Strangers and Foreigners on the Earth

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 1: 1, 10-20 and Hebrews 11: 1-3 and 8-16 Sermon Title: Strangers and foreigners on the earth Preached on August 11, 2019 My new friend Van Pearlburg asked me if I was going to be preaching from the book of Galoshes again this week. I told him that “It was Colossians, not Galoshes. And no, this week the sermon was about faith based on a passage from the book of Hebrews.” But what is faith? According to our Second Scripture Lesson, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Such a definition as this one broadens the way we think about faith, for we generally confine any talk of faith to the world of religion. In reality, there are all kinds of things we don’t know for certain are there, we just know they are. We have faith that they’re there. Take snakes for example. Jim and Flora Speed had a snake in the house week before last. They told me this story knowing they might hear it again, and here it is. They suspected it was in the catch-all room of their house. Their catch-all room came with a door that opens to the side yard, and do you think Flora needed proof that a snake was in there to avoid going into that room? No. Faith is the assurance of things not seen, and she didn’t have to see the snake to know that it was there. That’s faith. It’s not faith in God, per say. It’s faith in the existence of a snake, but my point is that so often we don’t need to know for sure that something is there to act as though it is. That’s faith. To act on her belief all she needed was the rumor of a snake. The shadow of a snake spotted by her husband. The skin of a snake discovered by a woman named Amanda who came over to catch the snake. Amanda from Animal Control came over to the house. Looked around the room where the snake was thought to be, and she said, “It’s under that book shelf.” “How do know that?” Dr. Speed asked. Could she see it? No. Amanda just knows enough about snakes: where they like to live and how they act, so after moving the books from the bookshelf, Amanda got her reward. A fat black rat snake that she took back to her property to reduce the rodent population. You see, you don’t have to know something for certain to be right. That’s faith. You don’t have to see something for it to be there. That’s faith, and we can apply that way of thinking to understand what faith in God is all about. Do we know for certain that God is at work in the world? Can we see God’s hand moving? All we need is to understand better the character of God and we will know well enough what God is doing and where God will probably be, but do we know God as well as Amanda knows snakes? Maybe not? It’s a story that’s been told again and again, that a man full of doubts went to visit his pastor in her study. “Pastor, I’m afraid I’ve lost my faith. I just don’t believe in God anymore.” His pastor responded, “Tell me about this God you don’t believe in, because I’m willing to bet that I don’t believe in that God either.” The God described in our Second Scripture Lesson is one who makes promises. Those who embody what it means to be faithful are the ones who believe that once God said it will be done, it will be, regardless of whether or not they can see it in plain sight. Abraham was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. Isaac and Jacob, were heirs with him of the same promise, but lived their lives in tents. Sarah was barren, [but] considered him faithful who had promised, even though her husband was as good as dead. And through them [Sarah and Abraham] descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” What is faith in God then? Is it holding fast to the belief that the Earth was created in seven 24-hour days? Is it never relenting on the conviction that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible? Or that Jesus was able to walk on the water as on the land? Believing all those things is just fine, however, do not be confused. For faith in God as defined by our Second Scripture Lesson has to do, not with some exacting standard of fundamental belief, but the absolute conviction that God has promised us a city, and while we have yet to arrive, while we can’t yet see it, we are still on our way there. Sometimes we make faith out to be some big, high academy, theological word. It’s not. It’s tangible. Then, at other times we make faith out to be some backwoods, anti-science, word. It’s not that either. It’s required of all of us, especially today. In our world today, to send a child to school is an act of faith. A new school year has begun. I’ve been walking our Lily to school each morning. Her little sister is now going to the magnet school out on Aviation, but Lily and I still walk to school together until we get to the corner of the school yard. That’s where she stops, gives me a hug, and walks on without me. I stand there and watch until she makes it inside. Most days while I’m standing there, she’ll turn around to wave at me. When she does that sometimes I’m overcome with emotions. How much I love and care for her. I’ll imagine what it will be like to drop her off at college. I stand there staring as she walks into her school and think about all these things that I can’t yet see or control, and I’ll pray that God will watch over her and all the other children in that school because ours is a world of uncertainty where anything could happen on any day. It takes faith for me to let her go. Only now I’m not sure that I’ve had enough. That’s because of what I learned just last Friday. Sara dropped Lily off, and on the way to school she said, “Mama. Did you know that when Daddy drops me off at school he just stands there and stares at me the whole time I’m walking? I know he does, because I turn around on my way to the doors, and wave for him to go on, but he just stands there.” What am I to say about these things? What I’d say is that too often this father is more controlled by fear than guided by faith. Of course, it’s easy to be afraid as a father. Maybe it’s impossible not to be, but when we give into our fear all we can do is stare. Immobilized, all we can do is hold our children to our chests. Controlled by terror, we react to the world without hope, and lose sight of the new world that God has promised. So, don’t look to my example. Look somewhere else. Look to Abraham, who could have turned back, but kept going. To Isaac and Jacob, who lived their whole lives in tents, but were preparing for something else. Look to Sarah, who was barren, but never gave up hope. Look to them and know that while around us is fear and hatred, Violence and war. While just walking into the Walmart takes courage – those who never fail to believe that a better world is coming and are bold enough to walk on toward it, are those who will have their reward. That’s what faith is all about, you see. Though tempted surely, they did not settle in and grow used to some reality of fear, terror, death, racism, ignorance, and hatred. No. They were not, nor are we citizens of this world of shadow, for God has promised us that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it. This afternoon at 1:00 our Mayor, Thunder Tumlin, has called on Marietta’s churches to assemble in prayer, especially for those cities most recently ravaged by gun violence. He called and asked me to help him pull it together, which I was glad to do, though I’m tempted, like many, to grow frustrated with a society who offers “thoughts and prayers,” but not much else. Today I feel differently, however. For if we all just stop to remember that God promises us a new heaven and a new earth, our thoughts are open to a different world than the one we have now, and if we are just bold enough to raise our voice in prayer, than, like the great heroes of our faith, we have called on God to help us make it so. Indeed, He will. So, let us have faith enough to follow. Amen.