The Front Porch Church

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

I grew up in Waynesboro, VA, a small city about the size of Owen Sound up here.  One of the cherished childhood memories that I have is of my grandparents’ front porch.  The experience of a summer evening spent on their porch greatly contributes to the ideas that I have of the way things ought to be.  They lived in the same house they had lived in since Granddaddy came home from the War.  It was three blocks off Main Street, a block from the police station where Granddaddy was Chief of Police, a block from the 7-11 where Grandma sent us to buy her cigarettes, a block from the grocery store and the bank, two blocks from the library, four from the “Y”, a block from their church that they didn’t get to very often.  There was even a barbershop on the corner of their street.  Such was their “neighbourhood”.

This was no a wealthy neighbourhood by any means.  It would be a stretch to call it even middle class.  Had they been into status Grandma and Granddaddy could easily have afforded living in a much more upscale neighbourhood, but Granddaddy wasn’t like that.

Chief Benson was a quiet, calming presence on the street.  If there were a human being that I imagine Jesus being like, it would be him.  He was wise, compassionate, humble, and brave.  He knew when to get involved and when not.  He minded his own business.  If you needed someone to listen, he was good at that.  It was a good, safe neighbourhood because of him.

Sitting on their porch in the summer after dinner involved swinging on the porch swing or jumping off the steps.  You’d have to listen to Grandma talk.  She knew everyone’s business.  There’d be talking back and forth across the street with the neighbours.  Everybody who walked by was greeted.  We kids would run circles around the outside of the house or ask to walk to the 7-11 on our own.  Sometimes we’d eat watermelon or cantaloupe or have an ice cream cone.  It was a neighbourhood and it was good.

Let’s talk about church in their neighbourhood. The church that I mentioned was one of four that stood side-by-side.  It was the First Baptist Church.  First Presbyterian was there too, as well as the main Episcopalian congregation.  The other was Lutheran as best as I can remember.  No one from the immediate neighbourhood actually went to these churches.  Being the city big steeples they drew mostly from the wealthy good citizens who lived elsewhere, out in the nice neighbourhoods.  All of these churches went through major declines starting in the late 1990’s to which they have adjusted.  They are smaller now and still drawing from the wider wealthier Waynesboro area. 

These congregations exist not as churches that serve their immediate neighbourhood, but as churches that invite you in with the expectation that you will make it central to your life.  This way of church, this “come from everywhere else and be a welcome part of our church” mindset has an inherent, long-term side effect that affects many churches that are not connected to their immediate neighbourhoods.  The people in the church over time become so involved with one another that they disengage with other networks of relationships and lose contact with the world “out there”.  These churches begin to struggle when the people in the church begin to say “my only friends are my church friends.”  Its great to have Christian friends, but if your only friends are your church friends, how then is your church to grow?  More over, evangelism in this setting consists largely of trying to covertly convince people that there is something wrong with their existing network of friendships and “our” Christian network of friendships centered on keeping an institution going is somehow better for them. 

One of the biggest shifts happening in the North American church that’s helping churches return to being vibrant is reconnecting with their immediate neighbourhood through a parish model of ministry.  The parish is an old way of doing things that developed when we didn’t have denominations competing for resources.  My grandparent’s neighbourhood certainly did not need four big steeples standing side by side.  It only needed one to serve them, but there was nothing of the sort.  The result of that was I really don’t think anyone in that neighbourhood actually went to church.

Let me plant an idea seed in you.  My grandparent’s neighbourhood like every neighbourhood had plenty of front porches.  Imagine one of those porches becoming a neighbourhood nexus for worship, fellowship, and neighbours meeting the real needs of neighbours in Jesus’ name. 

A parish church is a church put in a place simply to serve the people that immediately surround it.  It has a minister and the church leaders, who come from the neighbourhood, are intimately connected to the needs of their immediate neighbours.  In the parish church the concerns of the neighbourhood are the concerns of the church.  The purpose of the parish church isn’t so much the conversion of individual people but the transformation of the neighbourhood.  Conversion/faith follows on the coattails of transformation.

