Faith I - Jesus about Faith ...

Monday, Aug 10, 2015. Christian faith is about faith. It is about faith in God. It is about trust, about belief, about giving your life into his hands. The New Testament is full of stories, where Jesus talks about faith - and these are not stories where everything would be always as clear as one would think. Let us dig a little deeper here …

Faith and Misunderstanding …

When you search for “faith” and “believe” in the New Testament, you will be led into many stories about faith. You will find many wonders first - as well as the call of Jesus himself (John 14,1): “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. Faith is in the center of Christianity. Faith in God. And faith in Jesus. It is all about faith. Nothing can work without faith - without faith in him, in Jesus. We will need to talk about this in more detail.

But there is also a lot of discussion about faith. “You of little faith” is one of the main reactions of Jesus, when it comes to faith. It is all about faith, but what is faith? What does it mean? How do you believe? What is this word about? Let us read such a story first, following the Gospel of Matthew:

5 When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. 6 Jesus said to them, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” 7 And they began discussing it among themselves, saying, “We brought no bread.” 8 But Jesus, aware of this, said, “O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread? 9 Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? 10 Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? 11 How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” 12 Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (Matthew 16, 5-12)

How to have faith? …

The above story starts with a typical situation. There is some problem - here the disciples do not have enough bread. Jesus uses the situation and talks about the “leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees”. The disciples are arguing on the level of their responsibilities, of their actions and their duties. But Jesus does not argue on this level here.

Jesus points the disciples to their own experiences with his miracles - to experiences with faith. All the problems they are discussing are changing, when you have faith. But here the disciples do not have faith. They are focussed on the difficulties, and they are discussing their own worldly options and failures. But Jesus uses this as a starting point for a deeper discussion - starting with a warning about teaching which seems to follow exactly this wrong starting point. The Pharesees and Sadducees seem to get a key point wrong, and it has to do with failures, with responsibilities and with faith!

“You of little faith” … Jesus does not say, that they do not have any faith. They want to come and live with him. But there are sincere misunderstandings of what faith is and how to live in faith. They did not yet get the main points - they still have to learn, and some teachings lead into the wrong direction. Does that reflect our situation today? We want to believe, yet we are as the disciples with Jesus. We are those of little faith, we are struggling with bread and our responsibilities, but do not focus on the grace and possibilities of God, and we do not fully trust him, what ever challenges we have? But Jesus tells us: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.“ (RWEP) ... more texts