"What Faith Is"

“What Faith Is”

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

828.328.6196   corinthtoday.org

 (© 2011 by Robert M. Thompson.  Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quoted are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, Copyright 2011 by New York International Bible Society.)

When Jesus rose, he gave us an eternal reason to believe in “something better.”

I don’t know about you, but it’s sort of hard for me to come to church on Easter Sunday and see what someone has described as a war zone at the front of our church property.

This past Wednesday I had a conversation with a reporter for the Catawba Valley bureau of the Charlotte Observer.  Charlene Carpenter said there had been a letter to the editor last week (which I missed) about the tree removal out front.  She wanted to know about our construction plans and also had questions about how large the congregation is and why we needed to clear that much land.

My response was that no one could be sadder to see that many trees cut than I am.  There was one tree in particular – a maple on the west end of our parking lot that blazed every autumn, a giant burning bush of red and orange. I might have been hugging that tree had I been around when the giant machine clutched it and severed its trunk.  I went out yesterday looking for a small offspring I could replant in my yard.

Planting a tree is an act of faith, because it takes decades for the tree to mature, providing shade or fruit or oxygen or just beauty.  Everywhere we have lived, we have planted trees, always enjoying a return trip to see how they have grown up.

Cutting trees can also be an act of faith. I told the reporter this entire property was ten acres of forest fifty years ago.  I don’t know of anyone who would go back to what it was then.  For most of our fifty years we’ve had about 125 parking spaces, and one of my jobs as chief regulation-enforcer was making sure people didn’t park in the grass.  I gave up.  Sunday morning crowds now average 600 and on days like this exceed that number by fifty percent.  With our new multi-purpose building we can seat over 1000 in two venues and we had to look at the whole property to maximize its use.

“We’ll make it beautiful,” I promised Ms. Carpenter.  That’s a statement of faith. Faith sees beauty when ugly is prominent.  Faith sees possibilities when realistic options are exhausted.  Faith sees life when death is visible.  Faith is the evidence of things not seen.

Today is a big day for faith, especially faith in Jesus Christ.  Faith is on display around the world today.  From Hickory to Rome, Christians will dress up, go to church, ring bells, and eat chocolate to declare, “He is risen!  I believe!”

Today is also a big test for faith.  Countless people around the world, maybe some of them in this room, will find the courage today to give faith a chance – or maybe a second chance.  They will step into a church or read a story in the newspaper or watch a program on television that will retell the story of a crucified man who stepped out into sunlight after spending two nights and three days as a cadaver as lifeless as the rock tomb in which he was laid.  They will ask themselves again if it is true, and if it matters.

The passage of the Bible we read today is admittedly an odd choice for Easter Sunday.  Today is about Jesus rising from the dead.  Our reading from Hebrews 11 never mentioned Jesus, much less his resurrection.

It did mention faith.  Hebrews 11 is the Bible’s great faith chapter.  We will  spend most of our time this morning talking about faith.  Toward the end, I’ll come back to talking about Jesus and Easter… and trees.

What faith is not

There are many misconceptions about faith, especially Christian faith.  The writer of Hebrews corrects those as he lists name after name of those known for faith.

Faith is not a way to feel superior.  A lot of people see believers as those who think they’re better than anyone else.  Maybe they do, because pride is one of the hardest sins to combat, and we invite sinners of all varieties here.  The proud, the greedy, the immoral, the dishonest – expect to find them all at church at various stages of understanding and living out their faith. 

Look at the people listed in Hebrews’ Hall of Faith. Noah was a drunk.  Abraham told half-truths.  Jacob’s name meant “deceiver.”  Moses had a temper.  Rahab was a prostitute.  Samson had a problem with women – there’s an understatement.  Jephthah was the son of a harlot who led a Robin Hood-style band of robbers and killed his daughter as a human sacrifice after an impulsive vow.  Yet Jephthah and all these others were commended in Hebrews 11 for their faith.  Having faith doesn’t make you better than other people.

Faith is not a way to make everything right.  “Things go better with Coke,” but there is no similar jingle for faith.  One of the great lies Hell has perpetuated inside and outside the church is that if you have faith you won’t get sick as much and you’ll get a better job and your marriage will be happier.  If you listen to some preachers you’d think death itself is avoidable if you have enough faith.

Look at these stories in Hebrews 11.  Abel was murdered.  Joseph rotted in prison after being falsely accused.  Drop down to vv. 32-28 – people of faith faced the mouths of lions, the fury of the flames, the edge of the sword, torture, jeers, flogging, prison, and stoning.  Some were sawed in two; others were destitute; others lived in deserts and caves.  If everything is going well, who needs faith?

