Genesis 12:1-9, Romans 4:13-25, Matthew 9:9-13,18-26
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Sometimes I don’t want to prepare a sermon . . . because it seems like an exercise in futility. No sermon is ever good enough to fully explain the experience of faith, or to capture the mystery of God’s love, or to describe the deep peace of knowing Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit. A sermon is an exercise in faith, that God will use my words in some way to help others, no matter how inadequate they may seem to me to be.
And so here we are, talking about stories in Genesis and Matthew that show us acts of faith.
In Genesis, Abraham carries on the call that his father Terah first heard, to leave the family home in Ur and travel to a new land. Abraham’s father Terah brought them as far as Haran. After Terah died, Abraham continued the journey down to Canaan. We know it was Canaan, but what God said in Genesis 12:1 was “go to the land that I will show you. Hebrews 11:8 says Abraham went without knowing where he was going. It takes a lot of faith and courage to leave a place you know and go somewhere new, even if you know where you’re going. It takes even more faith and courage to go when you don’t know where you’re going.
This past week here in Sterling we had our community vacation Bible school. Ready Set Move! I helped out in the Bible class where every day we had activities that helped us engage with the day’s lesson. On two of those days, we used blindfolds. So I brought one and I wonder if someone would be willing to come up and put on the blindfold?
[direct the blindfolded person to go different directions]
Thank you so much. You did a great job! You followed directions well. You went where I said, even though you couldn’t see. Why were you willing to trust me?
Thank you for being willing to trust me. Abraham also went because he trusted God. Genesis doesn’t tell us much about Abraham’s life before he went to Canaan, but he must have had enough of a relationship with God to hear God’s call and trust God enough to follow that call.
Included in the call was a promise: I will make you into a great nation. (Genesis 12:2) But Abraham had no children because his wife Sarah was barren, and Abraham was already 75 years old. Hoping against hope, Abraham had faith in God. Romans 4:18 says, “Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping—believing…” Romans 4:21 says “He was fully convinced that God is able to do whatever he promises.”
In what ways are we hesitating to move forward and follow God because we can’t see where we’re going?
We are heirs of God’s promise to Abraham. Paul explains this in Romans 4:
16 So the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free gift. And we are all certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham’s. For Abraham is the father of all who believe. 17 That is what the Scriptures mean when God told him, “I have made you the father of many nations.” This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing. (Romans 4:16-17)
In our reading in the Gospel of Matthew, we see people who are also heirs of that promise to Abraham, people who are acting in faith. First there’s Matthew answering Jesus’ call to follow him, much like Abraham answered God’s call to go to a new place. And then there’s the synagogue leader asking Jesus to come resurrect his daughter who has just died, and the women who dares to reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ robe in desperate hope of healing.
Matthew, the synagogue leader, and the woman all acted in faith that God can do more than we can ask or imagine. Jesus tells the woman in Matthew 9:22 “Daughter, be encouraged! Your faith has made you well.” Her faith gave her the courage to try, to brave the crowd and touch Jesus, something she was forbidden to do because of her condition. Faith helps us to have courage and do what God asks – follow, ask, touch.
Two weeks ago our kids and grandkids were here visiting. My granddaughter Raegan asked me to take her to Dollar General to buy Elmer’s glue and a bottle that said “magical liquid,” a can of shaving cream, and a jar of glitter. It’ll be fun, she said. It sounded like a big mess to me. But I trusted her.
[Combine glue and magical liquid.]
Raegan was right. She and her cousin had a lot of fun making slime, and adding the shaving cream to change the consistency of it, and adding the glitter to give it texture and sparkle. And I was right. It was kinda messy, and we will be finding glitter in random places until Jesus comes again.
