Please Click Here For Sermon Video
My great-grandmother lived in a little house in the country. Oddly, she had no well. Instead, she had a rainwater cistern at the end of the back porch with a hand-crank pump on it. She didn’t have indoor plumbing so she didn’t need a lot of water. She had a tin roof with eavestroughs that emptied into the cistern to provide her with water. All the water she needed for drinking, cooking, dishwashing and bathing came from that cistern. I remember having to carry an old metal bucket out to the pump and cranking that pump to fill it and then struggling to carry it back in without spilling. For a drink of water, you ladled it from the bucket into a glass. The water always seemed so clear and fresh, but my dad always said, “Don’t drink what’s at the bottom of the glass.” Once it sat there for a minute or you knew why. There would be bits of rusted metal and who knows what else that had washed down off the roof with the rain…but we drank the water anyway as per dad’s instructions. It was good, fresh water instead of city water.
Anyway, the polite word for that stuff at the bottom of the glass is sediment. Sediment is the result of that very complicated process known as sedimentation. That’s where the stuff that seems hidden at first settles out and becomes visible. When you ladle the water into the glass the motion keeps the sedimentary product afloat and depending on what it is it seems invisible. But the sedimentary product is heavier than water and starts to sink to the bottom. It’s sort of a natural purification process.
Now, I bet you didn’t know it but in the Greek of the New Testament there’s a word that describes that process of sedimentation. It’s hypostasis. Breaking the word down, hypo means under or below and stasisroughly means standing so put them together and it means “that which stands under” sort of like foundation. Hypostasis means “that which is more real”. In the process of sedimentation, the sediment is the hypostasis, the more real stuff that at first was hidden but becomes visible in the water as it settles out. Medically speaking, when you feed a baby, the milk goes through the hidden process of digestion and then you have the hypostasis of the brutal reality of a loaded diaper.
Philosophically speaking, hypostasis is the reality of the stuff of our lives. It’s what arises from the hidden processes of cause and effect or the stuff that comes out of left field. It’s the reality that arises from our plans and motives and dreams. Hypostasis is the real stuff we have to deal with.
Well guess what? Paul uses hypostasis to define what faith is. He says, “Faith is the hypostasis of the hoped-for things; the coming to light of unseen things. I have to warn you this is a different way of looking at faith than we have become accustomed to. Paul is saying there is a hidden, behind the scenes realm of God acting in history to save and heal his very good creation and especially humanity and like sediment, faith is the real, tangible things of God’s actions becoming visible. It’s as real and strong as a dandelion plant poking through in the middle of an asphalt parking lot. It’s as beautiful and symbolic of hope as snowdrops and crocus blooms in early March. Faith is the sedimentation into reality of the hoped-for things in Christ, the inbreaking of God’s kingdom, the real tangible evidence of God’s love. Faith is better defined as the actions of faithfulness, both God’s faithfulness and our own.
We tend to understand faith as a subjective reality, meaning something that goes on inside of me. For example, our NIV translation of that verse reads: “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” The NRSV reads: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.” Faith seems to be a feeling of certainty. When somebody says “I have faith”, they usually mean the belief or the feeling or the intuition or a just plain irrational agreement to ideas that there is a God we can trust. In that sense, faith is purely subjective.
Paul said it well in Galatians 2:20 where he says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith that is of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” Or, “…I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me or gave himself for me.” It is likely that Paul is reflecting a bit on what Baptism is. For him, Baptism was a real participation in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Paul believed he had died with Christ when he went under the water. The life he lived after coming out of the water was "new life" in Christ, a new life in which Jesus was living in and through him by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Paul, the persecutor of Christians, had had a life re-orienting encounter with Jesus on the Road to Damascus that left him not only knowing Jesus was who he said he was, (the Lord, the Messiah, the Son of God) but Paul suddenly became a faithful servant of Jesus and an integral part of Faith, the sphere, the realm, the inbreaking reality of what God is really doing to save his very good creation and especially humanity.
So it is with each of us. We are each part of the reality, the hypostasis, the sedimentation of God’s acting in history to bring about the world’s hoped-for saving by means of the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. God has done things in our lives to create in us a sure sense that we are his beloved children, that he is watching over us, and he creates in us a sense of loyalty to Jesus. These inner workings by God are often hidden to the world like particulates swirling around in a freshly ladled glass of Great-grandma’s water. But in time we begin to act according to the love of God in Christ that God has poured into us, the Living Water of the Holy Spirit. Nurtured by daily devotions and Christian fellowship we begin to do things for others that are part of God’s acting to bring the hope and love of Jesus to them. Also, when we organize together and as a congregation do things we feel led by God to do, well, that’s the sediment of, the becoming real and visible of the reality of the Kingdom of God. Faith isn’t so much about what we believe as it is about Jesus living in and acting through us. Faith isn’t so much about us being able to say what we believe, but rather our being able to point out what God is doing in our midst. I hope this makes sense. Amen.