Faith is not a crutch for the weak.  Some people think faith is for sissies who can’t man up and deal with life on their own strength and will.  Faith is for nobodies on the bottom of the food chain.  Tough guys man up and throw down crutches like faith.

Look again at Hebrews 11.  Abraham was a patriarch, a man of wealth and stature.  Moses was a prince.  Samson could have whipped any Ultimate Fighter.  David was a king.  Faith does not discriminate in the social order – it’s on display among the strong and powerful as well as the weak and insignificant.

Faith is not the final piece of the puzzle.  It’s not like life is a giant jigsaw, almost complete except for that one little hole.  You find faith and ah! the picture is complete. 

The end of Hebrews 11 notes that these heroes died without receiving what had been promised.  Faith is more like the frame.  Even at the end of life, the puzzle pieces might still be scattered.  But if the frame is intact, that’s enough.

What faith is

So let’s talk about “What Faith Is.”  Besides his illustrative stories, the writer of Hebrews makes four key statements about faith (vv. 1, 3, 6, and 10) that give meaning to life and to Easter.  If you need a little help finding or recovering faith, try these steps.

Step one: the possibility of God.  “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (v. 1).  Before you can believe in God, you have to believe that what you can’t see can be real.  You may answer, “Well, it’s harder for us post-Enlightenment moderns than it was in the first century to be certain of the invisible.”

Actually, it should be easier.  We know more than they did about what’s invisible.  From gravity to atoms to red blood cells to black holes, we know our lives are profoundly affected by what we can’t see. 

The reason we believe in air, or electricity, or love – is not because we can see them.  We see their effects.  This is the argument in Hebrews 11.  Look at the effect that faith had on Noah, for example.  He was warned about “things not yet seen” (v. 7) and “built an ark to save his family” (v. 7).  At the time, he looked like a nut.  Time, and a lot of water, vindicated his faith.  Faith changed everything for him.

Life has a way of forcing us to be certain we can’t see everything that is real.  Three weeks ago today, Tim Boyd asked me to put his wife Anita’s niece, Rachel Klein of Bellingham, WA, on the prayer list.  She had overdosed on a medication and the family feared the worst.   That week multiple EEGs showed no brain activity, and the family began planning for her funeral.  Doctors gave no hope.  Rachel was brain dead.

One week later, with her father and mother grieving in the hospital room, Rachel suddenly sat up.  She’s been eating, walking, talking, and even singing.  Her parents, who were not believers, now declare this was a miracle.  You may think that’s naïveté on their part, but Rachel’s father is a cardiologist and her mother is a nurse practitioner.

The starting point for faith is to admit that not everything that is real is visible.

Step two: A creator caused the world.   “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (v. 3).  The rest of the chapter will have a series of statements that begin the same way – “By faith” – but continue with a person’s name and a story.  This time he says, “By faith we understand…..”  Faith is the connection of reason and revelation.

The author is not hung up on whether you believe the universe was created in six literal days less than 10,000 years ago or whether it was created billions of years ago.  Neither am I.  What matters as a starting point for faith is there is a Creator.  It’s impossible to speak meaningfully about faith in any other area unless this comes first.

Francis Collins is a contemporary scientist who sees the invisible as pointing to God.  The leader of the team that mapped the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, Collins was an atheist in graduate school.  But medical school brought him closer to the ultimate questions that science can’t answer:  Why is the universe so finely tuned?  Why are we here?  Who caused the beginning of the universe?  Those questions led him to take step two – not only is the invisible real; there must be a Creator.

Step three:  I matter to God.  If the invisible is real, then God is possible.  If God is possible, then a Creator is the best explanation for all that exists.  Now the writer of Hebrews begins a series of personal illustrations – Abel, who offered a sacrifice by faith and then died at his brothers’ hand, and Enoch, who apparently did not die.  Very little is told us about him except that “Enoch walked with God and God took him” (Gen. 5:24).

Our writer chooses that moment to interrupt his faith illustrations and make his next point about faith:  “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (6).

That’s another giant leap of faith.  Many great men and women have believed that there is a Creator.  The philosophy is known as Deism.  God exists, and he made everything, but he’s uninterested and uninvolved.  Those who adopt this philosophy have no real motive to think much about God, talk to him, or certainly go to church.

If you’re going to come to God, the writer of Hebrews says, you need a further step.  You have to believe that you matter to God.  Like Enoch, you have to “walk with God.”  That can take a thousand different forms, but all of them start with saying that God didn’t just make the world – he made you.  He loves you, just where you are.  He knows about you – the private you and the public you.  You are accountable to him, now and when this life is over.  If you seek him, the reward will be forever worth it.

But there’s still more.  Faith is being certain of the invisible, but it’s more.  It is acknowledging a Creator, but it’s more.  It’s knowing you matter to God, but it’s even more than that.

