What a Jerk of a Dog Reminded Me About Big Faith
From a sermon “The Hardest Easy Thing” preached 3/5/23 at First Presbyterian Church of Memphis.
In January of this year, a Facebook post by the Niagara SPCA, in Niagara Falls, NY, a no-kill animal shelter, went viral. The post was shared everywhere on social media, and soon the national news even picked up the story. What was this post you ask? The viral post was an adoption advertisement for a French bulldog named “Ralphie,” and I would like to share it with you as an entry into our discussion of the text in the Gospel of John today:
It reads:
“We've become pros at writing animal adoption posts. With the adorableness we encounter daily, we have tons of material. Sometimes we can sugar coat the less than desirable traits like- prefers to be an only child. This one stumps us though. We don't actually have too many nice things to say so we're just going to come out with it. Meet Ralphie. At first glance, he's an adorable highly sought after, young dog. People should be banging down our doors for him. We promise you, that won't be the case. Ralphie is a terror in a somewhat small package. What could go wrong with a 26lb dog, right? We're sure you're thinking: my ankles will be just fine. We'd caution- proceed at your own risk.
Our best guess is that Ralphie's cute face got him whatever he wanted and boundaries are something he heard people talk about, but they didn't apply to him. His first owners took him to board and train, but their relationship was built on the premise that Ralphie was the boss so things ended abruptly. He was rehomed. Two weeks into this new home and he was surrendered to us because "annoys our older dog". What they actually meant was: Ralphie is a fire-breathing demon and will eat our dog, but hey, he's only 26lbs.
Lots of people withheld Ralphie's less than desirable traits, but we're going to tell you all about it. He's a whole jerk- not even half. Everything belongs to him. If you dare test his ability to possess THE things, wrath will ensue. If you show a moment of weakness, prepare to be exploited. Sounds fun, huh?
The ideal home for Ralphie is the Mother of Dragons, or an adult home free of other animals, with an owner who will lead him calmly and sternly- putting up with zero crap. On the bright side, Ralphie's previous trainer will provide his new adopters with the training tools they believe he needs to be successful in a home. Serious inquiries only. No, we will not make exceptions. No takesy backsies (kidding, obviously).”
It’s amazing, right? I’ve read it through it about a dozen times and it always makes me laugh. It brings back memories of the more difficult pets I’ve known or called my own over the years, but Ralphie’s kind of difficult is apparently turned up to 11!
There have been follow up posts and even videos - one where Ralphie, for no apparent reason, is attacking a floor mop. After the viral post, Ralphie was in fact adopted, and then returned two weeks later by the well-intentioned but apparently overwhelmed adopter. Ralphie is now being sent to a specialized boarding and training program to the tune of $6,000, which the Niagara SPCA believes they can raise from his adoring fans around the world. He will be listed for adoption again after his training tour, and the latest post ends with the cautionary line – “Those who need not apply include folks who believe that all Ralphie needs is love. He will totally exploit that!”
When I sit back and think about the employees at this animal shelter, what I am most struck by is their unwavering faith that Ralphie WILL find a loving home. They seem to believe through and through that little Ralphie, as challenging and complicated as he may be, is worthy of love, and just needs the right constellation of factors in his environment to be a loving, successful pet. After multiple owners have surrendered him, after they themselves have witnessed what a “jerk” Ralphie is most of the time, it hasn’t dampened their faith in him – even though with each owner who returns him, I am sure that it must feel more and more impossible that a sustainable match between Ralphie and someone new will be found.
It represents an incredible and bold testament of faith, and really, faith in something that seems impossible, or at the very least, highly unlikely. When all of the experience and observations seem to suggest that Ralphie is nothing more than a handsome jerk of a dog, and that’s all he will ever be, the Niagara SPCA has not lost faith in a happy ending for Ralphie the dog. That’s big faith.
I have three little ones, ages 3, 4 and 5, and my kiddos regularly show me how all of us are born with big faith. They have faith in the supernatural and they have faith in the goodness people. They believe that Santa Claus travels around the world in one night. They believe that there are fairies living in our backyard that visit the fairy houses they have constructed. They believe that the reason that our downstairs bathroom light flickers is because we have a ghost named Nancy who is friendly but likes to play tricks. Even though I can tell that there are moments where their young brains acknowledge that all of these things are somewhat unbelievable, they still believe in the seemingly impossible and the unrealistic.
In addition to their belief in the magical and exciting supernatural, the girls demonstrate to me that we are all born with big faith in each other. Each one of them exhibits a sense of trust in every person they encounter. I’m convinced this is why grownups have to teach children about “stranger danger” because we are born believing in the goodness of everyone around us. It’s like there is a pure innocence in being born as a child of God, and part of that innocence is that you have an unobstructed view in seeing every other person around you as a fellow child of God.
For example, a couple of months ago I explained to my kindergartner about what it means for people to be unhoused and living on the streets, and she asked me, “Well why don’t people just invite them into their homes?” My lip quivered and tears welled up in my eyes as I said, “I don’t know sweetie. That’s a good question.”
Something happens to us as we grow up. Of course, we mature. We become educated. We become experienced. We learn which stories we were told as children are true and which were invented merely to spark our young imaginations and bring us joy. But there is something else that happens. Something that I believe is captured in the exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus in our text today. And I want to add a little preface acknowledging that many of the depictions of the Pharisees in the New Testament, and many depictions of Jewish people in the Gospel of John are unfavorable, and the root of a great deal of antisemitism. So I want to be clear that any depiction of Nicodemus and his shortcomings that I touch on is meant to be an illustration of how all of us struggle in how we come to know faith in God.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of Jewish leaders. He was educated and influential, a scholar and teacher. He visits Jesus in the night in an effort to get the “real story.” Perhaps as one of the educated elite, one who is looked to for having all the answers, he was a little embarrassed that he didn’t quite have an explanation for this remarkable Jewish teacher who was performing miracles in the name of God. He tells Jesus, “I can tell that you are different, special, and that you are sent from God.” Jesus tells Nicodemus that, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Here is where Jesus loses Nicodemus, and probably loses us as readers. Nicodemus starts asking technical questions, and sometimes I wonder if they were truly innocent questions or if he was throwing in a little snarkiness at the ridiculous of what Jesus has said when he asks, “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus says, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?”
