Sermon 8/12/07
By Faith - Luke 12:32-40
(view lectionary notes for this text)
When I was a child, this reading from Hebrews was one of my two favorites in the Bible. The other was the creation story, and I can’t remember which passage won out when our Sunday School class took turns reading our favorites aloud on Children’s Sunday at the Westernville UMC. But I always loved this passage. I’m not even sure why. Maybe I liked how the passage gave a sort of summary of so many Bible stories I knew. I know that I always remembered clearly the phrase “so great a cloud of witnesses” which we’ll read in the second part of this passage next week. And I liked the definition of faith in the opening that we read today – the classic definition of faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Mostly, though, I think I just liked – like – how it’s written. It’s a beautiful passage, inspiring, lyrical. I can picture hearing it aloud – I can imagine hearing the words from a dynamic, impassioned preacher. By faith, by faith, by faith.
Now, though, I have to admit the passage has sort of slipped off my imaginary ‘top ten’ list of favorite Bible passages. I guess I tend now to go more toward content over style. The passage is beautifully written, but I tend toward passages that challenge me, like Jesus’ teachings. This passage is just recounting stories from the Old Testament, reminding us of what happened to them through their faith in God. Interesting, but not my favorite anymore. And I guess I don’t use the language of “my faith” a lot. I know many people who would say of hard times that it was their faith in God that got them through a situation. I can’t picture those words coming out of my own mouth. I would probably say something about “God’s grace” getting me through, not “my faith.’ I think if we rely on our faith to get us through something, we’re in big trouble, whereas God’s grace is always there, always something we can depend on.
But what about my faith then? What use is it? I know my faith isn’t enough. I know God’s grace is what counts. But does my faith play no role then, in getting me through? In answering that question, I start to get drawn back into this passage from Hebrews. What is it that we do by faith? What is our faith for, if God’s grace is there? What is faith? Most of you know that I was at Red Bird Mission this past week with a group of people from our church. I decided that I would enlist their help in writing my sermon, and so I asked those I could find time to sit down with to respond to a few questions about faith. I’ve mentioned many times that I think we American are very private when it comes to talking about faith, and I had a chance to prove my own point as I tried to get the team to respond to my questions. Some were eager to sit down and talk, but most were hesitant, feeling not exactly unwilling, but maybe unequipped – like they couldn’t possibly have anything important to say about faith – not sermon-worthy anyway. In fact, one person (whose name I will leave out to protect the innocent!) was so uncomfortable that he left the building rather than answer my questions! Faith – our faith – is a complicated subject.
As I share some of their responses to my questions, I invite you to think about what your own answers would be. My first question was simple and difficult. What is your definition of faith? Matt Woodcock said that faith is a “belief that something is going to happen or that something good is going to happen.” His girlfriend, Jill, described faith as, “your dedicated belief in something that you’re passionate about.” Abbey Woodcock defines it as “trusting when you really have no logical reason to trust.” Mallorie Fallon compared faith to the “trust fall” games we often play at camp to build trust between teammates. She said faith is “kind of like a trust fall where you don’t know what you’re getting but [God’s] always there to pick you up from falling.” Angel, from another church in town, said that faith is “believing in things unseen and unbelievable.” Wally Fallon said faith is “a feeling of knowing that God has a great good that we can’t understand, and by putting our trust in God all things will come out [for the] good.” Sue, a woman from New Jersey who joined our team, said this: “[Faith] is trusting when you think that you shouldn’t or you have no means of proving otherwise but you do it anyway. And it’s built upon. [Faith] is not just like a blanket. You ask, [God] fulfills, so you ask again, and you build upon [your faith].”
I think all of there responses touch on different aspects of what the author of Hebrews writes: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Since I was traveling and driving and thinking about directions to Kentucky and thinking about the winding roads of the rural region of Kentucky, when I read the passage for this week I kept thinking about faith as a journey you take. In our passage, the author talks about Abraham’s faith as a journey. Indeed, Abraham’s faith was tied up in a literal journey – God asked him to physically go to specific places in order to receive God’s promises. The author writes, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.”
So I asked the Red Bird Team, “Have you set out for someplace without directions? How does that make you feel?” Matt Woodcock talked about many times where Suzie would set out for someplace without taking Dave’s directions, where they’d all end up lost. Matt said it made him feel like he wasn’t in control, and where you couldn’t rely on anything to find your way, since you didn’t recognize any landmarks. Jill said when she’s been lost or without directions, she just “follows the signs.” It wouldn’t make her scared, but instead she would feel a sense of accomplishment when she successfully reached her destination. Abbey talked about driving to some place she’d been a hundred times after she first got her driver’s license, only to get lost on the way, realizing that she’d never really paid attention to the directions when she was just a passenger. She felt very foolish, she said. Mallorie wisely said that she just doesn’t ever go places without directions. Wally admitted that he’s headed to Red Bird from North Carolina without directions. He just figured he’d “know his way,” and he made it without a problem.
