What Part of Speech is Faith?
The Reverend Canon Beth Knowlton
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany
19 February 2006
Religious vocabulary is an interesting thing. We use it regularly and at times without much thought. When used well it creates connections and speaks of our common life with one another. It ultimately points beyond itself towards God. Words like redemption, grace, and forgiveness may point to particular tenets of our faith. But ultimately, we want them to urge us toward a deep sense of God’s presence in our lives. We want to be assured that we are not isolated or separated from our Creator or those that we make our lives with. When our religious words they accomplish this, they are helpful and even symbolic resources we have at our disposal.
However religious words can also create barriers and disconnections. Some words have become so “loaded” in their common usage; we may shy away from them. We may even think other denominations somehow have proprietary rights. As Episcopalians we might feel somehow that a word, like evangelism, might require licensing permission, before we would dare to utter it publicly.
But hesitancy to use some religious words may indicate a deeper issue. I think that if we have anxiety around particular words it is often because we fear them. Fear that their usage that will create isolation, rather than connection. We sense the real power of words and accordingly treat them with respect. When we seem themed tossed about without care, we inwardly flinch on behalf of those who might be wounded.
Even if we are careful in our words, there is still an issue of commonality. We intend for a religious word to convey something very particular. But, it is not always safe to assume that the word will be received in that way. We might assume that everyone agrees with our internal definition. Yet, we might not even agree that it is the same part of speech.
Take the word faith for instance. I have to admit, I really struggle to believe that faith should be a noun. I resist it. I would much prefer to think of it as an adjective or convert it to a verbal form. The reason I resist it? I think when we speak of faith as a noun, it too quickly becomes one key on a whole ring of religious car keys. Hopefully it’s the ignition, but I fear it only opens the trunk. I might not even have use for it if I have an automatic keychain that it replaces. And I fear that if it is placed too close to doubt, it might be lost forever.
Yes, I resist faith being a noun. It sounds like it is too easily misplaced. I can never find my keys. I don’t want my faith to be an object. I don’t want it to be wholly dependent on my ability to keep track of it and care for it. I don’t want it to be something we try to quantify and measure.
And yet we tend to speak of it that way. We comment on people who have a strong faith, or little faith. Or worst of all someone who has lost their faith. So, if I have to concede by our usage that it often is a noun, it had at least better have something beyond an individual or singular meaning. It cannot only be a thing, but needs to have people and places involved as well. Which seems to be the direction our text from Mark is pointing us towards today.
For someone not raised with much of a biblical background, I am always somewhat surprised when I discover a bible story I remember from childhood. The healing of the paralytic is one of them. I had a picture book of it. It was one of my favorite stories, but not necessarily for the reasons you might expect.
I was fascinated by the thought of lowering someone through the roof to see Jesus. My roof didn’t come off my house, how did that work? Was it tile? Or maybe it was straw? I think I was more impressed with that part, frankly, than with Jesus forgiving the paralytic’s sins, and freeing him to walk and have a new life.
Reading the story as an adult, I wonder whether I noticed the people lowering the pallet. Did I hear that Jesus linked their faith to the paralytic’s healing? No, I was far more interested in a time in history where your roof could be removed by four busy pairs of hands. If at the age of six, I even considered those carrying the pallet, it was probably to wonder why they didn’t fall in after their friend and all land on top of Jesus.
I do remember wondering, “How did they get on top of the house anyway?” If the crowd was so large, they could not get through, how did they manage to scale the walls? Why didn’t better manner prevail? Wasn’t anyone concerned by the sight of four people climbing a wall bearing a pallet between them? This unfamiliar world didn’t make much sense. My own experience created only a crowd of questions. Entry through the doorway of the story was unthinkable, and a glimpse of Jesus’ authority unlikely.
But this is not just a problem of lack of experience or childhood naiveté. It is often what emerges when we treat our faith as solely an individual object that we must create and sustain. We lose perspective. Our definitions become normative and we lose the abundance of God’s grace that is communicated through others. We find ourselves blocked from redemption and healing.
