Sermon August 8, 2010

This week I'm preaching about faith. We have the wonderful verse from the Letter to the Hebrews: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." What does it mean to have faith? Well, it does not mean that we don't ever have any doubts or questions. In the Episcopal Church, we value the asking of questions. Tillich, in The Dynamics of Faith, is clear that doubt is always a part of faith. Doubt is in fact, not the opposite of faith. In her book Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris describes her surprise that a monk did not think that her doubts were a major problem. Rather, the monk said that, "doubt is merely the seed of faith, a sign that faith is alive and ready to grow (p. 63)."