A sermon given at Perinton Presbyterian Church on January 24, 2021.
Once upon a time there was a little
girl who lived with her parents. She was a very quiet, shy child—so quiet that
the rural folk of her town called her “strange” and her grandparents worried
that she’d never emerge from their kitchen corner to talk with them. But there
were two people the little girl loved more than anyone in the whole world—her
mother and father, who dearly loved her too and told her so every day. Their
greatest joy was to love and protect her and her two younger brothers.
This quiet little girl didn’t particularly
like talking with people, but she always listened to the grownups very, very
closely, and she learned things from her careful listening. She learned that
grownups like you when you follow the rules and when you know the right answers.
Knowing the right answers and making grownups happy made her happy. So she got
good grades and ate her vegetables, even when she didn’t like them, and
practiced the piano every day. She learned all the Bible stories in Sunday
School and memorized hundreds of Bible verses. She could even recite all 66
books of the Bible in a single breath! She learned that Jesus had saved her
from the bad things she had done and that He was the right answer for saving
her from her sin. So she prayed to ask Him into her heart when she was four
years old. This made her grownups very happy.
The little girl grew taller and her
world became more complex. She fell in love with the smell of a sweaty leather
glove on the softball field, experienced elation in perfecting a back walkover,
and delighted to discover that, in her family, jello pretzel salad didn’t count
as dessert. She also continued to be proven correct that having the right
answers was an excellent way to find favor with her evangelical church, her
teachers, and with God. So she practiced the piano for hours every day, she got
straight A’s, and she read Christian books. She sat attentively in Sunday
School classes that prepared her to answer the questions and doubts people
might have about Jesus. She waited for God to answer her prayers (it’ll either
be “yes,” “no,” or “wait!”) and kept reading the Bible for answers to anything
and everything. Increasingly, she felt she wasn’t discovering much new.
By the time she got to college she
began to get very tired. It was exhausting juggling difficult classes, musical
ensembles, relationships with roommates and friends, keeping in touch with
family, and faithfully serving God—all while knowing the right answers and
keeping everyone happy. Still she kept on, because this was what had always
worked, and she was in excellent standing with her parents, teachers, and, she
thought, God.
Then one day the girl got so very tired
that she couldn’t go on any longer. She woke up every morning sick to her
stomach, dizzy, appetite gone, unable to make herself care to do the right
thing and have the right answers. She was working at a summer camp and the camp
called her mother and her mother came, picked her up, and drove her home. The
girl was very angry—angry at her mother for coming to get her, angry at the
camp for calling her mother, and mostly, angry at herself for failing and
inconveniencing everyone. And she was angry at God, for making her so tired
after how hard she’d tried to please Him.
Her mother drove her home and
deposited the angry girl on the couch. And there she fell asleep. She slept,
and slept, and slept. She slept 18 hours a day for two whole weeks. At the end
of two weeks she felt a bit better, and was able to hear the wisdom and love of
her parents. They told her they loved her, not for what she did or what she knew,
but because of who she was. She wasn’t sure she believed them.
The girl, loved but broken, wasn’t
certain what came next. Would God still love her? For once, she did not have an
answer…
My life story, thus far, has two acts.
You’ve just heard the first—the tale of a young girl, raised in a loving
Christian home. She was an introverted perfectionist, who tried very hard to
get all the answers right. And, it’s important to note, I had a lot of right
answers. I did walk with Jesus and prayed fervently and lived in His Word. I
also crashed and burned at 21. The faith of my first act was a safe, tidy,
complete faith.
Faith in my second act has been messy
and uncertain. It’s been painful and freeing, raw and beautiful. It’s been a
lot more honest.
We’ve already heard this morning the
first half of Hebrews 11—a wonderful chapter highlighting the faith of Old
Testament heroes--Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Samson, and
all the others. They seem so strong, so mighty, so complete. They conquered
lands, they were visited by angels, they heard directly from God and were
blessed by him. No wonder they’re celebrated on flannelgraph Sunday school boards
around the world! Of course they get their own special chapter in
Hebrews! When I was a little girl I wanted to be just like them—to feel that
close to God. That would be pretty irrefutable proof I was on the right path
and had the right answers.
