| Our Fear and God’s Promise Sermon preached By Reverend Ginger Gaines-Cirelli - August 08, 2010
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40
In the reading from Hebrews, we hear about Abraham and Sarah, who are held up as examples of walking by faith. For those who may not know the story, Abraham was led by God to leave his familiar home and travel to an unknown land— a land that, according to God, held some promise. Abraham wandered as a pilgrim for years, never putting down stable roots. And when Abraham was 99 years old and his wife Sarah was 90, God promised the couple that they (who had been unable to conceive a child) would now in their advanced age have a son. The story goes that both of them found this particular promise laughable, literally. However, Abraham and Sarah did, rather inconceivably, conceive and bear a son—Isaac.
Abraham and Sarah walked by faith. And, for me, the question arises: what does this mean? Evidently it doesn’t mean that to be faithful means that we never doubt— or even laugh—at what seems to us an unbelievable promise. It seems to me that what we hear in Abraham and Sarah’s story is this: God says to them, “You can be more than you are today…your lives can have a bigger impact, a clearer purpose, a deeper significance. You can experience greater abundance and love… I will take you places you never imagined and will do great things through you! But you have to leave your comfortable and well-known existence. You have to change and move. Trust me!” And the craziest part of the story is that they did it. Yes, they laughed, but at the end of the day they didn’t just say “Oh that’s a nice idea and someday when I’m ready and I’ve got more time I’ll get right on that, God.” They believed it and they left everything and went. No wonder we’re still talking about them all these thousands of years later…
After all, we know how difficult it can be even to believe that things can change much less actually do the things necessary to change; we know how difficult it can be to believe that our lives can be different than they are today, that we can experience greater meaning and purpose, or balance or peace or integration or strength. For some of us here today, it may be difficult to believe that God IS, much less that God wants to work in us and through us to bring transformation into the world. For some of us here today, we may be so conditioned to think of ourselves as small and insignificant, that the idea of being “more than we are today” is near impossible to believe. For some of us here today, we may have no sense of needing to be more than we already are because things seem to be going along quite nicely, thank you. For some of us here today, we may feel enslaved to habits and addictions that seem impossible to overcome and so even the idea of our lives being different leads to despair. For still others, the idea of being called by God to serve and grow may just make us tired—because we’ve been at it for so many years or because we feel there simply isn’t enough time and space in our day to add one more thing.
Yes…no wonder we’re still talking about Abraham and Sarah all these years later. What they did was hard. Archetypally hard (if that’s even a word). And what they did was have faith. They trusted the promise of God to guide them, to strengthen them, to use them, to make them, in a sense, more than they were before. Or, as I think of it, they trusted God to make them more themselves. (You will note that there is no age limit on this—Abraham is described as being “as good as dead!”) The writer of the letter to the Hebrews says that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” In other words, faith is wandering in the dark, trusting that God’s presence will light the way. There’s a reason we speak of making “a leap of faith” because that’s what it is…a hopeful step forward without seeing where you will land.
Do any of you remember that scene in the movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indiana, the character played by Harrison Ford, is trying to obtain the Holy Grail? His father has been shot and the only way for him to be healed is to drink from the chalice. Indiana has to pass through a series of theological booby-traps to reach the grail. The last test finds him at the edge of a great chasm with no way that he can see to cross the divide. But finally, he takes the step and—lo and behold—there is a solid pathway there to get him across the rocky divide. The pathway was there all the time (hidden by an optical illusion), but if he hadn’t been able to overcome his fear of falling, his fear of death, he might never have taken the step. Or maybe he didn’t overcome his fear—I certainly would have been afraid to take the step—maybe he didn’t overcome his fear, but rather decided that the promise of what lay on the other side of that chasm was worth the risk.