I know that this has been true in my own journey. I find that through the voices outside of myself, I realize that my own view has been blocked. I have a prayer community that I am associated with in South Georgia. We have a rule of life that we covenant to live together in our own setting. I am always struck in our gatherings at the power of hearing another’s story. In my listening my own story becomes clearer.
I mentioned in my Credo two weeks ago that as a child I had a blackbird that I assumed followed me to and from school. Now as I got older and ostensibly wiser, I realized that probably more than one bird had been involved. And this in a sense took away the wonder of feeling like there was a presence above me, looking after me. So I didn’t think about this blackbird for probably at least twenty years. He had been lost to me. Until one day sitting out on the porch at Green Bough, one of my fellow associates said, “I’ve always loved the sound of a blackbird squawking. It sounds like they are bearers of the Gospel.” At that very instance I was flooded with that childhood memory. And I realized that I could recapture the mystery of the comfort my blackbird had brought me.
But when I was trapped in the very real and correct knowledge that many blackbirds had been present, I had lost something in my perspective. I questioned whether it could communicate a sense of love to me, when I realized the blackbirds probably hadn’t even followed me or known I was around. I had fallen into the trap of the scribes.
And I think the trap of the scribes is perhaps particularly insidious. They are sitting, possibly pretty close to Jesus, and yet their hearing is more blocked that the crowds shimmying up to the door longing to hear his word. Their individual perspective makes them more paralyzed than the paralytic. No one is able to even see their need for forgiveness and healing. They appear to be the most powerful people in the room. They are probably the most educated; the ones who should have all the answers. Would we even think to offer to carry them on a pallet? Would it occur to us that we need to lie down and be carried?
Jesus does not conform to their notion of authority and so when he proclaims forgiveness for the paralytic’s sins, they are blocked from believing. They sit there “questioning in their hearts.” But Jesus sees beyond the obvious physical suffering of the paralytic and creates a moment of healing that extends to the whole of the gathered community.
Today we are pretty isolated from a first century Mediterranean view of community. Often we think of individuals who come together to create communities, as opposed to the community which happens to contain individuals. We can miss the clues in the gospels that assume inter-relatedness. Jesus’ itinerary was not posted on the internet and he was not checking in with the disciples by cell phone. Yet his return to Capernaum was reported and made known. And despite our technology’s potential to create greater connection, at times I’m afraid it can contribute to our sense of isolation.
Now the communities of Jesus’ time certainly had isolation. If I had become ritually contaminated I would have found myself outside my community. I would be expected to shout out to you my unclean state, lest you should come too close. But, if I live in isolation afraid to acknowledge my own need for healing, I may be just as disconnected as the worst case of 1st century skin lesions.
I think we often remain in isolation with our concerns and our individual questions of faith. We question in our hearts and fear naming them aloud. If we think of faith as an individual object, we fear that if we name those questions we might be judged to have lost our faith. Perhaps we fear we have already lost it if we don’t feel faithful inside. But this gospel account is a powerful image for us to hold before ourselves.
We don’t actually know the state of the paralytic’s individual faith. We do know the communal faith that was present was sufficient. The communal faith invited Jesus’ presence, his forgiveness, and his healing. The paralytic is not the only one who is healed, but the scribes as well who shout out in glorifying God, “We have never seen anything like this.”
So we have a two-fold call as individuals set within a faith community. We need each other to find our redemption. One, there are times when we must be willing to be vulnerable enough to be the person on the pallet. We need to shed the certainty of the scribes and show our inner paralysis. That may be the harder part for those of us who like to serve. Our fear of vulnerability may make us more afraid of falling through the roof. Are we really willing to trust others to bear us forward to the redemption and healing we need?
Secondly, we need to be the pallet-bearers. We are called to be the loving presence that bears our community forward. It is as we enact our belief together that I am willing to yield that faith may indeed be a corporately held object. Then we move beyond individual questioning that may paralyze and block us from forgiveness and healing. We then may move together towards the light of Christ. It is then we may truly invite Christ into a space where all are healed of their separation from God.
Amen
Comments? Contact Beth Knowlton at: BKnowlton@stphilipscathedral.org