Gracious Living

“Faith Factor”
Rev. Samuel Schaal
August 8, 2004

Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16
Luke 12: 32-40
Psalm 50: 1-8

Over the past several years we’ve seen a new type of television programming: reality television. The concept behind reality television is that you put people in a certain situation, turn on the television cameras, and record – for millions to see – their real reactions. It’s unrehearsed. It’s immediate. It’s real (we think).

One of the most popular of the reality shows is Fear Factor, produced by NBC. In Fear Factor, people endure all sorts of very gross situations to win a cash prize. People sit in vats of worms or cockroaches, people jump off high buildings, held by a mere slender cord, and people even eat raw animal parts on camera. They face their fears in the hopes of winning cash. In our elevated, education culture, this passes for entertainment. We, the television audience, watch this slice of American reality.

It’s debatable whether Fear Factor indeed reflects reality, for the situations they put people through are anything but real. The situations are contrived and the fear of the contestants is a healthy fear. What have we really gained as a society if we conquer the fear of eating worms or reclining with the cockroaches?

The show is silly and its popularity will surely recede once the public has had its fill of this kind of thing. But fear – true fear – is certainly a staple of modern life. In so many other ways, fear has indeed become a factor.

Just this week we watched on the news that recently discovered information indicates that terrorists had been casing several buildings in our nation’s financial sectors and that these localities might be the target of another attack. We have been warned repeatedly since September 11 that we would likely suffer another attack and this week the information was more detailed than normal.

Yes, fear is a factor in our lives, in ways that didn’t exist several years ago. We live in a new and a dangerous age. And yet every age has had its anxieties. Since the beginning of humanity’s creation, when humanity evolved far enough to have self-consciousness, we have been conscious that we are not always safe in the world. It was certainly true in the early church, and we see hints of this in our reading this morning from Hebrews.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews was often thought to be Paul, but the language and style of the text is so different, that we don’t really know who wrote this text. But while its author is unknown, the themes of the overall book of Hebrews, including this morning’s lectionary reading, provide some of the most elevated language about life in Christ.

The Letter to the Hebrews was a text addressed most likely to a mixed audience of Hebrew and Gentile Christians, and it was meant to bolster and inspire the people to remain steadfast and committed to their faith. For these people had known deprivation; they had known fear. At the end of the tenth chapter just before chapter 11, the writer refers to the persecution, imprisonment and loss of property that the people suffered as a result of their faith. The writer reminds them of the abuse and persecution they had suffered and suggests that they should not abandon the confidence of life in God. At the end of chapter 10 he says: “We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and keep their souls.”

Then he defines faith. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” So faith is assurance and conviction. This is how our Revised Standard Version of the Bible renders these two words. But the translation of those two words is open to debate, as is often the case. In the original Greek, the word translated here as assurance is “hypostasis.” So, “Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for…” The RSV’s translation as assurance gives it a sort of psychological connotation. But hypostatis has several connotations. The word, in fact, is used in several different ways in others parts of Hebrews.

One scholar argues that the best translation of that passage is the more philosophical one: faith is the “reality” of things hoped for. (See Harold Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989, pp. 308-310.)

We usually think that this verse says we should be assured; that if we are faithful we will, by psychological assent, be confident about things not presently verified. But perhaps what Hebrews actually asserts is that the faithful believer anticipates the reality of what is believed.

The RSV goes on to say that faith is the “conviction” of things not seen. The Greek word here – elegchos – does not mean conviction in the sense of personal belief that something will happen. More likely it means proof, so faith is the “proof of things not seen’”

So if faith is the reality of things hoped for and the proof of things not seen, this gives us a different sense of the text. It suggests that faith – our faith – is not something that we decide on our own, out of our various psychological and emotional powers, but that faith itself is God’s way of telling us of reality, of what is truly important and truly real in the world. Faith is not a platitude that we either have or not, but an intuition, perhaps a sixth sense, of the way God works in the world, or of the way the invisible God works among the visible creation.

There is a sense here that faith is not based merely on what we believe, or on the force of what we believe, but that it originates in God and is a gift from God.

In the text from Hebrews, after so defining faith, to illustrate the point, the writer recites the story of those ancestors whose faithfulness carried them through some very difficult times and tasks, and many of whom died, the text says, “not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.” For God, the writer says, “is our homeland.”

In this understanding of Hebrews 11:1, the very fact that you yearn, that you sense a greater connection, may be God reaching out to you, beckoning you to your greater good.

Now, your greater good may not be what you think you need. It may not be a larger 401(k) or a more prosperous business year or a more loving spouse or family. Your greater good may not be for more security, even for more love. Your greater good could very well include times of trial, temptation, times of testing. Today’s psalm is not the usual comforting words of the psalmist, but a reminder that God is God. And sometimes God is not our buddy. Sometimes – often! – we are developed in ways and deepened in ways that we would not choose. But we live in a relationship with God through Christ that prepares us to respond to the challenges of life, and to life itself, with a calm assurance that our relationship to God is our true reality, that God is that which is really real. That the seeming empty places in our lives are already filled with divine love.

So perhaps the most accurate translation is, “faith is the reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen” that God works in us and opens us to participate in a reality that is not always visible in the world. That there is more to life than our secular, materialist views on reality might suggest. There is more going on than what we can see, hear, feel, taste, touch.

“ Fear not, little flock,” Jesus says. Don’t let the fear keep you from doing what you need to do as the family of God. “Sell your possessions,” which could mean that we should sink our trust, not in possessions or even on earthly life, but that we should trust that our true treasure is divine, a treasure of the heavens, safe from thieves, moths, stock fluctuations, economic trends, jobs or joblessness. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

This is not to say we should take no stock of planning and providing adequately for ourselves and our loved ones. This is not to say that we should live in a metaphysical heaven and not be at home on the earth. This is to say that as God’s family we look forever to a life that we can’t quite yet see. That we live in a reality that can’t be put under a microscope and understood. That at the core of life we find something or someone who is with us, that we exist not for ourselves alone but as a part of a larger whole, that this someone is God and is understood more fully through the historical narrative of the people of Israel and the Christ event.

Perhaps it’s trusting what we cannot always see ahead of us on the journey of life. The writer of Hebrews, after laying out this rather astounding idea that our faith is a reflection of a divine reality, does not then appeal to philosophy, logic, or even theology, but appeals to history and the story of the faithful and their journeys. Abraham, called to go out to a place he couldn’t see and died without having received what was promised. And staying faithful in the process.

If you read all of Hebrews chapter 11 you get a sense of all the journeys of the ancestors. I like images of journeys because it causes me to think of my own journeys in life. Particularly my journey to ministry which I started late, but then, some of us are late bloomers. When I first realized I wanted to be a minister, I had no idea of how that could happen. I didn’t have the money. I didn’t have the time. I didn’t have the stamina or the brains to enter graduate school in midlife. Slowly, the next step was revealed to me and I took it, then the next step, then the next … not being able to see the end of the journey, not exactly knowing where it would lead.

There were twists and turns on that journey and there were some terrifying moments, as well as moments of triumph. And I still can’t see the end of the journey. And sometimes that scares me and fear encroaches and I try to remember where my true homeland is. “But as it is,” says the writer of Hebrews, “they (I) desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”

Being faithful is perhaps trusting what we cannot see. The story is told of the impala. The impala is an antelope, a majestic animal that can jump great distances, up to about ten feet. And yet this magnificent creature is kept easily in a pen with a three-foot wall – a wall only tall enough to shield its vision – for the impala will not jump if it cannot see where its feet will land.

God calls us at times to jump where we cannot see. God calls us to a leap of faith.