The Measure of Faith

"...."For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly that he ought, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him."

The Lord God, I am sure, made us to live in relation to one another--to care for and comfort one another; to rejoice and be glad in each other's gifts and good fortune. Yet the truth of our lives is that much of the time we have taken that intention and twisted it, until we find ourselves living, not so much in relation, as in comparison to one another. From the way we look to the way we work; from our incomes to our automobiles; from our mind's capacity to think, to our body's capacity to perform, we are people prone to size each other up, put each other down, position ourselves according to what best suits our self-image, value our abilities only in relation to another's liabilities. To be sure, it happens in families, where siblings rival...in industries, where employees compete...in schools and universities where insecurity manifests itself in pettiness...in friendships, where keeping up outweighs the value of coming close...and in churches, where different gifts do not always make for a common ministry. Like Peter in the last chapter of John's gospel, we would rather ask about Christ's demands on the other disciple, "Lord, what about him?" when Jesus' word to us is always, "What is that to you? Follow me."

But those are not so much the comparisons that come to mind as I consider Paul's words to the Romans, asking how they may become words to us. Rather, what confronts me in Paul's letter on this Sunday of All Saints, seldom marked in Presbyterian circles, what confronts me is intended distinction implied by Paul's mention of the "measure of faith which God has assigned" this one, as opposed to that one.

For if I simply read between your own lines, the words you say to me in a hospital room or a classroom, at the door of the church or around the kitchen table, before the prospect of your own death or concerning the reason of your unlikely birth, what I know is that we each one wrestle with the measure of faith God has assigned us. We look at another whose long-suffering seems to have deepened belief, and we long for a trial that would find us on our knees. We watch as a brave one bears witness to a God of justice and wonder if ever we would put our life on the line. Or we listen through tears as a friend cries out for the faith we have always taken for granted and yet know not how to give... even as we marvel at the studied indifference of a colleague, whose life continues untouched, or whose mind remains closed to the tugs of grace all around, while we cannot help but believe.

"It is not merely a matter of experience," wrote Karl Barth, "but fundamentally true, that the Holy Spirit is not a friend of too doctrinaire democracy, that the community living in the ministry of its witness can never remain a uniform multitude of believers." Barth underlines what Paul implies when he speaks of the measure of faith assigned us by God: namely, that the measure assigned to you is not the measure assigned to me. That while you might find yourself surrounded by the Holy Spirit and held up on every side in all things, I may be hanging on to faith by a thread and barely able to pray the Lord's Prayer. While your spouse has been asked to serve as a deacon and an elder, you sit unnoticed on the pew, in hopes that someone will say "Hello" after the last hymn. While a friend seems able to give herself wholly to people in need, you cannot manage to reach much beyond your own problems. "It is not merely a matter of experience, but fundamentally true, that the Holy Spirit is not a friend of too doctrinaire democracy."

In so saying, Barth was coming as close as any Reformed theologian dares to a consideration of the place of saints in the life of the church. In the Roman tradition, saints were those men and women recognized by the church for their extraordinary measure of faith and so, in death, set apart, believed to have special power to intercede with God on behalf of the living. The Reformers thought differently! John Calvin deemed it the "height of stupidity, not to say madness" to pray to the saints. "Those who account Christ's intercession worthless," he wrote, "unless George and Hippolytus and such specters come forward leave nothing for Christ to do."

So the role of the saints in intercessory prayer was denounced, but the reality of those who, in life, have a special measure of faith cannot be denied. And by faith, I do not mean a warm feeling in the heart or a closer walk with Jesus. When Paul spoke of the measure of faith given, he began with an appeal for surrender: "I appeal to you therefore...by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice." And then he spoke of tasks, functions, "Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them."

Surrender and service. There is no question that my life has been marked by those whose measure of faith is immeasureably greater than my own. I know myself to be in their presence not by pious words or even by remarkable actions, but I think more by their unselfconscious surrender or by an absolute unspoken trust that their lives are held in God's grace and given over to God's will. They remind me, without a word, who and whose I am. They call me, without a sound, to my own acts of trust and surrender that seem to exceed the measure of faith assigned to me thus far.

Some have led quiet lives of faithfulness, some consistent lives of questioning; others are on the battlefields where justice requires risking all, and a good number I have known only as they were confined to a bed. A few, who have made headlines, are studied only from afar, while others are as close as from this pulpit to the seventeenth pew. "None is by a long chalk a second Christ," writes Barth again. "But each in his/in her particularity is a witness of Christ to be greeted with particular thanksgiving. For what would the community be if it were referred only to the Christian mediocrity in which all these possibilities might finally be open in a mild form to all?"

