27th Sunday 2016 What is our Faith?

Faith, how do we understand it?

Faith, is it simply to say “I believe” or “i trust”?

Or “I know that God exists”?

How about this, Faith, having an open mind and imagination to God’s very life.  

Faith is to imagine a different outcome, imagine new possibilities of God being at work in our lives, at work in our world.  

This is not my idea, but of a theologian that I happen to agree with.

Look at this Gospel, Jesus affirms this.  He says imagine being able to say to this tree, uproot and move into the sea.  Can we even imagine that?

Can we imagine saying to Mt. Rose, “move” and it would?

What can we truly imagine God doing?

Jesus certainly imagined God doing incredible things through him!  I think that was how he healed, he imagined it, and he got the people to imagine it too, and BOOM, healing.

I think this is wonderful, because for us adults, we can lose our faith, we can become to jaded by life.  

We can lose our sense of wonder of what God can do for us. 

This leads to really no conversion, no change...lack of joy.

Think of those not healed in the gospels, because they could not imagine God doing it, they lack the faith.

Think of the religious leaders who dismissed Jesus, got angry at Jesus for healing...they lacked faith.

Elsewhere in the Gospel Jesus calls for a "child-like" faith.

We know children can have such energetic and wonderful imaginations; so much so that it can exhaust us!

They are much better at being open to the wonder and mystery of God, of Jesus.

So here are the disciples asking for an increase of faith!  Jesus is telling them open up your minds to the wonder, the aliveness of God!

This is what jesus wants for us, and of us.  He wants us to imagine new possibilities of God working in our lives;  he wants us to be open to how much God is alive!

Imagine what forgiveness can do.

Imagine what compassion can do,

Imagine what mercy, love, generosity, selflessness can do!

I think that with true Faith, with imaginations open to God, there is Joy!

But we adults, aside from losing a sense of wonder, we can also fall into the trap of trying to control it all.  

We want to manage how God works our lives.  We tell God exactly how to do things.  The end result, more unhappiness, no joy.

That is why Jesus too tells us imagine, but then be humble.  

We are to serve God and what God is doing, we are not to manage it, not control it, nor manipulate it.

For example, let’s take loneliness.   

I think most of us tend to think the cure for loneliness must be other people, or a person:  “If I find that one person,I will not be lonely.”  

So we enter into relationships seeking to cure our loneliness, and if this person or that person doesn’t do it for us, we find another, and another, and another...you get the picture.

What if we imagine differently, as God.  What if we can imagine God curing loneliness in a different way say like with a community, or oooh, I don’t know, serving others?  

Then new opportunities arise for us to not be lonely; to be engaged.  We can begin to see that it’s not about a person, but really about engagement with others!

Or we are hurt, life seems dark, nothing seems to go our way, our dreams have failed.  

So we become bitter, closed off, we withdraw.  We develop this attitude that if I can’t be happy, nobody can be as well.  We think healing is simply let it be, ignore it.  Or worse, we self medicate with drugs, alcohol, other addictions.  Or we seek money, cars, power to divert our minds.

What If we imagine differently, as God.  

What if we imagine God healing us differently.

What if the hurt, the sadness, the darkness is not healed by going inward, but outward.  

What if we reached out and began to help others, gave of ourselves, began to see others who are hurting just as we are, and together we can help one another.

Or like St. Therese, the little Flower, she imagined herself as missionary going far away to serve, and she imagined herself being a martyr.  And she became frustrated because it was not going the way she wanted.

It was not until God opened her up to new ways of imagining being a missionary and martyr that she found peace; she found Love.

We Catholics are called to use our imaginations with Faith, it’s part of our DNA.  

The Sacraments call us to have faith, to see that something else is going on beyond the pouring of water or beyond the anointing with oil.

If we can imagine that bread and wine become the very person of the Son of God, what else can we imagine God doing in our lives, calling us to have faith?

If we are open to the very real presence of God in bread & wine, can’t we open ourselves to something more?