Tomorrow is Columbus Day - I will be officiating at a Funeral here at Marble. The deceased was an agnostic. Agnostic is Greek in origin; ‘a’ means without and ‘gnostic’ means knowledge; without knowledge. Today, we used this term to mean not denying but also not believing in God; not knowing God.
There is a story told about the famous artist Michelangelo. One day he was working on a rather large block of marble. As the chips were flying from his mallet and chisel, one onlooker, a little girl, asked him, “What are you doing?” The great man paused and said, “There is an angel inside of this block and I must set it free.”
I think of our Christian journey like that. When we are brought into the body of the church we are each given a block of marble. For the rest of our lives we are chipping away the unnecessary or superfluous material of our lives to hone our ‘angel.’ I believe our ‘angel’ is called: Faith - faith in God. We come to ‘know’ God through our faith. Our faith in God makes us free.
When we follow Christ, I believe, we are not a business or an institution. We do not sell or produce anything. We do advocate some earthly causes like peace, justice and forgiveness. We serve no worldly authority. Our leader is not here, not so that I can show him to you or offer irrefutable evidence of his existence. That means faith is all we have. We are born through faith, live by faith, and die in faith. After my death, then and only then, will I know in full, as the Apostle Paul says, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see [Jesus] face to face.”
So what does faith look like to me? For me, faith looks like a grieving woman who has the courage to tell me her beloved husband is an agnostic. She did not know how I would react. I believe that faith made her strong and gave her courage to speak the truth. Her faith told her that truth is sufficient. |