Grace Presbyterian Church
August 7, 2016, Pentecost 12C
Faith: A Matter of Trust
What is faith?
That might seem a
strange question to ask in this case, since in the very first verse of today’s
reading from Hebrews we get what has become one of the more familiar verses of
scripture as a seeming definition of faith – “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of
things not seen,” or “substance of things hoped for, evidence of
things not seen” if all your memorized scripture is still in the King James
Version. (I hate to break it to you, but "assurance" and “conviction” is actually a better word
to correspond to the Greek here.)
It’s a beautiful
verse, true. Maybe too beautiful. We hear it and get lost in the mellifluous
poetry of it all and maybe we don’t always bore down into it to understand just
what’s really going on.
Fortunately, the
author of Hebrews (which really is in effect a sermon rather than a letter)
doesn’t stop with the lovely poetry, but pushes forward to flesh out the
picture of faith with a couple of further elaborations and then a whole bunch
of examples.
This isn’t a bad
thing, and maybe at this point it’s a particularly beneficial thing for us
modern Christians, who have a habit of using the word “faith” in some strange
ways.
If you go to
Dictionary.com and look up the word “faith” you get seven different
definitions, some of which are clearly not quite what our preacher is talking
about here and some of which might just be part of the story. The sixth and
seventh definitions have to do with “the
obligaion of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.”
and “the observance of this obligation,”
which do sound a bit like the Hebrews preacher in some parts of this chapter.
The fifth definition, “a system of
religious belief,” is acceptable I suppose, but we have better words for
that – “theology” or “doctrine” or even “religion” itself seem closer to the
mark there. And the second definition, “belief
that is not based on proof,” sounds very much like our preacher here in
verses 1-3.
But the sticking
point comes in comparing the third and first definitions. The third definition,
“belief in God or in the doctrines or
teachings of religion,” seems to be the definition we are most likely to
use these days. We speak of “faith” rather often in reference to a mere
assertion of belief in God. “I have faith” ends up meaning little more than “I
believe in God,” or “I believe x
about God.” We assert a particular set of propositions or statements about God
and call that faith.
At the risk of
offending, if our Hebrews preacher were to hear us use the word “faith” today,
he (or she) might be tempted to borrow a line from the character Inigo Montoya
in the movie The Princess Bride: “You
use that word a lot. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
What our preacher
is telling us in this passage, what our preacher wants us to see in the
examples of Abel and his faithful sacrifice; Enoch who “walked with God” and was
taken up by God without suffering death; Noah who built an ark well before any
rain fell; and yes, Abraham who set out from the only home he knew and followed
God to a strange new land; what Hebrews wants us to see in all of these
examples (and more to come later in the chapter) has basically nothing to do
with fealty to a set of doctrines or teachings. That’s not the faith that moved
these ancient ancestors.
The synonym for
“faith” that Hebrews wants us to hear is not “belief”; the synonym Hebrews
wants us to hear is “trust.”
Abraham didn’t set
out from Ur and journey into that strange land because he had memorized the
Apostles’ Creed or the “Roman Road” to salvation. Abraham made that journey,
followed after God with his wife and his household and his complete lack of
children, because somehow in that moment of call, somehow in that moment of
being called out by God to take on this strange and terrible journey, Abraham trusted God. Noah certainly didn’t build
an ark in the midst of a dry season in a dry land because somebody handed him a
gospel tract and told him to believe it. Noah, crazily and unbelievably, trusted God.
And this might be
why the Hebrews preacher might go all Inigo Montoya on us and question how we
use the word. We’re very good at asserting beliefs, we moderns, and very good
at beating up on those who don’t assert the same beliefs that we do and even
declaring them to be “outside the faith.” I have no doubt you can find that
kind of “faith” at dozens of churches in this town. But the kind of faith that
shows real trust in God? The kind of
faith that steps out with zero visual evidence ready to follow the crazy and
unexpected path that God sets before us? Yeah, not so much.
But that’s the
faith that Hebrews urges upon us. Faith that trusts God, convicted of things
not seen, not worrying about what’s behind us but set on what God points to
ahead of us, faith that actually dares to encounter
God instead of merely talking about God? That’s the faith of Hebrews 11. Trust
is not the end point of that faith (that’s next week’s sermon), but it is its
start. And that’s the faith that will matter in a faithless world.
For trust in God, Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns (from Glory to
God: The Presbyterian Hymnal):
#838 Standing on the Promises
#817 We Walk By Faith and Not By Sight
#538 Hallelujah! We Sing Your Praises
#321 The Church’s One Foundation
Credit: agnusday.org. It's not a contest...
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