Sunday 7th August, 2022

Reflection:   "The Faith of the Hopeful"

Isaiah 1:1,10-20

Psalm 50:1-8,22-23

Luke 12:32-40

Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16

At the “Stockmen’s Hall of Fame” in the outback Queensland town of Longreach is a list of our early pioneers and settlers and this list is dominated by the names of men.
In a similar vein, the 11th Chapter of the letter to the Hebrews reads like a roll call of many of the memorable Old Testament people of faith.
It, too, is dominated by the names of men, although we know that many women were influential in both settings.
This list of people of faith is quite an impressive one and for any Jew, this chapter would make their adrenalin flow.
Even for Gentiles like us, it’s quite soul stirring stuff!
But then comes an unexpected phrase in verse 13, where it says:
“All of these persons died in faith, without having received the promises.”
What a way to ruin a good story! In spite of their mighty faith, they still perished like the rest of us.
Death, that indiscriminate leveller, got them all in the end.
 
But because we’re in New Testament times, we’re dealing with a different way of seeing life and death.
A different view of time and eternity.
From the Christian perspective, faith is NOT shattered by death. In truth, death is shattered by hope and faith.
To live by hope and faith, and to die in hope and faith, is actually a grand thing!
 
So, what’s this “hope” that’s mentioned here?
What’s this hope which, when taken up by faith, reshapes people, as well as shattering the gloom of death?
 
According to the letter to the Hebrews, faith is closely allied to hope.
“Faith gives substance to our hopes, and makes us sure of those realities that we cannot see.”
 
Christian hope isn’t a vague, wistful longing, nor a pathetic wish-list for the improbable, or the impossible.
Hope is not building imaginary castles in the air and it’s certainly not trite, sentimental optimism. 
Instead, it’s a sharing in God’s vision and plan, affirming the glorious future which God has for humanity.
Hope is us turning to the promises of God and saying: “Yes please!”
 
For that childless couple, Abram and Sarai (who were renamed Abraham and Sarah because of their faith) hope was daring to envision the divine promise - that through their descendants “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
 
Hope, for Moses, was daring to picture and commit to, the liberty of the promised land, “flowing with milk and honey”, at the time when his people were in miserable slavery in Egypt.
 
Hope, for Isaiah, was a commitment to the vision.
It was daring for him to see and preach about the new world, that would one day surely come to be.
“Then shall blind eyes be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb sing. Men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning blades. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor ever again be trained for war. For the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea beds.”
 
For Christian people, hope takes on a special shape.
It dares to look at a new world order, shaped in the likeness of Jesus of Nazareth.
He is the first born of the future race, the shape of the new humanity.
He is the new creation, the future surging into the present moment.
By hope, we commit ourselves to doing things his way.
 
Hope is daring to look at this future and seeing it not as a mirage, but as a certainty.
By hope, an irrepressible longing and a joyful commitment enters into the human soul.
 
Unless we dare to hope, we’re most likely to become mesmerised by the greed and violence and chaos of humanity, slowly surrendering our ideals, sliding into pessimism and joining the so called “rat race.”
 
And what about faith - this “faith”, that the writer to the Hebrews extols?
This faith is always active, never passive, not something to calm people down and make them docile.
It’s a trust in God, which thrusts people into the thick of life.
Faith is not an escape, but a new, profound, re-creative involvement.
It’s like us launching out into the world, putting into action what God has done for us, in and through Christ Jesus.
 
Abraham and Sarah are worthy models of faith.
To them, faith meant leaving the comfortable existence of their home, family and country, and setting out on a journey - where the destination was somewhat cloudy. “He went out, not knowing where he was to end up.” 
It meant a long, and at times risky, adventure, where there were to be joys and hardships, nasty twists in events, frustration and danger, on their journey of faith.
 
Faith is actively implementing as much of our hope as is possible in our time and circumstance.
It is giving substance to our hope and it’s an active way of life.
 
Our status in the Uniting Church is that of pilgrims. Andrew Dutney, past President of the Uniting Church, liked to remind us that in item 3 of the Basis of Union, “we are called to be a pilgrim people, always on the way”.
 
We should also notice that living by faith in the God of hope, makes us people who don’t totally belong in any one town, city, or rural region. 
These faith heroes and heroines lived in many places, among many nations, settled amid many cultures, but they didn’t belong - they weren’t at home.
 
So, we have no final home here on earth.
“Home” is the vision we have of the better future, the promise from God.
Here we’re only sojourners, passing through and it can’t be otherwise, for people like us, who’ve been given the gift of hope.
 
Look around us at the culture in which we’re living.
Is this really our ideal home?
Don’t get me wrong, I love my world and I dearly love my country.
 
If we look at this myopic, selfish and often desperate world, our self-indulgent and anxious society, all the foppery of fashion and the silly pomposity of our politics and look at the injustices and grave abuses which occur from Darwin to Devonport and Broome to Burleigh Heads, are any of us content to call this our real home, our true soul-place?
 
This isn’t the world as it should be, our true home!
This isn’t the completed world which God has promised.
  
It’s inevitable that we’ll all live and die in the faith - with many of our God-given hopes not fully realised.
But it’s far, far better to die with the restlessness of hope still upon us, than to die as those who are content with the world as it now is.
 
For a Christian, the fact of dying doesn’t really matter that much, for in Christ, death is no calamity.
What’s important is how we live whilst we are alive in this world, moment by moment.
The important thing is whether we reach for the hope with all our faith and apply it with all the love we can muster.
For this task, we have the Spirit of God with us, aiding and abetting every step we take towards the promised land, every act of love we show our neighbour, every tilt we make against injustice, every prayer we offer with thankful and compassionate hearts.
By our active faith, we give solid content to our hopes.
 
I encourage you to take that hope and faith with you out into the world and become mighty warriors for God.

​Pastor Rick