The Reverend Betsy Scott, Sunday August 16th, 2016
FAITH
It is a happy and special day, the baptism of James Ashcroft Fennessy, born February 20, 2026 to Drew and Aidan Fennessy. Godparents are Emma Archibald and Brendan Kinnane who cannot not be with us. And both sets of grandparents: Michael and Martha Fennessy and Eric and Constance Silverman. We are all here to welcome James into the Church Family of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and to promise to nurture him in faith, a crucially important role.
Our Gospel reading for today is the incredibly powerful message about faith and healing, so powerful that it continues to change individual lives and even the destiny of peoples and nations. Christ heard the plea and faith of the Canaanite woman, an outsider, and healed her daughter. This message has been transforming the world for two thousand years.
The Gospel for today is also a complement to the baptism ceremony taking place later in the service for it is about faith: Christ said to the Woman, “great is your faith, let it be done as you wish” and her daughter was instantly healed. The people asked in the Gospel of John, what must we do to fulfil God’s requirements, and Christ answered: Believe.
You might ask: what is faith? One answer: faith is trust in a higher power. It results in a driving force that inspires moral choices, good deeds and perseverance through hard times. It is a relationship where we discover we are loved and not alone in this world. Faith is the core of a healthy personality.
It is faith we are here to promise to foster in James and in all the young in our lives and for each other.
It is very interesting that scientific studies are now corroborating the truth of this great teaching about faith. There are many studies today about the healing power for the seeker of the Holy Spirit. One of my favorites is Dr. Lisa Miller at Columbia University Teacher’s College, a professor of psychology. Dr. Lisa Miller has written two books: The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and our Quest for an Inspired Life and The Spiritual Child. She conducts studies showing through brain scans that those students who seek the spirit have a part of their brain developed that those who have not been seeking the spirit do not have that part of their brain developed. What a radical finding! The spiritual quest changes our brains. When she started, everyone was skeptical of her work, but when she showed them her scientific evidence, they had to pay attention.
Her book reveals that humans are universally equipped with a capacity for spirituality. All human cultures have a religion.
• The awakened decision is the better decision. With an awakened perception, we are more creative, collaborative, ethical, and innovative.
• The awakened brain is the healthier brain. An engaged spiritual life enhances grit, optimism, and resilience while providing insulation against addiction, trauma, and depression.
• The awakened life is the inspired life. Loss, uncertainty, and even trauma are the gateways by which we are invited to move beyond merely coping with hardship to transcend into a life of renewal, healing, joy, and fulfillment.
This last was the experience I had in my life. After the tragic death of my husband in a car accident when I was a young mother, I went to Seminary in faith that there were answers, I just did not know what they were. After a couple of years of full-time study, worship, talking, crying; Christ came to me in a mystical experience--a mystery, a surprise--and healed my broken heart which led to another life of joy and fulfillment. I likened myself to Job where everything was taken away and then everything was restored double. None of this can be explained rationally, but it transformed my life. I no longer just have faith that there is a loving God, I know it from personal experience, and my experience has been repeated over and over through history. For example, I was very taken with the experience of St Teresa of Avila when I went on a pilgrimage to Spain last year. Here was a young woman who through seeking had many mystical experiences of the love of the Holy Spirit.
In sum: what we are seeing is that scientific research and peoples experiences corroborate the great wisdom and truth of the Bible. Faith is the key for it leads to a life of seeking and finding. It is promised: he who seeks finds.
In contrast, a book I read this summer entitled In the Café of Lost Youth by Patrick Modiano, winner of the Nobel prize in literature in 2014, takes place after WW Two in Paris and it describes a woman named Louki who is lost, wandering from place to place. She is not seeking, she does not believe, she has no sense that she has a mission in life. She has no faith. She is not a seeker. This book was awful to read. It lets the reader know what life is like for a young person without faith. At the end of the book, Louki commits suicide.
I imagine you have all read about the high rate of depression in college age young people today, but these findings show us that it does not have to be so bleak if we foster faith, belief and love in our young
To continue with Dr. Lisa Miller, her research shows that college students with a developed sense of spirituality:
* are 40% less likely to use and abuse substances
* are 60% less likely to be depressed as teenagers
* are 80% less likely to have dangerous or unprotected sex and have significantly more positive markers for thriving including an increased sense of meaning and purpose, and high levels of academic success.
What are some ways we can foster faith in ourselves and in the young?
We pray to God for faith and to help our unbelief. We meditate, listening for guidance: we walk in nature and develop awe for God’s creation; we read sacred texts; we attend services. We seek all our lives in whatever ways open-up to us, for there are many paths to the Spirit.
We foster faith in the young by encouraging their wonder and inquiring minds. For example, when a young child is wondering about butterflies or asks why the flowers are so beautiful, we as parents can foster their faith by enjoying their wonder with them and being grateful for the beauty. We share our own faith with the young, reassuring them they will find answers if they keep seeking,
But perhaps the most important way we teach faith and spirituality to the young is the way we ourselves lead our lives. Are we ourselves seeking guidance from the Holy Spirit? Do we practice our own religious traditions in our homes? Do we leave room for children to doubt and express their own thoughts? Are we kind? What we do is much more powerful than what we say?
Repeating again Christ’s statement to the mother in today’s Gospel: “Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish” and her daughter was instantly healed.
How does one’s seeking faith lead to healing?
Have you had this experience? Let me give an example I have seen:
When I was leading grief groups at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City, there was a young woman whose father had died when she was three years old. Her mother remarried and had several more children, but this young woman never felt like she truly belonged to her stepfather and kept longing for her own father. When I saw her, she was probably in her late thirties. She came faithfully to the grief group once a week for a couple of years always repeating the same plea about missing her own father and seeking healing of her grief. She wanted to know that she was equally loved. She had faith that if she kept seeking, she would be healed.
One day late in the session when everyone else had left, she was sitting quietly and I sensed something special was happening. I put up my right hand in blessing, keeping quiet. After a while, she lifted her head and opened her eyes and with a radiant face told me her father had been there with her and now she knew she had a father and was not alone. The mystical experience healed this young woman. She had been seeking healing for years and then she experienced this mystery and was healed. When I saw her after this, she was a changed person.
The daughter in out Gospel was suddenly healed, and we are not told exactly what happened, perhaps it was something similar.
The Spirit answers us in the Spirit’s own way, usually as a surprise when least expected but in the midst of our seeking. I went to seminary seeking healing and an answer, and Christ came to me in surprise and let me know that He was with me, that I was known and loved and that I was not alone. The Holy Spirit healed the heart of the young woman in my grief group. The Holy Spirit heals the hearts of the seeker in the Spirit’s own time and way. That is the great Good News of this morning’s Gospel.
We are all exhorted to keep faith, to keep seeking and to be aware how important it is, particularly for the sake of the young in our care and today for James.
I will end by quoting a Rilke poem:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not seek the answers which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live with them, And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now.”
We are called to have faith, to persevere, and to believe that the answers and healing will come in God’s own way and in God’s time for in today’s Gospel we read that Jesus saw the faith of the Canaanite woman and healed her daughter.
Benediction:
Life is Short and We do not have much time to Gladen the hearts of those who travel the way with us. Be swift to love and make haste to be kind, and May the Blessing of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit be with us all now and for evermore, Amen