11th Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture Readings:
New Testament – Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-13a1
1Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. 3By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.
8By 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. 9By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised. 12Therefore 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.”
13All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.
Gospel – Luke 12: 32-402
32“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
35“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.
39“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. 40You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
“Faith Is the Assurance of Things Hoped for.”
While we were swapping stories about our grandchildren, a colleague of mine related a funny, but significant, story about a conversation that he remembered having with his son when his son was just four years old. The boy had been sitting on his father's knee listening to a children's story about faith. When his father had finished he asked his son, "Matthew, do you have faith?" His son looked up at him and said, simply, "No. I have toys."
I wonder what most of us really treasure? Where is it that we focus most of our time and energy? Is it in our "toys?" If that's true, how much real satisfaction do we find in them? Our scripture readings for today suggest that by centering our lives in God, we'll discover that there's more than enough real treasures – things that really count – to go around: like love, peace, justice, liberation….
Another story was told of a family that has two small sons, ages six and four. The boys have been caught up recently in that wonderful world of the imagination and are completely occupied with racing after adventures over that endlessly receding horizon known as childhood. They come down every morning (and have for days on end now) outfitted for the day's quest in well-worn but oddly appropriate costumes. Today the older one wears a complete cowboy outfit, with a Stetson that looks like it's weathered quite a few rodeos; his younger brother has on black rubber boots, a yellow rain slicker and a fire chief's hat that settles down over both ears. In a constant state of preparedness, they're always carrying around things like miniature flashlights, Game Boys, walkie-talkies…and since they're all pocket-sized, they've come to rummaging around in their mother's kitchen junk drawer every other day where there's a ready supply of replacement batteries. Eyes glowing with expectation every morning, they're sure that something amazing is bound to happen that day; and they're ready! They could've been poster children for the words of Jesus given to us in today's gospel reading: "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit…be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."3
When Jesus told his followers to "look to the children"4 as examples of how to get into "the kingdom of God,"5 I like to think that he remembered adventurous quests of his own from his childhood. One more joy of being a grandfather, I've discovered, is to be constantly reminded that children – whose work is their play – show us that we don't have to know exactly where it is we're going in order to get ready to go. The kind of excitement and hope conveyed in the eyes of children as they set out on a trip, is something that we adults ought to recapture – even if our knowledge of the destination might be just as vague as it is for them. Children have learned how to hold hands and walk trustingly into a future that, even though they can't see it, is still filled with optimism and promises to be fulfilled.
Ann Ulanov in her book, The Wisdom of the Psyche, encourages us to:
…think of people who have lived this [kind of] love into the world, people in whose presence, whether they are male or female, you feel the capacity to be [re-]born.
I think of a woman in Harlem who has been written and talked about in New York quite a bit the last few years. For forty years now, after finishing her raising of her own children, she has been taking into her home the infants of drug-addicted prostitutes. She is now in her eighties and very well known in Harlem. Women come and leave their babies on her doorstep. The babies they bring are addicted. She does not treat them with drugs, which is the usual medical way with children. She said in one interview: "I love them back into being." ….There in her, is the love we have been talking about, love pulled into the world, love brought almost violently back into circulation….
This circulation of love for which we may be the house forces us to step out into the unknown, to leave the familiar, as Abraham did – whether it be for job, relationship, marriage, country, whatever. It moves us to take the good offered us.6
This is how I understand "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."7 Faith is an attitude toward the future, not the present; it’s about tomorrow, not today. Faith isn't something that we embrace on those days when everything's fallen into place, but on those days when everything's coming apart at the seams. From that point of view I'm prompted to wonder whether or not the author of Hebrews would consider us to be a people of faith…or not.
What do you think?
Then I remember the words of Jesus: "…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."8 Where does our treasure lie? If you and I were one among that first great "cloud of witnesses"9 to the Jesus-event, wouldn't life in God be our treasure? Opening our hearts and minds – as well as our doors10 – to the fullness of life as it was lived by Jesus, could lead us from doubt and denial to hope and to faith – and with whatever assurances and convictions we are given, we might just find that, as mysterious as life might be, it somehow makes sense.
I do remember a cartoon, though, that appeared in the New Yorker magazine some time ago; it showed what looked to be like an aging professor crouched over a desk piled high with books. His grinning face hovers over an enormous tome that's open in front of him, as he exclaims, "Wow! For a minute there, it suddenly all made sense." Of course, the unstated message is that most of the time it doesn't.
Many of you were able to join those of us who read and discussed Marcus Borg's book, The Heart of Christianity recently. Like many lay persons, as well as other colleagues of mine in the ministry, I too want to acknowledge Borg's insights that I've come to endorse – in fact, his work and the scholarship of the "Jesus Seminar"11 have done nothing less than revived my passion for the ministry and renewed my hope for the church.12 Alongside guidelines given by The Center for Progressive Christianity,13 Christian theology has been re-centered, for me, in the biblical themes of liberation and deliverance, instead of the desolating themes of sin, guilt, and shame – that must then beg for forgiveness. Even though there are wonderful stories in the Bible about blindness and seeing, sickness and health, doubt and faith, I find compelling the two themes that Borg points out are at the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures: they are the story of the exodus (of bondage and liberation) and the story of the exile (of homelessness and homecoming). It's the priestly story, sadly (with its emphasis on sin, shame and guilt), that has remained, to such a large extent, the story of the church.14 It's the one that's deeply ingrained in our memories, while the stories of exodus and liberation, of exile and return, have been practically forgotten.
