Year C. The tenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 12th, 2001
Hebrew 11: 1-3, 8-16
Title: “Faith is the gift of gifts.”
The author has maintained and demonstrated the superiority of Jesus’ priesthood over that of the old covenant and of his sacrifice over that of the old animal sacrifices. Beginning in 10:19 he exhorts believers to avail themselves of the ministerial implications of the bloody self-sacrifice of Jesus and enter into the presence of God, the real Holy of Holies. He admonishes them not to lose their “first fervor,” the enthusiasm of their first days of conversion and Baptism. Faith needs endurance to last permanently. . In Chapter eleven he gives a catalogue of heroes from the past who endured in faith, a faith based on the old covenant, mind you. The implication is that if they could endure and last permanently, even though they did not live to see the realization of the promise, how much more so can present-day Christians who have seen the day of Christ.
In Chapter eleven we have the equivalent of a modern documentary TV program where an heir of a wealthy and famous family stops before the portrait of an ancestor, in this case an ancestor in faith, more a “Hall of Faith” than a “Hall of Fame,” and tells the story of a major exploit that contributed to the family’s strength and survival throughout the ages. These are godly people of faith to be imitated, who have much to teach us about faith, even though their faith was not consciously Christian. After making his famous statement about faith in verse one, the author observes that the visible world was created out of the invisible, implying the same is true of faith. He then says a word about three men of the age, faith ancestors, from creation to the flood- Abel, Enoch and Noah. Our text, beginning with verse eight, begins with the fourth and greatest example of faith- Abraham.
In verse one, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for,” this is not a definition of faith, but a description of how it works. Faith is vision of a different kind than physical vision. It does not abide by the rules of earth and so what earth would consider future, not yet, unreal, faith can make present, already, real. Faith is the eternal vision and version of reality, often at odds with earthbound perspective. The earthly, fleshly, time-bound person cannot see what the faith person can see. While the faith person knows, as Abraham, for instance, knew, what he or she “sees” is not physically or historically present, he or she also know that it is “more present,” more real than what is historically so because it is eternally so. Time and history will pass away; earth will pass away. Eternal truth, first glimpsed and finally grasped through faith, will never pass away. Faith gives the future a “present reality.”
Evidence of things not seen, the word translated as “realization” is the Greek hypostasis. It can mean “nature,” “essence,” or “assurance.” The word translated as “evidence” is the Greek elenchos. It means “proof, test.” It is, of course, not proof as earth would demand. It is proof of a different kind, dimension, realm, sphere, where the rules of proof are not so physical or temporal. Faith empowers one to “see,” but not physically see, the physically invisible. Faith has a timeless character as well as a “place-less character.” Yet, as the author will show by telling the stories of faithful ancients, we can see faith lived by real people even if we cannot see what faith’s object is.
In verse two, “because of it the ancients were well attested.” Because they lived by faith they had God’s approval. God approved of Abel’s attitude and manner of life, even though on earthly terms it looked like Cain had won. Enoch’s faith kept him above the corruption of his age. Noah believed in the flood, evidence of things not seen, and acted accordingly even before it happened, realization of what is not yet.
In verse eight, Abraham…went out, not knowing where he was to go. Unlike Noah, Abraham received very few details about the future. God dealt with him on a “need to know” basis. He obediently left behind the “seen” world of his familiar and familial environs and spontaneously embraced an “unseen” vision of an unrealized inheritance. Not until he reached Canaan did God tell him, “This is the place.”
In verse nine, “by faith…dwelling in tents.” He dwelt as a stranger, foreigner, nomad, traveler in tents. This is not evidence of one who possesses the land, but of an alien. Abraham was so tenacious in tenuous circumstances that he is both the father and the model of faith, faith that makes a reality of the “unreal,” the not yet.
In verse ten, “Looking forward to a city with foundations,” the author contrasts the actual earthly situation with the faith situation. A city with walls for protection is a long way away from a collapsible tent. But the author is preparing the reader for a broader interpretation of Abraham’s “city” or “land” than a mere territorial one. The vision which faith gives, the horizon it provides, enables Abraham to look both behind and beyond his immediate environment.
Whose architect and maker is God: Abraham’s real goal is no earthly inheritance.
In verse eleven, “he received power to generate,” this English translation straightens out a problem in the Greek text that might indicate that “Sarah received power to conceive.” The text makes Sarah the subject, but the verb is the one for depositing the seed, not receiving it. Furthermore, making Sarah the subject of the sentence assigns a faith to her that Genesis 18: 12-15 says she did not have. She laughed at the idea, in fact. The point is that earthly biology would say conception is impossible, given the ages of Abraham and Sarah. Heavenly biology would laugh at that, just as Sarah laughed at God’s word.
