How often we look around us and long for a path
toward faith and hope in the midst of much anxiety! Our world is replete with seemingly
intractable violence in many lands and uncertainties about who shall lead us. Today
is no exception.
In the face of impossible hopes, as with Abram, God
takes us by the hand and shows us the stars – a heaven filled with mysterious
and distant lights that cannot be counted. They reveal the limitlessness of God’s
promises which hold out hope for peace in the way Julian of Norwich insisted,
writing: “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall
be well.”
How are we to grasp this?
Luke 12:32-40
The Gospel story shows us a stance to take, an approach to
the things of this world, a measurement for what we value, and a caution about
the dangers.
Today's gospel reading. . . collects
a number of Jesus' teachings regarding how his followers are to ready
themselves for God's impending future, that is, what living faithfully is to
look like in terms of our behavior. First he underlines the gift-character of
salvation with the encouragement: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is
your Father's good pleasure to give
you the kingdom” (v 32, emphasis added).
Secondly, he recommends a series of
actions consistent with last week's readings' emphasis on not investing oneself
in the pursuit of transient earthly wealth, culminating in the assurance that
“where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (See the commentary on
last week's texts.)
And thirdly, with a greatly
abbreviated reference to the much more elaborate end-time parable of the ten
virgins we find in Matthew 25, he recommends an active and alert stance toward
the impending future, a stance of ready waiting “for the Son of Man is coming
at an unexpected hour.” One might call this attitude of urgent anticipation
“faith-filled hope.” – John Rollefson
Genesis 15:1-6
While the Gospel gives us the prospect of readiness to hope,
the Genesis story gives us companionship with God in the night, even at the
moment of despair.
In the poignant image of God pointing Abram to the stars (I picture
a clear, cold, windless midnight hour with the lights of the heavens twinkling,
thick and sharp) we see with Abram the abundance of God’s promised future. We
are incredulous, because when we look around us at the world’s disappointments
in our individual lives and that of the nations, a future of such brightness
and vastness seems impossible. The moment for Abraham appears to be like ours: Where
is the least inkling that hope is not futile? Where is Abram’s first heir?
[T]here is as . . . yet no sign of
the offspring needed to get the promise started toward fulfillment, and the
clock is ticking. It's not until the next chapter that Sarai will try to
jump-start the promise by offering her slave-girl Hagar as a surrogate. As soon
will become evident, this only complicates matters, and such human
improvisation in trying to help the promise along isn't what Yahweh has in
mind.
But most significant for today's
theme is the story's conclusion: “And he (Abram) believed the Lord; and the
Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
From St. Paul in his Letter to the
Romans, chapter 4, through the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of
Justification officially ratified by the 1999 Vatican and the Lutheran World
Federation, this passage has been key in the church's efforts to understand the
mystery of how it is that God justifies (reckons righteous), by grace through
faith, us fallen descendants of Adam and Eve. – John Rollefson
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Finally, we receive a summation of the truth about faith: It
is not logical. What we hope for is not visible.
The author's succinct definition of
faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”
(v 1) is borne out in the conclusion drawn from the history of the faithful,
all of whom “died in faith without having received the promises, but from a
distance they saw and greeted them” (v 13a). This throws faith into its
appropriate attitude of leaning into the future to which a promise always leads
where its fulfillment is awaited in what both Paul (Romans 8:24–25, e.g.) and
the Psalmist (33:22) call “hope.”
. . . The author's description of
the faithful as “strangers and foreigners (sojourners) on the earth…seeking a
homeland” is an apt description of the pilgrim character of the church,
bringing us full circle back to father Abraham whose first recorded act of faith
was to respond to God's call to “Go from your country and your kindred and your
father's house to the land that I will show you” in trusting obedience, “not
knowing where he was going” (v 8b). . .
We cannot prove that we are justified to have faith and
hope. Rather, faith and hope feed each other and we come by them most possibly with
our eyes (see the stars!) and ears (hear the word of God!) open to what is
impossible… and yet true.
John Rollefson is
a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He has served
congregations in Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, Milwaukee, and San Francisco.
Homily Service 40, no. 9 (2007): 13-22.
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