“Forward in Faith” Sermon, August 7, 2016

“Forward in Faith”
Sermon, Year C, Proper 14, August 7, 2016
© Rev. David J. Huber 2016
Plymouth UCC, Eau Claire, WI
Focus Scripture: Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16; Luke 12:32-40



This letter to the Hebrews that we read was written during perhaps the second or third generation of the church, somewhere between the year 60 and 100. So somewhere from 30 years after Jesus’ resurrection to 70 years after. Somewhere in that range.

Most of the letters we have in the New Testament, we know at least who they were written to, many of them we know who wrote them, but this one we don’t know either. We don’t know who wrote it, nor to whom they wrote it. Though it would appear that it was sent to a congregation that was made up of Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus. And probably it was a congregation that had either undergone persecution by the Roman Empire or the Jewish leaders, or was going through persecution at the time of the writing. This was a time when Rome was persecuting Christians, throwing them to the lions, stoning them, arresting them, harassing them, and other things.

The letter is divided into four sections. The first part explores God’s word as spoken by Jesus. The second is a lifting up of Jesus as the eternal high priest in comparison to the Jewish high priests. The third section talks about faith as an insight into our world and into God’s realm. Today’s passage comes from that section. Then the fourth part is the last chapter, chapter 13, which has advice and greetings.

We read in the section about faith.

Faith is one of those words that we bounce around a lot in the church, and talk about it a lot but don’t always talk about what it means. What is faith? And faith in what?

It is a tricky word, faith.

I like to think of faith as meaning trust. To have faith in God is to trust God. So not about blind obedience or blind acceptance of doctrinal statements. Faith does not mean turning off our reasoning capacity and believing things without questioning.

Faith is simply trust. Trust in God. Trust in God’s promises. Trust that God is present. Trust that God will keep the covenant even when we fail to do so. Trusting in God’s love above all else. Trust that no matter what, nothing can separate us from God’s love. That God will never stop loving us.

As I think about the meaning of faith, I think that trust is really a good word to use in thinking about faith. Hope can be another definition. Faith is the hope in God, that God is working something in this realm for us, for the good.

There are abusive ways to think of faith as well. Like faith healing. I am suspicious about that. The people who call themselves faith healers. Or those who say, “If you just have enough faith you can be healed of anything.” Which has, of course, its negative corollary that if you have prayed for healing and did not get it, then you must lack faith. Somehow you didn’t have enough faith. So it’s your fault for not believing strong enough. I think that’s an abusive way to look at faith and our relationship to God. The so-called faith healers who say they have the power to heal people, you may have seen them on TV - and I do try to always leave some room for miracles, and things can happen that we don’t understand; there may be a few true faith healers in the world, who have some kind of Spirit-power about them, but I doubt they’d go on TV - the ones I see I often wonder, “If you were really a faith healer, then you wouldn’t be charging people to come to you in some auditorium or arena; you would be going through our hospitals and emptying them out for free.”

Not to say that there is no power in prayer to heal or help, either. Prayer is a powerful act. We pray here, of course, during worship and before meals and in the nursing homes and hospitals… but I don’t believe that God’s love for us depends on the strength of our faith or the piety of our prayers. There is no test or metric that God puts in front of us, that “Once you have enough faith, then I will do this for you.” The promise is simply God saying, “I love you, and want you to trust in that.” But no reward for doing it in the proper way, or punishment for not doing it in the right way.

We are called simply to have faith. To have trust. To trust in God. To trust in God’s love. And to trust, then, that if something bad happens to us it is not because God is punishing us, or that we did something to deserve punishment (though the bad thing happening could be our own fault at some level, but it’s not God punishing us). Or that if something good happens to us it isn’t because we did something extra special that has merited God’s favor, that God is doling out a reward on us, or that we have some kind of favored status with God.

Have faith, have trust, in neither the punishing retributive God, nor the Santa Claus God that gives gifts to all the good boys and girls of the world. Trust in the God of Jesus Christ: who promised us to love us always, who promises us eternal life with God, and who went to the cross to show us the depth of divine love.

The writer of Hebrews here talks about Abraham. Abraham being the one who shows up very early in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, and becomes of the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Hebrews writer lifts Abraham up as a man of faith, someone who trusted God. Abraham listened to God and followed, even through long periods of trial when it seems that God would never fulfill the promises that were made to Abraham.