In verse twelve, “as good as dead…descendants…numerous…countless,” Life in abundance was to come from the apparently dead. This is a heavenly principle, but it is also a fact of earthly life. Limited human perception is unable to see that all great nations and, indeed, the whole human race, started out quite small and fragile, as small as an individual couple.
In verses thirteen to sixteen, these all died in faith, the patriarchs died in the context of faith, but the context, faith, did not die. They went on to live in another dimension. Faith was the “rule” or “rules” they lived by and died , not only “with” and “by”, but also “into.” In the New Testament Paul uses the phrase, apparent only in the Greek, “believing into” but translated in English as “believing in.”
“saw it…from afar,” they did not actually physically see or experience what God promised, except from a distance, in some measure, but not fully. They “saw” it, but not quite, as in verse one would put it or as Deuteronomy 3: 25-27 would describe Moses catching a glimpse of the Promised Land, yet never entering it. They would always be strangers and aliens on the earth. The Promised Land was in a different realm.
In verse seventeen, put to the test, offered up Isaac. This is the third and last example of Abraham’s faith. The very basis of the promise, Isaac, Ishmael was also Abraham’s son, but not heir to the promise. The means through which the nation would continue, was to be put to death by the command of God, his heavenly father, and the very hand of Abraham, his earthly father.
In verse nineteen, he reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead. According to the author of Hebrews, Abraham had full faith in the promise, so full than not even the death of Isaac at his own hand and God’s command could end it. Therefore, God must intend to raise Isaac from the dead if he were to carry out this sacrifice. Many Jews believed at this time in an afterlife, but resurrection from the dead was not part of it. The author is using phraseology, specifically Christian phraseology, to make a homiletic point to his contemporary readers rather than really describing Abraham’s thought processes.
He received Isaac back as a symbol. The author is still speaking to his audience. He means “as a symbol of Christ’s future resurrection,” for Isaac was as good as, symbolically, dead and came back to life.
Sermon
Oh, what faith can do! Oh, what faith can do when we do not try to control its outcome, when we trust and do not require a specific result! Abraham died without possessing the land, all he had was a grave for his wife, and without seeing a great number of offspring. Where were the results? The proof?
They were in another realm. Abraham had faith, vision into another world, another scheme of things, of which this world is but the prelude. The concreteness and specificity, the hardness and visibility of things and people and events in this world are signs of another dimension. That dimension seems, when compared to the concrete world, flimsy, ethereal, gaseous and illusory, made- up even. Yet, without becoming a Platonist, and the author of Hebrews was not a Platonist nor a neo-Platonist, the really real world is perceived through the browser of faith and entered into through “hitching” onto Christ who alone can take us there.
To require “concrete proof” of “un-concrete” truth before we give the other dimension even a chance is to rob ourselves of the best part of God’s universe. It is also to condemn ourselves to “concrete” existence- static, too heavy to lift up, too hard to be comfortable in or on, dead. Even the most hardheaded realist of earth must escape into art from time to time for a little “grotesque comic relief” from the reality of earth-bound existence. Even non-believers do this and when they do they belie their protestations of gullibility on the part of believers.
There are and were many heroes of faith, but Abraham stands out not only as among the first, but the best. An old man, settled in his ways and wealthy in his own right, picks up stakes to go to a land as yet unspecified and unknown, believing he will father a child who will father a nation, despite his age, and refusing to let the harsh facts which seem to contradict his hope ever get him down, confident that God will never let him down- how can such a man not be an inspiration across the ages, for people of all nations? A man who would sacrifice his own son, let alone the son who was the only means to fulfill his hope, what he believed to be God’s promise! Who would sacrifice him simply because God said so without explanation or justification? This is faith! Yet, if this is faith, we certainly need God to give it to us. There is no way we can arrive at it through logic, reason, or our own powers. This is the gift of gifts. This enables us to see all else as a gift, especially Christ.
The other world, the age to come, does not operate by the rules of this world. And we who have the vision that comes from faith and the version of reality it spawns should not operate by the rules of this world either, except in so far as we must- in a biological sense.
