Homily for Pentecost Pentecost 10 - August 12, 2007
The Very Rev’d Michael J. Pitts
Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40Last week, Prof. Wallis took us on a wonderful guided tour of the scriptures searching for angels. But for me, what was more important was her exposition of the double biblical understanding of human responsibility and sin on the one hand and cosmic evil on the other. As I reflect more about this, you may be hearing more from me on this theme. The duality of this understanding is one more example of the many dances of differences which we find in scripture, and of which I was speaking about on several occasions earlier in the year. Today’s readings offer us another, the tension between faith on the one hand and… well we are going to have to work a bit on the other hand to define what it is.
Even the meaning of faith is not totally unambiguous. If for instance we speak of the Christian Faith, we are thinking of a set of intellectual propositions enshrined in a Creed or a work of systematic theology. Belief in this context is to be seen as assent to the propositions. How Christian or orthodox we are is measured by our assent or otherwise to the propositions. Canon Sanchez and I once found a web-based examination on our Christian faith. We both filled it out quite independently, and the result that was returned for each of us was ``Chalcedon compliant``. We were actually rather disappointed. We always thought we were heretics.
But anyway this is not, for the most part, the Biblical understanding of faith. St Luke offers us an epitome of that in the opening sentence of this morning’s Gospel:
"Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms.” 1
Faith in the teaching of the Gospels is a simple trust in the goodness and love of the Father. Belief in this context takes us back to and older English meaning of the word related to our modern word beloved. Faith leads us to find in God the object of our love.
Paul’s thinking around faith is more determined by the contrast, arising from his personal experience, between faith and works. As a zealous Pharisee, he had thought that his humanity, his salvation, was to be earned by minute application of the law to every detail of life. But, in coming to know the risen Christ, he had learned that being in a right relationship with God was a gift, given by Christ. Faith was the simple acceptance of the gift.
The letter to the Hebrews, which we read this morning, and which of course, was not written by Paul, despite the later ascription, moves in yet another direction.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2
It is important to read this in the context of the whole letter. It is encouragement to endure persecution, trusting in God’s goodness despite the evidence to the contrary in the sufferings of the Christian community. This is a far cry from another modern misunderstanding of faith as belief in something unproveable and unlikely.
In general terms, although both Paul and the writer of the letter to the Hebrews have an understanding of faith slightly different from that of the Gospels, there is much in common between the three. Faith is trust in a loving reality at the heart of the universe. The opposite would be to work things out for ourselves, to make the best arrangements and accommodations possible for ourselves with a cruel and unloving world.
Now let us look at the other side of this duality, which we were not able to define a few moments ago. We have not yet looked at all at our first reading from the Isaiah prophecies, so let us begin there.
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. 3
If faith is about religion, God wants none of it.. The opposite for Isaiah, and here his message is similar to that of many of the other prophets is:
learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. 4
It is important to note that the reason for such a way of living and acting in relationship with others is not, in Pauline terms to earn salvation. That would be the purpose of the religiosity which Isaiah has just condemned. Rather to live with justice and mercy is based in the nature of God. We are to be compassionate because God is compassionate. However this understanding does provide a contrast with the faith side of our duality, in that it suggests that the heart of our response is not just acceptance of, and trust in, the loving nature of God, but rather way of living and acting in and for the world, consonant with God’s nature.
In the same way, faith, in the letter to the Hebrews, the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, gives rise to a fundamental orientation of life. We are, like the heroes of old, to be looking forward, to be striving for the future, to be intent on a goal. We may need to think much more thoroughly about what that future, what that goal is. Is the future, better country, as this writer suggests, the heavenly country, outside of present pragmatic experience, or is it the future of our present world? To fix the hearers’ vision on the heavenly country may have been important when the problem to be dealt with was a time of persecution for the church. But when one our key problems is the degradation of our environment to the point where there is the threat that planet earth may not in the future be habitable by many species, including homo sapiens, a concentration in the future of this world may be more important.
Let us return to the Gospel reading. Luke began, as we have seen, with Jesus saying:
"Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
But he continues :
"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. 5
In the context of Luke’s Gospel these sayings concern the end time, which for Luke is near, even if not quite so near as for Matthew, Mark and Paul. But part of the contemporary debate about the historical Jesus concerns whether he was an eschatological prophet, preaching that the end of the world was near, or whether he was a teacher who spoke about living in and challenging his contemporary world, the world of the Roman empire. I think both interpretations are possible and born out by the texts, but again in our present context I believe, in our generation, a concern for this world might be more important than a fixation on the next.
But let us end where we began and see if we can define more clearly the duality. On the one side is faith, a simple acceptance of God’s loving, compassionate and nurturing reality. On the other side is intentional directed living in such a way that our actions, relationships and way of life reflect, in our world, the nature on God. Like the other dualities of our scriptures, these are not either/or propositions. Faith without intentional living becomes solipsistic self congratulation. Intentional living without faith becomes obsessive and neurotic. I believe that our tradition offers us a way calm, faithful, intentional living that despite much evidence to the contrary can change our world for the better and make the future more possible for our children and grandchildren.