Gifts of Faith: Belief

2026-21
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, March 29, 2026

Zechariah 9:9-10; Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Philippians 2:5-11 ; Matthew 21:1-11

The season of Lent is drawing to a close. We’ve gone from curiosity to thirst, from thirst to clarity, from clarity to hope. These are all gifts of faith—gifts given to us by our Creator to make our lives … what? I don’t know what to put in that blank, so I’ll just say, “to make our lives.” Just “to make our lives.” Yes. That’s right.

But there’s one more gift to talk about, and for four consecutive Sundays, it showed up on the sly. Did you notice?

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”

The Samaritans said to the woman who met Jesus at the well: “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves.”

When Jesus heard that the man born blind had been driven out, he found him and asked, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.”

And last week, Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Well? Do you believe this? What does “believing” even mean?

We always need to be careful with the word “believe,” because usually in the Bible it means something very different than it does in popular culture and even in America’s dominant theologies.

Belief has taken a beating lately, and for good reason. People use it to refer to things that are a matter of fact or opinion, not belief. Or they use it to refer to things they’re clutching tightly with all the certainty they can muster! But when you believe something, by definition, it’s something you can’t be certain about. A healthy belief is more of a hope than it is a conviction. It’s like saying, “I don’t know for sure, but it had darn well better be this way, because I don’t see how the world could be OK otherwise!”

Now, for a lot of people, that just doesn’t feel like enough. They’ll say, “If you can’t be certain about it, it’s not worth believing in.” Yet everyone believes in things they aren’t certain about. None of us will ever have all the answers, but we all must make decisions every day based on the limited information we do have.

So how do we come to believe in anything in the first place? The answer is … over time, and not typically through logic. In reality, belief is a form of personal trust. When you tell me something I didn’t know, I get to decide whether I trust you as a source. And when you assure me of your love or your friendship, I get to decide how much I trust you just for being you. A relationship with God—as revealed to us through Jesus—is like this kind of belief, this kind of trust. It’s personal, it’s vulnerable, and it’s built by choice and in stages. Jesus invites us first to get curious about him, then to get thirsty, then to find clarity, then to embrace hope, and in doing all of this, to come to believe … to trust his Way of Love and to walk in it all our lives.

But there’s another thing about this lifelong Way of Love that we don’t talk about much in church, and it’s this: You are also free to walk away anytime you like. When belief becomes too difficult to sustain, no one will stop you from saying, “You know what? I don’t think this is working. I don’t believe it will ever work.” Better yet, we now live in a time in America when there will be fewer social consequences than ever before for taking an off-ramp from the church. Don’t want to bother with all this religion stuff? Just walk away. The less you were involved in the first place, of course, the easier this is. But it’s totally achievable.

And you know what? I think Jesus is actually OK with that. Because he provided off-ramps as well. Lots of them.

When a rich young man asked Jesus how he could obtain eternal life, Jesus said, “Get rid of all your money.” The young man walked away sadly, knowing he would never do that. Jesus didn’t chase after him.

When Jesus’ teachings got too difficult, too countercultural, and frankly too weird for some folks, a bunch of them walked away at once, leaving only the twelve disciples. Jesus didn’t stress over it. He just asked them, “Are you going to walk away, too?” But Peter said, “Where else would we go? You have the words of life! No matter how hard it gets, we’re with you all the way.” And Peter kept insisting that … probably a little more loudly than he meant it.

As we enter Holy Week, we get to the most obvious off-ramp of all, and that’s the one Judas took. Jesus rides into the city on a donkey, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy about the proper humility of God’s anointed king. Even the children are shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” You need to understand that “Son of David” is a political title, and a subversive one. The people are swearing allegiance to a new king—not to the emperor. This is terribly dangerous, but it just might work. Maybe the people are numerous enough now that they can crown Jesus as king in place of Herod—and even Caesar! Who knows how much bigger this thing might get?

But then Jesus goes right from this palm procession into the temple courtyard and overturns all the money-changing tables, making a public spectacle and upsetting everyone. Then Jesus spends the whole week trolling the chief priests and elders. By chapter 23, he’s going on an ALL-CAPS RANT against them. OK, well, he’s lost the powerful economic and religious people. But I suppose he never really had them in the first place.

Then a woman sneaks in and anoints Jesus’ feet with perfume—perfume worth a whole year’s wages! Imagine how much more the poor needed that money! For Judas, this is the last straw—and he takes his own off-ramp from belief into betrayal.

But Jesus just isn’t going to fulfill the people’s expectations. He’s not going to build himself up into a king. He’s going to stand there and say, “Look, God is right here among you, and you don’t even recognize it! If you did, you’d quit fighting among yourselves and love and care and give to one another. That’s all that matters. But since you’re not going to listen … well, you are free creatures. Do with me what you will.”

The snippet we heard from Paul’s letter to the Philippians was one of the earliest Christian hymns. We hear that Jesus was on the same level as God, but he knew that gave him no excuse to stomp around and fix things by force. Honestly, it made that kind of behavior impossible for him. Because Love doesn’t work that way. Love is humble and patient and kind. Love refuses even to break the eggs necessary to make an omelet. Love doesn’t force anything! And love also knows when to let others walk away.

Just because you think every knee should bend to Jesus doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. That would mean getting over our obsession with power and control. It didn’t happen in Jesus’ time. It’s not going to happen in our time. So then, if we’re going to follow Jesus, we have a choice. Will we cling tightly to power and control, or will we let go? Will we eat, or be eaten?

We know Jesus’ answer to that question: “OK, if those are my options, I’ll be eaten. Then I can nourish you.”

Is this belief too hard? Will you also walk away?

Or will you come to this table and just be nourished, and let go of your need for certainty about how this could ever work?

Will you stay just a little bit longer after that, to hear the story that follows—the story of the great unraveling that propels us into Holy Week? We tell too much of the story today, to be honest. But we do it so that we can go back over it in greater detail and from different perspectives.

On Thursday night we won’t just say what we believe. We’ll literally wash one another’s feet.

On Friday night we won’t just say we’re sorry Jesus died. We’ll touch the Cross ourselves.

On Saturday night we’ll gather around a bonfire in hope, because how could we not? From the depths of Holy Saturday we’ll watch the sun go down, and we’ll tell stories in the dark. We’ll hang in there together, holding our fragile little belief like a candle dripping wax onto our hands, trying to keep that flame going just a little bit longer.

And then … and then … ? From there in the tomb, with darkness all around us … what will we discover?

Oh, buckle your belief belts, everyone!