Have you ever met anybody who says they have no faith? Or what about talks with someone who says they lost what little faith they had when they were a child ?
Did it sound like a good idea for spending an extra hour in bed on a Sunday instead of going to church?
If rioters had had faith, there would be love for neighbours.
Or maybe they know that the way they treat their family or the people at work is less than loving and claiming to have no faith allows them to ignore their conscience.
Faith is a gift from God. St Paul wrote ” To one is given through the spirit the utterance of wisdom and…to another faith by the same Spirit.”
Faith is one of those gifts which we can never boast about, it is a gift for which we must be grateful that we are the recipient.
Later today I will be baptising twins. During the baptism service I will use the words “Faith is the gift of God to his people” and will ask the twins’ god parents and friends to pray for the boys, to draw them by example into the community of faith and to walk with them in the way of Christ. I will also tell them that we trust God for their growth in faith and that in baptism the boys will begin their journey in faith.
Faith is like a tiny seed. It is planted in the soul and allowed to grow or wither. It needs careful nurturing if it is to grow. St Paul describes faith as a fruit of the Spirit and like fruit trees, faith needs to be fed and watered, and protected from predators if it is to grow.
Everyone is given the germ of faith by God and if they tend it carefully it will grow until it gives them the strength to behave lovingly.
For some people God offers particular challenges, which they can only meet in the power of the specially strong faith which he has given them. In today’s Gospel a foreign woman asks Jesus to heal her sick daughter. But Jesus had not yet recruited enough disciples to staff an international mission and he turned her down. Yet she gets what she asks for, and the words she used are repeated by us week by week, “We are not worthy to eat the crumbs from your table”. She believed Jesus could heal her daughter if he wanted to, and Jesus, impressed by her faith tells her,
“Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for as you wish. ”
Faith does not mean you have to believe in the truth of lots of doctrines. Faith is a relationship of love, trusting in a loving heavenly Father, and in Jesus. God gives everyone the gift of faith, often when we are not even looking for it. We can fail to recognise it, we can refuse it, we can allow it to wither if we neglect it, but we can never lose it altogether, despite what we may think.
Be open when God offers you the gift. Develop it with regular prayer, worship and bible reading until it bears fruit in the power to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and to love your neighbour as yourself.
If you should ever think you have lost your faith, set yourself simple tasks of loving care for those around you, until you recover the simple trust in God’s love that you had before.
Remember, God has given you the gift of faith so it is up to you to nurture it.
AMEN
Reverend Edwina Wallace