The parish church seeks to be the front porch presence of Jesus in its neighbourhood.  Just as the Gospels portray him, Jesus, in the work of the Holy Spirit is out there among the people doing his ministry.  We need to get away from a “come to church and get Jesus” mindset and start thinking of ourselves as joining in with Jesus in his mission and ministry out in our neighbourhoods.  Church can’t simply be somewhere we go.  It must be where we live.  We need to imagine and organize ourselves around mission rather than around “church” – mission to the neighbourhood where this building sits.  Church missions thinker and author David Bosch somewhere said: “It isn’t the church of God that has a mission in the world, it’s the God of Mission that has a church in the world.” (see the introduction to Text & Context: Church Planting in Canada in Post-Christendom; Uban Loft; 2013; ed. Leonard Hjalmarson) 

Looking at Hebrews, the Christians to whom Paul wrote this letter met in peoples’ houses and most of the congregants came from the immediate surrounding neighbourhood.  They didn’t travel halfway across town to meet at a church that met their consumeristic flavour or because “this just felt like the right church for me”.  You went to church at your neighbour’s house because by the Spirit Jesus was there among them in their neighbourhood.

What we have in our reading today is Paul giving advice for how Christians should be as neighbours.  First, “let mutual or brotherly love continue.”  Love everyone as friends who are family.  Love your neighbours as family even the ones you don’t like.

Second, show hospitality.  Once again this is not about how we make our churches more hospitable so that when people visit they will like us.  It’s about making this church or the church that meets on my front porch hospitable or more like a home to the people who live immediately across the street who ain’t like us.  It might mean having weekly free meals where people who are a little tight this month due to their bad habits or a disability can come and be treated with respect and find Jesus among us.

Third, Paul tells them to remember your neighbours who had been imprisoned for being Christians as if you were there with them.  As they were likely being tortured, remember you are one body with them.  Admittedly, this is odd advice for us, but there are those in our midst who suffer at home because their spouses are not sympathetic to their faithfulness to Jesus.

Fourth, happy marriages make for good neighbourhoods.  Support your neighbours in their marriages.  Honour your own.

Fifth, the love of money, “keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.”  The Lord is the one who provides for us what we need.  Jesus will never leave us or forsake us.  We do not need to fear anything.  That is advice we need to abide by in a culture in which we just have so much stuff when so many others have nothing. 

Sixth, the leaders in the neighbourhood church are those who walk the talk of the teachings of Jesus among their neighbours.  We should imitate their faithfulness.  My grandfather, even though he wasn’t very regular at church at all, was a good example of this.

Seventh, in, with, and through Jesus we offer a sacrifice of praise in our neighbourhoods.  This is not standing on our porches and singing “Praise Jesus” repetitively while we strum something that sounds like the theme song to “Friends” on guitars.  Paul defines this sacrifice as doing good and sharing what we have.  These are sacrifices pleasing to God because they join with him in what he is doing in our neighbourhoods.

I challenge you to think of ways this congregation can reconnect with its immediate neighbourhood.  The Holy Spirit is out there already working.  Where and how do we join in as the body of Christ?  Better yet, whose got a front porch we can gather together on and start being the church in the neighbourhood? Amen.

Cleaning the Fishbowl

Luke 13:10-17

A few years ago when I was at my last church while on vacation I went to church and then to a place called the Shwarma Queen for lunch.  That's Middle Eastern food.  When I got there to my surprise it was closed on Sunday.  I had to settle for Subway.  How dare they ruin my Sunday after-church eating plans?  Hopefully you know I'm joking.  Actually, I suspected they were Christian and likely from Lebanon.  Instead of cursing them I asked God to bless them for having the devotion to close on Sunday. 

I don't think I would be too far afield to say that we all are a bit amazed anymore when we discover businesses that are closed on Sunday especially restaurants.  Sunday after church is usually the third busiest meal in the restaurant business.  Even though the church crowd is known for being the worst complainers and stingiest tippers restaurants tolerate us for our business.  When I was a child only the odd restaurant and gas station/convenience store were open.  Now, it’s the odd business that’s closed (and yes we view them as odd) and worse, Sunday mornings are now fair game for children’s sporting events which only pits church in a losing bout. 

Over the past fifty years this cultural change has come upon us and it’s not that it wasn't protested.  Sadly, those who did protest were usually vilified as religious extremists – Pharisees, like the man in our passage, or legalists and fundamentalists.  In the big picture, the loss of a national Sunday Sabbath is simply part of the fall of cultural Christianity in the Western world signalling that Christianity is no longer the default religion of North America. 

