Ya Gotta Have Faith

"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

--Luke 12: 34

"Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

--Hebrews 11: 1

"The LORD brought Abram outside and and said, 'Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.'  Then the LORD said to Abram, 'So shall your descendants be.'  And Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness."

--Genesis 15: 5-6

90s pop icon George Michael.

George Michael sang about it. Ya gotta have faith!  He was singing about having enough faith to give his heart over to someone and love them without fear of being hurt.  Faith is a step out into the unknown, scary, and full of unpredictability, especially when we place our faith in something like loving someone.  We can’t know for certain that that person will love us unconditionally, we cannot know for certain that our love for them will endure through difficult times.  But we try to love, we try to trust, because we have faith.

Faith, says the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  It’s one of the most quoted lines of the New Testament.  The Greek word ὑπόστασις, which is translated as assurance, can also be translated as reality.  Faith is the reality of things hoped for, thus those of us who walk in faith walk in the reality of an invisible world, a world of unpredictability, a world we cannot see or fully understand, yet we walk in it because we know that it is a world in which God dwells. 

Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Obi-Wan Kenobi once said, ‘Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them.’  He was talking about faith; of course, in his case it was faith in the Force, but we can learn from that wise old Jedi’s saying.  Faith is being able to look at a given situation and say that, while my eyes may tell me one thing, I choose to trust not so much in them but in my heart, my gut, my soul.  Rather than relying on my outward senses to explain away everything, I choose to trust in that which I cannot fully comprehend. I choose to accept what the Divine is doing with me, rather than expect the Divine to do something for me. This is exactly what our ancestor Abraham did.  *It should be noted here that Father Prime fully endorses the idea that Abraham was, in fact, a Jedi.*

This past Sunday we found Father Abraham the 15th chapter of Genesis, having just won a great military victory over some eastern kings.  He’s been blessed by a king/priest named Melchizadek, a follower of the one true God, which prompted him to give the king 1/10th of all the spoils of his victory (a precursor to our ritual of tithing).  Here he is called Abram—which means “exalted ancestor.”  Abram laments to God that, though he has won in battle, he still does not have a true heir to carry out his name, only some guy named Eliezer in Damascus.  Abram is frustrated and pours out those frustrations on God, who responds with the great, grand, and unbelievable promise that Abram will be a father, and not only will he be a father, but his descendants will be as many as the stars in the sky.  The last line of our reading says “Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.”  In the ancient world righteousness meant being true to one’s social obligations and commitments.  Thus, a righteous person was one who kept his or her social obligations and commitments.  God had made a commitment to Abram, a sign of righteousness; in fact, some ancient versions of this text remove “the LORD” from the last part of that sentence, meaning that Abram is the one who reckons righteousness to God by way of his own faith, certifying that he fully believed God would be true to the commitment God had made.  Two chapters later, Abram , at the age of 99, will be given a new name, Abraham—meaning “ancestor of a multitude”—and four chapters after that, Abraham’s son Isaac will be born.  God had made the commitment, Abraham had had faith in it, and that faith was brought to its fulfillment. 

A mosaic depicting Abraham and his son Isaac. 

There is a reason why Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are called the Abrahamic Faiths.  It is because our faith begins with his faith, which sets in-motion these three great relationships with God.  Whenever Christians, Jews, or Muslims speak of faith, we all point to Father Abraham, to the one who trusted in a God who took him and his family on a remarkable adventure from their home in Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan, and to Salem, Hebron, Beer-Sheba, Dan, Sheckem, Damascus, Haran, and Kadesh.  The God who promised a great nation to a wandering old man and his barren wife.  Thus, when the writer of the Hebrews gives us an example of what faith really looks like, the person cited is, of course, Abraham.  There is, quite possibly, no greater example of faith than his.

We need to be reminded of Abraham’s faith.  As children of the Enlightenment, we tend to place our faith in the things that can be quantified, things that can be seen, heard, and felt.  We place our faith in things about which we can make reasonable expectations.  So we place our faith in money, houses, stocks, and other investments.  We place our faith in sports teams that we cheer.  We place our faith in people, whom we expect to act in a certain way, but then we get angry when those expectations aren't met.  We place our faith in systems that weave false narratives to us and reassure us that they know what’s best.  Maybe this isn't the way to go.  Maybe we can learn from Father Abraham, who accepted far more than he expected.

Abraham did not know what to expect from God when God called him to leave his home, and he certainly didn't know what to expect when God promised him a nation of descendants.  Yet he accepted where God was leading him.  He accepted God's promise to him and his wife Sarah.  Even when God asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac (another topic for another blog post), he accepted whatever it was that was being asked of him.  I wonder what would happen if we accepted more and expected less.  Perhaps our faith might shift, and we might focus less on things and more on God.  It could be that we may find ourselves caring less about the things we physically see, hear, and feel, and more on the One who overcomes all of that to move and speak to us in ways that we cannot fully understand.  

Too often it seems our faith is placed in the things of this world. We cannot, we dare not, place our faith in such things.  This is what Jesus means when he tells the crowd in the Gospel reading “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Jesus told them to sell everything, give alms, focus all of your attention on God, placing your faith in God, and waiting expectantly for the Day of Resurrection.  We live in a time not that much different from Jesus, when folks are looking for quick fixes to problems or run away when times get tough because they see no solution in sight.  And like the crowd he spoke to that day, we need to be reminded where our heart really lies, where our faith really lies.  It isn’t in the stuff of this world.  It is in God. It is in the One who, though we cannot fully understand, brings meaning and purpose and Resurrection out of the worst set of circumstances.

Abraham’s faith was, indeed, rewarded when his son Isaac was born, but we must not put our faith in God expecting something in return, that’s not what faith is about. Faith is about hoping in something bigger than ourselves, the kind of hope that tells us all manner of things will be well, the kind of hope that offers that peace that passes all understanding.  This is not a faith that rewards us like some sort of cosmic vending machine.  This is a faith that accepts more than it expects.  It is a faith that reminds us that we are loved, always and forever, beyond our wildest imaginations, and that nothing, even our own sins and wickedness, can separate us from that love. That’s what faith in God, faith in the Lord Jesus, looks like.  With that kind of faith we can step out into any danger without fear of being hurt.  It’s scary, and it cannot always be predicted, but that kind of faith can lead us to changed hearts and minds, which will then change the world, as Father Abraham’s faith changed the world.  I wonder what it might look like if we had THAT kind of faith.

Ya gotta have faith, brothers and sisters. Ya gotta have faith.