'The
word of the Lord came to
Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward
shall be very great." But Abram said, "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and
the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You
have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my
heir." But the word of the Lord came
to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue
shall be your heir." He brought him outside and said, "Look toward
heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said
to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as
righteousness.'
--Genesis 15: 1-6
'Now
faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that
the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from
things that are not visible.
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. By
faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign
land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the
same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose
architect and builder is God. By faith he received power of procreation, even
though he was too old-- and Sarah herself was barren-- because he considered
him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good
as dead, descendants were born, "as many as the stars of heaven and as the
innumerable grains of sand by the seashore."'
--Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-12
A great sage of the 1990s once sang
about a theme that runs through our Scriptures this week:
God rest your soul, George Michael! Ya gotta have faith, faith
faith! We throw that sentence around a
lot, don’t we? Ya gotta have faith that this
will be the year our team finally wins—story of my life as a Cleveland sports
fan. In George Michael’s case, he’s
gotta have faith that he’ll find that partner who won’t break his heart. It’s
not just something that we preach on Sunday mornings. Faith is an underlying theme of so many
aspects of our day-to-day lives, and we are often told, in one way or another,
that if the thing doesn’t work out, then we just didn’t have enough faith. Is that, though, what our Scriptures are
trying to tell us about the nature of faith?
Immediately our attention gets
grabbed by the first sentence in the 11th chapter of the Letter to
the Hebrews: “Faith is the assurance of
things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” That’s one of those sentences of Scripture that’s
so popular that we see it on bracelets and bumper stickers, and even us Episcopalians
can usually quote it. But this line has,
it seems, become somewhat saturated by an individual-based theology, and to be
honest, the translation that we use—the New Revised Standard Version—is rather
problematic. First, the Greek word that
gets translated as 'assurance' –“faith is the assurance of things hoped for”--is
hupostasis, which is better translated as 'reality' because it doesn’t
have anything to do with personal belief.
Also, the word translated as 'conviction' –“the conviction of things not
seen”—is elenchos, which again is not about personal conviction but is
better translated as 'proof.' So we
could read this sentence as: Faith is
the reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen. When we think of faith in this manner it
becomes less about a personal desire and more about the realization of the
forward movement of God throughout the universe.
Take the example of Abraham. We see him in Genesis—when he was still
called Abram—and God promises him that his descendants will outnumber the stars. And again, in Hebrews his faith in the
promises of God is commended. But consider
the fact that Abraham doesn’t live to see God’s promises fulfilled. He doesn’t see the city God promised, nor does he
bear witness to a multitude of descendants.
Clearly Abraham’s is a faith in something bigger than just his own wants
and desires.
I suspect it’s because the faith
that Abraham had, and the faith that is being raised up by the author of Hebrews,
is not about an outcome or accomplishment that we can measure or see—the team
winning a championship or George Michael getting that love he hoped for—but rather
it is about openness to and acceptance of the movement of God. If our faith is measured only in our sensory
accomplishments or outcomes, then hardly any of us could be considered
faithful, could we? Our team still lost,
in spite of our faith. Our relationship still ended in heartbreak, in spite of
our faith. And how many dear friends and
brothers and sisters can we think of right now who have suffered pain and
disappointment, in spite of their faith? No, faith must be about something
more, something beyond our own senses, beyond time and space. Faith must be about the movement of God.
The movement of God is not
something that can be measured by traditional means. When we do our annual Parochial Report to be
sent in to the church powers-that-be, we measure the number of services we hold
and people that come through our doors, but we can’t measure the movement of
God. There’s no point where we figure that out. It is a constant movement, a constant shifting of the world, turning it
rightside-up, pointing it in the direction of the Kingdom of God. That’s where our faith lies! Our faith lies in a God who is about more than a measurable
accomplishment, a God who is still here, still moving, a God who is not done
with us, a God who will keep at it, long after we are gone, a God who is the
very essence of love, a God who is faithful.
When we say that we have faith,
this is what we mean. We have faith in
this kind of God, one who is moving, even when we can’t see it. Some of you may have read an article by
theologian Diana Butler Bass a few days ago entitled The God of Love Had a
Really Bad Week. It made its way
through every news source from the BBC to Fox and was shared by who knows how
many folks on social media. In the last three
weeks or so that’s been certainly true, especially with no fewer than three
mass shootings and everything else that we have witnessed. The answer, some folks say, is to have more
faith, to offer more thoughts and prayers because the lack thereof is the
reason things are the way they are, the reason God has allowed so much of this
to happen. But this doesn't sound like a faithful God. The God we know and worship is a God who has
placed faith in us, that we may in turn place our faith in God. Our God persists in goodness and love and keeps moving us toward
the Kingdom, even when we can’t see it, even when we are led to believe otherwise.
The reality of things hoped for,
the proof of things not seen. That is
faith. Our reality is that, while we live
in a world filled with violence and injustice of every kind, God still reigns,
and God is still moving this broken world to a place of restoration and healing. The proof, therefore, is all of you reading this blog. You long to be inspired by that God, to share in a meal with that God, and to go into the world to proclaim that, despite what we may hear or see all around us, God is still love, God is
still light, and no measure of hate or darkness will ever blot out the love and
light of God from this world.
It’s funny how in George Michael’s
song he sang that you gotta have "faith, faith faith," (the same word repeated
again and again), because the author of Hebrews does the same thing. Look at the reading again. Notice how many times it repeat the words "by faith." The answer (in case you didn't check) is four times. Such repetition is a
kind of encouragement for us, as it was for the community of believers that
first heard it, encouragement to trust that God’s got this, as Abraham did, as
Jesus did. It’s more than a hope that our
team will win or our relationship will work.
It’s faith in the everlasting goodness of God to overcome the evils of
this world.
There is one great example of this kind of faith in
fairly recent memory. During the
Apartheid days of South Africa, when the government tried shutting out any vocal opposition, Archbishop Desmond
Tutu held a church service where armed police entered his cathedral in Cape
Town in a move of intimidation while Tutu was preaching. At one point he finally addressed the police
directly and said: “You are very powerful, but you are not
gods and I serve a God who cannot be mocked. So, since you’ve already lost, I
invite you today to come and join the winning side!” With that, the congregation broke out into
singing and dancing. No one knew then
that Apartheid would eventually be defeated, but Tutu had faith, not so much in the law being changed, but in the ultimate victory of a good and faithful God.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu. A man who has understood what faith really is.