We are afraid of lots of things in life, things ranging from seemingly insignificant things like spiders or looking foolish in front of others, to the truly major things like fear of pain, of death, of abandonment. Several fears come to mind in reflecting on this morning’s scriptures: fear of the unknown, fear of hoping (because what if what we are hoping for never happens?), fear of change, fear of wasting our time and energy on something or someone when we may never see the fruits or fulfillment of our efforts. Of course, this is more than we can think about in one sitting. The point is that we live a lot of life in fear of one thing or another. I would argue that it’s one of the most natural and common of all human experiences. Perhaps this is part of the reason it is so difficult to really have faith.
A story is told of a woman who fell off a cliff, but managed to grab a tree limb on the way down. The following conversation ensued: “Is anyone up there?” “I am here. I am the Lord. Do you believe me?” “Yes, Lord, I believe. I really believe, but I can’t hang on much longer.” “That’s alright. You have nothing to fear. I will save you. Just let go of the branch.” A moment of silence, then: “Is anyone else up there?”
Faith does involve that letting go into the unseen, intellectually untenable promise of the reality of a loving God. It’s much easier to laugh like Abraham (though without his follow-through)— to make a joke of it, or to protect ourselves from coming to the edge of that chasm by our own intellectual or psychological defenses; or by referring to our busy calendars. We fear the unknown, the unseen. We fear the change that might be involved if we were to make a real commitment to such a promise, to the kind of relationship we hear is involved in this whole faith thing. We are, perhaps, afraid of being disappointed yet again by life and we doubt that making that leap would ever really produce the results that we’re looking for. It’s hard and it’s scary to walk by faith.
But what do we lose if we laugh it off or defend ourselves from coming to the edge and taking that unseen step? The short answer is that we lose the opportunity to receive whatever it is that God knows we need to grow and change and be more of who we’re created to be. All week, one of my favorite poems has been hovering around the edges of my mind:
Dove that ventured outside, flying far from the dovecote: housed and protected again, one with the day, the night, knows what serenity is, for she has felt her wings pass through all distance and fear in the course of her wanderings.
The doves that remained at home, never exposed to loss, innocent and secure, cannot know tenderness; only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied: free, through all it has given up, to rejoice in its mastery.
Being arches itself over the vast abyss. Ah the ball that we dared, that we hurled into infinite space, doesn’t it fill our hands differently with its return: heavier by the weight of where it has been.[i]
If we don’t dare to venture out from our innocent, secure homes of familiarity and comfortable habit, we won’t be challenged to pass through “all distance and fear” to find ourselves free and full with the experiences of life and grace. If we don’t make the leap of faith, we risk living small lives—or smaller lives than we were created to live. We risk staying trapped in habits or relationships or addictions that suck life out of us rather than fill us with abundant life.
Friends, think about where, in your own life, you need to take a step in faith, just one step toward the life that is more full, more free, more YOU. Where in your own life, is God calling you out to make a deeper impact, to be more than you are today?
As a congregation, I believe that God is calling us to see that, strong and vibrant as we are, we are now called to take the next leap—to stay open and willing to venture out from what is comfortable—not just for the sake of something different—but for the sake of God’s need and desire for St. Matthew’s to be even more than we are today. I don’t know exactly what that is going to look like. But my conviction is based on the words of Jesus from our Gospel today: “Do not be afraid…for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” God wants us to inherit the promise, to inherit the fullness of God’s vision for our lives and for St. Matthew’s; it is God’s good pleasure to incorporate our lives into God’s perfect future—even if we don’t see that future in its fullness—and don’t understand even what that future looks like! If we’re paying attention, we will realize that the story of Abraham and Sarah is our own story, a story of setting out without knowing exactly where the journey will go or where it will end, a story of wandering at times, without certainty of the “right” path, and the story of new life springing from those from whom some would never believe such life could emerge.
As we make baby steps or leaps of faith as persons and as a congregation, I pray that we will dare to leave the comfort of our secure “home” in order to become more fully the persons and the congregation that God knows we are created to be. On the far side of a great, rocky chasm lies the promise of freedom, fullness, new life. It is worth the risk. Let go. Do not be afraid. |
