When Faith is Impossible

Sermon from Sunday, August 3rd

Luke 8:49-56

Today, I want to talk to y’all about faith. Last week we talked a lot about hope. I feel like hope is something we all need right now. That’s just as true this week as it was last week. But this week I want to talk about faith. I want to talk about faith when faith is impossible. I want to talk about faith when faith seems like the hardest thing. It’s one thing to hope, right? A lot of people went out this week and bought lottery tickets. My dad always says that the lottery is a voluntary tax on people who are bad at probability. A lot of people bought lottery tickets this week hoping that they would win. A few people bought lottery tickets this week believing that they would win. But most of them walked away just as disappointed or more as the ones who hoped.

Faith is different from hope. Faith is what happens when our hopes have been fulfilled a few times and we begin to believe. But sometimes believing feels impossible. Sometimes believing feels just beyond our grasp.

When I was a kid, my dad taught me how to drive a tractor. One of the first things I learned to do, mostly because it was convenient for my dad, was drive the tractor with loads of hay on the trailer behind me. As long as all I had to do was drive forward, I was ok. Just be sure to swing wide, not clip any fence posts along the way, and you’re good. But one day I had to turn the tractor and trailer around and I didn’t have room to turn around. I had to back up. My dad showed me the basics and I said, “Dad, I can’t do it!” and he said, “yes, you can.” So I tried it and I jackknifed it. Dad had to come help me fix it. Then the next time, Dad said, “ok, Wyatt, I want you to do it again and I want you to do it right this time.” I said, “Dad, I can’t do it!” and he said, “yes, you can.” So I tried again and I jackknifed it again. But eventually, by trying and trying and because Dad believed I could do it, or at least telling me I could do it, I finally learned how to do it.Faith is like that a little bit. Faith is something that we learn to do by doing. Believing is something we learn to do first by accident, but then by effort. In this story, we have a few things that encourage us to believe.

Put yourself in Jairus’ shoes for a minute. He went to Jesus with hope. Just a sliver of hope, but hope. He said, “Jesus, my daughter is sick, she’s at the point of death, but I think you can probably help her.” So his hope had actually started to become faith. Now why? Why is the question here. After a lot of Jesus’ healings, you see the Gospel writers say, “reports of this spread throughout the region.” That picks us up where we left off last week.

Testimony is one of the most important things that we have to offer the world when we ask them to believe in Jesus. When we tell people what Jesus has done for us. As the song we just listened to said, “It is no secret what God can do/Because what He’s done for others, He’ll do for you.” And so the people of God throughout history, especially in our tradition, make a lot of telling people what Jesus has done for them. Has Jesus healed and helped your loved ones? Has Jesus pulled you up out of the pit of despair? Has Jesus taken your life, which had no purpose, and given you a purpose?

That’s my story. In preparation for going to Ghana, I’ve written my testimony out. And we stood in a front of a village of folks gathered under a tree and we told our stories. And I told them about myself as a teenager. I was raised in church. I have believed in Jesus as long as I can remember. Jesus was always just sort of a given. When I was 12 years old, I committed my life to Jesus. But — how many of y’all have a “but” in your story after you committed your life to Jesus? — I still had a lot of growing up to do. In high school, I became more of a Sunday morning Christian. I was in church every week, but during the week, I did whatever I wanted. Now I didn’t get into too much trouble because I wasn’t allowed to do a whole lot and I mostly stayed home or ran cross country, which made me too tired to do much sinning. I would spend time in the cafeteria with my friends talking about all kinds of things and using all kinds of colorful language. One day going through the cafeteria line, I saw a tray of french fries sitting a little ways off to the side. I grabbed it and dumped it on top of the fries I already had. When the cafeteria lady ringing up my meal asked me if I had gotten extra fries and therefore needed to pay for them, I lied and said no. And in the grand scheme of things, that was a little thing. But in those few minutes, I had stolen and lied. I don’t even know why. I’ve done things, some of which I have shared with y’all, worse than that. But something about that moment from my junior year of high school has stuck with me as a defining moment. It was the “no big deal” attitude of it all that made me think, “is this the type of person I want to be? Is this the type of person God wants me to be?” That’s what happens when your life loses its purpose. You sin in lots of little ways and then eventually you start sinning in big ones.

