Sermon for Trinity 8: Faith & Reason

Hebrews 11, 1-3 and 8-12

1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.2 This is what the ancients were commended for.

3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.

9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.

10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

11 By faith Abraham, even though he was past age— and Sarah herself was barren— was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise.

12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

Luke 12

32 ‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

35 ‘Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, 36 like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. 37 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will make them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. 38 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or towards daybreak. 39 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.’

Are you a person of faith, or of reason?

Here is a definition of faith to help you decide, it's by Richard Dawkins, the atheist writer and campaigner, he writes,

‘Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.’

According to Dawkins, you are either a person of faith, or a person of reason, so which are you?

I confess I must be a person of faith as there are many things I believe without having examined the evidence. For instance, I have accepted the creation account I have received from my culture without serious investigation of the facts, I just believe what the scientists say. I can't do the maths, I don't have a telescope powerful enough to see distant galaxies, I just believe what I'm told about the Big Bang. I have never seen a ‘quark’ or a subatomic particle, but I have faith that they exist. For that matter, I have never seen gravity or time, but I firmly believe in them.

If I take such things on faith at least I can take comfort there have been other men of faith who have gone on to achieve great things.

Einstein wrote, "The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science....To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense… I am a devoutly religious man."

Columbus setting sail across the Atlantic, Galileo pointing his telescope at the stars, Darwin setting sail for the Galapagos Islands, Newton and Einstein describing in mathematics a universe beyond their touch in theories only later shown to be correct by experimental physics. Faith enabled these men to reach out and investigate our world. People of faith reach out into the unknown in the belief that the unknown will respond.

However, by Dawkin’s definition, the former Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, would seem to be a man of reason, not of faith.

In his book, ‘Surprised by Hope’ Tom Wright, after evaluating all the evidence, concludes that only the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus can explain the rise and character of early Christianity. He writes,

‘I and others have studied quite extensively all the alternative explanations, ancient and modern, for the rise of the early church and the shape of its belief. Far and away the best historical explanation is that Jesus… having been thoroughly dead and buried, really was raised to life on the third day with a renewed body.’

He is not the only Minister I have met to investigate the world by reason, the Revd Professor David Wilkinson, the Principal of St John's College, Durham, where I studied theology, holds PhDs in both Theoretical Astrophysics and Systematic Theology. He is clearly a man of reason.

The Vicar of the church I attended in my youth, the Rev'd Canon Roger Morgan, studied Maths at Oxford, he then became Director of Studies in Mathematics at Cambridge. Only after assessing all the evidence did he became convinced of the truth of Christianity, and went into the Church.

A Bishop of Durham who evaluates evidence, a theoretical astrophysicist teaching theology, and a Vicar who was an Oxford educated Mathematician.

Could it be that being human requires the application of both faith and reason?

There's a saying I like, ‘reason is my right hand, and faith my left’.

We need both hands to engage with the world.

We have made faith religious when it is human.

None of us know what's around the corner, but we proceed in faith based on evidence.

In our reading from Hebrews we heard that ‘faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.’

Certainty?

Only God can be certain.

The King James Version translates that verse as “evidence of things not seen”. In this case I think the King James Version is correct, the Greek word “elenchos” is closer to “evidence” than “certainty.” Faith actually requires you to look at the evidence.

Beware people who proclaim either faith or reason as absolute proof of their beliefs, we need both faith and reason, and we need the humility that comes from recognising our frailty as human beings.

I once heard a wonderful illustration of faith in a sermon preached by a Reader. To understand the story you need to know this Reader was a large gentleman of mature years, he wouldn't mind me telling you that as his ungainly frame was a feature of his story.

He had been camping for the weekend with his son in Derbyshire, and they were walking back down a lane that brought them off the hills and within sight of the railway station.

It was at this point they saw the train approaching, the last train home. All seemed lost but then a young man shot by running at speed, and yelled, ‘if you run, I will hold the train!’

They both broke into a run, with camping equipment swinging about them. Our Reader huffed and puffed and went red in the face, but still ran on.

As they got into the town the station disappeared from sight, but as they rounded the ticket office there it was, the train waiting on the platform, with the young and swift youth, who had charged on ahead, standing by the engine.

Now, the Reader pointed out, he had no way of knowing if the young man would be as good as his word, or if he would be quick enough, or if the train driver would listen to him. The Reader acted out of faith based on the limited evidence he had.

If the Reader had not believed he would not have caught the train, and if he had believed but not run he would have gained nothing. Faith makes things happen, but only if you act on it.

I like the story because it is a simple illustration of faith, but also because that young man who saved them reminds me of Jesus.

Jesus travelled our road, he asked us to follow and trust him, and he went on ahead of us to save us a place. Without him we miss the train to salvation in this world and the next.

Faith is not a great cop-out, or an excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence, neither is faith ‘belief in spite of…the lack of evidence.’ Faith requires that you opt in; faith demands that you think, and evaluate evidence. Faith requires you wrestle with uncertainty. Faith is a part of what makes us human, and faith is the divine gift that enables us to reach out to receive God's grace.

So live in faith, not in fear, as Jesus said, “do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”

Amen.