By Faith
MaryAnn McKibben Dana
July 26, 2009
Genesis 15:1-6
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
———————
Paul Jones remembers the day that he found faith—or perhaps I should say, the day faith found him.
By the time I heard the story, at a conference in Colorado, Paul Jones was a seminary trained theologian and ordained monk in the Trappist order. Over the course of his life he had lived in a tenement house among the poor of Kansas City, had taught seminary courses, and was currently one of the contributors to Weavings, a magazine of spirituality published by the Upper Room publishing house. He had the pedigree! But before all that, decades earlier in his young adulthood, he had a question. The question burned within him.
Is the resurrection true?
Have you ever found yourself wondering if it’s true, if it’s really true, if that crazy wonderful impossible thing could be true? During a time of spiritual darkness, or while squinting through the thick fog of grief, or even just while reading the morning paper and wading through the grim headlines. Have the powers of death really been defeated forever, despite what we see? Was this man Jesus really raised from the dead, despite what we know about human biology and our finite human bodies?
Did the question flit through your mind, only to be swatted away? Or did it linger—for hours, for days, for months? Maybe it lingers still.
When the question comes, do we dare to mutter it to someone else, or do we lock it up silently—for to give voice to that question would be to make it all too real, and after all, “I’ve been in the church my whole life,” or “I’m an elder,” or “I’m a pastor”—I’m in this Christian life too deep, won’t I look like a fool if I start questioning it now? It seems like Christianity is on the ropes these days… the number of people who identify themselves as “unaffiliated” has doubled since 1990, and the percentage of Christians in that same period, while still large, has declined 10%. (http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583 ) So if we, the steadfast practitioners of Christianity, start admitting to our doubts, isn’t the whole thing going to come crashing down?
Or maybe you don’t wrestle with the question at all. You feel certain that it’s not true, and that Christianity is nothing more than a nice club, an organization that teaches good values and ethical living, but the supernatural stuff? “C’mon, we’re past all that.”
If you have ever wrestled with that question, you are not alone. You share company with believers throughout the ages, including, it would seem, the recipients of the letter to the Hebrews. Actually, the book of Hebrews, many argue, is not merely a letter, but a sermon—a sermon to a group of second generation Christians who were beginning to wander away from the faith, disgruntled that the second coming hadn’t come yet. They expected Jesus to return quickly, and when he didn’t they asked, “Where is this messiah that was promised? Is the story even true? Is the resurrection true?”
And like a good preacher, the writer of Hebrews responds to this crisis with a profound little statement about faith, a statement that people would hopefully still be pondering to themselves on the way home from church or at Sunday brunch. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Which is a fancy way of saying, “Friends, you aren’t going to get proof. Faith is about potential—the God you put your faith in hasn’t finished the job yet, and you may never really see the end result in this lifetime. It’s hoped for, it’s unseen.”
And then the preacher of Hebrews goes on with this astounding list of pillars of the covenant community who lived out that faith. Noah, Moses, David, Samuel, and of course, today’s focus, Abraham. And throughout this litany of Old Testament heroes is woven the words, by faith… by faith… by faith, reminding the Hebrews and us that they didn’t do it alone, that Abraham didn’t do it alone, that God gave him the faith to go to the land that had been promised to him.
Where Abraham started, and where Paul Jones started, is a land without faith. Life is so radically different there that Abraham even has a different name. Remember, before Abraham was Abraham, he was Abram. And as far as Abram knows, there is no God, there is no covenant, there is no obedience to anything, and Abram has no sons or daughters.
It’s not a bad place, probably, the Land without Faith. It’s probably a very simple place to live, things are pretty black and white, you’re not beholden to anybody or much of anything.
But the problem with the Land without Faith, as Abram discovers, is that once God has invaded your life, once God has addressed you and given you a new name, you can’t stay.
You’ve got to emigrate. And so God presses a little compass into your palm, helps you on with your knapsack, and leads you into your new home, which is the Land of Faith, that in-between place, just as God led Abraham.
What kind of place is the Land of Faith? It’s not a bad place to live either, but unlike the place you came from, it is not simple. Things happen that don’t make a lot of sense.
In the old land, a geriatric couple without children is as good as dead.
In the new land, that same couple is told that their descendants will be more numerous than all the stars of the night sky.
In the old land, it’s the rules of the schoolyard; the biggest and the toughest always wins.
In the new land, a young boy, the baby of the family, can defeat a giant with a single stone between the eyes.
In the old land, if you’re successful it’s because you earned it, if you’re rich it’s because you deserve it more than that person over there, if there’s a rule for living it’s to look out for #1.
In the new land, people (interrupt a busy Saturday) get up early on a Sunday morning and make their way to a house of meeting, and dare to proclaim: our lives are not our own, everything we have is a gift, and if there’s a rule for living it’s to love one another even if we don’t like each other all the time.
That’s the Land of Faith.
That litany of biblical heroes sounds pretty amazing. “By faith, by faith, by faith.” But it can also seem very discomforting. What if God doesn’t speak so clearly to us? What if the faith we grew up with, the faith we have lived in for much of our lives, the faith of our parents, just doesn’t feel authentic anymore? What if we strongly suspect that maybe this is all there is—what we see?
Maybe we need to understand faith a little differently.
Gordon Atkinson is a pastor in Texas who blogs under the name “Real Live Preacher.” Here, in his words, is a story that speaks to me about a different kind of faith (http://highcallingblogs.com/blog/covenant-stories-our-first-funeral/2600/ )…
My wife met George Swisher at the hospital where she was working as a chaplain. George had AIDS and was in the hospital battling an infection of some kind. George was an avowed atheist. His father faithfully took the family to the Baptist Church on Sundays, but then he beat any idea of God out of George during the rest of the week. In George’s mind, his father, the beatings, and the Baptist Church were all rolled up together in a ball of painful memories. It’s not surprising that he hadn’t been in church for awhile.
