Live by Faith and Hope

August 7, 2022
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Hebrews 11:1–3, 8–16; Luke 12:32–40

Are you waiting for something? Are you expecting something to happen, but you don’t know when? We spend a lot of our time waiting. We wait in line to check out at the grocery store. We wait for the light to change from red to green. We wait for the inspiration to come. We wait for the computer to boot up. With all this waiting, you’d think we would be good at it. We should be able to wait, as Jesus said, “like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet.” Our lamps are ready to be lit, we’re awake and alert, ready to go!

The thing is, we know that when the waiting is over, the time for change has come - and change is scary. The moment comes and… we let it pass us by. The big day arrives and we’re afraid to move, to act, to change, to stop waiting. There is a song by Sarah McLachlan that captures the sense of despair that can accompany waiting:

Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance
For a break that would make it okay.
There's always some reason
To feel not good enough
And it's hard, at the end of the day.[1]

Waiting is comfortable. We have our routine, the same day to day, week to week, a comfortable rhythm. Waiting doesn’t require much of us. The thing is, if we just wait, often what we hope for never happens. Maybe what needs to happen is waiting on us.

Abraham had been promised a land, a people, descendants numbered like the stars. But ages went by, and he and his wife, Sarah, grew old. Still, he had faith. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he 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.” Even as he waited for the promises of God to be fulfilled, Abraham continued to do as God asked, until finally God came through. “Therefore, from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, ‘as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.’” Abraham lived by faith and hope, and became known as the father of many nations.

After college I took a job at the bank. Just something to pay the bills while I waited to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. It was nine years before my waiting was over, and by then I had grown pretty comfortable with my routine. But I had faith and hope for what was next; and when I felt called, I got moving.

Change for me meant leaving my hometown of Denver, moving to a tiny apartment in Chicago, and starting school again. It was very hard to leave that old life behind. I left my family, my friends, and many things I loved. I fell to a low point of loneliness and sadness in that time. But with the help of my new community, the strength and wisdom I had gained as I waited, and with some faith in the calling I had received, I began to rise from that low point and in my new life I began to shine.

The change that comes at the unexpected hour may begin with things getting worse. It is difficult to overcome inertia. There is loss, and some cherished things must be left behind. Moving in a new direction takes a lot of energy. There are those who will oppose the change, and will tell you that you’re making a mistake. I remember thinking, “What have I done?” But with the help of those around you, with faith in the strength of God to see you through, and with the knowledge that the light of the world has come into your heart, you can face the end of waiting.

Maybe you’re ready. Perhaps you have made purses that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven. Your lamp is lit. You’re at the door. The excitement of finally going fills you with joy. Isaiah, the prophet, was ready. When he heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” He replied, “Here am I; send me!”[2] When the road ahead is clear and well-marked, and you’re ready, moving on is easy. When the way is less clear, or a fork appears in the road, we hesitate.

A decision must be made. Which way shall I go, which choice shall I choose? Often, it is facing a decision, choosing one thing and losing another, that causes us to keep waiting. We fear making the wrong choice, or losing out on something because we have chosen something else. The songwriter David Wilcox puts it succinctly:

I was dead with deciding - afraid to choose.
I was mourning the loss of the choices I'd lose.
But there's no choice at all if I don't make my move,
And trust that the timing is right;
Yes, and hold it up to the light.[3]

When the waiting is over, start moving. If you hold your choice up to the light, you’ll be moving in the direction that leads toward God. The change may be hard at first, but don’t give up hope, for after the fall comes a rising. The prophet Simeon said that Jesus was destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel. We are a resurrection people, and though we fall, we rise again to new life, and to the fulfillment of our calling to seek the realm of God.

“But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Let’s be ready when the time comes, trusting that the timing is right, already moving forward with faith and hope, forward toward the kin-dom of God.

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[1] Sarah McLachlan, “Angel” on Surfacing (Wild Sky Studios, 1997).

[2] Isaiah 6:8.

[3] David Wilcox, “Hold It Up to the Light” on Big Horizon (A&M Records, 1994).

Race Across the Sky

September 15, 2019

St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

How many of you remember Usain Bolt from the last Olympic Games? He was amazingly fast. He practically strolled through world records. Watching him run was like watching a superhero.

Superheroes are big right now. There have been not a few films about superheroes in the past few years, with many more in the works. We enjoy watching superheroes. Perhaps it is helpful to imagine that our problems, or the world’s problems, could be solved if only there was one person, one gifted with super-human abilities, who had the courage to take a stand. Perhaps we like to watch because we can imagine being the superhero ourselves, if only for a couple of hours, and it makes us feel powerful.

