June 16, 2002
Genesis
18:1-15
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Genesis 21:1-7
RSV
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NIV
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Matthew
9:35-38 +
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NIV
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Matthew
10:1-8
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“Faith of our Fathers”
“Faith of our Fathers living still, in spite of dungeon, fire, and sword. O how our hearts beat high with joy, when-e’er we hear that glorious word . . .” Stirring words, aren’t they? When Frederick William Faber penned them in the middle of the nineteenth century he was celebrating the Recusants. The Recusants were English Roman Catholics who had not abandoned their faith to become Anglicans. Ironically, once they had started singing hymns, the Congregationalists grabbed on to this one, too, but used it to celebrate their Puritan ancestors. So while circumstances – or at least perspectives – might differ widely, what is celebrated remains the same: faith.
Abraham is our ‘father in faith’ and his story is shared by the three great Western religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Last week we saw that he was an unlikely saint and now see that he is an even more unlikely parent. After all, both he and Sarah were very old and this was hardly the time in life for them to be having children.
Actually, Sarah was less than impressed by the promise of a child – she laughed. Abraham may have had trouble accepting the announcement of God’s promise, but Sarah just laughed it off – a ridiculous notion. Their skepticism, however, had to come up against the hard reality of faith – “the assurance of things hoped for.” Faith turned Sarah’s laughter from scornful to joyful as she became the mother of Isaac – whose name is a play on words with the Hebrew word for ‘laughter.’ The divine promise is fulfilled and Sarah’s laughter – her Isaac – becomes the father of Israel.
We could probably also have heard a few snickers when Jesus chose the twelve apostles. These are hardly the offspring of the best families or the products of the best schools. The apostles constitute a real mixed bag of personalities and occupations, including tax collectors and political agitators. They are an unlikely bunch to be chosen to become the fathers of the church, but Jesus sends them out to carry the news that “the kingdom is near at hand.”
Faith, then, can transform us from being mere spectators in to active participants in God’s ongoing work in God’s world. Faith is a powerful source of change that can lift us up from despair and hopelessness and set us on the way to a whole new understanding of life. When we talk about faith in this way we’re talking about more than mere intellectual assent to a body of facts.
I came across something by Biblical commentator Diane Jacobson that brought this point home to me. She made reference to an episode of the TV show “West Wing” entitled “Shibboleth.” The title refers to Judges 12:6 where identity is tested by one’s ability to pronounce the word ‘shibboleth.’
The show begins with our hearing about some one hundred escaped refugees from mainland China who arrived in California in a boat, each sealed in their own container. We soon learn that some of the escapees have died on the journey; they now number eighty-three. We hear as well that they claim to be evangelical Christians escaping persecution. President Bartlett must decide whether their claim to discipleship, and thus their claim to asylum, is real or somehow faked. He must discover if they can say “Shibboleth.” The highlight of the show is a remarkable encounter that takes place in the oval office between President Bartlett and one of the Chinese refugees, a chemistry professor by the name of Jen Wei. Jen Wei is an older man, possessed of nothing but a calm and quiet dignity. The president asks how he became a Christian. Jen Wei responds that he and his wife began attending a house church and then were baptized. When asked how he practices his faith, Jen Wei responds that they share Bibles, sing hymns, hear sermons, recite the Lord’s prayer, and do charitable acts. “Who,” asks the president, “is the head of your church?” “The head of the parish,” responds Jen Wei, “is an eighty-four-year-old man by name of Won Ling. He has been beaten and imprisoned many times. The head of the church is Jesus Christ.” President Bartlett asks him to name the disciples. He responds, “Peter, Andrew, John Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, Thaddaeus, Simon, Judas, and James” – the same list we find in Matthew 10. And then Jen Wei continues with a remarkable speech. “Mr. President, Christianity is not demonstrated through a recitation of facts. You are seeking evidence of faith, a whole-hearted acceptance of God’s promise of a better world. For we hold that man is justified by faith alone. This is what St. Paul said, ‘justified by faith alone.’” Faith is the true shibboleth. The witness is astounding.
[Diane Jacobson New
Proclamation Year A – 2002 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), p. 107.]
What Jacobson observes is that faith is more context than content. Faith shows itself in how we go about living out the promise. It is demonstrated in our attitudes, in our actions, and even in our ability to laugh.
Faith is also demonstrated by the authenticity of our approach. Jesus tells the disciples to preach the nearness of the kingdom of God. They demonstrate its nearness by the manner in which they deal with people. They receive them where they are and their primary goal isn’t to do well for themselves, but to make others well, embracing them in their illness and distress. Jesus sends them out and tells them to take the bare minimum of baggage – perhaps for us that baggage may be attitudes or ideas that we need to put aside so that we can open ourselves to love people in a new way. To reach out to others, to offer hospitality, to even be the recipient of hospitality takes an active, living faith.
If, at this point, you’re beginning to hear that there is a difference between the “faith of our fathers” and “our father’s faith,” you’re right with me. We may draw inspiration from Abraham, from the apostles, from the early Congregationalists, and from our own fathers, but their faith is theirs, not ours. If it is to be ours it must take root in us, grow and blossom in us and then it is our faith, “living still in spite of dungeon, fire and sword.”
We live in a time when we need to cultivate the faith – the wholehearted acceptance of God’s promise of a better world – and we need to share it and live it out. It was a lively faith in God and the American idea that sustained what Tom Brokaw has called, “the greatest generation.” They worked through the desolation of the Great Depression, the challenge and horror of the Second World War, and then ushered in one of the most remarkable periods in American history. More church buildings and religious institutions were built in the period immediately following 1945 to about 1960 than had been built up to that time. As at no other time did we demonstrate Sidney Mead’s estimation that “America is a nation with the soul of a church.” Impressive as their accomplishments are, we cannot face this very different world and the challenges it holds with their faith. We can only face it and transform it if the ‘faith of our fathers’ is our faith, living and active in us each day.
How do we accomplish this? We open ourselves to the wonder of God’s presence and take seriously Jesus’ announcement that the “kingdom is near at hand.” The presence of the kingdom is always a tension – an already, but not yet. It is the stuff of Augustine’s prayer to a “beauty ancient yet ever new.” And it puts God’s own peace into our hearts even when the people we’ve looked to fall very short of our expectations, or our hopes. Faith in that kind of living presence doesn’t come from someone else. That kind of faith comes from deep inside us, from hearts and minds that have tested, tried, questioned, protested and, finally, felt the affirmation and assurance of God’s eternal “YES,” in spite of our persistent, “NO.”
Faith like that doesn’t come overnight, nor should it. Faith that is “living still” and to which we can be “true ‘till death” must be cultivated, nurtured, and matured over time. Faith like that will weather the trials of life and even disappointments and scandals in the church. The faith of our fathers that becomes our faith will make “our hearts beat high with joy” because God’s love remains the same, though it is ever new, and the kingdom is still near at hand if we open our hearts, our minds, our eyes to God’s promise of a better world.
We read the stories and we sing the songs, but the true celebration of faith is in how we live it. Don’t leave the faith here in this meetinghouse when you go. Take it with you. For you see, we are the only evidence that the faith of our fathers is living still.