Faith, Being Beckoned into the Future by Hope's Targets

12 Pentecost, Cp14, August 11, 2013   

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24

Hebrews 11:1-3 (4-7) 8-16 Luke 12:32-40

 Lectionary Link

  In our lives we live with an intuition that is provided us from a kind of parallel kingdom that is within us.  This intuition that can arise from within us comes in the form of a message that says to us always, “There is something better.  There is something more.  There is other life, another life, life  in our future.”  And even when we are getting ready to leave this life and when our dear friends are getting ready to leave this life in the body as we know it now;  our intuition tells us that there is still more life.  Why does it do that?  Plenitude of life teaches us the humility of knowing that we are always contained by something greater than us because we can know that our great Container preceded us and will also succeed us after the wicks of our bodies burn down toward their ashy residue.  Our intuition also inspires imaginations of an afterlife as well, as a kind of humility in recognizing that the few decades of our lives are not the only and final or even significant decades in the life everlasting.

  We are born with a biological life that gives us orientation in growth, so we know that such growth implies a future.  Growth means we have a future whether we want it or not; the question then becomes how do we live into our future?  What does our future mean?

  We have the general and automatic future promised to us by the very nature of growth but we need to process automatic growth with intentional meanings.  And this effort to be intentional in the meaning of growth into a future is where we encounter a way of living, called the way of faith.

  The writer of the letter to the Hebrews wrote in a way about faith that became watershed reflections upon the faith of people who are the legendary and historic figures of the Salvation History that is recounted in the Bible.    Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets: What did all of these have in common?  According to the writer to the Hebrews, they all had faith.  Many of them had weaknesses and faults but what distinguished their lives in the midst of the mixed blessings of personhood and circumstances, they had this virtue called faith.

  How does the writer to the Hebrews describe faith?  “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  Things that we hope for have not happened yet.  So hope has created a host of events that have not occurred yet.

  The shadow of hope is despair and pessimism.  We can let the negative vision of the future cripple us now with fear and anxiety.  The visions of worst case scenarios can rise before us to defeat us before we even try to do anything.  The boredom of the ordinary or the mediocre can depress us to try to do anything different.  After all, what difference will it make?   We cannot change the world in any significant way.

  Faith is a deliberate way of living with hope.  Faith is an intentional way of articulating hope.  Faith is acting with a purpose; acting towards a future target that has captured our imagination toward making our lives better and the life of our world a more excellent place.

  Faith involves focusing upon a target and so in faith we profess a love and a desire for something that has not happened yet.  This focus aspect of faith is crucial since with faith we can have the proper relationship towards hope and the future.  An unhealthy relationship with hope and the future is manifested in mere dreams and fantasy as entertainment in our present pain, boredom or discomfort.  To live by faith is to not let the vision of hope degrade to cloudy dreams without feet upon the ground.

  The heroes of faith written about by the writer to the Hebrews were people who had to pick some very real and down to earth targets.  They felt they were inspired to wants some important things for their future.  Abel, an accepted offering for God; Enoch, a faithful walk with God; Noah, a crazy notion for building a ship; Abraham and Sarah, wanting their own child.  Isaac, to pass on the family blessing; Jacob, a promise of a divine blessing; Joseph, the vision of not being trapped in Egypt; Moses, a promised land; Samuel, leadership for his people; Rahab, a harlot who wanted to survive an attack on Jericho; David, a king who wanted an established kingdom and line of succession.  Prophets; who wanted listening faithful audiences to love God and practice justice.  All of these people had specific targets created in their contexts from the inspired intuitions of hope.  They did not let these targets go; they focused and they worked and they persevered.  They did not give up.

  The writer of the Hebrews said it was important to have targets of hope and act in faith towards those targets.  The writer also said that none really achieved their targets in any final way, writing they were all really looking for a better country, a better location, a better environment, a better place to be, a heavenly country.  They were always looking for another specific future.

  What is the difference between achieving a future with faith or without faith?  Frankly, biology guarantees that we will all have a future of sorts.  But do we regard ourselves to be in the automatic ruts of our family or our society or our current peer group to attain the cookie cutter pre-ordained roles given for us in the future?

   Faith, is not just living in the ruts which guide up toward the future;  faith involves a worship of Greatness, a worship of the Great One and in that worship finding an inspired intuition that gives us specific targets of hope in our future.  And then with intention, deliberation, preparation, hard work, perseverance, prayer, pleading, intense desire, tenacity and grace we exercise the daily narrative of events in our lives toward the targets of hope realizing that the targets are not ends in themselves.  The achievements of the target goals are significant milestones toward the next milestone in a never ending journey into the future.  
  Faith involves a calling from the One who seems to mark our lives with sublime modes of communication.   I can remember the call to the priesthood.  Oh, to be a priest.  There is my target of faith, to be a priest.  And then I got there and as I carried a plunger towards the church bathroom, I thought, “Wow, is this it?   Thousands of people hanging on my every word…..Not!”  But do we regret hope’s targets because they are temporary and not final?  Not at all because within the attainment of the target, thousands of more targets of hope open up to continue to beckon us to live with the attitude of life called, faith. 

  Jesus, as the one who lived with faith towards hope’s future, gave us the vision of living towards having  the treasure of faith with God.  Faith is living in the state of being prepared.  Faith is living with the freedom to be disillusioned with the temporary attainments in life even as good as they seem to be in our quest for them, why?  Because there is always more.  There is always hope’s visions of new targets for our faithful actions.  There is always Son of Man; There is always Super Man/ Super Woman; There is always the Surpassing Humanity as a target person of each of us in a surpassing future state to keep us, keeping on.  And it is the focus of “keeping on” which is God’s most graceful achievement of faith in our lives.

  The targets of hope are not about arriving at a final destination; they are lures to focus the intentional acts of faith by which we continue to believe that hope is the best of all vision and not the cruel tease for us to want things we can never have.  We come here today to worship God so as to open ourselves up to the intuitions of hope; these intuitions create targets and these targets of hope for us personally and for our community can inspire us to live by faith.  And as Scriptures say, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.”  Amen.