A Sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Winnette

Faith Without Doubt,

Hebrews 11:1-3, Luke 16:18-25

This morning I offer the third sermon in a series on Faith and how our faith impacts our daily lives. We heard of wealthy Dives and his plea that Abraham send proof for the faith of his brothers. Now I will share from the letter to the Hebrews a definition of faith. Continue reading on your own to hear a litany of heroes of faith: Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Sarah and others.   Study the text and revive in your imaginations what it meant for them to be faithful as they faced the challenges of their worlds.    

Hebrews 11:1-3 -- Listen with me for a word from God. 

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. ²Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. ³By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

“And now you may kiss the bride.” I love that moment at the end of a wedding. It’s a fascinating if voyeuristic moment. It’s physical and spiritual. I love the kiss because of the unseen glitter of promise behind it, because of the unseen trust behind it. I love to picture the couple’s future, a horizon beyond the kiss of love.   Now the horizon I envision doesn’t always become reality, but in the moment faith reigns. The kiss is a gift of covenant, a promise of love.  It signs a dynamic relationship of relatedness: God above, two pairs of lips, and a community of faith. It is an amazing gift of faith that’s physical and spiritual, both seen and unseen.  

Faith in God gets muddied within a myriad of expectations. We expect that faith in God consists of buying into a set of ideas about God.   Faithful voices say, “God loves all people.” Some say, “God loves but only approves of people with certain lifestyles or with certain beliefs.” We might be asked to believe that God stopped speaking to humanity with Jesus, Muhammad, or with Joseph Smith and that the last word was the best word. We can get seriously stuck under all the heavy propositions about God.   Some think they have a weak faith because they just cannot believe in the virgin birth or in Jesus feeding the 5000. 

Others lament that they have too many doubts and don’t know what they believe.   Still others draw God with detailed specificity and in so doing box God in, removing God’s freedom.   Susan B. Anthony wrote, “I distrust those people who know well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”  

The heroes in Hebrews exhibit vigorous faiths woven with strands of blind hope, desperate humanity, surprising humility, and deep trust. Christian writer Madeleine L’Engle wrote, “Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without certainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair believe only in the idea of God, not in God himself.”[1]   I don’t think we can have faith without doubt. A faith rooted in facts is not faith; its observation. Faith in God is born in the gap between the seen and the unseen. Faith in God is born in places between fact and fantasy, between proof and hope. Frederick Buechner wrote, “Almost nothing that makes any real difference can be proved.”[2]   Our faith in God sits between reality and promise, today and tomorrow. 

So how do we obtain faith? Faith is a series of gifts from God, gifts freely given. Imagine faith coming down to us wrapped in the colorful, gleaming stories of scripture. Wouldn’t it be nice if the gifts actually did come down like manna from heaven, gift-wrapped boxes of holy love?   Plunked down on the seat or pew beside you with a handwritten card that says: TO- you, beloved child of God, FROM- God, xoxoxo.   If God would give us gifts this way, we would be sure that God really exists and cares for us.   And we could promptly send our thank you cards. 

But that is not how the gifts of faith come to us; they don’t drop clearly from heaven, yet they are all around us. They come gift-wrapped in the stories of scripture, and the stories of our shared lives. Faith is wrapped in tree leaves as they dry and color. Faith comes adorned with pumpkins and drying cornstalks. Faith is wrapped in the whispered or emailed words of love we send to each other. Faith comes wrapped up in the arms of giggling infants and the kind elderly in our lives. Faith comes as feelings of well-being from our God. It is an attitude of trust in God and in each other.   Faith comes in the sparkling beauty of our material world and it comes wrapped up in the unseen words and expressions of our relationships. Receiving the gifts of faith we trust in our God’s promises. Receiving faith, we are given courage to glimpse beyond any difficult moment, the horizons of God’s promises. 

So as people seeking deeper faith, we come together on a scavenger hunt to find and un-wrap the gifts of God.   It’s an easy scavenger hunt, like an Easter egg hunt where you can see colored eggs all around you; where your basket cannot hold enough. We can easily find the faith gifts of the material world. It is harder for us to find and un-wrap the invisible gifts for we live in a culture that has dissected the physical world becoming addicted to proofs. We live in a culture that has centered it’s economies on the resources of matter rather than the resources of relationship and spirit. So we have a harder time finding and accepting the unseen gifts of faith.  

