Genesis 15:1-6
Psalm 33:12-22
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40
Issues of faith
and belief are not always easy to talk about, not least of which because even
as mature Christians we have not yet learned to make the distinction between
believing something to be true – the intellectual
assertion of this or that – and believing in someone. We can too often confuse believing something
or someone, with believing in
something or someone. The former, is
usually based on facts and analysis, it is about accepting something as true or
false. The latter has to do with faith. When we believe in something, or especially when we believe in someone, we have entered into the realm of faith. We are saying that we trust the person, that
we trust their reliability, their dependability. Faith in the Judaeo-Christian tradition does
not have much to do with believing in the sense of simple, quantifiable facts
we can examine then accept or reject.
Rather, faith takes us below the surface of things. Quite simply, it has to do with trust and with
relationship.
Biblical Hebrew
has several words which can be rendered faith – about
nine or so. In its meaning, each of
these conveys come nuance of trust or reliability. In today’s lesson from the Hebrew
Scriptures, most particularly, the word translated into English as faith is aman. This word has various
meanings, and while it can be translated as believe, its various contexts
reveal its meaning to convey a sense of certainty about God and God’s character, a total trust in God, as well as a willingness to
continue to rely on God no matter the problem or circumstance. If we want to translate it as “believe”, we must think not in
term of believing whether or not God
exists or believing something to be true about
God, but instead believing in God and
in who God is, how God relates to us
and to all of creation. It is a much more
holistic approach than we normally associate with the term “believe.” The New Testament, on the other hand, uses
the Greek word pistis to describe
Christian faith. Socially, this word was
commonly used to describe the trust one may have in another person; but Pistis was also the name given to a
minor deity of good faith, trust and reliability; and who, along with the other
virtues and graces, was “associated with honesty
and harmony among people.” In later Christian theology, when Latin
became the dominant language, the word used was fides. This Latin word meant
simply “ ‘reliability’, [the] sense of trust
[necessary] between two parties if a relationship between them was to exist.” As is so often the case,
the early Christians took a common word of everyday use, a concept of everyday
human activity and gave it a deeper nuance, as they tried make sense of the new
reality and paradigm inaugurated by Christ.
Christian faith, then isn’t about believing or not
believing. It is about trust, the sort
of trust which is fundamental to relationship; and after all is it not
relationship to which God calls us, what God desires with us, and what we say
we desire with God?
If God is to be
more to us than simply a cosmic gift dispenser whom we pester as and when we
find ourselves in need, then we must think more in terms of relationship, and
there trust is essential. Relationship – any relationship – will always at some
point take us outside our comfort zone, and when that happens mere belief never
serves us well. Not least of which,
because belief in the sense of intellectual conviction only happens when we
have been able to process the facts and come to terms with what they
represent. It happens precisely when we
have become comfortable; comfortable with the reality the facts show us and as
we accommodate our reality to them.
Intellectual belief can be the safe option. However, only faith will ever take us beyond
ourselves. Intellectual belief is a
private affair, but faith never is.
Faith is always trust in another.
It requires knowledge of the other, even intimacy. It requires relationship, and as such it can
point us beyond ourselves to truths larger and deeper than we can discern on
our own; truths beyond the surface facts.
Take Abraham, for
example. The facts privately and
intellectually considered could never have held out to him the possibility of
posterity, much less of a lasting name.
Thinking of God still merely as a dispenser of favors, Abraham says “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and
the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?”…Behold,
you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” (Genesis 15:2, 3) Only
when God showed him a reality he could previously never have intellectually contemplated
– “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to
number them.” (Genesis 15:5) – only then, and almost
mysteriously, does faith come to Abraham and he believes, he trusts God. He actually enters into a relationship which
will take him to places he could not even yet imagine. Nevertheless, his trust in God, in who God
is, in God’s own faithfulness and reliability means that he can enter into
that new reality – whatever that reality will mean or be – he can enter it confidently; and only faith makes this possible.
The Christians
for whom the letter to the Hebrews is written are in a similar situation; a
situation in which the purely intellectual assessment of their circumstances
does not foster conventional security, but instead just the opposite. As we read later in the letter, the decision
to trust in God’s promises and follow Christ had cost many their social standing
and made them objects of ridicule, hostility and violence. It had cost some their financial security and
even their liberty as they faced imprisonment. (cf. Hebrews
10:32-34) Certainly, the letter hints
that a number of them were wondering if this was all worth it and that perhaps
some had already abandoned the profession made at their baptism. So, the letter’s
writer reminds them that this is not the whole story, and by way of
encouragement recalls to them the fundamentally relational nature of the faith
they profess. He succinctly defines this
faith for them, as “the assurance of things
hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The writer places the nature of faith
squarely within the context of relationship, within the context of trust,
reminding them of faith’s inherently risky
nature. He reminds them of Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah, and holds them up as shining examples of this kind of
faith. They voluntarily left behind all
the respect, rootedness, security they enjoyed in Chaldea and accepted the
lower status of rootless wanderers as they “looked
forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” (Hebrews 11:10) He reminds
his fellow Christians that they too have entered into a relationship with God,
and that that relationship requires trust, faithfulness. It was not an intellectual exercise
primarily, but one of the heart. Like in
any relationship, we do not abandon the other simply because things don’t turn out the way we expected, or because outside forces work to
undermine our commitment. Indeed, in the
case of the latter particularly, we hold on tighter, seeking in our
faithfulness to weather the storm.
Sometimes to those around us, and sometimes even to ourselves this may
not seem reasonable, but real faith sometimes enables us to see what others
cannot immediately discern, it enables us to see beyond the simple facts.
Our Episcopal
commitment to reason notwithstanding, it is important to grasp a firm hold on
this biblical understanding of faith, because the call of the Gospel, the call
of the entire Judeao-Christian tradition is to relationship – relationship with God, relationship with others; and for real
relationship to flourish we need trust, we need faith. Faith is not about ignoring the facts, but
about trusting the promises made by someone we know to be reliable, and knowing
that sometimes – even oftentimes – simple, easily
discernible facts do not tell the whole story.
The facts do not tell the whole story of Abraham and Sarah, neither do
they tell the whole story of those for whom the letter to the Hebrews was
written. Indeed, it is their faith,
their trust, which makes any sense of the facts as they are, which makes any
sense of conventional belief. For
Christians, faith allows us to go beyond conventional believing and by trust
enables us to hold on to a promised reality, regardless of immediate
appearances. It teaches us to hope in
the midst of seeming hopelessness, and allows us to learn a new criteria for
making sense of the world and of our lives, as we move into closer relationship
with God, and into the paradigm of God’s perspective. The immediately discernible facts are never
the whole story, and at some point, if our commitment to the Christian life and
our relationship to God are to grow and deepen in maturity, we will simply have
to trust, make the leap of faith. And here
I must stop, I think, because I can not definitively tell you how to do that, much less can I tell you
what making that leap will look like or mean for you. The only way to discern that is in prayer as
we, like Abraham, go out into the open, risky spaces of our own lives – outside of ourselves and our neatly intellectualized facts – and listen to God’s vision for us.
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