It can be difficult to distinguish between what is meant by faith and belief. For some, such a distinction doesn’t exist; to “have faith” means to “believe in X,Y,or Z.” Yet, for others (and I would put myself in this camp) there is an important distinction that must be made, while recognizing that they are interrelated aspects of our lives. Faith does not require the same sort of thing that belief does. And that thing is cognitive, conceptual, thematic, reflexive, explicit, propositional awareness, understanding, or assent related to a claim about Christianity.
We can see this in a more practical way when we pause to consider how we use the two terms in everyday usage. For example, to say that “I have faith that things will work out” suggests that the how or in what way a situation might be resolved doesn’t come to the fore. But to talk about like, “I believe that this thing will happen,” requires a particular object of consideration.
Faith is much more than belief.
Faith is the grounding of our very selves in the love and existence of God that oftentimes escapes conceptual reflection and concrete expression. It is about the relationship or experience of an encounter with God in our lives and in our world. It is what provides, as Karl Rahner might put it, the very condition for the possibility of belief — the fiducial context out of which our doctrines, scripture, and shared expression of that experience arises.
Just because someone cannot or will not “believe” in something, does not mean that the same person doesn’t intrinsically and in a very profound way have faith.
Perhaps there is no better example of this dynamic of human existence in relationship to God playing out than in our Gospel for this Sunday — the famous encounter (or initial lack thereof) between the Risen Lord and Thomas, called Didymus, and more popularly called “the doubter!”
Thomas’s doubt shouldn’t, I believe, be mistaken for a lack of faith.
Why? Thomas’s faith — that experience of God in Jesus Christ that led him to transform his life (metanoia) in following in the footsteps of the Nazarene — is what brought him to the moment when the question of belief and unbelief arose. I have no doubt that Thomas was well aware of the mystery of God’s action in the world and in his life in particular, but that doesn’t mean that he had an easy time making sense or conceptualizing or understanding what was happening in the everyday, categorical experience of his quotidian life. On the contrary, the author of the Gospel of John tells us that he, like the other disciples, were rather confused, uncertain, and deathly afraid (literally — they feared the same fate as Jesus). He was, like so many women and men — really, like all women and men, unsure of what to believe.
The story traditionally paints Thomas as something of a loser, a “bad guy,” a holdout. But, I think he’s the most genuine figure for which any modern disciple could hope. He is us, and because we are losers or holdouts or weak in faith. On the contrary, the experience of Thomas reveals that just because we have faith in the God who is love, who is our ground, who sustains us and, like we read in Exodus 3:15-17 in the theophany to Moses, is the God who is concerned about us and cares for us, does not mean that our belief in all aspects of our tradition will come easily and that we will always understand what is happening in our lives with clarity.
The end of the Gospel account from John reads:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples
that are not written in this book.
But these are written that you may come to believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that through this belief you may have life in his name.
The author of this Gospel seems to make it clear that the purpose of the concretized, historical medium of kerygma or early experience and proclamation of the Christ event, is to serve as a means for Christians who would come after to believe. It presupposes the faith that is intrinsic to each of us by virtue of our being loved into existence by God and, therefore, seeks to help us make sense of what our lives are about, what it is we are supposed to do, and to understand better who God is.
That is the whole point of God becoming a human person in Jesus of Nazareth, something that God planed and desired from all eternity: to enter into an ever-more intimate relationship with all of humanity and creation. That is the point of John 1:18 when the author, at the end of the prologue, explains that the purpose of the Gospel that follows is to present what it means for the Son to reveal (exegete or express) the Father. That is the point of the Good News (Gospel), to lead our faith to belief, to give an account of what it means to bear the name Christ and to make sense of the faith that is already always present, even if we choose to ignore it.
Thomas isn’t such a bad guy, he’s just very real and extraordinarily normal. He helps show us that what brings us to God through Christ is the faith that is an expression of our a priori relationship with our creator, and that it is then the purpose of the Christian community to encourage one another so that we may then “come to believe” and, then, “through this belief you may have life in his name.”
Jesus says: “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples ,and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31). But, as if fulfilling the prophecy of Jack Nicholson’s character in the film A Few Good Men, those who hear Jesus seem quite incapable of “handling the truth.”
Early in this new year I heard a music teacher speak on an NPR program about his New Year’s resolution. While he had spent many years teaching young people how to play instruments and encouraging them through their public performances, he, a cellist by training, had never performed a private recital. This year would be different. It was his goal to finally do that, to prepare the necessary pieces he would publicly perform and take the risk that some will like his musical performance and others might not. He spoke on the radio about both the conscious and unconscious factors that have contributed to years of avoiding taking this risk, of exposing himself to others by vulnerably presenting and performing that about which he cared most deeply. It is very personal, yet it is not unlike the experiences of so many.
I used to not like the story in the first part of today’s Gospel passage about the healing of Simon’s Mother-in-law. There was something that struck my modern awareness of the subjugation of women in various times and cultures that suggested her immediate “service” or “waiting on” Jesus, Simon, Andrew, and the gang, right after she was healed from her illness was offensive. That is until I had a better appreciation for what I see as a connection between this passage, which appears in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel and a passage that appears eight chapters later.
O Root of Jesse, you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples; kings stand silent in your presence; the nations bow down in worship before you. Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.
Today is marks the last Sunday in the regular church year. Next week, the First Sunday of Advent (I know, when did time fly by so quickly?!), is the transition into the next church year — the “New Year’s Eve” of the Liturgical cycle! But before we start thinking about the coming new church year, I think today’s Gospel selection is well-worth considering as the last proclamation of the Good News for this current year. It comes from the end of the Gospel of John where Pilate is interrogating Jesus during his impromptu trial before the Roman Governor. In response to the question, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus explains: “My Kingdom does not belong to this world” (John 18:36).
Today is a precious day, one often shaded by the shadow of sadness that arises from our remembrance of those who have gone before us to eternal life. The Feast of All Souls is really the continuation of yesterday’s Feast of All Saint, for we are all — living and deceased — members of the communion of saints, united by the Holy Spirit. This Gospel reading for today’s liturgy is a powerful one indeed and it comes from the Good News according to John:
When I was a kid, my brothers and I loved to watch the ABC TV series MacGyver! There was something about the way he would, regardless of the seemingly impossible situation, the uphill battle he faced, and the lack of resources he had to work with, he would always save the day. He was a little foolish and impractical too, although in my youth I didn’t pick up on that as much as I did on the late 80s early 90s action that drew boys like me to wonder from one episode to the next how the smart independent-contractor-like spy-and-problem-solver-for-hire would get out of this week’s quagmire. This was especially interesting because he was often out-matched, the bad guys would always have guns, bombs, or, in the case of the archenemy Murdoc, a flame-thrower. MacGyver, on the other hand, had a strict no-guns policy — a man committed, in the most improbable way given his line of work, to some form of nonviolence.
No. False! Mustard plants are, in fact, not large at all (see photo to left). They are more like weeds or small shrubs, and they certainly cannot support the weight of birds, forget about the weight of a bird nest!
Have you heard of Fun.? I don’t mean what you do when you laugh and have a good time, but instead mean the popular band whose name is 