The author encourages us to endure in this new vision, in our attitudes and modes of behavior, by reminding us of past examples of people like Abraham who did it. Their behavior was strange, by this world’s standards, because they were strangers and aliens. So should ours be. There can be no really satisfying logical explanation for why Abraham was willing to sacrifice the very basis for the promise he believed in, namely, the sacrifice of Isaac. There can only be awesome admiration on the part of believers and incredulous revulsion on the part of non-believers. Faith, as Abraham lived it, cannot be explained. It does not fit into the earthly scheme of things. Faith, as Abraham saw it, supplies for the lack of visual, tangible evidence. That “evidence” is not concrete or demonstrable. It is rooted not in physical objects but in the very “object” of faith, God. This faith is not merely vision. It is also hearing. Faith is seeing with one’s spiritual eyes, envisioning, what one hears with one’s spiritual ears. Faith is listening to God telling us of his dreams for us and picturing those dreams in our mind’s eye, much like people who listen to mystery stories on the radio use their own imagination to make the story come alive in their minds. It is not pure fantasy, but based on something, “evidence,” if you will, the evidence of what is heard, the word, the promises of God.
The vision that comes from faith lets us see what is otherwise invisible.
What we see through our faith eyes is real, yet not solid like what we see through our physical eyes.
What we see with our faith eyes and testify to will not hold up in a human court of human law as solid evidence.
We can only see the faith of others by observing their behavior, behavior that makes little or no sense to those blind to or dismissive of the vision of faith.
Faith in Christ brings not only vision to see the invisible but also the power to live the truth it reveals.
Imitating Heroes: Certainly Christians imitate Christ first and foremost. He is every Christian’s hero par excellence. However, because Christ is more than simply the historical Jesus of Nazareth, because, as God, Christ has lived in the world in some form or other long before Jesus was born, and because Christ continues to live in Christians long after he has died, risen and ascended into heaven, we can find many people to imitate in so far as they imitated Christ, even “imitated” him before Jesus was born. In the case of Old Testament heroes, those who lived before Jesus, we would more correctly use the term “intimate” rather than “”imitate, since they “hinted at” Christ more than “minted” or “coined” his behavior. Be that as it may, the author of Hebrews is holding up Abraham and the other three “heroes,” Abel, Enoch, and Noah, for our edification, admiration, and imitation. He is, in effect, saying, “Let these examples of faith inspire you to live your faith with the same daring attitude.” Everybody has his or her heroes. Even murderers will report that they were “inspired” by other murderers and that their example gave them both the courage and the basic plan to carry out their own crimes. We humans are imitators, much like our cousins, the apes. Indeed, something as basic and universal as speaking a language is the result of imitating others, others whom we first admired, then by whom we were inspired to imitate and from whom we derived the courage to actually do what they do and maybe even improve upon it. Now, certainly, the author is not holding up Abraham’s sacrifice of his son for us to imitate exactly or literally. He is getting at the underlying invisible attitude that gave Abraham to courage to even think about it. It is the attitude we are to imitate, not necessarily the exact action. In so far as our heroes reflect the attitudes of God we can avail ourselves of the power their attitudes and the actions that proceed from them can give us to also imitate God, Christ, in our own rather unique set of circumstances. And just as our heroes live at least one level above the “average” person, when w e imitate them, we are lifted above our own “average” lives into a higher and richer realm, the realm where God is more visible and his presence more felt. Then, if our “hero-worship” is based on real qualities and not just imaginarily imposed upon the admired one, we, in turn, become a “hero” to others. Thus, living the Christian life, Christian values, truths and attitudes, is not a solitary affair, but always a communal one, for none of us singly can reflect the full array of the gifts of God’s Spirit or the example of the character and characteristics of Christ.
Hall of Faith vs. Hall of Fame: It is crucially important who our heroes are and why they are heroes to us. Whom we admire and why we admire them will tell us a lot about ourselves. If we admire only rock stars or athletes or movie stars or “stars” of other worldly pursuits, it will tell us where our heart really lies. It will tell us what we really value, what is “holy” to us. Fame and its twin, Fortune, are this-worldly values and, as such, are limited in scope and duration. Faith, and its twin, Fidelity, are eternal values and, as such, transcend time and space. If Lady Fame inspires us to act a certain way, it is very likely that Dame Faith will leave us cold and unmoved. If Mr. Fortune is our hero, Mr. Fidelity will seem it us to be Mr. Fool. It is really a matter of vision, which vision and version of reality we choose to commit to. The behavior that flows from each vision is very different, even contradictory. One vision values the opinion of God above all else; the other, the hall of fame version, values the opinion of other humans above all else. Time proves where wisdom lies. More correctly, eternity, the end of time, proves where wisdom lies and the wise live. Amen.
