Are We Acting in Faith?
The Bible is unflinching in challenging us to interpret the world we live in. Thus, we find Jesus, in an already difficult and disturbing outburst, asking this most pivotal question of faith: Why do we not know how to interpret the present time? For those of us living in the United States today, this is undoubtedly the most challenging task facing our public life. It divides not just the country whose name begins with the word “United,” but as Jesus declares in Luke 12:49-56, the divisions are upending families and households: “Father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” As it is with the present time in a dangerously ununited United States, so it was a mere three generations into the life of what came to be called the Christian Church when Luke was writing a Gospel and The Acts of the Apostles.
In fact, in a few weeks we will hear the tone sharpened when Jesus announces, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” [Luke 14:26-27] All his speech about kindling a fire, a stressful baptism, carrying a cross, becoming a disciple, is framed as a response to “the present time.” Jesus has read, marked, and inwardly digested the warnings of the prophets of Israel: God is not impressed by worship, sacrifices, and prayers that are not backed up with action. Which action is meant to counter the unjust, and therefore ungodly, actions of a society that ceases protections for its most vulnerable citizens, often described in the coded biblical phrase, “widows, orphans, and resident aliens.”
When the Poet-Prophet Isaiah describes Israel as God’s personal vineyard [Isaiah 5:1-7], we hear the interpretation of the present time is that of everything falling apart: instead of producing fruits worthy of becoming fine wine, the vineyard yields only wild grapes. Why? Because where the Lord asked for there to be a just society, one sees only bloodshed; where the Lord asked for righteousness – mercy, forgiveness of debts, love of neighbor – one “hears only a cry.” It is a judgement issued more out of sorrow and disappointment than anger. Instead of a community that cares for the well-being of all of society, to include even those nomadic resident aliens seeking safe refuge, one sees the people driven into debt, ancestral farms foreclosed and usurped by predatory urban “despots,” and the cry of a people who have lost their homes, and many snatched off the land and carried off to foreign lands to be slaves and servants of other nations.
As he interprets the present time, Jesus sees these historic injustices and lack of support for God’s people compounded by the occupation of the vineyard by a brutal and resource devouring Empire centered in Rome, overseen by the emperor-god, Caesar. Jesus warns those who respond to his call to “follow him” in all his attempts to restore justice for the debt-ridden and poor, to dismantle the rapacious systems of governance and taxation, and somehow drive out the foreign legions to restore the vineyard, to restore Israel as God’s own people and land, and to reestablish a just and free society for all. He warns that the path toward a restored and productive vineyard will be met with conflict and resistance before justice, mercy and peace has any chance of being restored. To put it bluntly, to be a disciple of Jesus, one must be willing to be kindled into a fire capable of dismantling and burning to the ground all systems of injustice that seek only to consolidate the wealth and resources of the land in the hands of the few, the affluent, and a politically-repressive leadership.
As one searches for the good news one needs to hear Jesus’s assurance to those who choose to leave the comfort of social and family ties and trust in the assured outcome: “Truly, I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age and in the age to come eternal life.” [Luke 18:29-30] His is a bold claim, but a claim rooted in Jesus’s people’s history.
Enter the treatise called Hebrews, which is believed to have been addressed to a struggling Christian community rooted in the very heart of the prevailing darkness, Rome. And it is this treatise called Hebrews that reviews the history of biblical faith. “Now faith is the reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen.” Rather than a claim about personal belief, Hebrews makes the highly provocative claim that faith itself moves in the direction of the realization of those things that are presently beyond demonstration, but nevertheless are real.
Hebrews examines the lives of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Sarah and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as those who face difficult times, and yet acted out of faith and changed the life of human civilization. Hebrews goes on to say, “By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace. And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets-- who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” [Hebrews 11:29-12:2]
All of which is to say, what we do now, as we interpret the needs of the present time, has eternal consequences, whether or not we see the fruits of our labor. Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist pastor and American theologian observed, “The man who wrote this little treatise…saw the history of humanity summed up in the life spirits who had the power of projection into the future. Faith is a quality of the heart which sees things before that are visible, which acts on ideals before they are realities, and which feels the distant city of God to be more dear, substantial, and attractive than the edible and profitable present. Hebrews 11 calls on Christians to take up the same manner of life, and compares them with men and women running a race in an amphitheater packed with all generations of the past who are watching them make their record. But he bids them keep their eye on Jesus who starts them at the line and will meet them at the goal, and who has set the pace for good and fleet men and women for all time” [i]
This great cloud of witnesses watches us now, in this present time. What do they see? Are we interpreting the present time and acting accordingly? Are we ready to pick up our crosses to follow Jesus and all those who came before him into the reality of God’s reign?
[i]
Rauschenbusch, Walter, The Social Principles of Jesus (The International
Committee of the YMCA, London:1916) p.189
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