What difference does faith make?
Lent 1: 25.02.07 – Deut.26.1-11; Rom. 10.8b-13; Luke 4.1-13: Tewin and Ayot: Revd. Dr. Alan Winton

What difference does being a Christian make to your life and what difference should it make?

That is the question that forms the theme of this year’s Lent Course, and groups are meeting across the churches of the Welwyn Team Ministry, all pursuing this same quest, to reflect on the difference faith makes to our lives. They will all be having their first meeting this week, so there is still time for you to decide to join one of the groups, if you haven’t made that decision already. It’s a particularly good Lent book I think because it asks a question that each of us ought to consider. It’s not about an issue safely out there at arms length: what do you think about this global problem, or what do you think about this aspect of the Scriptures? The sort of questions that we might happily pontificate upon, without ever seriously touching our lives and the choices we make. Instead, the Lent course this year closes in and asks you to consider what is personal to you, and not simply what you believe, but also what difference it makes to your words, your thoughts and your actions, your daily life in fact.

The title of the book is actually ‘Spot the Difference’. And although its emphasis on difference makes for a sharp edge to the book’s questions, it does raise some questions of its own. And the main question is this: different from whom, different from what?
 
Now you could go down the road of asking what is the difference between people who profess a faith, and those who do not. What is the difference between people who go to church and those who do not?  While the groups may choose to touch on that from time to time, I think it would be a mistake to have that as your focus too often. Whatever difference we might want to claim for faith, there will probably always be someone to argue that the same attribute is present in the life of someone who does not have faith at all. I think these kinds of comparisons could prove frustrating and fruitless.

So I would prefer to pose the question in terms of what difference faith makes to me and my life: to think about the difference in my behaviour, my choices, my preferences, my convictions that faith brings about, without worrying about what someone else is doing. It’s not an opportunity to spend time comparing myself with others, but trying to think about the effect faith has on me, or indeed ought to have on me. The focus has to be inward. I suppose that will be an easier question to consider for those who are relatively new to faith: but even the old timers need to think about it, and honestly confront the question of the difference that God makes to my life, or indeed, ought to make to my life.

Our Gospel reading of the story of Jesus’ temptations poses the question rather well in terms of the difference faith makes in the life of Jesus. This narrative shows Jesus faced with a series of choices, in each there is an easy choice which is rejected as false, and a more difficult choice which is embraced on the basis of being more true to the faith in God that Jesus is seeking to live by.

Just to take one of the temptations as an example. As the Son of God, Jesus’ mission is for the whole world, and the devil offers him the whole world, but the price is high. He will be given authority over all the world if he will worship the devil. This is a false choice which Jesus quite rightly rejects on two grounds. First, it is clearly to replace the proper worship of God with one of his creatures. And secondly it would be to win the hearts of the whole world by a form of violence, by the exercise of power and coercion. Jesus desires the whole world, but he desires people to choose freely to follow him – he has no desire to take the world or people’s loyalty by force.

Faith makes a difference to the actions of Jesus and the temptation story illustrates this vividly: he refuses the easy route, because it is based on falsehoods, preferring instead to be true to God however much more difficult that may prove to be. This will often be the pattern for the choices we make: the difference faith makes will be that it requires us to reject the easy way, to see through its falsehood, and instead be true to God however more demanding that may be.

Now the first week of the Lent course focuses on love and it asks how far love actually distinguishes our lives. There are temptations all around us when it comes to the topic of love: there are false and easy truths on offer, so we need to reflect on how we can distinguish them, how we can discern the difference that faith makes to our lives when it comes to the call to practice love.

Love is, I think, a difficult concept for the modern world, because talk of love is all around us – no one in their right mind could possibly be against love.   But the truth is that the world we live in offers so much that is false when it comes to love. So much that drives modern life today is about acquiring on the basis of what makes us feel better; in contrast the goal of love will always be the happiness of the other.  Think about these quotations from the Lent course:

R. H. Benson writes: “To love is to wish the other’s highest good”.

And the famous monk and spiritual teacher Thomas Merton wrote: “Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to care for themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward”.

In a slightly different context, but echoing that same thought, the philosopher Kant emphasized a central principle in his teaching on ethics that we should never treat another person simply as the means to an end: that the good of the other person should always be the goal to which love directs itself.

In the light of those quotations and thoughts it is clear that there is much talk about love which completely misses the mark. How often do we think we are acting in love when actually our main motive is our own gratification? How often do we use other people, fooling ourselves into thinking that we are acting in love, when we really we are much more concerned about what they can give us?

This corruption of love can be reflected in our relationships, but it can also be seen in our church life. How do we view the people who walk through the door of our church? Is our first thought to consider how we can work for their highest good? Or do we see them as the means to some end: the payment of our parish share; the filling of a rota? Is our love conditional on them fitting into our ways, or are we truly practising love and seeing how their needs might challenge our way of doing things?

The Lent groups might well find themselves looking at the life of Jesus as the pattern for our lives when we consider this central theme of love. We have already seen in the temptation story that Jesus refused to practice coercion, recognising that love must be freely given and received. Can we see examples of Jesus desiring only the highest good of the other person: how does such a quality of love show itself in the way he treated those who came to him?

Love is a requirement of all religions and it is widely recognised as a driving force in most people’s lives, but it is a concept, a quality that is so easily open to corruption, it is a word whose currency is easily devalued.  Faith requires us to reflect deeply on the quality of the love we practice. To learn from Christ as the pattern of our lives, and to be self-critical and honest with ourselves. What better task could we set ourselves in this season of Lent than to think deeply about the quality of love we practice: in our closest relationships, in our friendships, in our dealings with others, and in the things we choose to value and devote our time to.

What difference does our faith make to way we practice love? Well, I hope many of you will be able to join a Lent group this week, to discuss and think about these important themes. But if you really can’t get to a group, hopefully the sermons that you’ll hear in church on the Sunday mornings of Lent will help you grapple with the difference faith ought to make in your life.

Let me end with this favourite prayer of William Temple that picks up the theme of the first Lent group, the theme of love. Let us bow our heads to pray:

O God of love, we ask you to give us love;
Love in our thinking, love in our speaking,
Love in our doing,
And love in the hidden places of our souls.
Love of those with whom we find it hard to bear,
And love of those who find it hard to bear with us;
Love of those with whom we work,
And love of those with whom we take our ease;
That so at length we may be worthy to dwell with you,
Who are eternal love. Amen.