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Sermons
August 8, 2010
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The author of Hebrews holds up for us as a model of faith Abraham and Sarah, who set out for a place they were to inherit, not knowing where it was or how they’d know they had received it. Part of the promise, too, was descendants as multitudinous as the sands of the sea or the stars of the sky, but they weren’t getting any younger, and Abraham might be forgiven for attempting a workaround by having a son with Sarah’s maid, Hagar. When we read Hebrews, we telescope the long, uncertain story of Abraham and Sarah, focusing on the very end when God did fulfill the promise of a son—but we ought to remember that in the living of that story, the son and heir was only a thing hoped for and a thing not seen. In fact, Genesis tells us that Hagar bore Ishmael when Abraham was 86, but the angels who came to tell him Sarah would have a son didn’t show up until he was 99. That’s 13 years of waiting after the workaround didn’t work so well.
“[They] died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.” Hebrews implicitly acknowledges how uncertain and empty the waiting was for Abraham and Sarah—they could not ever feel that they had come home while they were waiting for the fulfillment of the promise of descendants. They spent a lifetime in a holding pattern , in a way, trusting God to bring them to their destination, but knowing that they still weren’t there. They were strangers and foreigners on the earth, seeking a homeland, seeking their destiny. They were, in fact, nomads.
Nomads are people who live in a place without being attached to it. They expect to move on; they’re always ready to fold the tents and move. That same readiness and detachment are evident in the picture of the servants that Jesus presents in Luke today. “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. . . . If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.” The readiness to which Jesus calls us is detached from our temporary situation but profoundly attached to the master and, by extension, the master’s property. As ready servants, we wait for the coming of the Lord and guard that which belongs to the master out of reverence. And what is it that the master loves and asks us to guard? Christ’s people and God’s beautiful creation.
We live in a time of vicious placelessness—not the intentional homelessness of the wanderer but the utter inhospitality of workplaces that have laid people off and don’t acknowledge receipt of job applications. The college graduates who scramble for a temporary toehold in the marketplace, not even a career but just a paycheck. The literal homelessness of those who can’t afford housing or who have lost their house to foreclosure. The placelessness of immigrants who came here illegally because they had no legal way to make a living. And the nightmare that goes on day after day for people affected by natural disasters—our sisters and brothers in Haiti, now six months into the post-earthquake life, our sisters and brothers in Pakistan, first ravaged by war and now devastated by floods that have literally washed away their dwelling places.
What is the Christian call in a world of such placelessness? Is it to erect fences, fortify borders, and protect our own sense of place? Is it to sit idly by while ethnic tensions erupt into religious warfare because people are so afraid of being without a place? In a world such as this, the call to placelessness, to the life of a nomad, to care for place while exerting no ownership, is increasingly necessary, increasingly desperate. [http://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermons_that_work_123564_ENG_HTM.htm]
We are called to hospitality, in a time when it seems that there is no place for so many of us. We are called to welcome the stranger into a home that we do not ourselves own. After all, it’s in welcoming the stranger that we welcome Christ himself, the householder. But we do so by faith—in the assurance that there is in fact a place for everyone, even if we can’t see it, in the conviction that God has a welcome for everyone. We do the faithful servant job out of faith.
And how does that work? Faith is not something we conjure up. You can’t make yourself have faith. St. Paul says that faith is a gift, and I suppose it is, in the sense that you don’t go out and get it for yourself, but in a very complex and untraceable way, you receive it. Faith is actually a state of being that makes certain things possible.
Last week in the Des Moines Register there was an article about the Bidwell Riverside Center, which offers services to poor people. Their building had been flooded and they were forced on a moment’s notice to move the daycare center into very cramped space so that 45 children are in two rooms instead of four. The executive director, Robert Crandall, who happens to teach religion as an adjunct at Simpson, does not know how they’re going to get through, with insurance red tape and questions about city code, "stop valves," insurance coverage and who's financially responsible for the broken sewers. He does not see the way. But I was struck by his description of himself as a short-term pessimist and long-term optimist—he believes there is a way, even if he can’t see it. And he says, "Let's keep this in perspective. "It isn't Haiti. We're not standing here watching people pull dead children out from under the rubble of our building." They have issued a call for paper plates, paper towels, plastic flatware, soap, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, diapers and children’s underwear, and so far it has been answered. So far the children are still in daycare, still taking field trips to the swimming pool, still safely occupied while their parents go to work.
I think there is a place for those children because Robert Crandall and lots of people connected to him are assured of things hoped for. They can envision a way to keep providing a place for those children, and it becomes possible. And then, day by possible day, they discover that they’ve been given faith for the next day. I think that’s how it works.
The Pullman Porters unionized in the 1920s because they were convinced God had made a place for them where they could work for a decent wage. Their movement built the foundation on which Rosa Parks stood and envisioned what could not be seen, a place where black folks had access to what white folks had access to. None of that was visible, none of that was real when they started. But knowing that the world they were in was just temporary, not as real or permanent as the kingdom of God, they pushed on to bring God’s vision into plain sight. They desired a better country, a homeland, and by faith it came about. That’s what Bidwell Riverside is doing, and that’s what we can do in hospitality to our fellow strangers and sojourners.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always although I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. (Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude)