Acts 2:42-47
1 Peter 1:3-9 
John 20:19-31 

Bishop Untener's Homily

Did Jesus Talk More about Faith or Love?

I have a question for you. In the Gospels, do you think that Jesus talks more "love," or more about "faith"? Let's take a survey. How many here think that Jesus talked more about love...  raise your hand? [About half the hands were raised.] How many think he talked more about love? [About half the hands were raised.]

Well, I checked it out using a word search on my computer, and here are the results. Jesus talked about love 41 times in the four Gospels. He talked about faith116 times. (In today's Gospel passage alone, Jesus mentions faith/believing four times.)

The story about the "doubting Thomas" is all about faith. So let's look at faith. 

God

I don't know if we talk much about faith, or preach much about it, or think much about it. We talk about "beliefs" and "doctrines"... and we talk about faith to some extent, but I don't know if we really get down into it. So here goes.

The more I thought about it the more I thought, well, we have a certain belief in Jesus and look at him as a human being who is a cut above us because he is divine. He led a good life, did wondrous things, died, rose from the dead... and we believe in what he taught, and we follow him.

That's all good. But there's more to faith than that. Jesus is the revelation of God. We go through Jesus to God, and I'm not so sure we get into that deep water. We wade around in the shallow water and I'm not sure how often we go out into the deep.

The first thing we have to do is get a sense of the colossal magnitude of God, and think about what it means to believe in God.

Let me put it in perspective. The earth, along with eight other planets revolves around the sun. And this star call the "sun" is one of many stars that are part of a galaxy called the Milky Way. A galaxy is made up of a large group of stars and other space objects that swirl around in a huge circle, something like that water in the sink when it's draining. So picture that mass of stars swirling round and round, and this great circle of stars is a galaxy. 

Now picture this. Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles a second (I had to look that up). 186,000 miles a second! This means that in one snap of my fingers, light goes around the world seven times. One snap of the finger. Seven times. Well, how long would it take light traveling at that speed to cross the width, the diameter of this great circle of stars called the galaxy? I looked that up too. It would take 100,000 years. A hundred thousand years! That's how big our galaxy is.

There's more. With the help of the Hubble Telescope, we have discovered that there are other galaxies, and do you know how many galaxies they now estimate are up there? Three hundred billion galaxies. When you think of the size of our one galaxy...  it takes 100,000 years to get across the diameter at the speed of light... and you think about three hundred billion galaxies, why, it takes your breath away.

Now, God created this. God is greater than all this. It staggers the mind.

That's what I mean when I say that we have to get beyond a small-time faith which sees God as sort of a special person out there somewhere. God, this living, loving being that we call God, is utterly beyond anything we can imagine is greater than ever we could comprehend.

Imagine: To "Connect" With This God

When I think in those terms, I tremble with awe at the thought that this great, colossal, holy being called God listens to me, loves me... that I connect with this God. When I start thinking about that, that's when I am really thinking about faith, the whole thing.

How can we possibly believe in someone of that magnitude? We can't reason our way to God, because we're dealing with more than our mind could ever take in.

So, how can we even have faith? Is it just a wish that maybe there is a loving, living being that is greater than the forces of the universe, and is working to bring it all to goodness?

Now we get to the heart of faith. We can believe in God because God takes the initiative to connect with us. For some incomprehensible reason, God created us so that we could relate with God. God made us that way. There is a pull in us toward God that was put there by God. That's what we mean when we say that we're made in the image and likeness of God.

We are drawn toward God before we even think about it, just as a little baby is drawn towards its mother. That's why it's good sometimes to image God as a mother. It's in us to be drawn toward God because God that's the way God created us. We don't summon faith ourselves. We don't manufacture it, reason our way toward it, and discipline ourselves to think that way. It's already in us to be drawn toward God.

What we have to do is allow ourselves to get in touch with this pull towards God. That's what faith is. It's simply sensing this gift which is real and which is perceptible... this pull towards God, like a baby to its mother.

Faith is nothing more and nothing less than sensing my connection with God who chose not to be distant, but to be close to me... encircling me, enfolding me. That's what faith is. It's something very real, not a vague wish. It's in me.

We can't think it through. Oh, we can think about it, and that is a very good thing to do, but we can only think about it because it's there.

We simply sense this pull and we let ourselves be drawn to God. When I tune into it, and move with that pull, then I experience the gift of faith. And the more I open myself to that awareness, the more I move with it, and my faith gets stronger and stronger.  Let the doubts come * it's such a colossal truth we have to doubt it now and then. But the pull is always there, stronger than any doubt. And when I let go, let God, then I feel a deep down peace that no one can take from me. And especially here at Eucharist I learn from Jesus Christ, and I join with him as he did on the cross in laying my whole existence into the hands of this living God.

That's why Jesus talked about faith so much. When we have faith, then love follows, and all the rest follows too.

That's why Jesus was disappointed in the limited faith of Thomas. That's why Jesus said, "Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed." What we believe in is more than we can see this side of the grave. It's more than Jesus going through death to the other side. It's more than the nail marks in his hands and the wound in his side. It's nothing less than this great and unimaginable God who loves us and encircles us and enfolds us. We simply experience the pull in us toward this God, and we know with everything in us that it is true, and we go with it, and enjoy it, and we say "thank-you".  And wouldn't you know. The Greek word for "thanksgiving" is "Eucharist".

Originally given on  April 7, 2002