12 August 2007

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

What do you think about when you hear the word “faith?” What comes first to mind?

Faith is a slippery thing. It doesn’t define easily. You have faith, keep the faith, are faithful, and faithfully do something. It’s sort of over and against theology, which we’re used to struggling with. In fact, Frederick Buechner says, “Faith is different from theology because theology is reasoned, systematic, and orderly, whereas faith is disorderly, intermittent, and full of surprises…Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat. Faith is less a position on than a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch. Faith is waiting" (Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons).

Faith is a funny thing. We each in this room, I’m presuming, profess to have one. But ask us to define it and we might end up squirming a little. And how many people we have here is how many different expressions and understandings of faith there would be. Especially since we are Disciples of Christ; no one is going to tell us what our faith is! “No creed but Christ” is nice for allowing us to struggle with our faith, but isn’t very useful when it comes to defining who we are.

The author of the book of Hebrews puts faith in a succinct way: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith, according to this author, involves assurance, hope, conviction and things not seen. Let’s look at this more closely.

Assurance; what does that involve and who is doing the assuring? Well, we would say that God is doing the assuring. Assuring us that God is there and knows about our faith. Assurance is a calming presence. It allows us to relax a little. Assurance provides a base for us to stand on and not worry. It is a promise; a promise that we are God’s and God hears us.

Hope is a little more difficult. We tend to mix up hope. We think of hope as wishing for a parking space or a cure for a disease, though those can be important hopes. But I think the author of Hebrews was going deeper; talking about a hope that transcends these worldly cares. The hope the author was talking about is more along the lines of hoping for better things than this world; hoping for God’s realm to come in; hoping for justice and peace to fill the world. The hope that helps to define faith is deep and lasting and brings us to a better place.

Conviction. That’s the next element in this author’s definition of faith; conviction of things not seen. We are convinced about our faith. We have to be. Now don’t get me wrong; there is room for doubt and struggling with our faith. Jesus makes that clear throughout the gospels. But deep down, faith leads us to being convinced about Truth, with a capital T. We know there is a Truth out there that is bigger than we are. We know, deep down, perhaps so deep down that we can barely recognize it, that we are God’s and God claims us as God’s own. The conviction of which this author writes is one of a willingness to believe and hold something to be true.

And that brings us to the final element: things not seen. It’s a faith that doesn’t have visual confirmations. We’d like those at times, of course, but we don’t get them. Our faith is filled with unseen things. We can’t see our God; though he walked the earth at one point, Christ is unseen as is the Holy Spirit. A lot of our life is unseen. And our faith is no different. We can’t have visual proof.

So we deal with a faith that relies on our conviction of unseen things, while being assured of those things we hope for.


How often do you or this church do things out of faith? Do we step out in faith knowing that God will be there? That unseen, assured of God will see us through whatever actions we take in faith.

I have a bunch of quotes on my computer. I collect them there for the end of the weekly email newsletter. One of them deals directly with this. It is from Barbara J. Winter, who appears, from her website, to be an entrepreneur guru. She says: “When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness ... faith is knowing... there will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly. “

Faith, our faith, is believing in a God who will be there to stand on or will teach us how to fly. We can’t see into the darkness of faith all the time. Sometimes we go forth into the unknown with only our faith to lead us on. We grope and stretch our arms out in an effort to get our bearings. But we use faith to know where we are. We use faith to locate ourselves in the darkness. We use faith to know that eventually the darkness will lift and we will be in the light of God once again.

It’s faith that allows us to operate amidst the swirling craziness of our world. In the midst of the oppression, racism, sexism, homophobia, the fear, the longing and the desires of a culture driven by greed and denial, we have this unseen faith to cling onto. We know that our faith will be the rock on which we can cling in the middle of the roaring sea of our society.

As I prepared for this sermon, I ran across an old friend; a prayer by Thomas Merton that I had learned when I was at my field education church in Boston 20 years ago. The prayer is a fitting conclusion not only to this sermon but also to this passage from Hebrews. Though it doesn’t mention faith directly, it clearly states the principles of faith we’ve talked about today. The prayer goes like this:

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone." (Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton)