Now that I’m an adult, I know that the world in which we dwell is as bad as it seems. There are lots of dragons out there, and they don’t have cute googly eyes. In our world, then, what does it mean for us Christians to “have faith?” Do we know? People often tell me that they can’t call themselves Christian because they don’t believe everything in the Creed. But faith isn’t intellectual assent to a bunch of doctrines. The TV preachers tell us that if we have enough faith, then God will miraculously answer our prayers. But faith isn’t a formula for getting what we want from God. Neither is it a pair of rose-colored glasses that cover up the real perils that we face.
The Preacher in our lesson from Hebrews tells us that faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” What we translate as “assurance” here really means “the very being” of something. Assurance, then, isn’t bravado. It’s not pretending that we’re not afraid, when we are. Instead, Hebrews is telling us that faith is holding in one’s hand the very being of what God has promised us, the very being of God’s loving presence in all things, however hidden from our view.[1] Clarence Jordan, in his “Cotton Patch Gospel,” translates our verse from Hebrews as follows: “Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds; it is betting your life on the unseen realities.”[2]
Faith, then, is more than inner confidence that the dragon out there is nicer than it looks and will someday become our friend. It’s us actually trading in our sword for a bouquet of flowers to give to the dragon. Faith is action. Movement. A destination. Faith isn’t something we end up with, or rest in. It’s a longing, a desire, that pushes us out to do God’s work in the world, even when we’re afraid.[3] Faith sent Harriet Tubman back into the danger of the slave-holding South to rescue God's enslaved people; faith sent Mother Theresa to live among the poor of Calcutta; faith sent the apostles to their deaths as martyrs in order to share the good news of Jesus.
Let me make a confession here: I spent most of my adult life thinking that faith was intellectual assent. I studied theology thinking that if I figured God out, then I would be a good Christian. If I could explain God to other people, then I would be a good witness. If I couldn’t figure God out, then I might as well go home. It wasn’t so long ago that I finally realized that faith is me putting into action God’s love in my daily life. And that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but complacency. And let me make another confession, while I’m at it. It’s hard not to be complacent when you’re over 60 years old. We older folks get tired, don’t we? We want to settle in and bask in the status quo. We shed our rose-colored glasses a long time ago. We know that the dragons are out there, but we’re tired of fighting them. We want to let someone else do that now.
Well, I hate to tell you, but God isn’t going to let us off the hook that easily. God certainly didn’t let Abraham and Sarah off the hook, even though, as our scripture says, “they were as good as dead!” You remember their story, right? They are the childless centenarians who are promised a land flowing with milk and honey and descendants as many as the grains of sand at the seashore. For our Preacher in Hebrews, Abraham and Sarah are examples of faithfulness. Faith is what sends them off on their journey into the unknown. Faith takes these old folks from their settled home to a nomadic life of wandering among strangers. Faith is their willingness to imagine new life, and to act on the things that they long for, even though they never live to eat the honey or count their myriads of descendants.
In the same way, Jesus’ parable of the diligent servants in our Gospel lesson is also about faith as action. The servants in this parable don’t sit around and recite the Creed. They don’t go to a chapel to pray for miracles. No, they get ready for what they long for. They prepare for their master to come home, even though they don’t have the slightest idea when that will be. As preacher Debie Thomas writes, the faith that these servants teach us “is the daily business of living on our tiptoes, our eyes on the door, our hands ready at the knob for the Master’s joy-filled arrival.”[4]
Even our lesson from Isaiah won’t let us alone today. As a priest, I love nothing better than worship. I would love for every day to be Sunday morning. But the prophet Isaiah makes it clear to us that faith is more than worship, more than joining in even the best of liturgies among the best of people. Worship without justice, without caring for "the least of these" in our suffering world, is worthless in God’s eyes. We’re not among the “faithful” if we are not actively living out God’s love in the world. If we long for God, for Jesus, for God’s life-giving Spirit to enter our lives, then we have to put action to our conviction, no matter what our age. If we long for new life for our parish, there’s no sitting on the sidelines, no hiding in a world of Sunday mornings while the world is hungry and in need.
I read a poem this week that speaks to the journey to which we are invited today, to the journey beyond the status quo. By the poet Joy Harjo, part of the poem goes: "Beyond sunrise,/ there is a song we follow/ … Beyond the footpaths we walk every day/ From sunrise to kitchen, to work, to garden, to play/ To sunset, to dark, and back/ Beyond where the baby sleeps, her breath/ A light mist of happiness …./ In the song of beyond, how deep we are —"[5]
Can you hear God's "song of beyond" calling your name? It's a song both beyond what we live and see and touch, and yet within what we live and see and touch. It's a song sung to us by the great cloud of witnesses that surround us, a song that we learn in the stories of our scriptures. It's a song of longing, a song of healing, a song of God's dream for the world. God needs for us each to sing God's song—to sing it in our own voices, and to sing it together as a parish. God needs for us to practice our faith. God is asking us to leave our armor behind, and to head off into the sunrise, hand in hand with the big green dragon. This may not sound like good news for us, but it is. Oh, it is, indeed. For it is the way to life abundant, to the very promises of God, to the joy for which we all long.
[1] Thomas Long, Hebrews, (Interpretation. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997), 113.
[2] Found in Edgar McKnight and Christopher Church, Hebrews-James (Smyth and Helwys, 2004), 261.
[3] Debie Thomas, "Called to Restlessness," August 2019. Found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2295-called-to-restlessness
[4] Ibid.
[5] Joy Harjo, from “Beyond” in An American Sunrise, quoted by Diana Butler Bass and found at https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/august-day?utm_source=email
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