But if we take a closer look at these
flannelgraph heroes, we see something else they have in common. Something that
is surprising, and crucial to understanding their faithfulness, and ours.
Listen again to Hebrews 11:13
“All these people were still living by
faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw
them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and
strangers on earth.”
“All of these people were still living
by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised…”
None—a grand
total of ZERO—of these faith heroes ever received the complete answers to what
God asked them to do.
Whaaa?
My friend Greg Coles has a new book
coming out next month called No Longer Strangers: Finding Belonging
In a World of Alienation. In it, Greg devotes a section to exploring the unfinished
faith of Abraham as described in Hebrews 11. It was with great delight that I
received Greg’s permission to share an excerpt with you all this morning. He writes,
with far greater eloquence than I…
“Abraham’s faith is exemplary
precisely because he’s still a stranger at the end of the story. Even the
land he’s buried on has to be bought specifically for that purpose, because no
piece of the promised land belongs to him. His faith is a foreigner’s faith, an
unsexy faith, a faith that’s terrible for boosting attendance or tithing
numbers. Instead of taking him all the way home, Abraham’s faith takes him only
as far as the promise of home. And this, apparently, is the point of
the story… If Abraham hadn’t still been longing for something at the end of
the story, he wouldn’t have been living by faith anymore.”
After my summer of catastrophe, with a shaken,
uncertain faith I timidly began to ask God some questions that I knew probably wouldn’t
get tidy, certain answers. And, surprise surprise, I didn’t find any tidy,
certain answers! But I did rediscover God’s love. I found his love in an
invitation to help bring about the promises described in Hebrews 11. I found
His love in loved ones who are also practicing a Hebrews 11 faith. Where I used
to only think of God’s love in vast constellations, crashing waves, and craggy peaks,
I find in surprising ways now—the buttery yellow of a June rosebud, the
meditation of a long run, and in sharing a chocolate raspberry torte with a
dear friend. I also find it in political crises for which I have no answers,
the grief of miscarriages, and broken relationships. As I live by a faith that
twists and winds I cling to the promise of the promised land—of home.
My uncertain faith causes me to look at the world
around me differently. God is making all things new and He invites us to
participate. What does it look like to see the earth, instead of a commodity
doomed for destruction, as God’s beautiful gift of creation, and myself as an
agent in bringing His kingdom to earth? What does it look like to view each
person I meet as a potential fellow kingdom-bearer, instead of a dead soul I
must save from eternal damnation? These days, when I read the gospels, I see Jesus
in a fresh, new way as he modeled this through his teachings, prayers, and his
own acts of faith.
My messy faith gives me permission to lament. When loved
ones pass, when diagnoses are heartbreaking, when the world is in chaos, when
there are no right answers--I can’t understand why, I can’t fix it, and…and that’s
OK. It’s OK to cry out to God, because he doesn’t expect me to understand. The
promise is in process. As we see modeled in so many Psalms, and the cries of
Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, God can handle our disappointment, our
frustration, our grief.
My Hebrews 11 faith gives me permission to explore teaching
and writings of those who also don’t have all the answers—those who are aliens
and sojourners. How liberating it has been to discover I am not alone in
working out my faith. In our e-votional sent out this past week there is an
attached document that shares a few books and authors who have been
particularly helpful to me in recent years. I can’t recommend enough the
practice of reading regularly, as it has proven to keep my heart soft to the
stories and discoveries of our Christian sisters and brothers.
So when you, my friends, are discouraged, frustrated,
and full of unanswered questions, maybe my story, and certainly the stories of
the saints of Hebrews 11, will bring you a comfort and hope that is found in
God’s grace and eternal plan. We’ve been passed a baton from the heroes of the
Old Testament, the apostles of the New, and the saints through history. Let’s
continue to run the race together, with faith and endurance, whether or not in
this lifetime we get to see the finish line.
To the glory of God the Father, Christ the Son, and
the Holy Spirit, Amen.