This has been a source of great anxiety for the North American Church particularly the mainline denominations.  But it has not made us anxious enough to really change our ways.  An interesting fact about human beings is that when we are told that our lifestyle, our daily habits, are killing us and that death will be imminent within a few years if we do not change our ways only 20% of us will make the necessary changes.  80% either will not or cannot change.  The statistics get grossly worse when it’s a group of people.  Statistically speaking, in a group of forty people 20% means only eight people who are actually capable of making changes.  If the key leaders of the group are not among the eight, the likelihood of change is nil.

I have been in ordained ministry for 19 years now and I have had exposure to many different congregations either as their minister or as a representative of Presbytery.  I have noticed in nearly every church I have worked with that though they realized the need to change or face grave financial challenges and/or death they did little more than try to find creative ways to continue on as they always had. 

It makes me think of this woman here in Luke’s Gospel who was bent over for 18 years.  In the Greek Luke says that she had a “spirit of sickness” or “spirit of weakness” that was bending her over and making her unable to stand upright.  I don’t think he meant a demon was doing this to her.  I think he meant she was sick in her disposition, in her mental and emotional state, and this sickness was symptomatic in her body, causing her to bend over further and further and not be able to straighten up.  More over, what was going on with her body was affecting her thinking.  Ask any doctor, there’s a huge connection between mental health and physical health.  A sick spirit can make for a sick body and sick body for sick spirit.  And in the end, this sickness has drastic consequences for our relationships.

Bent over as she was, how do you think this women felt?  What do you think her thoughts were?  She would have to be one rare blossom in the Royal Botanical Gardens not to be depressed, bitter, and hopeless.  Imagine not being able to see any more than the patch of ground right at your feet.  The pain must have been unreal.  No self-worth.  Imagine not being able to look someone in the face and it be painful even just to turn your head so you can look up at somebody who is only looking down at you and seeing first and foremost what’s wrong with you.  Imagine people thinking you’re cursed for having done some horrible hidden sin that you won’t confess.

As I said a moment ago, I’ve been ministering for just over 18 years now and most of the churches I have worked with have been bent over with a spirit of weakness.  We are stuck in seeing our declining situation and have grown sadder and weaker and more hopeless and we’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that we will die and there’s nothing we can do about.  We try things but in all honesty these things are only meant to keep us doing what we’ve always done.  We are stuck in seeing ourselves and our world and the role the church and Christians play in it in a particular way that is skewed by Christianity having been the default religion in this culture and now that we are not we are bent over with a spirit of weakness.

Tripp Fuller who hosts a podcast called Homebrewed Christianity said the other day: “We are like fish swimming around in a dirty fishbowl.  Everything we see is skewed by the fact that we are swimming around in our own poop and pee.  And, it’s not that our scales are dirty.  It’s that the water needs to be changed so that we can see clearly.”[1]  Sorry for the crude example, but my seven-year-old daughter has a fish and I know exactly what he means.  Apart from some pretty hefty parental intervention that fish would have died a long time ago.

We are stuck in a fishbowl where the only way we can really imagine doing church is the way we’ve always done it.  From our “fishbowl” we look out onto a world in which we seem to believe that everybody out there is thinking about God and wants to please God.  We seem to believe that they believe Sunday’s are sacred and that they feel that participating in church is integral to a meaning-filled, God-filled life.  We seem to believe that they are going to show at church and swim in the comfort-filled fishbowl of our dirty water that needs to be changed.  Though we think about God and value church, the majority of people out there do not.  Quite frankly, they are anti-God – at least, anti the God we’ve been presenting.  If Sunday is sacred to them it is because it is their only day off.  These folks just aren’t going to up and decide to come back to church because they know church participation is integral to a meaning-filled, God-filled life.

I don’t think we need to get out of the fishbowl, but we do need to get our water changed so that we can see what’s going on out there more clearly.  Unfortunately for us, what is needed in the church today is that we do the hard work of changing the way we imagine the world around us.  It’s not simply for the survival of our congregations that we need to be concerned.  More so, we need to be concerned that the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the love of God is not being proclaimed out there in our communities now that people don’t and won’t come to church and frankly couldn’t care less.

