Courage! To "Have Faith" . . . to Do Faith
November 19, 2006
Ralph DiBiasio-Snyder

Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-12, 23-27

Introduction to the Scripture

The book of Hebrews in the New Testament is a unique piece of writing. It's not my favorite. It assumes that we the readers know a lot more than most of us do about the Old Testament law. And it uses a method of theological argument that is quite foreign to us today unless you have done a lot of study in that area. If you read Hebrews without any background information, I'm afraid that you'll find the first ten chapters to be long, and rather tedious, obscurely theological.

It's all about who Jesus the Christ was and is, how he is superior to Moses and the law; how his death on the cross was a sacrifice for sin. We think that this theological treatise was written to a church of Jewish converts who had suffered a great deal for their belief in Christ, and who were now tempted to go back to their Judaism. In the first ten chapters the arguments, as I say, are close and dense and impenetrable without a lot of work, for most of us. But a phrase here and there shines out from the mists of abstractions. For example,

Overall, the point of the first ten chapters is that in Christ God has entered into the world, and by his pouring out his life for the sake of the world has opened to all the way of love, the way of faith. This is the great mystery that lies at the heart of the Christian story - how the life but especially the death of Christ - teaches us self-forgetfulness; teaches us to act on behalf of the weak (as Jesus did); and so live out the continuing, freedom-bringing word of God - the word that was in Christ, and now is in us, lives on when we act by faith.

With that as a foundation, the eleventh chapter is a catalog of the heroes and heroines of the Old Testament story. This is what faith looks like, says Hebrews. This is what faith does.

Listen now to a portion of the chapter that some have called the "Hall of Fame of Faith."

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Did you know that I once owned - I am not kidding you now - I once owned a key to - I really am not kidding you - Oral Roberts' prayer room. Oral Roberts - the faith healing, revival tent evangelist star of the 50s and 60s, founder of Oral Roberts (what else?) University, Tulsa, Oklahoma. High above the campus - not far from the 60-foot tall, thirty-ton bronze praying hands, modeled after Oral's very own - was the 200-foot prayer tower, and at the top was the prayer room where Brother Roberts, he assured me, would spend hours on his knees praying for my needs (if I would just send them in, with a donation). The key would let me in, on my next visit to Tulsa.

How did I get that key, you say? Some kind soul at the first church I served had thoughtfully sent in my name, putting me on Oral Roberts' mailing list. And one day in the mail came my key to the prayer tower, with instructions on how I could, by faith, send in a donation, receive untold blessings, many of them financial, and even have access to the sacred space where Oral himself prayed and wept and believed God for more blessings.

I lost the key. Actually, I think I threw it away. I should have kept it, though. For it was a turning point in my spiritual growth.

You see, I was raised in a very theologically conservative home and church. We proudly wore the label "fundamentalist" - but please don't think of the contemporary use of the word that has come to mean fanatically committed to radical far right-wing politics. Fundamentalists of the 50s and 60s were of a much kinder and gentler sort - and we would have nothing to do with politics. We pretty much kept to ourselves.

But we kept to the fundamentals of the faith too - as we understood them. And the most fundamental of those fundamentals was that "faith" begins with correct doctrine - orthodox doctrine - the right "beliefs" about God and Jesus and the Bible and the Cross and a whole lot of other things - the historic creeds of the church had to be accepted. Being a "believer" meant - or so it seemed to me - counting as True certain "beliefs." If you had the right beliefs, then at least you had a chance to be a faithful person - following Christ. It wasn't enough, just to believe in your mind the right things. One had to act on faith. But you couldn't start faith if you believed the wrong things. Faith began in the head - in assenting to the correct beliefs, as I say, about Jesus and God and the Bible.

So I had the world all figured out. We could judge a person's faith by the content of their doctrine - whether or not they gave mental assent to the creeds. If you believed the right doctrines you were in; it you didn't, you were out. Simple as that.

And then came the key to the prayer room. Oral Roberts in those days, in my mind, for all his emphasis on healing and prosperity - send in your "seed-faith" gift, he would say, and God will give you much more back - for all that, he said all the right things about Jesus and God and the Bible and the Cross and about being "born again." He was in the right camp, doctrinally.

But that key . . . . I thought to myself, "This is crazy!" The crassness of his appeal, the kitsch of his fund-raising, abuse of faith . . . . all embodied in that key in my hand opened my eyes to the obvious truth: "right" beliefs . . . in one's mind did not necessarily mean a right faith lived out. You can believe all the right things, and live all the wrong ones.

Just what is "faith?"

"Faith," says the writer of the book of Hebrews, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Does that clear it up for you?

Carol and I have begun something new in relation to our sermon preparation. This is the first week we've done it. And if this first attempt is any indicator, it will be a very helpful practice for us. Here's what we're doing.

Two weeks ago we sent out by email to a group of about 15 people a copy of today's scripture text. We asked them to read it, think about it, pray about it. We asked that they tell us what words, phrases, ideas seemed to jump out to them. What did these verses mean to them? And if they were going to preach a sermon on this text, what would they say? We're calling it the "If I were preaching" group. If any of you would like to be included in this experiment, do let us know and we'll put you on the list!