I trusted her enough to go along with it, even though it might get messy. Sometimes we miss the miracle because we’re distracted by the mess. The religious leaders only saw the mess when they asked the disciples in Matthew 9:11 “Why does your teacher eat with such scum?” Jesus was eating with Matthew’s friends, tax collectors and other people who were on the outs with religion. Jesus explains to the religious leaders in Matthew 9:13 ‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.’ They had a whole system of sacrifices to be offered in particular ways for particular things. But Jesus says, don’t worry so much about having things neat and orderly, or being correct and precise. Worry more about being merciful. Welcoming. Compassionate. Loving.
In what ways are we hesitating to move forward and follow God because we’re worried about the messiness?
In what ways is God calling us to go outside our comfort zones?
Maybe it is to talk about gun violence. In this month’s issue of the Presbyterian Outlook, there’s an article by gun violence prevention minister Deanna Hollas who asks: Why do we have so much gun violence? Here’s how she answers:
“The primary reason is that we have underestimated the greed and political power of the gun industry, whose profits soar with every school shooting. We have also underestimated its ability to exploit our fears and create its own culture. Because a gun is a nonconsumable product (meaning it lasts indefinitely – it does not get used up like toilet paper or wear out like a car), gun manufacturers must create continual demand for their products and bring in new customers to keep their factory doors open. The simple fact is that nothing sells guns better than gun violence, according to a 2022 NewsNation article. The more gun violence we have, the more people buy guns. And the more guns we have, the more gun violence we have. This continuous, self-sustaining loop only benefits the gun industry by promoting gun sales and also the politicians who cater to gun extremists for votes.”[1]
That’s probably not the way most people are talking about it. If we avoid having conversations about tough subjects like this, we also miss opportunities to offer alternative perspectives, to help change the narrative, to find ways to work together to solve the problem. The Matthew 25 initiative, of which we are a part, is being expanded to include taking action to prevent gun violence. Matthew 25 is about eradicating systemic racism, structural poverty, and increasing congregational vitality. The Outlook article points out that people of color are disproportionately affected by the gun violence epidemic, and includes suggestions for how to take action. I’ve shared it on my Facebook page.
What else do we avoid talking about? Welcoming and supporting those who are not welcomed in other churches. Talking about poverty and race in ways that don’t demonize the poor or people of color, so that instead of being afraid of one another, we can love one another, as Jesus calls us to do.
God calls us to do things we’ve never done before, to overcome fears, to admit and address our doubts and questions, to use our resources for ministry in new ways…to be willing to let go and trust God.
I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been reading Pastor Brian McLaren’s book Faith After Doubt. McLaren proposes that “Faith before doubt: [is] about correct beliefs. Faith after doubt: [is] about revolutionary love.”
In our journey of faith, we learn and grow in our understanding of our beliefs, and part of growing is allowing ourselves to ask questions about those beliefs, and to go beyond them so that we can love as Jesus loves, what McLaren calls “revolutionary love.” He explains:
“By revolutionary love, I mean love beyond: love that goes beyond myself to my neighbor, beyond my neighbor to the stranger, alien, other, outcast, and outsider; beyond the outsider to the critic, antagonist, opponent, and enemy; and even beyond the human to my non-human fellow creatures. In short, revolutionary love means loving as God would love: infinitely, graciously, extravagantly.”[2]
Philosopher Alan Watts puts it this way—he says, “Beliefs are ideas we cling to because we wish they were true or want them to be true. Faith is like looking at the sky through a clear or open window…with an openness to accepting it as it is: blue or gray, light or dark, starry or sunny, rainy or fair.”[3]
Faith as openness to accepting what is might be the hardest first step in learning to love as Jesus loves, with revolutionary love.
Or as Paul says more simply in Galatians 5:6, “What counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
With love like that, we can change the world.
Thanks, God.
Cover photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash
[1] https://pres-outlook.org/2023/05/from-despair-to-hope-mobilizing-your-church-to-end-gun-violence/
[2] McLaren, Brian D.. Faith After Doubt (pp. 116-117). St. Martin’s Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[3] As quoted in McLaren, Brian D.. Faith After Doubt (p. 117). St. Martin’s Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
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