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Sermon: Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (C) - 8th August 2010
St Aidan’s Anglican Church West Epping 8:30
Readings: Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24, Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 Luke12:32-40
The reading from Hebrew’s is a statement of faith and hope that is a great passage which has been so rich in the life of the Church down through the ages, following on from the original benefit the Hebrew believers received.
This letter was written to those men and women who had likely been good, upstanding members of the Jewish faith community. They were, in our terms, the ones who had been in the mainstream church for generation after generation after generation. Most of them probably knew their pedigree and their family's pedigree in that church, members from the very beginning.
At some moment in that strange transformative time of history, these were the ones who had heard the call, had seen a vision, had been told that there is another city, there is another way to go. They had heard the call of the kingdom. What it meant was that they had to turn away from all that had been comfortable, from all that had been reasonable, safe, secure, and respectable. They had stepped out in a direction that was totally unpredictable, following a leader who had ended up on a cross.
The writer speaks to them in loving, understanding and challenging ways, reminding them about when they first saw that light. You can just imagine what they must have gone through to take that step out of the mainstream into the wildness: into the wilderness with no assurance but the presence of God.
Not only were these people themselves publicly vilified and accused, called fools, stupid, subversive and all kinds of other names but not being satisfied with that, some of them apparently went and stood with other people who were being accused in the same manner. They saw no real escape, no real safety for themselves as long as there was someone who was under that same kind of persecution.
After 15, 20, 30 years some of the recipients of this letter were tired of this strange way. Some of the Hebrew Christians were surely wondering if they should not go back into the familiar way of their fathers and mothers. Everything was much clearer in the old way. Everybody knew exactly what should be done in that way because people had been doing it for thousands of years. Compared to this Christian business, it seemed a safe way and there must have been in many minds a tremendous temptation to escape all this vilification, abuse, strangeness and having to constantly be walking on the edge.
The writer goes through a list of Jewish heroes who had lived by faith: Abraham, Enoch, Sarah, Noah, including a prostitute, making it clear that faith in God is available to everybody who is open to living by faith. Then the writer says that Abraham went out, not knowing where he was to go. That is a powerful image, important not only for the lives of those Hebrew people, but for our lives too. The call comes to us to go out to a place that does not fit into the computer program, where there is no predictability, where there is only wildness and unpredictability. For all of those who believe that the Christian faith is a life of security, must think on Abraham’s faith for a little while. The Christian faith is not meant to lead to a life of security; rather, it is meant to be a life of "creative insecurity". If you are secure, you don't need grace. If you are secure, you don't need prayer. If you are secure, you don't need brothers and sisters. If you are secure, you don't need the power of God. If that is you, then you've got it all made.
A life based upon faith is a life of walking, teetering, always not being quite sure whether or not you've made the right decision, but still enduring and calling out, "Where is I, Lord? Please hold my hand while I run this race, because I don't want to run this race in vain”.
Then we're told, " Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. He set out, not knowing where he was going . This is a marvellous way of telling us something about the way that we are called to live for our age. We are living in an age in which all the old sureties are falling apart, in which all the old structures that gave so much promise of security are breaking down and there is nothing for us to do to do but set up our tents and say, I see something else different. Set up our tents and say, I see a city that is in the process of being established that is not divided by gender, race or class. I see a city where men and women and children of every race and every class are living and loving and working together to create a new society: a compassionate and just society, a beautiful city. We can say to ourselves, say to the world, I see what is being established and I'm not just going to sing about it. I'm not just going to talk about it. I'm not just going to create beautiful liturgy about it. I'm going to bet my life on it. I'm going to be out there with my tent, ready for the time when the new city comes. I'm going to help make it come. I will be dressed and ready and with my lamps lit.
That's how things get started, by people taking wild bets with their lives. I'm going to set up my tent here until the time comes for the real buildings to be built and when they're built, I'm going to be right in the midst of them because I'm going to be among the builders, seeing things that nobody else sees, picturing new ways of living, seeing cities that people say are crazy, totally unrealistic that are outside of what is expected. That happens when we are able to testify out of our dreams, in our tents, awaiting the Bridegroom’s arrival: I believe in holiness. I believe in righteousness. I believe in justice. I'm ready for a new kind of city, for a new kind of coming together of men, women and children who can really celebrate the love and the grace of God. That's what Hebrews is talking about here. Acknowledging that all these crazy visionaries and tent-dwellers from long ago: All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth .
Such people are like Martin Luther King who said, " I've been to the mountaintop. … I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, … will get to the promised land!”
That's what it means to live a life of faith, not trying to gobble everything that you can get your hands on, not saying that if I can't see it, if I can't have it myself, then I don't believe in it. It means knowing that there is a city set out there, within here, for God's people, for all people, a city that is better than anything we have known. Living by faith means knowing that this is not someplace in the sky, but that it is in the hearts and lives of the women and men who will work for it, who will seek to create it.
Living by faith is knowing that even though our little work, our little seed, our little brick, our little block may not make the whole thing, the whole thing exists in the mind of God and that whether or not we are there to see the whole thing is not the most important matter. The most important thing is whether we have entered into the process.
That's how your soul can be calm about the future, when you stop being selfish, when you stop thinking, working only for yourself and start dreaming. Your soul is calm when you realize that your life is not meant to be captured just in your skin, but that your life reaches out to the life of the universe itself. Simultaneously the life of the universe reaches into us and demands of us that we be more than we think we can be, demands that we live out these dreams.
Therefore, we look again at the letter to the Hebrews, the letter to us and realize that this is living by faith. For people who speak and act in this way make clear that they are seeking a homeland, going to the homeland, bringing in the homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, the land of safety, the land of security, the land of doctrinal clarity, then they would have had the opportunity to return. However, these crazy, wild sojourners desire a better country, which is a heavenly one. Therefore, we are told, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for God has already prepared for such people a city.
Are you dressed for action and your lamps lit?
This sermon based upon an article in Preaching the Word, http://www.sojo.net by Vincent Harding “ In the Company of the Faithful: Journeying toward the Promised Land”.