WALKING BLINDFOLDED: DO YOU HAVE FAITH OR MERELY BELIEFS?”

                                              We walk by faith and not by sight.                                                II Corinthians 5:6-10

Are you a person of faith? No, I am not asking if you have a lot of beliefs! What I am asking is this: do you have faith? In other words, do you actively trust God to guide you in life as you make decisions?  Surely you know that it is possible for religious people to have a list of beliefs a mile long, but without much faith whatsoever!

Let me give you an old example from my own life – one that I have no doubt shared with you several times over the years!  By the time I was ordained in 1970, I had been in the seminary for 12 years. I would say that my head was crammed with the beliefs that I had learned about in seminary classes!   I believed that those doctrines of the church were true, but the real question was whether I had any real faith? In other words, did I trust God enough with my life to follow his lead or did I think I knew better than God what was truly good for me? Well, as God usually does in my life, he gave me a chance to answer those questions during the first two weeks of my priesthood. 

Even though I had grown up in the country, I went to high school seminary up here in Louisville. By the time I was ordained, I had been in the city long enough to be thoroughly “urbanized.” Normally, the newly ordained at that time were assigned to the big parishes here in Louisville as associate pastors, so I just assumed that I would be serving one of our big Louisville parishes as an associate pastor.  Back then, we got a couple of weeks of vacation after ordination and before our official assignments started.  I went to Florida for a week, came back and was hanging around the rectory at St. John Vianney Church on Southside Drive, waiting for “the call” from the Priests’ Personnel Board.  It came one morning about 10:00 am. I freaked out when they told me that I had been assigned, not to a Louisville parish as I had expected, but to a mission parish the size of the state of Delaware, down in southern Kentucky, along the Tennessee border.  I pleaded.  I yelled.  I begged.  I whined.  It made no difference. Their minds were made up. Mad as hell, I packed my bags, bought a road map and headed south, to a cluster of little churches I had never seen before, in an area of the state I knew absolutely nothing about. With my theology degree in the trunk, with my head full of beliefs, I begrudgingly headed south.  God and I had it out in the car on the way down there, but in the end I had to admit that I had a lot of beliefs, but I did not have much faith.  It dawned on me, right there in the car, half-way down there that I was not trusting God with this decision, but my own preconceived plans.  In a moment of grace, I changed my mind. Since I did not get what I wanted, I decided that I needed to want what I got! I decided to ask for the ability to trust God with this unwelcomed assignment. What God did was to help me open my hand to receive the incredible experiences that awaited me in the next ten years. I learned then that a little faith can move mountains and the biggest mountains in the world are often the ones in our heads and hearts.

There is another example of “faithing” from my own life that I can share with you. It happened during the years when I was pastor here between 1983 – 1997. For years, I woke up with a prayer tape which I taped in my own voice. I have used this prayer techniques for years, in various areas of my life, and I can tell you that it has worked with some incredible results! One of the things I said on the tape was: “I am a published spiritual writer.” Even though I had never published anything, I prayed every morning, for over a year, as if it were already true, leaving the details of how it would be accomplished, to God. One day, a man showed up at the cathedral telling me at the end of Mass that I should publish my homilies. He was a former theology professor from Bellarmine. I told him that I had been praying for an opportunity to publish something, but I didn’t have an editor and I didn’t have any connections to a publishing company. Guess what he said to me? He said, “I’m an editor for Crossroads Press! Send me a manuscript and I’ll see what I can do!” The short of it is this:  I soon published my first book and since then, I have published over thirty more, counting Spanish, Vietnamese and Swahili translations, and collections of fourteen years of columns from The Record!  Yes indeed, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains!”

My friends, I gave you two examples from my own life, but you need to know that every serious follower of Jesus is tested sooner or later. The test question is, “Do you have faith in God or merely beliefs about God?”  Sooner or later, every follower is asked whether he or she is willing to trust God with the direction of his or her life. Trusting God is certainly not about being passive.  It is about opening our minds to receive the help God wants to extend to us and opening our hands to receive the gifts that God wants to give us, knowing that God only wants the best for us.  If this opportunity to consciously trust God has not happened to you yet, you may soon find yourself in a predicament where you will have to decide to trust God on something. It may be an unfavorable diagnosis, the end of a favorite relationship, the death of a parent or sibling, unexpected unemployment or some other unwelcomed change.  Depending how you react to it, you will know whether you have faith in God or merely beliefs about God. In such a situation, you may feel that you do not have much faith.  The good news today is this: you don’t need much faith! A little will go a long way! Even if your faith is as small as a mustard seed, it can move mountains.

I have learned one very important lesson from the times that I have trusted God.  I have discovered, again and again, that when I have trusted, things turned out much better than I could have ever imagined. In fact, I often shiver when I realized that what I initially wanted was nothing compared to what I ended up receiving.  When I left here in 1997, I was pretty uneasy about what would happen to me next. It was a wonderful fourteen years, but I thought the best was behind me.  I was mopping around my house feeling that nothing would ever compare to my experience as your pastor.  I was upstairs mumbling to myself when I heard a distinct voice say, “Don’t worry!” I thought it was someone downstairs, but there was no one there! I thought it might be the TV or the radio, but they weren’t on! I looked outside! Nobody was there! I knew I had clearly heard a voice, but I could not find out where it was coming from, so I just decided to just follow what it said, “Do not worry!” Well, over the next 20 years, this amazing assignment was followed by at least three more so far – some of them taking me on speaking trips around the world.

I often try to imagine how much different my life might be today if I had refused to trust God with that first assignment or if I had fought it in my mind for all the years I was down there. One thing I have learned for sure: God knows what he was doing, much better than I do! It was true then and it is true now!  If we can trust him, with even a little dab of faith, incredible and unexpected blessings await us!