Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 2-114 Sunday 09 Jun 2002

Reading: Psalm 114 – FAITH AND FOOLISHNESS

(From ‘Encounter with God’ Bible Reading Notes)

‘The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is mightier than human strength’.(1)

Western culture imagines the world as a neatly compartmentalised place in which private religious opinions are distinguished from the universal truths of science and nature. Science is said to be essentially objective and demonstrable, whereas faith and religion are largely subjective, and thus incapable of proof.

Scripture confounds this tidy view of things, insisting that God has invaded our everyday world. The parting of the Red Sea; the earthquake that accompanied the giving of the Law and Moses’ provision of water from the rock all show God powerfully at work in the ‘real’ world.(2) So momentous are these events, in fact, that they form the very basis of Israel’s salvation and national identity.

Indeed, these are more than distant events from ancient history. More clearly in Hebrew than in English translation, the psalmist speaks as though they are still ongoing: ‘Why is it, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back? O mountains. that you skip like rams’ (vs 5, 6, NRSV). He is certain that God’s mighty hand reaches forward into his own day.

Even so, this conviction is stated in the form of a question – ‘Why is it?’ – just as Jesus’ disciples, confronted by his power over nature, ask ‘Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?'(3) Both questions clarify the nature of faith, which is not a matter of first deciding what is scientifically possible, and then looking around for something worthy of belief. Rather, as with the resurrection of Jesus, faith is based on events by which God upturns our well-kept views of the world, and leaves us searching for an explanation that exceeds the limits of the normal.

Marvel at the parts of God’s plan that exceed our grasp, and rejoice in the wisdom of God that confounds our simple understanding.

(1)Cor 1:25 (2)See Exod 14:15-29; 17:5,6; 19:16-18; Josh 3:14-16 (3)Mark 4:41

– Rev Dr Michael Knowles

Copyright Scripture Union, 2002

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