Which is to say that most of us are left to struggle with our Christian mediocrity! We are the Salieris of the church, bound to give thanks to God for Mozart and Mother Theresa, but sorely pressed to understand the justice done by the measure of faith meted out to us. We are the Whiskey Priests who feel "only an immense disappointment because we have to go to God empty-handed....It seemed to him at the moment (of his execution)," writes Graham Greene of the Whiskey Priest, "that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who had missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted--to be a saint."

To be a saint. The temptation is to think that with "a little self-restraint and a little courage" on our parts, we could be saints, we could increase our measure of faith a hundred-fold. If we could just set out to find the faith we have lost in the living...if we could simply put ourselves in circumstances more conducive to sainthood than the security of middle-class America... if we could by reason of training or temerity manage to thrust ourselves out on the edge where angels fear to tread...or if we could by disciplined prayer or earnest study deepen our spirits and strengthen our discernment of God's leading. If only we could manage to get the measure of faith that this one seems to have without effort or receive the measure of grace that another is given without asking, then we could go to God with hands full and hearts open.

But what Paul is saying to us, when he tells us to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned us, is that the measure of our faith is neither cause for boasting nor is it cause for belittling ourselves. To be sure, his words were words of constraint to the Romans: do not think more highly of yourselves than you ought...with sober judgment think. But again I say, what I remember and carry within me is the wrestling you have known with the measure of faith not given, with the record of a witness not made. And to that, Paul's words hold up a different sort of measure--not the measure that is yours, individually, to have, but the measure that is ours, corporately to hold.

For the measure of faith God has assigned you has been assigned in the context of a community of faith. The questions that have hold of you, that seem to keep you from belief, that sit you in a back pew ready to bolt out the door, just might be given to you by a God who knows what must be asked again and again and again if this congregation is together to be faithful. The prayers you cannot pray, because there seems only silence in reply, are the prayers, in the silence, that another has been given to pray until they are your own. The senselessness of a stroke or the sudden news of an illness that finds you only with tears, finds you also surrounded by brothers and sisters whose faith was given to catch your tears, and whose task it is to be the stuff of God's promises to you, the assurance of God's nearness beside you. The little child who is flesh and blood of your own, but beyond your capacity to teach, is given to one who, though riddled with doubts, has the quiet gift of bringing four year olds to trust God's care.

The measure of faith we are given--small in comparison, meagre in kind--becomes great when joined to the communion of saints who have gone before us, and who are even now by our side. The mediocrity that is ours to bemoan is made right by reason of another's ordinary need and God's extraodinary grace. The fear that keeps us from acts of justice and the silence that reigns when prophets' words are called for, require us, for the time being, to be grateful witnesses of those whose greater measure moves us quietly to little acts of faith, and whose complete surrender calls out of us but modest moves toward trust.

Now this word has particular relevance as we enter the weeks leading up to Stewardship Commitment Sunday on November 22. For the gratitude, engendered by the measure of faith God has assigned to you, has direct bearing on the example of Christian discipleship you are given to bear within this community of faith. I will tell you without hesitation that I never knew the measure of faith within me until my stewardship propelled me into a life of greater trust in God than in what my means could get me. "Present your bodoes as a living sacrifice," says Paul, which is to say that stewardship is an act of complete surrender, which trusts that the measure of faith God has given will be sufficient. I learned this, my friends, not from within, but through the humbling witness of the saints over these last twenty four plus years in ministry. I know, even new, the sacrifices some of you are making for the minstry of Christ's church. Though it is not for reasons of comparison but because your example calls out of me a greater measure than I ever would have hoped God has given me that I have learned to be a grateful steward, contributing to the needs of the saints, aware that still my gift is nothing and yet, when joined with yours is good and acceptable.

All of which is to say that you are to me and for me the saints of God. You bear to me the faith of my fathers and my mothers when I am riddled with doubt. Your witness in the world I cannot live in gives me courage to live in this world of volunteer believers. Your questions keep me ever wrestling into the night with the measure of faith I have been given, and prod me day by day toward this word, not my own, which when spoken might open a heart or a mind to God's grace. Your sadness teaches me to pray and your babies overwhelm me with God's goodness and tender mercy. You are for me the saints of God and so it is,

By the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith God has assigned you. For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Thanks be to God!

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