Faith of Our Fathers and Mothers

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

May 9, 2010

Text: Hebrews 11

A famous scientist has written that, “The cosmos is all that is, all there ever was and all that every will be.” (Source unknown)

To which Frederick Buechner replied that this sounds like a worm in an apple saying that the apple is all there is. (Source lost)

We speak sometimes of “blind faith,” by which we seem to mean believing something is real in spite of all the evidence to the contrary----a kind of stubborn refusal to disbelieve.

What if there is such a thing as “seeing faith,” based on the deeply held conviction that, beneath the surface, there is vastly more that we cannot see? More than stubbornness (which is vastly under-rated) is confidence, bed-rock confidence in realities we do cannot see with our physical eyes.

A woman in a WWII concentration camp told a friend that when she looked at a tree outside her window, the tree speaks to her, saying, “I am eternal life.” (Source lost)

Is this blind faith, delusion, or is she in touch with a deeper reality?

One woman was prone to say, everyday, “Another day shot to hades.” Another woman, as they found on her day by day calendar after her death, had written thanksgivings for specific things that had blessed her every day.

Is this faith or whistling in the dark?

Do not judge harshly those who do not seem to believe in God. For some, life has been hazardous; belief in God, or in any deeper reality, seems unnatural, phony. Some people avoid belief in God because of those who arrogantly believe and look with condemnation on those who don’t. From where they sit, belief in God is a waste of time.

No one can be badgered into believing something, especially belief in God. They can be badgered into acting as if they do, not the same thing at all!

So if faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, how does anyone come to believe in God---belief not simply as mental assent but as risky venture? Do we line up the evidence and convince them?

Among theologians and preachers, this task is called apologetics. We take the ancient faith and attempt to relate it to present day culture, language and world-views. Apologetics is evident in the New Testament writings themselves as the church sought to proclaim the gospel to people of all nations.

Does faith arise because of convincing arguments? It certainly makes a difference to some.

It seems to me, however, that the preacher who wrote the Letter of Hebrews would say “No, not alone and usually not first.” The pathway to faith from the Christian perspective comes by way of encounter. “Faith comes when we are surprised by the knowledge of One in our darkness, and we know ourselves to be known from beginning to end, apprehended by the knower….” (H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation.)

Jesus speaks to us, reveals himself to us in story, sacrament, music, art---and we meet God as we encounter Jesus.

We may not be able to say why this happens; we can only testify that it does, it has. It is like someone has opened the curtain and we see the One we have always sought----and this one, we learn, has been seeking us all along. Through him, we have peace with God. Forgiveness, healing, guidance, affirmation: all of these come with the Giver. “Faith is trust that in Jesus of Nazareth God chose to make himself present to us in our history and for our salvation.” (Carl Michaelson, The Witness of Radical Faith)

For the author of Hebrews, Jesus is experienced as the mediator between God and us, representing us to God and God to us. Consider that this is personal introduction by the host of a party. “Robert, meet God; God, meet Robert. Let’s understand each other.”

By faith in God, we are opened up to see life differently. We are given “faith vision,” the ability to trust that the same God who has met us in life can be trusted to see us through whatever else life brings us---that God is trustworthy, worthy of our trust.

Faith gives birth to hope.

“Faith means the eyes by which the as-yet-unseen heavenly country, the future inheritance of the faithful, can be seen from a distance.” (Robert A.J. Gagnon, pages 506-510 in The Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday’s Texts: Second Readings, Robert E. Van Horn, Editor,

The preacher in Hebrews then, like a mason laying a foundation of stones, does a roll call of the faithful: Abraham and Sarah (called in old age to have children and to go to a far land to start a new people through whom God would bless all peoples.) Abel, Jacob, Esau, Moses, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jepthah, David and Samuel, Rahab----“who through faith----
 
Faithful people “conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword…..They were sawn in two, stoned to death, tortured, flogged, mocked, imprisoned, made destitute, persecuted, tormented….Yet all these were commended for their faith.”

By faith….by faith…by faith….

It is the roll call those who “courageously swing out on the vine of God’s promises over the chasm of life trusting the vine would hold.” (Source lost)

Faith empowers us in our struggles against evil and for the common good. Faith gives us courage for endurance, not escape the world

Faith in God is not a general optimism; it does not mean that we are called to believe 7 impossible things before breakfast; it is not acceptance of fate.

Faith moves us toward hopefulness based on the belief that the God who has been the inspiration for previous fathers and mothers will be with us as we face our futures---not only to comfort us but to embolden us.

By faith we understand that following Jesus is the “way to become who I truly am----a person created in the image of God.” (John C Shelley, Feasting on the Word, Year C Texts in Eastertide, page 328))

Faith in God enables us to see things differently. For example:

We see our creation not as an accidental swirl of meaningless forces but as an expression of the love of God, sustained by hidden providence;

Faith allows Finance Committees to see their work as not only as the paying of bills but as the underwriting of the living, breathing presence of God at work in and through the church;

Faith allows churches to plan for the future based on the belief that God  will give us power to do what we are called to do;

Faith moves us to see our daily work in the world (whether we are paid for it or not) as mission work, the places where we glorify God with our best, honest work and make real the love of neighbor;

Faith means acting on impossible hunches that the Lord of heaven and earth has called and touched and directed us along certain paths, certain tasks, with certain gifts;

We speak of time every day: Time filled, time that is empty, stretched out time, time on our hands, killing time, time smashed together, the blur of time, the long slow drag of time-----these are the ways we sometime approach life, face the future. Sometimes we speak as if we are “slouching through the inevitable.” (Source lost)

Faith in God opens to our view a different way of dealing with time: chronos (clock time) is infused with kairos (divine time, pregnant time, time full of meaning and possibility). Why?

Because we have been given a taste of eternal life in the midst of the ordinary. We have seen a glimpse of the “city not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,” and this glimpse of God’s holy city, a community where God’ kingdom is fully realized-----God’s promised future---- buoys us up, keeps us from quitting before we are done.

Karl Barth wrote that, in the life of the apostle Paul, he sees “a person who has been thrown out of his course by seeing and hearing what I for my part do not see or hear---who is, so to speak, captured in order to be [led] as a prisoner from land to land for strange, intense, uncertain, and yet mysteriously well-planned service. (The Word of God, the Word of Man, “The Strange New World Within the Bible,” Page 32)

Can we live with the uncertainties of our times, the dangers and disappointments and threats to our existence and our well-being?

We cannot and should not minimize the real threats we face in the future:  threats such as  the pollution of our habitat, or threats of nuclear or biological wars or mishaps; poverty which grinds down the already poor.

At a more personal level, the shaking of the foundations of our economic life. I do not minimize the suffering which many have experienced. In the midst of this loss, can we trust God and get up every morning believing that this God will see us through to a better day----as God did for so many of our fathers and mothers in the faith during the Great Depression?

We live in the age of the superficial; we skate along on the surface of life, substituting sound bites for in in-depth examination. We scan more than we search for truth. We live for amusement and we treat political life as a grand competition rather than governance for the common safety, prosperity and peace.

How can live deeper, more authentic lives in the midst of such trivialization and crudeness?

We foster and nurture faith in God, our own and others’. But faith is not an achievement but a gift. We do not get very far by makine faith a must do. Faith is a gift offered to whosoever will receive it. What we are invited to do is to be open to realities which we cannot see, futures that we may glimpse but not fully realized.

Can you and I look deeper than the surface of things? Listen more carefully for the life-giving breath of God? The essence of faith is the conviction that God has not brought us all this way to abandon us now.