“From Faith to Faith”
August 27, 2023 — “Camp Sunday”
Romans 1:16-17
Pastor Mike
The phrase that has captured my imagination from these two verses of Romans is the one containing the four little words “through faith for faith.” The two Greek prepositions, here translated as “through” and “for” have broad fields of meaning. This phrase could just as correctly be rendered “from faith to faith,” “out of faith into faith,” “by means of faith with the result of faith,” or even more loosely, “by faith from start to finish.”
In all its possible forms, the point that Paul is driving home with this phrase is that faith alone allows to us know God’s righteousness, which is to say God’s beauty, justice, and love. Faith amplifies itself, and a life of faith spirals to greater heights and depths. As we live with God, we return often to the basics, to the original questions, to certain fundamental experiences, but each time we come, hopefully, we do so from a more mature vantage. Let’s get away from the idea that faith is simply assent to doctrine. We can substitute “through trust for trust” or “through faithfulness for faithfulness,” which are synonyms in the New Testament for faith. The more we trust God, the more we practice faithfulness to God, the more trust and faithfulness become available to our spirits. God is revealed to us “through faith for faith,” “through faith for faith, “through faith for faith,” on and on, a little further and a little deeper every day. It is a dance of grace: God makes a move, we respond; we make a move, God responds.
One of the greatest ways we can help ourselves along this deepening, spiraling journey from faith to faith is by having places that remain constant in our lives – sacred and holy places that we return to whenever the curl of the spiral asks for them. Places hold memories; they hold our stories. They are steady while we change, so they help us to remember what has been, reflect on what is, and dream about what is coming. Familiar, returned-to places are one of the primary ways we continue to know who we are and trust in our own ripening as disciples.
For so many of you, Camp is one of those places. Camp is a holy place, a place where faith is received, renewed, deepened, and amplified. Commitments to Christ are made through faith, for faith. Self-love is gained by faith, for faith. Children, teens, and adults leap from faith into faith.
The American author, Annie Dillard, whose books include Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and The Writing Life, begins the memoir of her childhood with these words:
When everything else has gone from my brain—the President’s name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family—when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that.
This morning we honor one of the places that has become inseparable from the intergenerational story of this congregation, inseparable from who you know God to be in your lives. Camp is a place that will go with you till your dying day. It persists in memory and, God willing, in reality. Camp is a holy piece of land on which we worship and pray, work and play. It holds the echoes of our faith’s ongoing response to itself.
This morning, we will hear from four folks who love camp: Caroline, Hannah, Tanner, and Marlys. As they share their experiences, may we all consider which places are our holy places. They may be exotic or ordinary, far away or right outside the back door of our homes. The crucial thing is to tend our relationships to these places as we would tend any lifelong friendship or love. Places are companions on our spiral. God willing, they outlast our mortal spiral and keep on blessing others who will come after us. So let us now celebrate the power of place in God’s great creation.
Amen.