Where is Your Faith? - August 19, 2007

Imagine, you are on a camping trip. It is nighttime, and the perfume of pine forest is all around you, You have left your cabin for a peaceful walk. Your leaders for the trip take you up the steep hill behind the cabin. You are led to the middle of a forest clearing, and you are instructed to lay down on your back and to watch the night time sky. You are told that if you wait and watch, you will see an unbelievable surprise. You wait for what seems like an impossibly long time. You keep quite still as you watch the glory of stars undimmed by the presence of city lights. You watch and wait, and it seems that nothing happens. You begin to think that you have been trapped – that this is some kind of joke. But you faith in your leaders, keeps you waiting and watching. Then suddenly the sky is filled by a wondrous blazing meotor show. You silent waiting is replaced by awe filled voices, as you and those you are with rejoice in the wonder that you have just saw. You had honestly questioned this whole experience, but in the end you received a reward for waiting in faith, a reward beyond anything that you could have made up in your mind.
Perhaps we can do this exercise when we go on our church camping trip. Getting away and just watching the night sky always brings the reward of awe. There is always something going on in the stars.
And yet this is a representation of our life as faithful people. God is our ever present leader on a journey. God tells us that there is a wonderful surprise in life coming up, it will be something that is greater than anything that we can imagine. We wait and we look forward to this wonderful surprise, but nothing happens. We get doubtful, we start to think that perhaps God does not know what anything. There is no surprise in life, there is nothing to look forward to. There is only the day grind of things that need our attention, things that we need to get through. Life just is, most of the time there is no reward.
That was the attitude of the people of the new church- they were told that Jesus was coming soon – that there would be a reward for a hard life. Moments passed, as a matter of fact, by this time years have passed and nothing has happened. There are no signs of Jesus. This fragile church that Paul addresses in Hebrews is made up of both Jews and gentiles. They have been able to overcome their differences to become a united church. But they have also found that they are being teased by others in their community. People are telling them that they are wasting their time. There is no need to wait for a Jesus who is not going to show up. It just doesn’t make sense to believe in something that you cant see. Paul reminds them that just because you cant see it, that doesn’t mean that it is not there. Afterall, the stars in the sky put on a wonderful show each and every night, but how many of us really take the time to pay attention to actually watch it. God speaks to us and gives us a vision all of the time. Most of the time we are so caught up in our doubt and cynisim that we forget to listen to a positive message from heaven.
Paul uses the of Sarah and Abraham as an example of faithful living. He is 98 and she is 90. together they are almost a quarter of a millenuim. Today they would be living together in a nursing home. They have no children to take care of them, so they are reliant on the staff for all of their care. And all of a sudden they get a vision to leave the safe care of the nursing home, and to go out into the desert into a new land. They are encouraged to take care of themselves and to listen to that voice of God calling them forward. The nurses at the home are especially concerned about this strange disappearance of Sarah, because her blood test show something strange. They have never had to do a pregnancy test on any of their patients, but for some reason they did and found that she is pregnant. In the midst of the worst of circumstances, when they thought that all hope was gone, God made a promise the Abraham and Sarah, and god fulfilled on that promise. God promised that they would have a family so large that its number would be like the stars in the sky. Over 5000 years longer, we can marvel at the fact that god did fulfill on that promise. But what must it have been like to follow a promise that makes no sense, and has nothing to do with reality. God has made each of us that same promise, but how many of us have a faith to wait for that promise to be fulfilled? How many of us are even still enough to hear God make that promise to us?
When the church in Hebrews was discouraged, Paul went back into history. And showed that many who had come before had followed God’s voice in their lives. They committed to living a life of faith, some times they never saw that faith fulfilled, but the generation who came after did. It reminds us to think of our ancestors and the dreams and visions that they had for the world. Having an education was very important for my grandmother, but it was something that she was denied. She always encouraged me to do the best that I could in school and to take advantage of every opportunity that I was given. When I got to college we were told the story of racism on campus in the sixties. We were reminded that we were free to get an education because of the many who sacrificed their education to sit in and demand equal education for all people regardless of their skin color. It is that reminder of the past that inspires to create a future for generations to come. To create a world that doesn’t exist today. It exist only in our faith and God’s vision. Who are the people in your past, who created your world, who fulfilled God’s promises so that you can live. Paul reminds us that we all have faithful ancestors and in times of doubt, we need to remember their stories.
A father and his five year old daughter were sitting around together talking. As he was reading his paper, the conversation went to dolls. The father promised his daughter that he would build her a doll house. The next day, he noticed that the daughter started to gather all of her dolls, and to collect all of her little tea pots, and all of the other things that you would out in a doll house. He asked wife what she was doing. The wife responded that she had been promised a doll house, and that she was making preparations to move in. the husband immediately put down his paper, and ran to the garage to build that house. It was important to fulfill the plans of his daughter. He wanted his daughter to believe in him. God is a lot like that father, God wants to fulfill our visions. God will do anything to fulfill the promises that have been made to us. It has been said that it is not a great faith that we need, but we need faith in a great God and the great promises that God will fulfill.
Jesus puts a new spin on being willing to watch and to wait. He tells us that being a child of God is the most wonderful gift that we could ever receive, but that it also comes with a responsibility. Our watching and waiting is to be filled with disciplship. Waiting is making a choice to be obedient to God. God is steadfast in God’s promise to us, so we must be steadfast in our faith. Jesus tells two stories one of those we are able to wait in steadfast faith and one who is not.
First he tells of servant who wait for their master – and when he comes he puts on his apron and serves and feeds the servants. Jesus is the one who will serve us, who feeds us all that we need to get through life.
Then he tells of a man who falls asleep while guarding his house – and thieves break in and steal his possessions. For those who don’t expect it – Jesus Presence is like a thief in the night, that steals our life away from us. When we are expecting one thing – Jesus makes another happen. It all depends on how we formulate our priorities - is our life about what we want – or what God has called us to do?
We have no way of knowing when Jesus will return, but we can be sure that he will. What will he find us doing when he comes? When we are waiting as a faithful disciple, there is not need to be anxious over uncertainty. What we hope for in the future, affects how we choose to live our life today. When we die, we cant take our finances with us, but we can take our character. So are we building up our possessions or our faith? When we talk of our self worth are we talking about how much we have or how much God values us. In God’s eyes, we are worth more than you ever know. Shouldn’t we respond by faithful living?
Isaiah sums it waiting in Christian discipleship very well when he says – Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your doings, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan and plead for the widow.