That summer, between my junior and senior year in high school, Christ took hold of my life in a real way. I was at a Christian concert listening to the David Crowder Band lead us in worship music and it was the one time in my life when I felt like I almost audibly heard the voice of God. Before, I felt like I had a calling, but I felt like I had disqualified myself from it. And God said, “No.” God said, “I’m not done with you yet.” God pointed out to me that there’s a certain level of pride and arrogance that says I have sinned more than God can forgive. God gave me a purpose and set me on a straight path.

Jairus has just seen what God can do in the life of this woman from last week. She’d had a flow of blood for 12 years, as long as Jarius’ daughter had been alive. She said, “I came to Jesus because I hoped that He could heal me and look! He has. He’s healed me.” Testimony is a powerful thing. Testimony breeds faith. Testimony is sometimes called sharing our faith with others. Isn’t that a beautiful image? It’s like the image of two horses in a team harnessed together. If both horses pull together, they can pull more weight that the sum of what they can pull separately. Isn’t that powerful? Isn’t sharing our faith powerful? It is no secret what God can do.

Another thing that Jesus himself does that gives us faith is to come along with us. Jesus tells Jairus in this moment, “Don’t be afraid. Just walk with me.” Sometimes that’s what faith is. It’s not skipping to the end of the story, even though that’s what we wish we could do. If you’re Jairus, as soon as you hear your daughter is dead, you wish you and the Lord could just immediately be transported to her side and Jesus would fix her. But instead, Jairus has to take a step of faith, and then another step of faith, and then another. He has to keep moving in the right direction with Jesus. Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid. Only believe and she will be saved. Let’s walk to your house, Jairus.”

That’s what our life is most of the time. Just walking with Jesus between miracles in faith that the miracle that just happened is only a foretaste of the miracle that’s about to happen. That’s most of our life. We don’t live “miracle saturated” lives. We live lives that just keep moving forward between miracles.

And then the last thing. Testimony are perhaps the responsibility of others, walking with Jesus is our responsibility, but the last thing Jesus does that I want to emphasize today is that He tells Jairus to do something impossible. Can you imagine getting the news that your daughter is dead and then being told, “Just believe. Don’t be afraid.” That’s impossible, Jesus. That’s impossible! It would be cruel for me to say something like that to a grieving family. I would only say that if I was certain a miracle was coming. I wouldn’t say it lightly. And Jesus doesn’t say it lightly. Jesus has a habit of asking people to do impossible things. At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel he tells a paralyzed man to get up, take his mat, and walk. That’s impossible, Jesus. And yet the man does. Here, Jesus enters the house, casts out the mourners, and tells the little girl, “ Child, get up.” Now that is impossible. But she doesn’t complain. That’s impossible, but she doesn’t protest. “Child, get up.” And she does.

The only way I can make sense of it is this: the same voice that told this little girl to do the impossible also told her father just a few minutes before to do the impossible. “Do not fear. Believe.” And so, if faith feels impossible to you, just remember this story. To me, the command of “Do not fear. Just believe” is harder to do than, “Child, get up.” If you feel like you don’t have faith, know that the one that calls you to faith works miracles by His calling you.

In the Gospel of John, John begins famously by writing, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” And then later in the chapter, John sums up the Gospel in this beautiful way: “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Jesus Christ is the Word of God. The Apostle Paul says in Colossians, “Through Him all things were created and everything is held together through Him.” God’s Word is powerful. And so when Jesus says, “Believe,” it might sound like a command, but it’s a command that empowers. It’s a command that enables. It’s a command that causes us to obey. Jesus doesn’t call us to obedience, he helps us to obey. Jesus doesn’t call us to believe, he helps us believe. He produces in us the very faith that he wants us to have. He does it by the testimony of a friend. He does it by just being near us and walking with us along the way. And he does it by showing us what he is capable of. “Child, get up.” “Child, wake up.”

I love Jesus - look at what he does next. Then, he doesn’t celebrate, he doesn’t do a touchdown dance, he doesn’t say look at how great I am. He says, “Get this girl something to eat.” Jesus doesn’t just save us and heal us. He sees to it that our needs are met.

Get up, breathe, eat, and do it all with faith in Jesus.