This is the line from this text that I find haunting. “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” It’s an indictment. You are the most studied and devout in our faith, and you do not understand God? It’s an assessment of his faith. And perhaps an unfair assessment because like with many of his teachings, Jesus uses allegory, symbolism and poetic language and doesn’t stick with the concrete facts. But the point I believe Jesus is making is that with all of knowledge and authority Nicodemus held, he still couldn’t hear Jesus teach through the lens of faith. He was stuck in the practicality and the details of the moment, unable to hear the greater lesson being shared.
The world we live in pushes most of us toward being more like Nicodemus. We start out as children who believe in magic and universal goodness, and then as we get older, we start to learn about the brokenness of the world. We learn that not all people are kind all of the time. We learn that most magic probably isn’t real. We become rooted in the practical. We fixate on details. Some of us even become cynical as we stare out at the sea of problems that churns between where we are and the Kingdom of God. It becomes really easy to adopt a faith that is rooted in the evidence we see around us and in predictability. A faith that feels safe and logical.
But the story of God that we see laid in the Bible is one that beckons us toward a faith that is grander than the details that must be sorted out in order to make it all make perfect sense. The faith that Jesus shared with Nicodemus is a big faith but it is also a faith that is shrouded in some mystery. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his followers that we are to become like Children in order to find the kingdom of heaven. The faith that God calls us to is like that faith we all once had as children – the one that believes in a little magic and trusts the stranger a little more than the grownups think we should. We can’t study our way into this faith like Nicodemus. We can’t become religious leaders to earn this kind of faith. It’s the kind of faith that only comes through surrender. It is a faith that appears when we open ourselves up to the mystery of God, which elevates us above our earthly prescriptions for how things must always be.
So what does this mean for us, here, in this place and time where we find ourselves? How do we reclaim that kind of faith that connects us with the Kingdom of God? Well, if I have learned one thing from our friends at the Niagara SPCA, we have to sometimes believe that something that is very unlikely is in fact possible. That just because our human minds can’t see a way, that God can.
When I think about the problems that plague us on a regular basis, what would it mean to adopt a faith that believes that even the most complex and serious of problems can be overcome.
After the murder of Tyre Nichols in January, I’ve heard many folks say, “This will never get better. We will never be able to reform policing and criminal justice in this nation in a way that serves everyone.” I get why they say that. The issues that have brought us and kept us in the place we are today are so complex, so immense. How do we untangle years and years of interconnected challenges with racism, politics, education, for-profit prisons, poverty, and all of the interconnected pieces of this intricate puzzle? These issues are so dense and complicated. It is so easy to become like Nicodemus, and start asking anyone who suggests there is a way out of this mess for each and every specific detail up front. But what if when we consider these very complicated issues in our society, we started from a place of faith – big faith, grand faith, faith that other grown-ups might even say is irrational faith? Maybe truly and genuinely believing that something that feels impossible will be possible is the only way to begin because it is the only way that we start with God, rather than relying on our own intellect.
When did you lose your childlike faith? Your ability to innocently marvel at the unbelievable? How old were you when you learned the truth about Santa Claus? Or that there are no fairies in the backyard? How old were you when you realized that a stranger can hurt you? Or even worse, that someone you love can hurt you?
Each day that my three girls grow older and learn more, they are starting to ask more questions about things, including those things which are magical and hard to believe. We haven’t told them about the real person of St. Nicholas yet. And we do still wonder with them if the fairies will visit their garden houses when it’s raining outside. I did maybe tell them that Nancy the ghost isn’t real, but mostly because I don’t want any middle of the night crying episodes after an alleged ghost sighting.
But the girls ask questions about the somewhat unbelievable things that they believe, and we so often affirm their faith. Yes, you should build a new fairy house for the garden this year. Yes, people should invite others to live in their homes so that no one lives on the streets. As they grow and become wiser and more learned, I need to figure out how to keep their big faith alive – that faith in the unbelievable, the unlikely and the thus-far unproven. I don’t want them to lose their ability to have big faith as they become young women and adults and begin to understand the complicated challenges we face in this world. I want them to know that there are no struggles in humanity that can keep us from the Kingdom of God if we have that big faith.
And so we keep affirming their faith. And that is what I want you to consider today. Somewhere along the way, you and I learned and experienced things that made our faith smaller - at least the faith in being able to do important things that at the outset look impossible. How can we revive that big faith in ourselves in moments when we need it? How can we encourage and affirm that big faith in one another?
The world is always becoming more complex, and tries to make us cynical that big faith is helpful. But the next time you find yourself staring at hard work that has to be done for the sake of moving us closer to the Kingdom of God, and you are thinking this is impossible – it can’t be done. Think of Jesus and Nicodemus. Remember how Christ summoned Nicodumes, and summons all of us, to big faith. Faith that defies explanation, but that changes us, and through us changes everything around us.
I’m convinced that God already has big faith in each of us. Let’s have big faith in ourselves and in the work we set out to do in this world. Let’s affirm that faith in each other so that we don’t lose that big faith that the complicated and broken world is hungry for. Amen.