Instead of trying to imagine what it was like for this lady to see the world from her bent over position lets try to imagine what it was like for her to see standing straight up.  That would be seeing the world of faith.  Chesley and Southampton haven’t had the pleasure of tolerating me the last two Sunday’s, but here in Dornoch and up in Chatsworth I have been talking about what faith is.  Faith is the sphere of reality in which God is making his plans and purposes for his creation actualize.  God promises and it happens.  By his Word, Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit God causes us to become participants in this sphere of reality that will ultimately become all of reality.  
Faith is like a fishbowl that is growing ever bigger.  When at the word of Jesus that spirit left the woman, she stood up straight, she stood up into the sphere of reality called faith.   To speak of faith from our end is not to speak of things like subjective beliefs about God, about what I chose to trust and believe.  Rather, it is to talk about faithfulness and living in the way that is proper to Jesus and the way of the cross; the way of the one who danced on the Sabbath and cured lame.  In this woman’s case, she simply stood up straight and learned to live from that perspective.

In all our churches since this Cooperative was formed we have had a sense of renewal, of Jesus saying "Stand up!  You're weakness has left you." But, there's still some standing up that we need to do to see the world differently and actually change.  We cannot let Jesus words fall on deaf ears.  Jesus has freshens the water lets stand up and see what's different.  We cannot let this just be a cheaper way of being and dong the things that we have always been and done. 
How do we change the water?  Well, the way we see the world is shaped by the questions we carry within us.  We shape our lives around how we answer those questions.  Think of a child.  If a child spends her days wondering things like “where do bugs come from”, “what makes grass grow”, or “how do rockets work”, that child is going to go in a profoundly different direction than the child who is preoccupied by “what’s wrong with me that other kids won’t play with me” or “why do people make fun of me?”

Looking at the women in our story here from Luke, it is easier for us to imagine how she saw the world in her bent over condition than it is for us to imagine what it was like for her to see the world from the perspective of being healed by Jesus and standing straight-up.  Healed and straightened doesn’t look as much like "our fishbowl" filled with dirty water as bent over does. 

As congregations we need to begin to imagine ourselves as “the church sent into the world” rather than “the church to which world the world must come if it wants to get sorted out”.  The questions we need to stop preoccupying ourselves with are ones like “how can we make our churches more friendly and welcoming and hospitable to our guests when they come?”  “What can we do to make church more attractive?”  Those questions are the church version of “What’s wrong with me that nobody wants to play with me?”  They inadvertently lead us not to change but simply to finding ways to continue to do the things we’ve always done.

Rather, being “the church sent” means we are not expecting people to come in our doors to meet us and maybe Jesus but are rather focused on joining with Jesus and working in his ministry of being sent into the world to save and heal it.  We need to begin to ask not “how hospitable am I when people show up at my house”, but rather “how good of a guest am I when I show up at other peoples’ houses?”   We need to be walking around our neighbourhoods and communities prayerfully asking, “Jesus, what are you doing in the life of that family that I can give voice to and participate in?”  He will give us a sense of it.  Stand up straight and get in the game.

Seeing from the perspective of being healed and straightened means I’m not so focused on me, but on others.  It means that when we are in conversations with others we are going to intentionally focus on listening to them as they share what’s going on in their lives.  It means praying for our neighbours and letting them know that we have been praying about the concerns they have shared with us.

Changing the questions we ask will change the way we see our place in the world.  The way we do life inside the fishbowl of church will clarify and look more like the fishbowl of faith.  If we ask the questions we need to ask as “the church sent into the world” we will begin to be the church sent into the world and we will thrive.  Amen.

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[1] Paraphrase from “God Has Left the Building: Alan Roxbourgh Gets (Post) Missional”; https://homebrewedchristianity.com

Race with Perseverance

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

In the early 2000’s a study was done of American youth and what they believe.  Though American, I think the results can apply up here.  The study involved nearly 3000 teenagers and the results were published in the book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. 

Here’s what they found that youth believe: “1) A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth; 2) god wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions; 3) the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself; 4) god does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when god is needed to resolve a problem; 5) good people go to heaven when they die.”[1]  The authors of the study ave a name to this religion.  .youth believeives of Americantudy involved nearly 3000 teenagersgave a name to this religion – Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. 

