Advent 2 // Faith Is Nothing And All

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“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1, NIV)

Writing this post, I wanted to start with a story. An image.

It is the way I typically begin.

But in the time where my day begins and ends within the same 150 feet or so - working from home, staying safe and away from crowds - few stories emerge.

So I did some thinking about the word “faith.” Synonyms like allegiance, loyalty, or fidelity.

Faithfulness to my wife means fully being myself and remaining devoted to her, no matter what.

Faith is both nothing in and of itself and also all of it.

In other words, faith is neutral on its own but when we draw it close it becomes everything that matters.

Faith has the ring of a certain quality; that state of being in which we stay regardless of whether we know everything or not. 

It is the difference between saying “I love you” and living in fear of our lover’s reaction to that phrase.

The phrase blind faith is actually redundant, meaningless: faith as it is has limited if not impaired vision. It isn’t that we accept without being able to see, it is that we can’t see anyway so what the hell are we going to do now?

Faith in this season of Advent is about sitting ready for the possibility of the Divine around every corner, every day.

And when the sun rises and sets without a hint of something “beyond,” we rest our heads knowing that the Divine has space enough in the next day to arrive & surprise us. That is faith.  

In this case, the opposite of faith is not doubt. To doubt is to wonder at our proneness to mystery, possibility, and even hope – which are all normal things. If God condemns doubt outright then there is no one who will ever be faithful. 

Ever. 

Doubt is wondering whether our trust in what we cannot see is enough. Is it rightly placed or is it solid? 

The opposite of faith is despair. Disappointment. Disenchantment. 

There is so much magic – in the sense of something happening outside of our comprehension – in the very gritty story of a child born in poverty and scorn becoming the hope of the world. 

 It is a sign and signal that there is a deep magic (a nod to C.S. Lewis) in the world, and the opposite of waiting and watching for that magic is the cynicism and despair of believing there is nothing beyond what we can see.

Jesus then engages our faith not out of mandate or out of demand, but out of the sheer unseen possibility that He brought into any and every moment. 

Of course, this is different from talking about “faith” in the sense of a religious tradition or system of belief – the Christian “faith,” for example. No, the quality of Advent is something more than that.  

It must be. 

To people in a pandemic, faith must be more than mental assent to pieces of information. Faith has to be something beyond memorized facts about religion, especially when we have no clear sight line to a time beyond this time. 

The kind of faith that forms us – literally shapes and molds our will and desires, and therefore our lives – is the kind that waits for the magic and believes it will come. 

It is the kind of faith that even when we doubt or reject, it remains our teacher. Our friend. The magic waiting just beyond the next breath. 

Karl Barth, the eminent 20th century German theologian spoke of Zechariah, father of John the Baptist:

“We are all just like Zechariah in the sanctuary. Every one of us has a hidden side of our being that is, as it were, in touch with God. We are secretly in a close connection with the eternal truth and love, even if we ourselves are not aware of it.”

(Watch For the Light, December 13)

Faith is the hint and whisper of our backchannel connection with the Divine – the kind of quality that invites carpenters to believe inspiration, not infidelity has filled his fiancee’s womb. It is the quality that keeps a woman named Anna in the temple for much of her life, waiting for the moment of anointing. 

She sees the Christ child because she sees the magic.

When we wake up and put on coffee, when we speak words from tattered pages to our tattered hearts with very little understanding of whether or not anything of a Divine import will come of it. 

Will we feel better? 

Will we move from this place to that place, wherever that place may be? 

We do not know. 

That’s faith.

Faith is the near-absurd inclination within us that Divinity is actually bending towards us and not away from us. 

At a time like Christmas, this story is acutely present if we’d only listen to it. 

As we commute, shelter, work from home, and do distance learning we are aching. Leaning. Listening. 

All the while having faith that just as the Divine leaned into flesh through a baby in Bethlehem, the arc of Divinity is leaning towards us where are. 

As we suffer. 

As we struggle. 

As we wait. Wait. Wait. 

Faith is nothing and all, and that is exactly how it should be. 

Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash