An Open Table where Love knows no borders

Faithful Faith

A sermon on Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16 & Luke 12: 32-40 by Nathan Nettleton

Faith causes a great deal of anxiety for many of those who seek to follow Jesus. People worry about whether they have got enough of it. Perhaps it is not surprising. People who are seeking salvation and acceptance by God are inevitably going to be concerned with whatever it takes to be saved and accepted by God, so if it is works — doing the right thing — that saves you, they will be worried about whether they’ve got enough works, and if it is faith, then they will be worried about whether they’ve got enough faith. We evangelical protestants have put great emphasis on salvation being by faith and not by works, and so it is not surprising that, among us, people would then be concerned about their faith. Does it measure up? Have I got enough? How much is enough? How do I get more? How can I banish doubts that eat away at my faith?

Some people have had bad experiences that have made them feel even more anxious about their faith. Some pastors who have made a name for themselves for ministries of healing the sick through prayer have had the rather nasty habit of blaming any non-healings on a lack of sufficient faith in the recipient. “You need more faith to experience God’s healing.” Thus people are made to feel guilty for their own ongoing sickness or brokenness, and even more anxious about the inadequacy of their faith. “If I haven’t got enough faith to be healed, perhaps I haven’t got enough to be saved either.”

Tonight’s scripture readings have a bit to say to this fear. I want us to have a bit of a look at two of them. Firstly, and very directly, in our gospel reading we heard Jesus say, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Hear that? “Do not be afraid.” It is not really a command though, it’s more of a reassurance. Don’t be afraid, there is nothing to worry about. Relax. It’s all sorted. No worries. Why? Because “it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” God wants to give you the kingdom. God delights to give you the kingdom. God is jumping out of his skin to give you the kingdom. You’d have to try harder to get God to stop giving you the kingdom than you would to receive it.

So where does faith come in to that then? Well, it doesn’t matter how much somebody wants to give you something, if you don’t trust them, if you don’t have faith in them, then you won’t take anything they offer you. You know this in plenty of other situations in your life. I don’t know if your email is as bad as mine, but I get about two hundred spam mails a week, and most of them are making spectacular offers. About three quarters of them tell me that if I buy some little blue pills from them, I will become a sexual athlete who’s irresistible to women, presumably including my wife. And the biggest proportion of the rest are telling me that I’m about to receive a very large sum of money, either because I’ve won it, or because some terminally ill Nigerian millionaire wants to entrust it to me to put to work for the kingdom of God. Now despite the undoubted attractions of both these offers, I never click on the links and follow up on them. Why? Because I have no faith in them. I don’t trust them. I am sure they are scams. Now, I am aware that there is a very very small possibility that one of the ten and half thousand such emails I will receive this year could be genuine, and I’ll miss the opportunity. Sexual or financial salvation will have come knocking at my door, and I will have missed it due to my lack of faith. I’m sure enough that it is not going to happen to continue happily in my lack of faith, and I recommend that you do too, but you can see how if somebody really did want to make me such an offer for real, they’d have a hard time giving it to me.

Or another example, perhaps a better one. If you are driving down the road and it is pouring rain, and you see someone who’s got caught out without an umbrella or coat, what happens if you pull over to offer them a lift. Well, if you are strangers to each other, and especially if you, the driver, are a bloke and the person caught in the rain is a woman, then very probably, no matter how cold and wet it is and no matter how keen you are to help, she’s going to refuse your offer. Why? Because she has no faith in you. She doesn’t trust you. There is no way to communicate the benevolence of your intentions in that situation. She could have been saved from the rain, but her salvation required faith, and she had no grounds on which to put her faith in you.

So what does it mean for us to have saving faith in God? Simply that when God pulls over and offers us a lift to the promised land, that we trust God enough to get in. Now I’m not, for even a moment, suggesting that you should start hopping trustingly into cars with random strangers. Such faith or trust is earned. If it was me who pulled over and offered you a lift when you were stuck in the rain, you’d probably hop in without the slightest hesitation. At least I’d like to think you would anyway! Because you know me, and you know that I’m not going to take advantage of you. I have, I hope, earned that trust from you. So the question is, has God earned your trust?