You may have noticed that in Moralistic Therapeutic Deism the god doesn’t require faithfulness.  The god is grossly undefined.  He is just part of a moral system with therapeutic benefits.  Be good and be happy and you will be blessed.  There is no talk of sin, no talk of denying oneself and serving this god. The authors of the study describes this god as “something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he's always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.”[2]

It is no stretch of the imagination to say that Moralistic Therapeutic Deism among teenagers at the beginning of the 21^st Century is the culmination of institutionalized Christianity being the “civil” religion of North America in the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th centuries.  The church produced this water-downed, nebulous belief system.  Teenagers and their parents and even their grandparents don’t come to church now because Moralistic Therapeutic Deism everywhere abounds.  Moreover, in a society of religious pluralism Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is so generic it no longer needs its institutional mother.

Recalling last weeks’ sermon, faith as we find it defined in Hebrews is not a subjective or in-the-head belief in ideas that helps us make sense of reality.  A subjective faith over time evolves through simply being a matter of private belief ultimately into atheism.  As you may recall faith is the “hypostasis” of the hoped for things, the coming to light of things hidden.  Faith is a sphere of reality in which God’s plan and purpose for his creation is “actualizing”, “sedimentizing” in the midst of the sphere of fallen reality.  In, through, and as Jesus Christ, God the Son become human, and by and through the presence and work of the Holy Spirit God has called us and made us to be participants in this sphere of faith by uniting us to Jesus in the bond of the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, to speak of “our faith” or “my faith” is to speak of faithfulness due to trust in God that he will bring his plan and purpose for his creation to culmination, specifically his promise to save it from sin, death, and evil.

Looking at our text today, Paul remembers some faithful people and brings the sphere of faith to its culmination in Jesus who is its Author and its Completion.  He is the author and the end of the story.  The sphere of faith is where Jesus is constantly making himself known through mighty works.  In the sphere of faith the Israelites passed through the Red Sea on dry ground.  But the Egyptians, being outside the sphere of faith, drowned.  In the sphere of faith the Israelites marched around the seemingly impenetrable walls of Jericho until, according to God’s promise, the walls came down.  In the sphere of faith Rahab the prostitute gave shelter to the Israelite spies who came to scout out Jericho and she and her family were spared when the Israelites took the city.  Please notice that Rahab was a prostitute.  This indicates that faithfulness does not indicate total moral uprightness.

These were big miraculous events that happened in the sphere of reality called faith.  Lest we get the idea that faithfulness in the sphere of faith leads to health and wealth and the happy ever after’s that TV preachers say will result by monetarily supporting their ministries “in faith”, Paul gives us a list of nameless martyrs; people who died for their faithfulness within the sphere of faith.  Paul also says that none of these heroes of the faith and martyrs saw the perfect completion of their faithfulness for it was yet to come in Christ and still is yet to come awaiting his return. Jesus is the Author of the sphere of Faith. He is the one writing this story.  All that the ancients did in the sphere of faith was by his own handwriting.  He is indeed himself the sphere of faith and life “in him” is faiths perfection, culmination, completeness.

Such is our life.  We participate in Jesus who is the sphere of faith. We were crucified with him and are and will be raised with him.  Being born of the Holy Spirit we are in him just as by physical birth we are in Adam.  We will not understand what faith is unless we understand that we are participants in Jesus’ own life.  We do not live in the sphere of faith by our own effort.  We live in it because we live in him by his faithfulness.  We live in and by his faithfulness not our own.  Our lives are a playing out of his faithfulness.  He even makes our unfaithfulness work out for good in the sphere of faith. 

Therefore, if our faithfulness is participation in Jesus' faithfulness, then for us true faithfulness – the visibility of the Sphere of Faith – is our living according to the way of the cross.  Faithfulness is not Moralistic Therapeutic Deism where we good people live happy comfortable lives and call ourselves blessed.  It is not the happy fulfilled life of success that is free of suffering.  It’s a life and death struggle against sin in ourselves and our cultures ways.  It’s a life of self-denial.  It’s a life of putting the real needs of others before our addictive pursuits of our own wants and false needs.  There is and will be suffering but we do not suffer alone or as those who have no hope.  Jesus is with us working all things to the good in the sphere of his reality.