Abraham was promised that he would become a father. That took years and years to come to fruition, and not until he and Sarah were well beyond child-bearing age. He had the promise of a new land, and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. That took a long time to be fulfilled. Even Isaac and Jacob, who were his son and grandson, did not see the fulfillment of God’s promises. Jacob’s sons, the twelve sons that became the twelve tribes of Israel, did not see it. They end up in Egypt, and their descendants spend a few hundred years as slaves there. Then Moses arrives and takes the people out of Egypt and toward the Promised Land, but they have forty years of wandering in the desert. And then, FINALLY!, after about 700 years since Abraham’s time, they see the fulfilment. They see the Promised Land and enter into it with Joshua at the head of the people.

They trusted, had faith, that in all that time God was faithful to the covenant. Even the generations of people who did not see it themselves remained faithful.

Jesus said in the Gospel lesson, “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit. Be like those waiting for their master to return.” Trust that the master will return, that the master will hold true to his words. And while you are waiting, be ready and be active while you wait, as well. Be about the business that you should be about while you wait.

That’s a call to us as a church as well.

To be ready, to be attentive, but to also be active. This is Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob and many generations trusted and had faith that God’s promise would be fulfilled, we also are in a time of waiting and expectation as the Church, not just ours, but the worldwide Church, is going through another kind of reformation. Like the wandering Hebrews in the desert, we who are the Church are in a bit of a wilderness time, a waiting time, a promise-fulfilling time. The Holy Spirit is up to something. It’s a time to have faith and trust. We are a generation that is being called to have faith that God is working something new. To have faith that God is growing us in a new direction as Jesus’ Church. The world is changing - that’s pretty obvious - and a we also note the church is also changing. It is changing to adapt to this new kind of world we are becoming, to be a new kind of church that is relevant and means something in this new world.

One way that we are changing is by being more present and relevant in our communities. I’ve talked about this before many times in sermons. Getting outside our walls and being present in our community, both here in Eau Claire and all over the world. We cannot stay in our walls any more, we need to be pushing out into the world that God loves. To be out there offering hope, compassion, listening ears, love for our neighbors. We are like those servants who are waiting for their master to return. We are in an in-between time of growth and reformation. We don’t know what the final product will be, or what it will look like it, or will result in.

This is a tense and anxious time, because of the change, but it is also a hopeful and exciting time! God is doing something new! Jesus is up to something, the Holy Spirit is up to something! The Church is changing as the world changes, and because it is happening in our time, that means that we get to help write the new story of what the Church of the future will look like and what it will be. We have started to live that vision now, and to then be the kind of church that says that people who are homeless matter. That people deserve a wage they can live on. That our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters matter and must have a place in the Church and in society. To say that peace is better than war. That children matter and need to be included in the life of the church and society. That we who have enough should share our excess with those who do not have enough. That the elderly matter, the sick and the inform matter. That generosity is better than accumulation. That sharing is better than hoarding. That our environment should be protected, and that we should be stewards of the world that God created. To be a church that says that where faith and trust in God’s love, that every single one of God’s people is welcome and invited to share at this table that Jesus sets before us. That we should be good and hospitable hosts opening the table to all whom God sends to it.

And so it is a somewhat anxious time in Jesus’ Church. And individual congregations, denominations, and the Church all over the world is changing. The world is changing rapidly, and we are trying to change to adapt to it, to help lead the change to direct it toward the good. To make it into a Church that means something for the new age. The Holy Spirit is doing something amazing and new. But like that promise made to Abraham, we don’t know what it will look like or when it will be fully realized. We don’t know quite what we are being birthed into, or when, other than that it will be what God wants and what the Holy Spirit blows us into being.

This is our Abraham moment, to have faith and trust through this reformation. The Church seems to go through reformations every 500 years, and this our time. It happened around the year 500, and again around the year 1000, then the 1500s with Luther and Calvin and other reformers, and now. These reformations take a few generations to get through, too, so we might not see the end of it.

As the writer of this letter to the Hebrews said at the end of the passage, “If they had been thinking of the land that they left behind, they would have had opportunity to return.” They could have gone back, and lived in the past if they wanted to. But they didn’t. They let go of the past in order to move forward. They would have had opportunity to return, but as it is, they desired a better country, a heavenly one, and so they moved forward in faith.

Let us keep moving forward, waiting actively, trusting in God’s promise of love for us, and love for the Church, and that it is through the Church that God’s love can be made known to the world.

Amen.