Step four:  The promise of something better (vv. 10, 39-40).  I have mentioned along the way some of the stories we must now skip over.  This entire chapter is worthy of your reflection this Easter day. 

One of those stories is about Abraham, in verses 9-10.  Abraham left his ancestral home on what we now call the Arabian Gulf and took his barren wife and clan up the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers then down the fertile crescent into the promised land.  There he lived a remarkably blessed life, when you look at it as a whole.  Possessions increased, the promised son finally did come, and then more sons and daughters and wealth and fame.  Among the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, he had it pretty good across the span of his life.  But he was a nomad, living in tents.

He died, verse 10 tells us, anticipating the promise of something even better – a home in the “city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”  I’m learning a little something at Corinth about trusting your architect and contractor.  I know who’s designing our master site plan and who’s building our multi-purpose building.  God, he knew, would be his hope for stability, for a home that would never be vulnerable to winds and storms.

Then follow a lot more stories about biblical heroes, most of whose lives did not end as well as Abraham’s.  The crescendo comes in the paragraph I already referred to, those unnamed saints who were stoned and stabbed and persecuted.  Why did they hold on to faith in spite of a bitter end?  Verse 35 says they were holding on to the hope of a better resurrection.

They died, verse 39 says, not having received what was promised.  That’s where you and I come back into the story.  “God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect” (40, emphasis added).

Do you understand the concept of resurrection in the Christian faith?  We believe that there is life after death – that our souls go immediately into the presence of the Lord.  But we believe, as N. T. Wright puts it, in “life after life after death.”  We believe, as the Apostles’ Creed says, in “the resurrection of the body.” 

That’s what Easter is all about.  Jesus didn’t just come back as a spirit.  He sprang back in a body – a breathing, laughing, talking, eating, touch-my-scars-and-see-for-yourself body.  As wonderful as the miracle is about Rachel Klein, Jesus was deader than she was – no brain waves and no pulse for three days.  And she will die again; he will not.  He walked out of that grave, high-fived some angels, winked at some sleeping soldiers, spoke tenderly to Mary Magdalene, and appeared personally to those who had followed him for three years.  He was back – all the way, in the flesh.

What that meant for those who had died before him was that their faith in something better was not in vain.  And when we are raised in body, they will be raised in body, and we will all enjoy that city whose architect and builder is God.

Three trees

We Christians are a stubborn lot when it comes to faith, hope, and love.  I thought about that awful-looking front corner of the church lot all week.  You may see it on Sundays or perhaps when you drive by occasionally.  I see it every time I walk out of my office.  It is in many ways this Easter a metaphor for the promise of “something better.”

I wonder what will come of those trees – the logs, I mean.  Some of them were quite sizable.  They were living maples and oaks and pines.  What will they become?

I thought of the legend of the three trees.  As they stood tall and proud on the hillside, the olive tree dreamed of becoming a treasure chest, the oak tree boasted of becoming a ship to sail the high seas, and the pine tree spoke only of staying right where he was and becoming the tallest tree in the forest.

One day some woodsmen came to the forest.  The axe fell on the olive tree as the woodsman said, “I will sell this fine specimen to a carpenter.”  The tree thought he was well on his way to becoming a treasure chest.  But the carpenter turned him into a feeding trough for barn animals.

When the second woodsman felled the mighty oak, he said, “I will sell this wood to the shipyard.”  The second tree thought his dream of sailing the high seas would soon come true, but he was turned into a small fishing boat and set on a quiet lake.

The pine tree’s dreams had nothing to do with being cut at all, and he was especially disappointed to hear his woodsman say, “This one’s nothing special, but maybe it will be of use to someone.”  He cut it up into large logs and forgot about them.

Their dreams all shattered, years passed.  Then a young couple gave birth to their baby in a barn and laid him in the manger made from an olive tree because there was no room in the inn.  The King of kings sailed in that little boat made of oak and stilled the storm.  And the pine tree?  He was fashioned into a cross by Roman soldiers and lifted high into the air with the Son of God nailed to him so that all of humanity would have the chance to draw near to God.

Maybe some of you have come here today with shattered dreams.  Life has simply not turned out as you planned.  When you came to church on Easter and saw the field of stumps and stack of brush you said to yourself, “That’s my life.  A war zone.”

A group of disillusioned followers of Jesus felt exactly that two thousand years ago.  Then Easter sunrise came.  When Jesus rose from the dead, he gave to everyone who has faith from that day until he comes again a reason to believe in “something better.”  That something better may be may be tangible and it may be in this life.  But it doesn’t have to be, because for those who put their trust in him even if this life ends with being sawed up like a tree, something better, far better, infinitely better, awaits.  Amen.