"I only wish I had your faith," they say wistfully, as though clergy somehow had it piped in bulk from on high by divine dispensation. What they haven't recognised is that little faith in ice a foot thick will still save you from drowning, while great faith in ice an inch thick can easily result in a tragedy. In other words, it is the object of faith that is the crucial element, and not the quantity.
It is worth remembering that during tomorrow's epistle reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, part of the famous chapter sometimes known as "the roll call of faith". The whole of the 11th chapter is devoted to a list of people in the Old Testament who believed in God, but it has a far deeper purpose within the letter as a whole.
Hebrews is concerned with the battle between faith and unbelief. The writer has already said that God's people in the wilderness were not able to enter rest (Canaan) "because of their unbelief". Christians, therefore, are to see to it that they similarly do not have "a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God" (3:12,19). There is a sharp contrast between those who live by faith and those who "shrink back and are destroyed" (10:38-39).
Here, then, faith is not a special gift for a few heroes long ago - much less the clergy nowadays - but the only acceptable and appropriate response for all of God's people to make to him. Faith is not a religious fashion accessory; it is a necessity.
The long list in this chapter includes examples from beginning to end of the Old Testament period and together they reflect the plan of God in forming a people of faith and obedience for himself.
The writer's insistence throughout is that the true descendants of this honoured line are those who trust in Christ for salvation and do not abandon him, especially not in favour of Old Testament faith and practice.
In contrast to the wistful who aspire to faith as some kind of rare and inaccessible commodity, Hebrews sees faith as part of the basic kit of believers. Faith is always active, on the go, for these people do things. They take open, risky, costly actions as a direct response to the promises of God.
So, as we hear of Abraham, the temptation to put him on a far-distant pedestal is to be resisted. The things that were expected of him as a man of faith are expected of Christians too. Abraham is to provoke believers today to costly obedience, perseverance, patience and faith. The basis of his faith in relation to his initial departure from Ur of the Chaldees; then his residence in the land promised him by God without him ever taking possession of it; and, best known, his belief that God would give him the descendants he had promised though at 90 he was childless, is the call to believe despite the evidence.
Faith is not a descent, though, into irrationality and a recipe for chaos, as the famous Baltimore Sun columnist H.L.Mencken once tartly suggested - "an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable". In Hebrews it is a principled and thought-through resting on the character of God, for Abraham "considered him faithful who had made the promise".
How does one become a person of faith? Try this. The Bible's witness to Jesus Christ is trustworthy. It tells us who he is and what he has done and the evidence it supplies for his unique person and work is extremely compelling. As I expose myself to the biblical witness to Christ, as it impacts on me, God creates faith in me. I receive the witness that is given. I believe, and that is not my contribution but God's gracious gift.
Unbelief is not congenital, therefore, nor is lack of faith part of temperament. It can be changed. So while there is life there is hope for the non-believer. God has given the means to increase faith and the receipe is summarised by St Paul: "Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ" (Letter to the Romans, 10:17).
All very tantalising and seemingly within our grasp until the Beecher's Brook of the belief stakes looms large with the recognition that our greatest need is not intellectual but moral, and that supposed inability of ours to believe is really an unwillingness to obey. That's when the heart's cry, "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief", must be fired like an arrow over and again at heaven's gate.
There's never a dull moment living the life of faith from then on, and you'd better believe it!
G.F.