The story from Luke is lesson about receiving faith. The once wealthy Dives character placed his hope in belongings and ignored the need of hungry, homeless Lazarus who lived outside his door. Dive ignored Lazarus, he also ignored the gifts of faith that came through the stories of his tradition, the stories of Moses and the Prophets. Every time he stepped over or around suffering Lazarus he refused God’s gift, an opportunity for friendship with Lazarus and trust in God.  After Dives died he lamented his suffering and cried out to Abraham, “unfair.” He did not feel he was given enough proof, no one forced him out of his self-centered life and he thought it unfair. He begs Abraham to send proof to his five brothers. Abraham simply tells him that his brothers are just going to have to trust in those stories from Moses and the Prophets.   We all want more proof. Many of us like Dives have cried to God to send a better proof than nature or story, so that we could be sure. During these frightening economic times we may cry out, “Send proof God of your will so that I will know whether I should save more or give more.” “God, just tell me definitively what you require of me.” “Send proof so I won’t worry.” “Send proof and I will believe and become the best disciple of Jesus possible.”  Alas, we are going to have to trust in the stories and God’s world as proof enough.  

I want to give you two little gifts – one can be seen and the other is unseen. They are wrapped up in a desire to help us see God’s horizon of hope. If you ever need what I have in my hand, I will give it to you.   What do you think is in my hand? You know I love you; it’s not going to be a spider, not a melting Reese’s peanut butter cup. Trust me. How many of you would believe me if I told you it was a twenty dollar bill?   The currency is the visible gift. Do you know what the unseen gift is? If you ever need the $20, all you need do is come and ask for it. The unseen gift is a promise. You can take the unseen gift now knowing that I will try to help you if you ask.   Faith is our trust in each other’s good promises. Faith is our trust in God’s good promises. Do you want to see what’s in my hand? Nah – I would rather you trust me.

I know faith is difficult. During an interview Billy Graham was asked if he believed after he died if God would say to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  He responded after pondering the question, “I hope so.”[3] God’s gifts of faith are not like Dorothy’s ruby red slippers; they don’t transport us out of our worlds. Faith in God is hard. Dostoyevsky so honestly wrote that the “death of a single infant calls into question the existence of God.”[4] There is great suffering and evil in the world and their existence challenge our faith in a providential God. During the dark nights of the soul we worry sleepless. Watching beside hospital beds we agonize that he or she may not recover health. What if we cannot find jobs?   What if the family never moves beyond this time of ill-will towards each other? What about global warming?   I urge you to trust in God nonetheless.  Our hope in God is our conviction that God has the long run in hand, even if we don’t see how it is all going to work out God will work it out well.

I’ll begin to close now with a story of hope shared by Pastor and professor Tom Long. He writes,

In her beautiful book, “Intensive Care,” Mary Lou Weisman tells the moving and tragic story of the death of her fifteen-year-old son, Peter, from the terrible disease, muscular dystrophy. She tells about an astonishing thing that happened right at the moment of his death. Peter’s body was completely paralyzed in the final stages of his disease, … He was moaning, random and disconnected in his thoughts. His voice, wrote Mary Lou, “sounded so far away, so lost.” But then, suddenly, in a surprisingly clear voice, Peter spoke directly to Larry, his father.

“Daddy, what does ‘impudent’ mean?”

Bewildered and frightened, Larry and Mary Lou looked at each other. What could this strange question from their dying son possibly mean?

“Daddy, what does ‘impudent’ mean?”

Even though he had tears streaming from his eyes, Larry answered Peter matter-of-factly. “Impudent. Son, impudent means bold. It means shamelessly bold.”

Peter paused for a moment, death closing its grip on him, and then he said, “Then put me in an impudent position.”

And sure enough, just before their son died, Larry and Mary Lou, positioned Peter’s arms and legs in a posture of bold defiance, an “impudent position” in the face of death.

Pastor Long continued,

I think there is something to learn from this story about the nature of Christian hope. Christian hope is a kind of “impudent position” over against the powers of death. Christian hope is not something sweet and mild. It’s not wishful thinking: I hope it doesn’t rain this weekend or I hope the economy gets better soon. Christian hope is not even about progress, the hope that human ingenuity will bring in a brighter tomorrow…
Those may be good hopes, but when Christians use the word hope, they mean something different by it. Christian hope is the faith that in a world of violence and warfare and suffering, that none of these things has the last word. That over against all of the visible evidence, love is finally stronger than hate, that life will prevail over death because God is bringing in a day when every tear will be dried, when justice will roll down like the waters, and death will be no more. This means that Christian hope puts us in a kind of “impudent position” over against the powers of destruction in the world.[5]

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.   Faith in God is more akin to attitudes of trustfulness than certainty.[6]   Faith is not about calculating the odds of God’s existence. Hope in God helps us boldly face the future.   We look beyond today’s troubles to the horizon of God’s promises, glimpsing God’s reality. We are arranged with impudence. We become hope-filled gifts of faith ourselves. Amen.