The Letter to the Hebrews holds up some superheroes of the bible for us to remember. These heroes accomplished amazing feats of strength and courage by faith, by the power of God working within them. The writer lists several, but acknowledges there are so many that there is not enough time to tell about all of them. And that’s just the ones in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. Many more heroes and heroines could be added from the New Testament; and from the two-thousand years of the history of the church could be added millions more. What a great cloud of witnesses!

It is good to remember our ancestors, to repeat the stories of heroism from our common history. Yet, we must do more than simply recite the old stories. We need to understand how their lives, and their stories, impact our lives. There is a paraphrase of Hebrews 11:40 by Eugene Peterson that I find helpful in understanding the connections. “God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours” (The Message). The story of their faith is not complete without the story of our faith, and ours is not complete without theirs, because we’re part of the same story.

We are part of The Story capital “S”, the big story that, for the ancients, began with Adam and Eve. For us it began with the Big Bang, or perhaps even long before. It is the story that is still being told. The bible tells some very important parts of that story, but it is not the whole story. And that is why we’ve been known to say “God is still speaking.”

Imagine a relay race. The baton is passed from one runner to the next. But this is not a sprint. This race is much longer, longer even than a marathon. It is like the “Race Across the Sky,” also known as the Leadville Trail 100 Run. That race is one-hundred miles of extreme Colorado Rockies terrain — from elevations of 9,200 to 12,600 feet. Or perhaps the race is more like the Olympic Torch relay, where the fire keeps passing from one to the next over thousands of miles. And like a relay race, other hands have kept the flame before us, and other hands will carry it on after us. And one day we will join that great cloud of witnesses.

The story of the faith of Saint John’s United Church of Christ in Union is like a marathon relay race. The story of the United Church of Christ is like the Trail 100. And the big story of the Christian faith, passed down through the ages, is like the Olympic Torch run. There are others running with us, some who have been running for a long time, and others who have only started to walk. Some cannot walk at all, and yet they participate in the race as well. That is the story of our faith.

In his book, Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope, Walter Brueggemann describes the story of the community of faith in which we share “a past of life-giving miracles, a future of circumstance-denying promise, and a present tense of neighbors in fidelity.” The stories of heroic deeds from the past, the stories of faithful people following the will of God, can inspire us today to be faithful to who we are, to keep on running the race, no matter what is happening around us, no matter how things appear. Our story is, as yet, unwritten, still unfolding, still being told.

Now, if the thought of trying to run 100 miles at 12,000 feet of elevation makes you want to faint, remember this: keep your eyes set on Jesus. Jesus ran this race before us, blazed a new trail, and set guideposts on the way. Jesus continues to run beside us. And Jesus will make sure that you don’t run this race in vain.

It might help to remember that those ancestors of our faith that are mentioned in the Letter to the Hebrews, they were not super-humans. They were human, just as flawed and failure-prone as the rest of us. Moses wasn’t permitted to enter the Promised Land because he had broken faith with God. Rahab’s life was spared, but her home, the city of Jericho, was destroyed. David didn’t get to build the Temple because of that business with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, whom David murdered.

It is encouraging to me to know that even these heroes of old were deeply flawed yet deeply faithful. Maybe there’s a chance for me yet. Maybe I need someone to remind me that it’s not by my own power – let alone super-power – that I endure or accomplish anything, or even live. I am able to do what I can only by the power of God working through me.

We don’t run this race in vain, and we don’t run it alone. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. We are joined on the journey by family and friends, fellow runners who can encourage us to keep going. And we have Jesus who runs the race with us, just ahead of us, guiding the way.

We are running in the big race, the Story with a capital “S”, and that means that what we do matters. It matters not just to us, but to those who have gone before and are now watching us as we continue the same race. It matters to those who follow us who will need examples of faith to fortify them as they, too, run the course. It matters to those who run alongside us, who fall and need a hand to get back up, and who reach out a hand to us in need. What we do matters because we will have added our own stories to those written long ago. Our faith story is not “apart from” the faith of our parents or our great-great-grandchildren. We’re part of something greater than ourselves, a bigger picture, an ancient story that is still being told.

As we run, we draw ever closer to the coming of God’s reign – the peace, and justice, and healing of God so badly needed in our homes and families and neighborhoods, and in places far away, like Iraq and Egypt, the Sudan, Afghanistan, and Syria. We run a race which is long and hard, but with the knowledge that God will not let go of us when we stumble or fall, knowing that God will guide our feet, in faith we shall not fail to pass on the fire.  Amen.