|
Seeking Assurance
Sermon by Brigid A. Boyle August 8, 2004, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Deuteronomy 7:7-14a Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
"Is it true?" This is the question which brings people to church, suggests Karl Barth. "Is it true? This sense of unity in diversity, or a stationary pole amid changing appearances, of a righteousness not somewhere behind the stars but within the events which are our present life? … Is it true, this talk of a loving a good God, who is more than one of the friendly idols whose rise is so easy to account for and whose dominion is so brief? … The people want to find out and thoroughly understand is the answer to this one question, Is it true? - and not some other answer which beats around the bush." I think Barth was right. I think that is the question that brings people to church, that brings you to church, and, if I am honest, brings me to church. Is it true? This story, these stories, of a God who chooses, loves and provides? Of a God who set his heart on a tiny rag tag group long ago and is faithful enough to keep his heart still set on us, a thousand generations later? Is it true? This proclamation of a Savior given to save us in a tiny babe? Of his body raised from the dead for our poor sakes? Is it really true? This conviction to which so many of our ancestors clung so tightly? Is it true? Can it really be true? It is a question, if we are honest, prompted by so much of what happens between the time we leave these doors on any given Sunday morning and when we return the Sunday next- the family which we longer recognize because of conflict which cuts to the core of who we thought we were, the terror and threats of terror which leave us both fearful and despairing, the job which never really satisfies and leaves us feeling as though our days are simply wasted, the sickness, the pain, the death. Can this word of a good God, a God who is still faithful? Of a God who is God? Doubtless hundreds of preachers and teachers before me have sought to find a way to convince any who would hear that it is true, and doubtless many have simply beat around the bush. On this day, I want to do neither, but to push Barth’s question a bit farther, or simply ask the next question. If it is true, what difference does faith make? If there is any sense in which you can believe that there is a good God whose providence has been and is for humanity, what difference does believing in that God make? If you can hold on to your doubts and still, haltingly, say, “It is true,” what difference does it make for the life you lead? What difference will everything we teach little Margaret make? Our question is, of course, is asked at a time much different that it was even a few decades past when Barth asked his question. Culture and the role of Christianity in it, of faith at all, have changed considerably, and have moved from the center closer and closer to the edge. I am sure that that there are more than a handful in this sanctuary who remember a day when faith was assumed, when the church, or community of faith, was without question a part of family life and commitment. It was a day when the pews of this church were packed, partly for the simple reason that coming to church was what people did. But this day, only a couple of generations later, things are much different. The negative side of this is easy to see, of course. It is that the people are much less invested in the life and work of the church, that we beg people to care about what we are doing and we fight to be counted as a priority among so much that competes- from soccer practice to quiet Sundays at home with the paper. Participation in the life of the church is sometimes considered part of a well-rounded social program as much or more than it is a community of God's people and Jesus Christ. I think about the phone call I received a few years back from one whose name is on the rolls but whose body never darkened the door. She called about her daughter. “We would like to have her confirmed. Her friends are doing it in other churches. Seems like we ought to too.” The girl made it to a year’s worth of classes and she was confirmed. And she has disappeared. I suspect we will see her again when she needs someone to marry her. I need not go on to illustrate, but simply to say that "times have changed and things are not the way they used to be." But the church’s changed situation is not all for ill. For the other side of the church having moved from the center to the edge, is that people, especially young people I think, are encouraged and even expected to be thoughtful in the claims they make, to be diligent in understanding what they believe and why and free to question and even to doubt. It is not so much, I think, fighting with the authority of Christianity as younger generations did in the 1960s. It is a more serious asking after what difference it really makes. It is a more serious seeking assurance that it does make a difference. So what difference does it make? We know that for Abel and Enoch, for Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, it made a difference. But what difference does belief, might belief, make for us? In the first place, faith in God moves us away from ourselves, toward things hoped for and things not seen. Faith frees us from being self-absorbed. To the point one theologian said, “Faith makes possible a greater sense of nonchalance about ourselves.” Faith permits us, yea even requires us, to realize that we need not be ultimately focused on ourselves, that as much as I would sometimes like it to be, it is not “all about me.” And what a gift that is. I think of the mindset prevalent almost everywhere these days, "I am myself responsible for everything." We convince ourselves we are responsible for doing it all. At its best and to be sure, this sense of responsibility has achieved some very admirable and consequential things over the years and centuries past. We did not wait for cures to polio and tuberculosis and other deadly diseases to appear, but claimed the responsibility to hasten finding a cure and, indeed, the world is better and safer for it. But there is another, I think more burdensome, side to this sense of independence and responsibility: I myself am responsible for everything. But of course, you and I cannot manage everything and so end up overwhelmed with the impossibility of the task. I know you know what I mean: the tears shed because we have failed to "fix" our marriage or our troubled child or our aging parents, the should haves and would haves uttered over and over when hindsight reveals clues that should have led to averting a tragedy or avoiding a conflict, the