel remotely intellectual. It’s more like jumping off that bunjee platform.
What I want to say about faith this morning is only rather loosely connected to the Bible readings we have just heard, but there is a link. The raising to life of the apparently dead son of the widow of Nain, and the very similar story from the Old Testament seem to me to challenge our faith at two levels. In the first place, we may wonder whether they are factually true. Were these young men really dead, or had they just gone into some sort of cataleptic trance from which the prophet could rouse them? If it was more than that, we face an even greater challenge. In both cases we are told that God was motivated to intervene by deep compassion for the bereaved widow, but if he can intervene in these cases, why does he not do so in other cases? Part of the answer might seem to lie in the suggestion that he had his own reasons for acting in these cases. Elijah was able to plead that it wouldn’t do much for Yahweh’s reputation if the widow who had been miraculously rescued from famine was then to be left devastated by the loss of her only source of continuing support. In Jesus’ case the miracle is seen as proof that a great prophet has arisen among us’. But is it not outrageous to suggest that God will overturn the rules of the universe when his reputation is at stake but not otherwise? What is going on here? What is an intelligent questioning church to make of such stories to-day?
These are difficult questions, and I think we need to come at them from a different direction.
The figure of Elijah hovers in the wings of the New Testament. The very last verse of the Hebrew scriptures (Malachi 4.6) promises his return before the great and terrible day of the Lord’. The expectation of his return was in the air in first century Palestine. He appears with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration, where his presence is symbolic of all the prophets whose faith in God’s purposes points ultimately to Jesus. But it is as the disciples come away from this moment of high, even intoxicating spiritual exaltation that they are confronted with the fragility and inadequacy of their own faith. An epileptic child has been brought to the disciples to be healed, and they have failed. The boy is seized by another fit as he is brought to Jesus, who asks compassionately how long this has been going on. From childhood, the father replies. If there is anything you can do, please take pity on us and help us. If there is anything you can do I cannot help seeing a sympathetic twinkle of wry amusement in Jesus’ eyes as he responds with words which contain a gently implicit challenge: All things can be done for one who believes. Here is a father there must surely have been a devoted mother in there too – whose love has driven them to do all they can for their disabled child, rescuing him repeatedly from the unprotected hazards of both water and the fire. Their human resources are almost exhausted, but their love will not allow them to give up. They want to believe that Jesus can help that is why the father has come and now, when challenged to really believe that all things are possible by faith, he knows in his heart that he wants to trust Jesus utterly and completely, without any of the reservations with which he may have come to him. So he blurts out these extraordinary words: Lord I believe; help thou mine unbelief. And Jesus heals the boy.
The North Camden Deanery Synod is not often the most inspiring occasion. But last Wednesday, as a succession of speakers described with some passion what they were doing about issues as diverse as church schools in Camden, the debate about a Church of England Covenant, the provision of winter care shelters, and the perpetual crisis in diocesan finances, I was very much struck by this evidence of the patient, constructive and faithful engagement of members of the Christian community to which we belong. In every case the speakers faced mountains of difficulty, in some cases downright opposition, which must at times be almost as daunting and exhausting as the years of stress which the parents of the epileptic child had been through. And those who spoke were just those whose concerns happened to be on the agenda. There are others here this morning who have shown similar commitment as they struggle to realise their Christian vision of the office or the family, of medicine or justice, of education or architecture, of politics or the responsible stewardship of resources. How long has all this been going on? For years and years But Lord, if there is anything you can do, have pity on us and help us. And that is the moment when we too, in our complex, modern, bureaucratic world face the same challenge as that desperate, compassionate parent in his village community two thousand years ago. The compassion is there, which prompted us in the first place. The steady commitment is there too. It is when we are tired and down-hearted, when passion and commitment seem to have failed, when we are most tempted to wonder whether our vision will ever be realised, that Jesus comes to meet us with a smile of loving understanding, and an invitation to a new and deeper faith, which prompts us to cry out with that anonymous father: Lord I believe; help me where faith falls short.
I still have awkward questions about some of Jesus’ miracles. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is the triumphant power of his love over all that is evil, a power which he proclaimed definitively by his death and resurrection, and continues to proclaim as his Holy Spirit strengthens each one of us by faith for his work in the world.
We are grateful for those mountain-top moments of insight and conviction, which inspire our faith. But the faith which moves mountains is discovered not when we float momentarily on a cloud of glory, but in those testing moments when we are challenged to commit ourselves in some practical way to the faith which we have perhaps glimpsed on some mountain top of our own. The circumstances may not be so physically challenging as preparing to leap off a bunjee platform, though they may very well be more than enough to cause us to wonder whether we have the courage and the strength to go through with it. But if by faith we can put our hand into the hand of God, and trust him to take care of us as we step forward into whatever it is that seems so daunting, his strong arm is there to hold us, and he will not let us fall. Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.