Paul leaves us with an image that is quite current as the Olympics are happening.  He says we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.  This is like competing in an Olympic race in the Olympic Stadium with a great crowd cheering us on.  But it’s no ordinary crowd.  It’s everybody who has run this marathon before us.  They know how hard it is and they know we can do it.  This great cloud of witnesses, the faithful in all times and places, is watching and cheering us on as we run to further bring our Perfecter to the completion, the fulfilment of his faith – the kingdom of God come in its fullness; when it is on Earth as it is in Heaven and the new humanity is complete.  If you think your life is insignificant.  Think again.  Run the race with perseverance.  Amen.

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[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_therapeutic_deism

[2] Ibid.

Faith Beyond Belief

Hebrews 11:1-16

Let’s assume everybody here knows how to text.  I need to know if you’ll be around in the afternoon so I can call you because there are some things we need to catch up on.  I text you to find out.  You text back that you’ll be around.  I text back, “Okay.  I’ll shout at you later.”  That would seemingly be a harmless exchange, right? 

But, what if you don’t really know me and my predisposition to be caring, nice, and polite like a Canadian and you were not up on my colloquialisms?  “I’ll give you a shout” is a fairly commonly understood colloquialism.  “I’ll shout at you later,” admittedly that one’s a bit tougher.  If you are a non-native speaker of English, you would be perplexed as to why I would want to call you up and speak to you at the top of my voice.  Or, if you don’t know my genial nature, and are prone to anxiety, you will fully be expecting me to call you up and yell at you about something you did that I thought was wrong.

Well, I bring all this up because it seems to me that we deal with faith in much the same way as we would deal with that text message.  Like the text, God has spoken the saving Word of the Incarnation of God the Son.  In the power of the Holy Spirit the Church proclaims the Gospel of this saving Word throughout the world and something called faith arises in its wake.  But what is this faith?

Carrying through with my analogy, most of us would say that faith would be my understanding of and response to “the text”, to the Gospel that in, through, and as Jesus Christ the Triune God of Grace is saving his creation from sin and death.  To respond appropriately I must have somehow decided to believe or to make intellectual ascent to the idea that there is a God, that this God’s nature is love, that I do indeed need saving, and I need to live accordingly.  We may wish to use the word trust to make us “feel” better.  I place my trust in Jesus and live accordingly.

Yet, this understanding of faith is largely subjective, meaning it is centered in me and the internal state of my mind and emotions and how I am able to sort this “Text of God” out.  But if faith and matters there of are purely subjective, then faith is simply a private affair and this is what has led many an enemy of God to say that faith is for the weak-minded and mentally unstable.  This is why atheism is abounding.  It is no stretch to say that history is proving before our very eyes that this subjective understanding of faith is flawed as congregation after congregation closes.

This subjective, this very inside-my-head, understanding of faith began to fester in the 1600’s when a French philosopher named Renee Descartes awoke from sleep and answered the question “how do I know I exist?” with the very profound observation, “I think, therefore I am.”  A century later the German philosopher and theologian Emmanuel Kant took subjectivity to its ultimate end teaching that there is no objective “reality”.  We cannot know things in themselves.  All we know of them is what we experience of them and what sense we make of those experiences.  Things are what they are because that’s the meaning we give to them. There are no laws in the universe other than the ones I place upon it. 

Kant went on to say that we cannot know God.  We can only know our ideas about God.  This is a far cry from our proclamation that God is knowable and has revealed himself in, through, and as Jesus Christ and through the presence and work of the Holy Spirit.  Sadly, if you want to talk about God in a world where reality is based in my ability to think and give things meaning, then agnosticism and atheism are the logical conclusions.  God is simply a figment of my imagination and faith is my crutch.

In this day and time because what we call faith has been so twisted about by our over-focusing on subjectivity, we need to stop assuming we know what faith is and step back into the Bible and try a little harder to understand what the writers of the Bible meant by “faith”.  Let’s try this and take a look here at Hebrews 11:1 where Paul gives us a concise definition of faith. If we look at the words Paul uses will see that faith isn’t just something that goes on in my head that I choose to believe in order to make sense of my reality.  Rather, faith is something that God is doing and is bringing into existence in his creation and has included us in it. 

