God is Faithful

August 8, 2004 (Tenth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 14)

by The Rev. Bruce Hall, Deacon

- Genesis 15:1-6
- Psalm 33
- Hebrews 11:1-3(4-7)8-16
- Luke 12:32-40

(From The Lectionary Page)

In the readings and sermon from last week, we were reminded that we are going to die and that much of what many of us work for, the “stuff” of our lives, is going to go to someone else. The worry and anxiety that we have given over to this “stuff” will pass with us as well. On its own, those readings can be depressing. On their own, they sober us. Yet, those lessons do not stand alone but are coupled with today’s reminder—that God is faithful.

Yes, the material world that we so often wrap ourselves up in is indeed going to pass away and is transitory. God is not, but is enduring and faithful to us, his children. We are given examples in the life of Abraham where God reveals himself and commands him to go to a promised land and a promised life of abundance. God simply says “go” and Abraham responds in faith—not necessarily understanding everything—indeed surely didn’t—and begins a journey in the belief that God is faithful. And when it came time for Abraham to pass along all his “stuff”, to name an heir, he became understandably anxious not having a legitimate heir according to his culture. Noting his age and his wife’s barrenness, he question’s God’s faithfulness in an all too human manner.

God was asking him to believe the unbelievable, which is not something that you and I find all that different today, I think, in our own lives. God often asks us to believe the unbelievable. To believe that Sarah could give birth? Abraham becomes a father? Impossible! Laughable! Yet, who of us in our own experience does not have something that we deem so impossible, so laughable, that it will never change and things never be different? The something broken in our lives shall never be restored? Something hurt never healed? Yet, God is in the habit of asking us to believe the unbelievable here in our modern world where we like to think we have a handle on how things work. The laws of gravity and physics comfort us and we can conceptualize the world as the collection of sub-atomic particles that we see pictures of in our science books. It is as if by having an explanation for how things fall or explode, we have control of it as well and enjoy a sense of security, though one wonders if knowing how the ozone layer got depleted is really that comforting when we reflect what its decay means for our future. In fact, such security is an illusion for even as we unwrap the wonders of God’s creation in our pursuit of knowledge, our lives remain short and events within them beyond comforting prediction. The possessions we use, we are only borrowing, the homes we might have owned for years we, in fact, are merely renting and your car, leased. We are only passing through and, in the anxiety of this truth, we often place our trust in the “stuff” of this world and lend to them our energy and time in exchange for false and transitory peace of mind.

God calls us to trust in God and to be more like the flowers and birds of last week’s lessons even as we face God’s “unbelievable” promises of the present moment and to wait for the Lord. It could be likened to crossing an elevated glass walkway, one that you could more easily feel rather than see, experience through one’s feet rather more than comprehend with one’s mind. Imagine what it might be like for you to walk on such a contraption and to feel, experience, a foundation even as your other senses might tell you there was nothing there and supply the fear to “prove” it. God asks us to do this in our life with God.

The reading from Hebrews tells us of such faith. I have a fond memory of this scripture being drilled into me while attending a bible college. Our as I should say, a B-i-b-l-e, in Byeeeebul college. The translation used read that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things unseen.” Faith was the “proof” the “facts.” We want facts today. We want to understand or believe that we know how the world works. This approach doesn’t always work with God. God really does seem to work in mysteries and even some fairly weird ways. Faith is not dependant upon our understanding how God is going to be faithful.

While I was at that same bible college, I was a young person and struggling with the knowledge that I was gay. And I believed that homosexuality was something warped, twisted, and evil. But, I had faith that God was going to change me and I prayed to God to heal me. “Heal me! Save me from this suffering!” I also thought I had a good idea of how God was going to do this. God, like magic, was simply going to say <snap>”You’re attracted to women.” But, the only thing that seemed to come in time was that I learned to “snap.” I was looking for something else, you know, altered sexual passion, and feelings, a complete rewiring. Still, I kept praying. I read the bible and believed that God was faithful, but asked “when is this going to happen?”

My experience became that God seemed to work in other places in my life. God was faithful in God’s way. This did not happen in a magical, instantaneous manner for me, where everything changed overnight and I woke up liking football. Rather, God was faithful in the everyday, ordinary events of my life and, I suspect, God is faithful in the ordinary events of yours too. God’s faithfulness is experienced over time of which our mountain-top experiences are but moments. It is in our relationship with Christ along our journey of faith that we encounter multiple experiences of God’s faithfulness. It is our relationship with Christ that we can take our comfort and not in our own senses of how God should act if God only got around to asking our advice. God has been so incredibly faithful with me, in healing me, but not in a way I would have dictated, but in a way that was amazing, strange, and bizarre. To have been lead to a place where my sexuality was affirmed and reconciled was such an unexpected joy—and very strange. God was faithful beyond what I could ask or imagine.

I wonder if many times when we experience frustrations or anxieties, brokenness, or things going wrong in our lives, whether or not we pray for God to help us but give advice on how to do it as well. We can trust God, but it may require us to let go of things we rely upon, preconceptions to which we are attached of how things ought to turn out. Christ invites us to attach to Him instead. And there is something in that response in attaching to Christ where we then become more able to see the faithfulness of God within us and without. Man, that feels scary, kinda uncertain like a glass sidewalk. God knows this is true with us just as he did when Peter tried to walk on water. Yet it is precisely in those moments when we give up on our more common senses and give into God that our initial tentative faith becomes transformed into the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” This is something that we experience within our relationship with God and not outside of it. We know love from others not because we possess it or control it but because we experience, feel it with each other which is it’s own evidence and proof. God calls us to a relationship where we trust in God’s word, and when we do, we begin to experience something altogether new. Not something that changes things and us, as if by magic, but something that shows us that through the journey of our life of faith that God is faithful. Through sometimes wild and unpredictable ways or the mundane routines of daily life, your Father loves you. Your Father will provide for you. Your creator and sustainer will give you all that you need. It may be though the everyday experiences of your life. But chances are its not going to be as you expected. When I was in college, today’s gospel was interpreted that Christ could come at anytime and so one best have their life cleaned and ready otherwise there would be hell to pay. I don’t know about you, but I figure if no matter when Christ might come in my lifetime, I’ll have some explaining to do. Thankfully, God’s faithfulness is not dependant upon us; God’s faithfulness is dependant on God. And God will be faithful to us in ways we haven’t expected. Dare we risk trusting God to follow through? Maybe though the lives and touch of our neighbors and this congregation, or with people we haven’t met in places we haven’t been—yet. Abraham isn’t the only one asked to just “go” and trust along the way, so am I, so are you. Amen.