One afternoon George was in a sleepy, drug-induced state and thought he saw Jesus standing at the foot of his hospital bed. He shook his head a few times and the vision of Jesus faded. About that time my wife walked into the room and announced that she was a chaplain. Normally George would have thrown her out, but the Jesus vision had spooked him a bit, so he let her stay. She did not push God talk on him. The two talked about life, laughed, and ended up becoming friends. I met George at a sandwich shop to talk, and in that conversation he confessed that he would like to come to church, but he felt it was a problem that he did not believe in God. I asked him why he wanted to come to church if he didn’t believe in God. He told me he remembered the hymns they sang in church when he was a boy. He thought he would like to hear that music again before he died.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Okay, come to church. People come to church for all sorts of reasons. Just sit there and sing hymns. You don’t have to do anything else. We won’t bother you or try to get you to convert or join or anything.” George was there the next Sunday, wearing jeans, black tennis shoes, a plaid flannel shirt, and suspenders. He sat in church, closed his eyes during the hymns, and sang along. He had a beautiful baritone voice, and within a few weeks, people were sitting near George so they could hear him sing.
I don’t have time to tell you how George became a Christian, and I don’t remember in any case. We never asked him. We just let him sing on Sundays and come to church picnics and be with us. We became his adopted family, you might say. One day George pulled me aside and said, “I think I’m ready to be baptized and become a Christian.”
“Really?” I said. I was surprised. “What happened?”
He scratched his beard. “Well, I don’t know for sure if there is a God. I still kind of doubt it, to be honest. But I started praying. I’ve been calling God ‘Dad.’ You know, like, ‘Hey Dad, can I talk to you for a moment?’ Do you think that’s okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “God, Dad, Father, Creator, Abba, whatever.”
After he was baptized, George’s act of service for the church was to stay after worship and pick up the hymnals. This he did with absolute faithfulness every Sunday. When it came time to elect deacons, I said we should vote for people who are servants of the church. I guess people immediately thought of George because he was always picking up the hymnals. So when half the ballots came back with George’s name on them, George became a deacon. He was completely shocked by this and kept saying, “Are you sure it was ME they wanted? There’s not some other George is there?”
It is safe to say that George was beloved by all of us. His approaching death had given him a sense of peace. He had lost any idea that he was going to get a lot done in his life. He was happy to come on Sundays and sing and put away the hymnals. How can you not love a guy like that?
But the inevitable finally happened. This was before the current AIDS drugs became so effective. …I got the call about 3 o’clock one morning.
And so we had our first funeral. It was a cold and cloudy day. George had a few family members there. Covenant people made up most of the audience. We had the whole service at the graveside. I cannot remember a single thing I said. Not one word. Which is fine, because I doubt anyone else does either. What we do remember is that George gave himself to God with an extraordinary act of faith. He prayed to God and put his life in God’s hands without even knowing that God existed. That, my friends, is faith.
We hear that litany of heroes… by faith, by faith, by faith… and we think that faith is all about believing a certain way. But there are two definitions of faith. One is belief, conviction, the head stuff. But the other definition of faith is more like faithfulness… commitment… action. You may not have much faith up here (in your head), but you can have faithfulness here (hands) and here (in your feet) in the way you walk on the earth. And that commitment is faith.
This is what Paul Jones realized as he struggled with whether the resurrection was true. (Source: 1996 Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference.)
The story goes that Paul was drinking a cup of coffee one morning and reading his Bible, and he stumbled across Revelation 21… the vision of the New Jerusalem, the new heaven and new earth—a place of no more crying or pain or even death itself. It’s the final destination. You might recognize that city in today’s passage from Hebrews—it’s the city that God the architect is building and planning. And he raised his coffee cup and said, “I’ll drink to that… and I’ll live for that.”
And as he read about the New Jerusalem that morning, Paul Jones suddenly knew that the question to live his life by was not, “Is the resurrection true?” but “What if it is?”
So Paul Jones’s conversion story was my favorite kind not a grand vision from God, but a decision, to live his life “as if,” to live in dedication to God and God’s vision for a new heaven and a new earth, even if he couldn’t prove it, even if it may never happen. To let faith be about faithfulness, more than just belief.
But, in the midst of living “as if,” sometimes the nagging questions come back.
Is it really true? Is there really a God?
Here’s what Paul Jones said about the “how do you know” question:
“I must stand before you today and say, I don’t know. Nor do you. But I have made a decision to gamble my life in commitment to that dream of the New Jerusalem.”
“And,” he went on, “If there is a God, and I pray to God that there is a God—
then my life will be a co-creator with God of that vision of the New Jerusalem.
And if there is no God, my life will be an undying protest against the non-existence of God.”
It’s a gamble. It’s a protest. It’s a risk.
What would it mean for you to pitch a tent in the Land of Faith, of Faithfulness?
Here’s the rest of the George’s story, from Gordon Atkinson:
George did not have many possessions. He left me a book and a rock. The rock was one he had gathered from our land. He kept this rock because he knew that he would not live long enough to see our church building there.
Two years later I asked the man who was building the rock facing of our church if he could put George’s rock into the church wall. He put it on the backside of the church, down low, right outside one of the Sunday school windows. I took a black marker and wrote “George’s Rock” on it. Every two our three years the wind and rain erase the ink, so I write it again.
It is still there today. A tender reminder of the power of faith and faithfulness.
May we all be so faithful.
