Our second reading today comes from the Book of Hebrews. Hebrews is a rich and complex work. Many scholars think it was originally a sermon in which the preacher is exploring what Jesus is all about, the meaning of Jesus and his work in this world, its purpose, what God was trying to do, how it works, how it is accomplished, and its meaning for us.
As I said, it is a rich and complex work and there is a lot of stuff in it. One of the major themes that keeps recurring is the issue of salvation, how salvation is achieved through Christ, and why it matters. When Hebrews was being written or preached for the first time, it was the first century. In order to talk about Jesus they didn’t have things like the Gospels or the Epistles. Those were all being written about the same time, so the Gospels were not yet widely distributed to all the communities. So the author of Hebrews doesn’t have that to rely on. Instead, the author relies on Scripture as they understood it in the first century, which is more or less the Old Testament we have today. The author is taking those stories in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, the Samuels, the Kings, the Chronicles, the major and minor Prophets, and showing how it is that Jesus is understood in light of those stories. How do they help us understand what Jesus is all about. It goes the other way, too, how does Jesus understand those stories. There is a mutual interpretation going on in this rich and complex sermon that was being given.
There is some interesting stuff in Hebrews. You can see how the preacher has a creative and holy imagination. He is able to take stories that I suspect we do not remember, like the story of Melchizedek which is three verses in Genesis. If it were not for the Book of Hebrews, we would not remember Melchizedek and how the priesthood of Jesus and the priesthood of Melchizedek are related, how they interact and help illuminate each other.
But the part we have for today is Chapter 11. Right before this chapter, there is a line that says, “we are not those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.” Salvation comes through faith. This is a profound and important statement that the preacher makes. It is also a statement that raises a lot of questions. One is what is faith, and that is our reading for today. We get the answer to the question, what is this faith in which we find our salvation.
It begins, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for.” This is a very nice bumper sticker kind of answer. But what does it mean? As I said, the author likes to use the stories that everybody who would be hearing this understood, how God has worked in the world, and uses them to illuminate the concepts or ideas the preacher is trying to make.
That is exactly what we have in Chapter 11. The author gives us a great review of the story of salvation, of the story of the ancestors, the great cloud of witnesses, in order to illuminate what faith is. Faith is a mushy concept that has to be embodied in real actions for us to grasp it. So the preacher tells the story in today’s reading of Sarah and Abraham. We have heard a lot about them in the past few weeks, how they went on an amazing journey leaving behind everything at home in order to follow God to a new land based on a wild promise, a promise that they would be the ancestors of a great nation, a promise they were already too hold for when the promise was made, but they trust in God and go in spite of their doubt. Certainly they are too old by the time the promise is realized. The reading today is the second time that God makes this promise to them, and we see that Abraham is getting a little fed up. It is only going to get worse. He will laugh the next time God says it, and then the next time Sarah is going to laugh when God repeats the outrageous promise.
That is not the only story that the preacher references here. You notice in our reading there are a few verses missing. They are the faith stories of Cain, and the stories of Enoch, and the story of Noah. It will continue on with the story of Isaac and the story of Jacob, the story of Joseph, the story of Moses, and so on. It is a review of the great story through the lens of faith: what is faith? How did these people live in faith? As the preacher tells these stories, which are already known, he doesn’t need to go into them in depth. Some of them are paragraph length, like we had today about Sarah and Abraham, but some are just sentences. Noah had faith because he built an ark. Joseph had faith because he secured the future of his family. They are little touchstones to remind people what the story is, and how it is they had faith.
You can imagine this as a sermon and the congregation looking at their watches and thinking get on with it, so the author gets to a point where he just starts name-dropping. “What more should I say, for time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Baruch, Samson, Jephtha, David and Samuel and the prophets.” But he knows as they heard each one of those names they would remember their stories.
In the process of going through this great review of their ancestors, the people would start to paint a picture of what faith is all about. That picture that we see painted is of the radical trust in God. People going on adventures and journeys with ridiculous promises. People standing up against great odds for justice and against the great empires. Think of Moses standing up against the greatest empire in the world at that time, Egypt, in order to achieve the Israelites’ freedom. These are stories of faith. Stories of the little guy fighting the big guy. Stories of challenging lions and facing fires. Stories of helping those in need. All these wonderful stories paint this image of what faith is all about.
Faith is not, in the author of Hebrews understanding, about getting it all right. Faith is not about doing the right thing all the time. Faith is about trusting in God.
At my house, we are currently reading aloud The Lord of the Rings. This week there was a part that stood out to me as embodying this understanding of faith that Hebrews is talking about. This takes place in Chapter Three. Frodo has sold his house and started out on the journey, but they haven’t gotten very far. He and his companions get to a point that one of the companions, Sam, has never seen before. It says that Sam’s round eyes were wide open, for he was looking across lands he had never seen to a new horizon. Frodo recites this poem that he’s not sure if he picked up from Bilbo, or if he made it up himself.
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then I cannot say.
Faith is a journey along the road, taking it as far as we can see, and then taking the next step into that part we cannot see. Going on that uncertain way with only this one certainty in mind: that God will be there, to be with us, to walk with us. God is there in that unknown. That is the journey of faith, knowing but not seeing, that out there is the larger way, that our own path along that road of faith will meet up with the paths of others, with Sarah and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Miriam, Samson and David. All those great ancestors’ journeys, and our own journeys are all about trusting in God. Not always knowing, but continuing to walk even when our feet get weary. Not necessarily knowing it all, not having it all right, not doing it perfectly, but taking the next step.
AMEN.