If sin, shame and guilt are left to dominate our understanding of Christianity, they will continue to deform our sense of being human, and block any positive relationship we otherwise might have with God – as it has for far, far too long to so many women, gays, and others who live on the margins of contemporary society. Christian orthodoxy, I really believe, has prevented our best and truest selves from ever coming to the surface. We grapple with our sin and our guilt, and out of shame beg for forgiveness, only to repeat the same process over and over again. That point of view contradicts the basic Christian fact that we are loved and accepted – right now, at this very moment – and we’re invited to embrace that fact so that we might get on with life.
So, on those days when everything is hanging together, to say that God is our treasure is easy, but on those days when everything is falling apart, we seem to be on a different treasure hunt – one where we're choosing, instead, to invest in things like our own security, success, wealth or happiness. The only lasting treasure, we’re told, is to let go of those things that enslave us, and come back home to the goodness of creation that is at the very heart of God. For far too long, the blaring messages of the marketplace have drowned out the simple themes of liberation and homecoming – good news given to us in Jesus.
That's what our scripture readings for today are all about; that’s what our liturgy for today means to remind us. We are being called back to the assurance of things for which we have always hoped, and to the conviction of things that we, ourselves, may never have seen, yet still know are there. That is the real treasure.
* * *
1 The Letter to the Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians who were in danger of giving up on their faith. It’s in this letter, oddly enough, that we’re given the definition of the so-called “unforgivable sin” (6: 1-6) – that after coming to believe in God, as God has been revealed in Jesus Christ, you reject it all.
Faith here isn’t defined in the way that Paul has defined it – as a gift – but as an attitude of confidence: the operative phrase here being “the assurance (hypostasis, in Greek) of things hoped for, the conviction (elenchos) of things not seen – but that phrase has also, legitimately, been translated: “the realization of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” or “the reality of things hoped for, the demonstration of things not seen.” As my professor of New Testament Greek, The Rev. Dr. Mickey Efird, was fond of saying to all of us about the multiple possibilities of just such translations as this: “Pay your money and take your choice!”
For all of the great heroes of the faith, though, it wasn’t always the way things were that concerned them, but the way things might be – if all of the faithful would just act on the basis of their deepest hope. That’s the vision that called them, and that continued to animate and inspire them. It might be our own as well. There ought to be demonstrated, living evidence of the reality of those things that we say we believe in.
2 Our gospel reading comes from a particularly esoteric portion of Luke's collection of sayings that’s related to speculation about an "end time." All we know that it’s a time of impending crisis. While the other two synoptic gospel accounts, Mark and Matthew, seem to be referring to some kind of cataclysmic intervention of the resurrected Christ at the end of time, Luke focuses our attention on a crisis that's much closer to hand. It could be the approaching climax of Jesus' ministry and the judgment that's about to overtake the nation – we don’t really know. In Luke's view, though, the coming crisis is not only about Jesus' death, but the testing of those who’d chosen to be his followers. When "all hell breaks loose," where will their ultimate loyalty lie? Indeed, where will ours?
3 Luke 12: 35a, 40.
4 Cf. Matthew 7:11 and 18: 3-5, but especially with 19: 14 (in concert with Mark 10: 14-15 and Luke 18: 16-17).
5 And, again, I prefer a more contemporary translation of that phrase to connote less of its hierarchical manifestations and more of its communal aspects: "commonwealth" is a word with a better feel for me at the moment; others have come to use the even more manufactured word, "kin-dom" (to emphasize our "kinship" vs. that which continues to artificially separate us – especially the notion of privilege, even "divine right," that's for far too long been associated with royalty).
6 Ann Ulanov, The Wisdom of the Psyche (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cowley Publications, 1988), pp. 99-101.
7 Hebrews 11: 1.
8 Luke 12: 34 (also Matthew 6: 21).
9 That quote from Hebrews 12: 1-2 is worth repeating:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…."
10 Okay, so this is my rather left-handed reference to the relatively new media campaign slogan being touted by The United Methodist Church – note their website at http://www.ignitingministry.org/default.aspx.
11 See http://www.westarinstitute.org/Jesus_Seminar/jesus_seminar.html and the rest of Westar's site for its work.
12 So I would include – along with Marcus Borg – such biblical scholars as John Dominic Crossan, Robert W. Funk, Elaine Pagels, Karen Armstrong, Arthur J. Dewey, Roy W. Hoover, Glenna S. Jackson, Karen L. King, John Shelby Spong, Robert J. Miller, Lane C. McGaughy, Marvin W. Meyer, James M. Robinson, Daryl D. Schmidt, Bernard Brandon Scott, Mahlon H. Smith, Hal Taussig, Walter Wink, Sara C. Winter…and many, many others (the list is too long and, wonderfully, growing!).
13 See their website at www.tcpc.org – particularly “the 8 points” which are presented elsewhere there.
14 These themes were first most clearly presented to me in chapter six of Marcus Borg's book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), pp. 119-137.