I asked the team to go a step farther – had they ever set out for a ‘life destination’ without directions, like Abraham did? Matt said that looking for colleges has been like that for him. He has no idea what he wants to do with his life, and that scares him. So he’s setting out for a new phase in life this fall, without directions. Mallorie said she’s still working on it! Abbey said that being without directions is basically her life right now, since she’s graduated from college. She said people are always coming up to her asking, “What are you doing now? Where are you going to work? What are you doing with your degree?” She doesn’t have those answers. She said it’s frustrating. But it’s exciting too, because things are wide open for her. She doesn’t have anything in terms of work that she’s tied down to. Nothing she can’t do. Wally said he feels like he’s without directions every time he goes on a mission trip. He goes blindly, not knowing what he might encounter, which makes him anxious. But he puts his faith in God to fill in the voids. Sue said she finds aspects of life that don’t have directions exciting, “especially where [she is in her life right now] since it seems so routine sometimes.” She said she goes through the motions of having so many people in house. “When you have a new opportunity,” she said, “you can’t always act on it – you are responsible for other people, you can’t just run off and do things on a whim. Sometimes you feel like you are sacrificing, but the rewards are really great. Where I am, I get to watch my children going off on the adventures, the unchartered paths. And I have to sit back and be quiet about it, even if I feel they are going in wrong direction.”
I asked the team to tell me what has happened in their lives ‘by faith’. That’s the phrase the author of Hebrews uses – by faith. I asked, “What times in your life would you say you have achieved/accomplished something ‘by faith’?” Matt and Jill both talked about family members that had been in accidents, and having faith that God would be with them. Matt said of his Uncle Rod, who we prayed for for so long after his motorcycle accident, “I didn’t so much have faith that [Uncle Rod] was going to come out of it, but I prayed a lot, and it was faith I guess that God was going to take care of it.” Wally said that when his life looked very bleak, and he had no direction at all, and he was ready to give up on life, his faith carried him though. God carried him through.” Mallorie said it is by faith that she can ever go on any mission trip. “I don’t think I would be able to do it without faith,” she said. Abbey said “More than anything it’s that things happen that you don’t know the reason for, [and] you have to have faith that it’s going to work out. A lot of times it’s hard to see in the moment – you have to have faith it’s going to work out and by doing that a lot of good things have happened [for her] – her time at school, her new job falling through, which was upsetting, but enabled her to go to Red Bird one more time – good things have come to her by faith. Sue said this, “I think almost everyday you do something that is an act of faith. I think you don’t realize it unless you have the time to sit back and look at it. Having [my first child when I was young], [my husband and I] had [about] two nickels to live on. [We were] building on faith, one foot in front of the other. You look back, [and] it’s all been on faith. You can’t possibly do it on your own.”
The author of Hebrews talks about Moses too. Moses led the Israelites into the Promised Land, out of slavery in Egypt. But you might remember that although God promised Moses to bring the people to this new land, Moses himself never got there. God allowed him to stand on a high mountain, to see the Promised Land from a distance. But Moses died before he ever made it there, after working so hard to lead everyone else to this new land. In Hebrews we read that Moses and others, “all of these [people] died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.” So I asked our team, “Have you ever ‘seen a promise from a distance?’” Matt said he did when he was on the borderline of whether or not he would graduate from high school. In the end, he said, he knew he had fulfilled his requirements, and so he knew it was going to work out. Wally said, “I see it all the time. It’s one of the few things I can see in my futures – things being better, because of what has happened so far. I can see the path. In my job, every time my job is advanced, I have prayed, and asked for guidance in accepting what is put before me and not asking for anymore. And it just keeps going up.” Abbey said “I think with where I am right now [the image of a promise seen from a distance] is very relevant. I can’t see what possibilities are ahead. I’m getting married, I’m going to have a family, I’m planning a career. I have an idea of where I’ll be. It’s not here, I’m not sure if anything I’m thinking will actually happen. It may not be exactly what I’m picturing right now, but . . .” It’s a promise from a distance. Sue said that she related to Abbey’s response, even though they were in very different places. She said with her established family, and all the hard work she’s put in, she is “seeing what their promise is going to be.” She is able to sit back and look at them. “The odds were against us,” she said. “From one day to the next, I ask ‘is this what I’m supposed to be doing?’ I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing or not. We say all the time it’s by the grace of God we are a family, working and growing.”
Finally, I asked them, “Would you still work with God toward fulfilling promises made, even if you never saw the promise achieved or completed in your lifetime?” Abbey’s responses summed it up for me. She said, “I think that there are things we’re part of that we’ll never see the results of. Like the ramp we worked on this week that we never got to build completely. I wonder what someone will do with the pieces we built. We’ll never see it or how it affects their life, but it is part of God’s plan. What we did ‘for nothing’ will go for something.”
How do you define faith? Where has life taken you without directions? What have you done by faith? What promises can you see now, still far off? Will you work to bring those promises into all the fullness God intends, even if you never will see exactly how things end up? How will you answer these questions?
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. By faith Abraham set out. By faith, we go too. Amen.