I think these illustrations are helpful too because they give us some insight into what the opposite of putting your faith in God might be. The opposite is not neutral; it is distrust. If you won’t hop in when God offers you a lift, it is because you suspect that God might have hidden malicious intentions; that God might be going to take advantage of your faith and rip you off or abuse you. And that might be fair enough. Because even though God does apparently offer us the gift for free, we do seem to be asked rather more than just accept the lift, don’t we? God always seems to say, “Happy to drop you there, for sure, but there are a few things you won’t be able to take with you, and a few attitudes and patterns of behaviour you’ll be needing to change if you’re going to get along when you get there.” So the question is, is God just being sneaky and promising us a free ride before starting to up the ante? Apparently that’s what those Nigerian scammers do if you respond. It’s all free and its all yours, but you’ll just have to send us a little deposit to get the wheels rolling, and then another one, and then there’s a little problem and we may need one more, a bit bigger this time. And when we look at these words from Jesus, the very next verse says, “Sell your possessions, and give alms.” So, is God a Nigerian scammer, or is God for real?

When we turn over to the reading we heard from the letter to the Hebrews, this question reappears from anther angle. In Hebrews 11, there is a big list of past heroes of faith and examples of their faithfulness to God. We only heard a little bit tonight, a bit about Abraham, but there is a much longer list there. And as it said in the bit we heard, “all of these (heroes) died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.” In other words, they put their trust in promises that God made and went to their graves without seeing those promises fulfilled. So was their faith in vain? Well, the author of the letter is adamant that it wasn’t, but that’s easy for him to say. They’re not about to jump up and contradict him, are they? It certainly gives more poignancy to his opening definition of faith: “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Some of them will remain unseen as you go to your grave. But don’t get too caught on this definition, because it easily slides back into the idea of faith being something measurable, and do you have enough assurance and enough conviction or not. The writer to the Hebrews uses an interesting word play throughout this passage. He slides back and forth between the idea of “faith” and that of “faithfulness”. Faith is not something you have more or less of, it is something you do. Faith and faithfulness blur into one. How much faith do you have? How loyal are you? How faithfully are you following? Do you hop in when Jesus says hop in, or do you stand back suspiciously and weigh up the risks? Do you hold out your hand willingly when Jesus says, “This is my body, take and eat,” or do you shy away, concerned that it may be a trap that will bring your world crashing down around your ears?

Now, of course, I can’t answer these questions for you. And, as our reading from the letter to the Hebrews suggests, I also can’t stand up here and tell you that everyone who has ever trusted God has lived to see their trust borne out and everything they anticipated from God fulfilled. What I can tell you, and what I think this list of ancient faith stories in the letter is telling you, is that I have not been ripped off or abused by God. Sure, much has been asked. I’m among those who would be a bit wary of calling it a free ride. It may have cost me nothing, but it has demanded much of me. But what I can say, is that I have found it to be consistently worth it. That, in a way, faithful discipleship is its own reward. It is not easy. It is sometimes quite painful and difficult. But I don’t think there are any easy alternatives you could choose anyway. Certainly when you look closely at the lives of the fabulously wealthy and beautiful, they don’t show any indication of being filled with joy and peace and contentment.

Putting my faith in God, through Christ, in the power of the Spirit, by getting on board and taking one faithful step at a time, even if often interspersed by a few unfaithful and backwards ones, I have found that I have gradually become a different person, a person more like what I want to be, like what I know I should be, and hopefully the person I was created to be. It’s just one faithful step at a time, one little step of confidence in things hoped for, of conviction of things not seen, often taken in the face of considerable doubt and uncertainty. Doubt and uncertainty are not the opposite of faith, they are the context in which faith is exercised.

I can’t tell you how it will work out. Neither could Abraham. But I can say, it’s a good ride. Hop on board.

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