Faith is the sphere of reality in which we wilfully and actively participate out of gratitude and devotion to God for his saving work in, through, and as Jesus Christ and the presence and work of the Holy Spirit.  Faith is the sphere of reality in which God is making the future coming reality of the Kingdom of God visible in our present.  The sphere of faith, which we could call “in Christ”, counters the sphere of reality that Paul calls “in Adam” or “the flesh” which is marked by sin and death.

Humour me here and let me say Hebrews 11:1 in a way that’s Greek sounding English or English sounding Greek.  “Faith is the hypostasis of the hoped for things, the bringing to light of the unseen.”  This is a far cry from the NIV’s describing faith as “confidence” and “assurance”, which in themselves are totally subjective words and, in light of what I said a few moments ago, that fact should make us wary of using that translation.  I like the Holman Christian Standard Bible translation that says “Faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of things unseen.”  Paul says that faith is the hypostasis of the hoped for things.  The “hoped for things” are God’s promises, that Jesus will return and establish the kingdom, there will be resurrection, and the victory that Jesus won over sin and death and the devil on the cross will ultimately be realized.  Faith is the hypostasis of these things.

 You are probably wondering what hypostasis means.  In the ancient Greek world it was a philosophical, scientific, and medical term.  To the philosophers it was the actualizing in reality of true being.  To talk like the philosopher Plato, a chair is the hypostasis of “chair-ness” or a tree is the hypostasis of “tree-ness” – an actualizing in reality of true being.  It can also mean the actualizing of the details of a hidden plan.  When Hebrew writers used the word they used it to speak of God’s plan for history coming into being and playing out.  Noah, Enoch, Abraham, and all those faithful people that Paul lists are the hypostases of God’s plan of salvation.  They are the bringing to light of God’s plan for history.

In the world of ancient Greek science “hypostasis” was used to describe sediment – the end result of the sedimentary process.  Go to your nearest pond and scoop out a bucket of water.  Though it looks clear or mostly clear, if you let it sit, eventually stuff will settle out in the bottom.  Hidden realities becoming actual.

In the world of ancient Greek medicine “hypostasis” was used to describe urine and fecal matter.  These were the end results, the actualizations of hidden, internal processes.  If you were a youth group I would now proceed to actualize my hidden sense of potty humour.  But, I like my job and wish to keep it, so I’ll keep that hidden.

So, faith is not so much about what is going on in my inner, subjective world in which we could define faithfulness as the actualizing of my internal beliefs.  Faith is bigger than that.  Faith is participating in the whole sphere of reality in which God’s hidden plan and purposes for his creation and our lives are coming to light, actualizing, becoming real through us, through real people in history by the powerful workings of the Holy Spirit.

We cannot talk about true faith without talking about Jesus. Faith is God actualizing, bringing into reality the New Humanity he began in, through, and as Jesus Christ by his life, death, and resurrection.  Faith is God’s working in us by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in us and making actual the hidden reality of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in and through us.  Faith is God’s getting ahold of each of us, bound in the sphere of sin as we are, and by his grace he invades our wills and sets us free from our bondage to sin and enables us to want to love and serve him and to be a part of the actualizing of his plan for history.

This requires active participation on our parts.  God in his great love for us has graciously gotten ahold of us and thus we must be faithful; what Paul calls in Romans 1:5 “the obedience of faith”.  John Calvin spoke of faith as trusting God’s saving love and mercy towards us in Jesus Christ and spoke of it in the sense that this trust is a gift of God that arises out of our being encountered by God.  Martin Luther taught that because we have faith – a love and trust of God and a desire to serve him – we know we are saved.  God was no mere idea to them or a matter of private belief.  They were, just as each of us are, active participants in God’s making actual in history his plans and purposes for his Creation formed in his great love.

In Chapter 11 of Hebrews Paul lists what he calls “a great cloud of witnesses”, people who throughout history were the sediment, the actualization of God’s hidden plan.  We all know people who we would add that list.  People who by their faithfulness were obviously living witnesses to what God is doing.  They lived in the sphere of reality Paul calls faith.  They, and each of us are living proof of God’s reality.  Let us stand humbly in this awesome reality and work unreservedly to live faithfully.  Amen.