nights where anxiety prevails over slumber and thoughts of how we might better "handle things" spin round and round until we are convinced only of our own dreadful inadequacy. Now this is not just about worrying over the things we cannot control. It is about feeling like we ought to have control and so, are responsible for everything. Do you see the difference? Faith in God, over and over again, puts all of this into perspective simply because it is faith in God, not in ourselves- not in our ability to manipulate things and direct the course of events, not in our power, or proficiency or strength- but faith in God. Said one theologian, "Faith is trusting in one who is ultimately responsible and, as such, is trustworthy." It is trusting this God who is God. What that means, quite simply, is that it is not up to us alone. There is a gracious sense of freedom in trusting this God who alone is responsible for the world, because when we do, by grace, we are made able to go about life with greater confidence and purpose and hopefully with a bit less stress. But, lest my point be misunderstood, trusting this God who alone is responsible does not mean that we ought simply "let go and let God" do all the work, individually or corporately. It is true that we cannot do all things, but there are some things we can do, some things we are uniquely created and given purpose to do. Faith makes a difference in our lives, then, by giving us purpose. "What most Westerners need to be saved from today," writes Douglas John Hall, isn't dread of death, and it isn't a crippling sense of guilt … It's the gnawing suspicion that humans may be purposeless things, a species just as accidental as all the others- equipped, ironically enough, with all the attributes necessary to purposeful living, but in the end random, arbitrary, and … 'superfluous.'" This gnawing suspicion, this anxiety, that we are here to do nothing, is, ironically, exactly opposite the anxiety that we are here to do everything. But the reality for those who trust in the living God is that neither is true. "We cannot do everything, " prayed Archbishop Romero in words you have heard before, "and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest." Faith in the God we know in Jesus Christ makes a difference then by freeing us from ourselves and for responsibility in the world. In the second place, faith makes a difference because, more than anything else, it lets us be honest about ourselves, those around us and the world around us. Faith lets us tell the truth, particularly about those things we would rather not, the world's faults, our friends' weaknesses and our own deficits. In this culture wherein the power of positive thinking seems to have a strong hold and socially and individually we try to keep going in life by emphasizing the positive assets and concealing our liabilities, being honest about one's faults seems a backward notion. But it is not. I think, for example and on a broad scale, of a certain society that believes itself terribly advanced and refuses, because it is so "advanced" perhaps, to be honest about and do business with the millions within its borders who have little money, little food and little opportunity in this land of plenty. Or I think of the cycle of violence often seen in families, when a parent's abusive rage is never really confronted in any honesty with the result being that the cycle simply repeats itself in the next generation. You see, truth, being honest, even with the things we would like to hide most, is necessary for our survival. It is necessary for compassion to exist and justice to be served. But that kind of honesty can be terribly painful and without an under girding which brings the assurance both that it is bearable and, in the end, it is not the whole truth, it is impossible. Faith, I tell you, makes a difference in life because it provides that under girding. That is so because it is faith in a God who knows the truth and whose greater truth is of a love that is able to absorb and overcome even the most frightening of truths about us. Faith gives us courage enough to do business with the truth about ourselves, because the truth of God's judgment and forgiveness, grace and love is, I promise you, deeper and broader and higher than anything else. There is nothing in all creation, no deep dark secret, no wrong done, fault deep within that will ever take away God’s love from you, or from me, or from anyone. And no one, nothing, can take that away. It is an assurance based only on things hoped for, it is a conviction based on things we cannot see, but it is true. And it makes a difference. All of which brings me to a final point, the final point, I think, of the difference faith really makes in the lives you and I lead. Faith in the God we know in Jesus Christ gives us a Word that the world simply cannot give. That word is hope. It is the assurance we all seek. "For Christians," writes Frederick Buechner, "hope is ultimately hope in Christ. The hope that he really is what for centuries we have been claiming he is. The hope that despite the fact that sin and death still rule the world, he somehow conquered them. The hope that in him and through him all of us stand a chance of somehow conquering them too. The hope that at some unforeseeable time and in some unimaginable way he will return with healing in his wings." It is the hope that our faith, your faith, is not just wishful thinking. It is the hope that lets us believe there is a picture bigger than what our eyes can see and our ears can hear. It is the hope, that lets us believe we see only through a glass darkly but one day we shall see face to face. It is the hope that lets you say a prayer for the new little babe just born. It is the hope that lets you stand with confidence at the edge of the open grave of one who you loved so very much. It is the hope that lets you speak a word of comfort to the friend whose knows death too well and tell another that they are good even though so much around seems to them tell them they are not. It is the hope that, when everything seems to be falling apart, lets you trust that you are held in the hands of a good God. That is the hope faith grants. That is the difference faith makes. I know that human words alone cannot convince anyone of the presence and protection of a good and gracious God. But what I also know is that there is a Word that can. It is a Word that gives us the assurance of things hoped for. It is a Word that fills us with conviction about things we cannot see. It is the Word which is God and was in the beginning with God. He name is Jesus Christ. May we be granted faith in him and may it make all the difference. Thanks be to God. Amen. |