John 14: Faith
as trust
Christ Church and St Mary’s, April 2002
If you ask most people what you should have faith in I suspect you will
get one of two answers. “You can't have
faith in anything-politics, science, technology, economic progress, religion,
they are all flawed, they have all failed to deliver.” Or alternatively people may answer, “The
only thing you can have faith in is yourself.”
Of course, as those who come to worship God through Jesus Christ the
answers for us do not lie in despair and suspicion, neither in making ourselves
into gods. But for us what does it mean
to have faith? Do you have faith? Are you sure of your faith? What does it mean to have faith in
Jesus? In a person you can't see? If you have ever sat in a wheelbarrow you
may have an inkling of an answer, but more of that later.
I have the privilege of being able to preach for the next two
consecutive weeks, and the readings for theses weeks are from John chapter
14. If you could turn to it now we will
look at the first half of the passage.
These words are the start of what is known as Jesus’ final discourse in
John’s Gospel. They are the words that
Jesus really wanted to pass on to his disciples before he died. They are the wisdom of his lifetime. In these words Jesus was telling his
disciples then and speaks to us now about what really counts about being a
human being on this earth. What is it
really all about. And he starts off by
talking about faith. “Believe in God,
believe also in me.” Faith in this
passage has two sides to it. There are,
two things required of us to have faith and they are contained in the words of
a famous old Gospel hymn: trust and obey.
To have faith is to trust and it is to obey.
This week we are going to look at what it means to trust Jesus. And next week we will look more at
obedience. Jesus starts his famous last
words to us telling us to trust him.
Verse one "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”
Immediately we come to a problem with this passage. It is over familiar. It is comforting, it is soothing. It is standard fare for difficult
situations. But if we are not careful
it can also have echoes of escapism, of being too cosy, with faith that doesn’t
deal with the problems of this world because a) we are just going to focus on
the next, and b) faith is only about feeling personally content inside no
matter what is happening outside. But
it’s not like that at all. Over use may
have domesticated Jesus’ words. But
that's why it's important to note the context of these words-they are Jesus’ last
words because he knows what is coming.
Judas has just left to betray him and he has just told Peter in verse 38
of chapter 13 that he will deny him three times. When Jesus says “Do not let your hearts be troubled” he speaks
out of pain himself. These are words
for the real world-for the world where people get killed unjustly, where there
is violence and hatred and sweat and starvation. These aren’t words of escape to comfort the faithful, these are
words about faith in the midst of the worst things that life can throw at
us. We can take them seriously. We can trust him because he knows how it
feels.
The next thing to notice about the trust of faith is that it is
outrageously centred on Jesus himself, as a living person. He doesn't ask his disciples to trust him as
an idea, he doesn't ask them to trust him as an ethical guide, he asks them to
trust him as a living person. Verse one
“Believe in me.” Verse three “I will come again and will take you
to myself, so that where I am there you may be also.” Verse 5. “I am the way, and the truth and
the life.” Verse 14 “If in my name you
ask me for anything, I will do it.”
Christian faith is faith in a living Jesus Christ. It is trust in a person who is present with
us through his spirit.
But on what grounds is a trust in Jesus to be based? After all, if anyone else said these things
we would run them out of town as a fruitcake.
The grounds for trusting Jesus is because of his exclusive claim among
religious leaders that he and God are one.
That's why in verse one he says “Believe in God, believe also in me” in
the same breath. And of course famously
in verse 6 "I am the way. No one
comes to the father except through me.
If you know me, you will know my father also." Karl Barth was lecturing to a group of
students at Princeton. One student asked the German theologian "Sir, don't
you think that God has revealed himself in other religions and not only in
Christianity?" Barth's answer stunned the crowd. With a modest thunder he
answered, "No, God has not revealed himself in any religion, including
Christianity. He has revealed himself in his Son."
The Bible never claim that anyone can know God directly. There is much about him that we will never
fathom. He is mystery. So it is not as if we know God and Jesus is
a bit of extra information. Jesus is
the information. Faith in God cannot
exist if we don't trust Jesus and have devotion to him. V. 7 "If you know me, you will know my
father also. From now on you do know
him and have seen him." Verse nine
“Whoever has seen me has seen the father.”
Christian faith is about trusting Jesus, trusting Jesus because he is uniquely qualified to shape, to hold, and to direct our lives. It’s not the kind of trust to be placed lightly in anyone or anything. But Jesus asks us to trust him in every respect. He asks us to trust him to be the way. This means that he is both the way to God, the direct access we need to the love that has created us, and the way to live. He shows us the way to live a fully human life. He asks us to trust him to be the truth-the final word on the reality of what our lives are about. There is nothing vague about Christian faith. God doesn't ask us to make wild stabs in the dark everyday-Jesus shows us the truth about the way things are. And he asks us to trust him to be our life- our life now but most specifically in this passage the way to eternal life. Again there is nothing vague about the what Jesus says about the afterlife. Jesus did not want to lead us on a guessing game. Look at verse 2 "In my father’s house there are many dwelling places.” He means room for all sorts. “If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” For you. Jesus makes this very personal. Trust me he says that there is a place prepared for you beyond death.
So Christian faith is about trust, trust in a living person. Trust as Fynn writes in Mr God this is Anna
"is more than confidence, more than security... It is simply the ability to move out of the, "I'm the centre
of all things" and to let someone take over.”
And now to the wheelbarrow.
Blondini was a tightrope walker in the last century. He used to walk over the Niagara Falls, and
people came from far and wide to see him.
He would carry all sorts of things over the water. One day a famous duke and his entourage
visited the Niagara Falls. They watched
Blondini walk over and clapped. They
watched him walk back and shouted for more.
Then Blondini asked, “Who believes I could carry this wheelbarrow over
the waterfall?” “Of course you can!”
said the duke and his friends. Blondini
took the wheelbarrow over. Everyone was
ecstatic. “Do you believe I could carry
this sack of potatoes over the waterfall in the wheelbarrow?” “Yes!!”
He duly did. Then he asked, “Who
believes I could carry a human being over the falls in this barrow?” “We all do!” they chorused. After a pause, Blondini asked, “Who will get
in the wheelbarrow then?” There was an
embarrassed silence - the Duke suddenly felt he had better things to do. Suddenly a little old lady came out of the
crowd and got in the wheelbarrow.
Blondini pushed her over the falls and back again, to the astonishment
of the crowd. The lady was Blondini’s
mother.
Trust in God, says Jesus, and trust in me. Get into the wheelbarrow.