As responses came back this week, I was very pleased with the depth, and the breadth of their comments. You have some wonderful theologians sitting in your midst! People with great insights, and good questions about faith! I have taken their responses, and mixed them with my ideas and reading to offer the reflections on today's passage.

The first question to emerge was the key one, and perhaps the most obvious, namely, just what is "faith." That opening verse confidently defines it, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." "Assurance." "Conviction." But where does one get assurance and conviction? Does it just spring up? Or is it given to us - or not? Can we make our own? And what are the "things hoped for?" "Things not seen?"

The word "faith" can be used in a entirely non-religious context, of course. One of you said,

I doubt it too. Well, what does the writer of Hebrews have in mind . . . what do the scriptures as a whole mean when they talk about believing, about being faithful?

Let me offer some ideas, first of what faith is not. And then what faith is.

Faith is not "believing makes it so," the power of "mind over matter," mere positive thinking, with all due respect to Norman Vincent Peale. The "prosperity gospel" that is filling churches and stadiums around the world, promising to the poor that if they give much they will receive much, that God wants us to be fabulously rich, is not what Hebrews or anywhere else in the Bible means by "faith."

Nor is faith, as I said earlier in my story about Oral Roberts, intellectual assent to a list of dogmas, right doctrine. Think about Abraham and Moses: what did they believe about God, intellectually? Given that they lived at the very dawn of Hebrew religion - Abraham we call the "father of the Hebrew nation" - what they thought God was like, and what we believe about God today I would bet have very little in common. Nevertheless, they were people of faith.

Marcus Borg in his book The Heart of Christianity makes a convincing case that many Christians today think that "believing" means accepting certain dogma intellectually - even, he says, when we have serious doubts. "Faith," he says, "has come to be what you turn to only when knowledge runs out;" "believing a notion contrary to evidence, contrary to what reasonable people know to be true." [p.29] Borg says that such an idea of faith - mental assent to creeds - is not what biblical faith is all about. Instead, the faith that is commended here in Hebrews is about trust in God, loyalty to God, and vision to see God's will, all leading to action in the world. Abraham's and Moses' faith had not so much to do with what they "believed," as what they did, because of what they saw.

If it's not positive thinking, or mental assent to dogma, still less is it accepting as true things we know are not, what is it?

For one thing, faith is always forward-leaning. Faith has a lot to do with hope, because things hoped for are always yet to come. For Abraham, he was looking forward to a home, a land. Moses was looking toward a reward that outweighed the riches and pleasures of Egypt, the reward of freedom for his people. And for some of us today our hope is for another home, an eternal home. Heaven where all will be well, where, as the prophet writes, God will wipe away every tear, heaven has been, and continues to be for some of us, a powerful motivator to set one's priorities straight, to live as we are called to live. Possessions, power, influence . . . these are merely temporary, and always secondary to the "ultimate prize" of eternal life.

Faith leans into the future, the future to which we see God calling us. It gives us hope not just for heaven someday, but for this life: hope that, as one of you said, "while the world can be beating us up today, it can't beat us up for long."

Note that while faith leans into the future, it is always acting in the present. It is a way of being, moment by moment. It is a way of addressing the fears that go along with everyday living. And so one of you wrote, "Faith is a fear-buster!"

Faith looks forward, but acts in the present, to quell our fears, to move us ahead into God's future. I love the phrase, Abraham set out "not knowing where he was going." (A feeling I have quite often!) To act by faith is to act not knowing what's coming next!

And so, faith must have courage. Moses' parents, we're told, "were not afraid of what the Pharaoh might do." Well, if they weren't afraid, why did they hide the child? They must have been afraid, but yet they acted. Faith is always doing, moving, daring, overcoming fear.

And faith is having courage to trust God. To let God be God. By that I mean, instead of taking on our own backs the responsibilities of the world - even our little part of it - to let God be in charge. One of you told about growing up in a family that didn't have a lot of things, and that sometimes there didn't even seem to be enough food to feed all five children. But Mom would tell her children, "Have faith! God will provide." And somehow they had enough. I doubt that mom said, "Have faith! God will provide," and then sat down waiting for the groceries to arrive. I'll bet she did her part to make do, to be creative, to make a budget stretch. But as she did, she somehow knew that it was God, and not her, who would provide. Knowing that makes all the difference!

Faith is trusting in things beyond ourselves, ultimately, God. It is also a new way of seeing. In our passage there is a lot of "looking" going on. Abraham looked forward to a city built by God. Moses looked ahead to the liberation from Egypt. He kept his eyes on the one who is invisible. What are we looking for? How do we see the world? As threatening and hostile, dying? Or do we see it gracious, God-filled, growing? Faith is vision: it is paying attention to the world around us.

One of you said, "If we would only notice, we are blessed with myriads of hopes fulfilled each day." If we could only notice . . . see . . . really see the presence of God within us, among us, around us. Faith sees as God sees.

Faith. "The assurance of things hoped for." Faith. "The conviction of things not seen."

Let me conclude with two simple questions. What are the things we hope for - as individuals, as a church? What hopes will pull us into the future?

And what have we not yet seen - that we could see, that we should see? What could we see that we can with courage, by faith, start living out?

Oh, and by the way: keys to our prayer tower will be on sale in the narthex today.