Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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What Abraham did that pleased God so was to trust him. We read a piece of the Abraham story this morning, to remind us of this ancient man who is a spiritual father to Jews, Christians and Muslims. When Abraham heard God say, "Move," he moved. When God told Abraham that his family would become a great nation, Abraham (although he was seventy-five years old and childless) believed. Writing two thousand years after Abraham, the apostle Paul reminded his readers of Abraham's great faith, of his eagerness to trust God. And, Paul says, that's what saved him. Not being good, not obeying God's law (Why "the law," the Ten Commandments, Paul points out, hadn't even been handed down in Abraham's time!), but believing, trusting, having faith in God's promises. That's what put him right. That's what made Abraham righteous in God's eyes.

Faith has always been the key to salvation, Paul says. Even under the Old Covenant, the covenant God established with the Jews, his own people. But the Jews often forgot that faith was the key, and tried (instead) to please God with hundreds of dos and don'ts. And, Paul insists, it is still true today, under the New Covenant, the covenant God established with all mankind through his Son, Jesus Christ: We are made right not by works, nor by the law, but by our faith. 

Faith, A Response to Grace

Faith is that mysterious presence in us which, according to Jesus, gives us the power to walk on water, to move mountains, to get up after being ill and carry our beds away, to see again after being blind. Faith is our response to God's grace. It is trust. It is our confidence and joy in God. And it is the key to heaven's door.

Today I want to say this: faith not only gets us into heaven; it also gets us out of bed in the morning. Not only can't we live forever without faith -- we can't live at all without it. Because, even if people never think about God or religion, they still need something by which to orient their lives, something to set direction for them. And in this super-cynical age, that something is hard to find. Nothing is trustworthy. A cloud of cynicism covers the stars by which our fathers set their course.

What We Used to Believe

Think about all the things we used to believe. We used to believe that baseball players played for love of the game, and that they lived clean lives so that they could be role models for kids. We used to believe that if we read it in the newspapers, or heard it on the radio or saw it on television, it was true. We used to believe that philanthropists were good people, not just stingy old misers looking for a break on their income tax. We used to believe that we could trust politicians, and ministers, and policemen and teachers and judges.

But today there is a thoroughgoing cynicism about all these things, and many others, and poor souls don't trust anything at all. I wouldn't say that some of the cynicism isn't deserved, although I believe it is much exaggerated, but I would ask: "If the essence of wisdom is to doubt, and to believe nothing and trust nothing, how can we survive? Don't we need some kind of anchor?"

We Need to Believe

Why would a young boy shoot up his school, wantonly taking the lives of innocent schoolmates? Maybe we've told him, at home and at school, in our words and deeds and attitudes, that there really is nothing to believe in. That he needs to be suspicious of everyone and everything, because nobody really means well and nothing is as it seems. Maybe we've taught him that this world is a house of mirrors, one distortion after another. That would mess me up. Because, if that were true, there would be no reason to get out of bed in the morning (except for the thrill of the day; we're making bombs in the garage!)

Kids like adults need faith, they need something to believe in, something they can trust. It might help to put prayer back in the schools (because it might say to troubled kids, somewhere there is something trustworthy), but that's only a piece of the answer. These kids (and in many cases their parents) have lost faith not just in God, but in doctors, and counselors, and teachers, and policemen -- even in other kids. A person's life needs underpinning. We give them job skills, but no reason to go to work. We dress them up and give them no place to go.

It Takes Courage to Believe

Why is it so easy to become cynical, and to lead others down that slippery slope? Because it agrees so well with our cowardly natures. It takes courage to believe. When we put our trust in something, there is always the chance that it wont be rewarded. When we reach out to someone in love, and say, "I think I can trust you not to hurt me, if I open my heart to you," we become very vulnerable indeed. When we do believe in something, and put our trust in it, and tell the world, we are ridiculed. Can't you hear Abraham's friends mocking him: "O sure, Abraham, you heard some God no one's ever heard of, and this unknown God of yours has told you to leave the old homestead, where all your security is, and go a long way away, and wander around on someone else's land. Right."

But I envy Abraham. No book was ever written about his cynical friends. They took the easy road. But Abraham did, indeed, become the father of nations. His friends stayed safe. That's why faith is so rare. But Jesus says, and Paul says, it is everything.

Faith May Not Be Easy

Faith is not necessarily easy. It doesn't necessarily make life easy. But it does make life worth living. Our Lord Jesus lived a faithful life, and went to the cross. He put his trust in God -- did he ever! He could have become cynical a thousand times: "I heal them and they don't believe. I tell them the truth and they don't listen. They follow all the wrong leaders. They go after all the wrong things." But he kept his faith through good times and bad. And never was anyone so blessed, nor become such a blessing, as he.

Karl Barth said, "Faith is the simple discovery of the child which finds itself in the father's house, and on the mother's lap." St. Augustine, many centuries before, said a similar thing: "Only those who have had friends" he said, "can understand the meaning of faith." Why? Because our faith in God is like a child's unquestioning confidence in his parents' love, or like our own reliance on another's friendship. It's only partly what we know about our parents and friends, that they have been good and loyal to us in the past.

It's only partly what we know about God (although faith cannot proceed without some knowledge). It's that, based on what knowledge and experience we have, we trust God always to be what he always has been. And that trust is what we build our life on. That is faith.
 

Eating the Bread; Drinking the Cup

Jesus came to the table that last night and gave his friends mementos of his death, a piece of bread, a sip of wine. It was a token of the faithful life he had lived in their presence, and which they had witnessed. It was to strengthen their faith, until he returned. We're his friends and we're still waiting. We still eat the bread and drink the cup. To trust him, after all these years, is not easy.

But to put our trust in other things will only disappoint, and not to trust in anything (to have no faith at all) leaves us empty, without a way or a reason to live. Let is not be cynics in God's world. There is no wisdom in that. Let us find faith, something to believe in and live by. Ask God for it. Here, in this place, today. It will not be any easier, or any less risky, tomorrow. Choose to believe. Choose to live, today and forever.