August 12, 2007 - Pentecost 11, Year C
Saint James Episcopal Church, Saint James, NY

"Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,
the conviction of things
not seen."

Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1. It's one of the most well known parts
of the book of Hebrews, a book in the New Testament
that is usually better known
for being long and complex and not very easy to understand.
But after ten chapters of careful argument about who Jesus is and what God was on about with him, we finally get to this verse,
and we breathe a sigh of relief.
Faith. It's something we know about. It's part of the daily life
of anyone who is a Christian.
And what we read in this first verse
is an affirmation
that in spite of all this complex theology
what really matters
is faith,
and while some people might think we're crazy for believing it,
we're not alone. Faith matters,
and it's about being convinced, being assured.
Faith is that thing that makes it possible
to believe in a God
who we cannot see,
it's what keeps us hoping
looking towards something
that we only have a glimpse of right now.

Or at least that's the way
we usually think about it.

But this is one of the times —
and I hate to say it — this is one of the times
when the people who translated our bible for us from the original Greek
might not have got it
quite right.
Because the way they've translated it,
faith, it seems, is all in our heads.
It's about being convinced of what we believe, of having our heads and hearts match up.

I don't normally talk much about in sermons about the original languages that our scriptures were written in. Mainly because for most of us
it's pretty boring. And mostly it's possible to explore the meaning in other ways.
But sometimes, just sometimes,
the way something is translated
really makes a difference to how we understand it.
And today is one of those days.

When you go back to the Greek, which is most likely the language
the letter to the Hebrews was originally written in
and is certainly the language that the oldest copies of the letter that we have
are written in,
if you go back to the Greek, there are two words that most English translations
don't quite get right.
The first one is the word
that we have translated "assurance."
In Greek, that word is hypostasis.
And when it appears in other places, it doesn't mean individual certainty or anything like that. What it comes closer to
is reality, or expression.
So in chapter one of Hebrews, it talks about Jesus as being the image or reality or expression of God.
And so, if that's a better translation,
then we have
Faith is the reality of things hoped for; faith is the expression of things hoped for.

And it's the same with the second part of the verse. "Faith is the conviction of things not seen."
The word translated conviction, elegchos,
doesn't quite mean that.
Conviction is about being convinced,
it's a word we tend to use about a strong personal internal belief.
But most of the time in the New Testament,
that word means proof.
That would make faith the proof of things unseen.

So where we had
"Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,
the conviction of things
not seen"
now we have
"Faith is the expression of things hoped for,
the proof of things
not seen."

Suddenly we've moved from faith
as something that goes on in our heads and hearts
to something that happens
in real life.
And that makes a whole lot more sense
of the rest of our reading from Hebrews chapter 11.
Because after that famous sentence about faith,
the letter goes on to describe the faith
of a bunch of Old Testament heroes, about Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham,
and on past the part we read today, about Isaac and Jacob and Moses,
and Rahab and Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David and Samuel, and more.
And for all of them
faith wasn't just something that happened in their heads and their hearts;
faith happened in their lives.
Faith was all about they did
in response to what they believed.
Remember the story of Cain and Abel.
They were brothers, and both were farmers.
Cain grew grain; Abel raised sheep. And both of them
brought sacrifices to God.
Cain brought some of his grain. Abel brought the most valued part
of the very first spring lambs.
God didn't accept Cain's offering, but did accept Abel's.
And as far as we can work out,
the difference was which part of their produce they offered.
Cain ground some grain for flour, made sure he had enough grain for the next planting, and then gave God some of what remained.
It was like he was saying, "I'll trust you this far God, but I'll make sure that I've got a back up plan."
Abel gave the very best — the lamb that he would most wanted to keep for breeding;
the tasty fat meat
that was best for entertaining.
He gave God the first
and the best
and trusted God to take care of him with the rest.
That's faith — not just what Abel thought or believed
but how he lived.

Enoch
is another one of the faith heroes.
This is the second Enoch in Genesis;
one is the son of Cain,
this one
a descendent of Cain and Abel's brother Seth.
We don't know much about him, except that whatever he did
it was pleasing to God.
Faith lived out.

Then there's Noah, crazy Noah.
There they are in the middle of the middle east.
It's not a place known
for its high rainfall and massive flooding.
But Noah heard God's warning of a flood, heard it,
and in spite of everyone's laughter and mockery
built a huge boat.
And he and his family were saved.
By faith.

And Abraham, already getting on in age by the time God spoke to him,
seventy five years old
and he packed up his belongings
and sold off everything that couldn't be packed
rounded up his family
and headed off into the unknown,
an emigrant
with no certain refuge ahead.

This was faith, for all of these heroes,
not what they thought
but what they did.

And it's the same for us.
What we do, the choices we make
in how we live our lives
is what faith is all about.
It's not just mind and heart,
but life and heart.
No wonder Jesus says,
where your treasure is
there will your heart be.
Because what we do
reveals what we believe
and what we love.

And if faith is what we do,
then faith is about choices.
If we take Abel's example
faith is about what we do with what we own. And for us,
that mostly shows up in how we allocate money.
Does God get the first offering?
Or just what's left over?
It's a choice, and what choice we make
reflects our faith.

And in the case of Noah, faith was about listening to God asking him to do something.
It was something a little unusual, something that risked making him a fool in the eyes of his family and friends.
And you know, faith is still like that for us.
Faith is about the choices we make
to live a little differently than those around us.
Faith is about choosing to live by God's call
and not just others' expectations.
And once again
that's about making choices.
Making choices about how we use our time —
maybe even something like limiting the invitations we take up
so that they don't interfere with our worshiping God on Sundays.
Making choices about the activities we get involved in,
so that God-stuff doesn't get squeezed out.

For Abraham
faith was about a willingness to have God take him to a whole new place, a whole new life.
And that raises a question.
Are we willing and open
to hear God's call to us?
Even if it might take us
to a different place, a different location,
or maybe just a different place in life,
a different job,
a different use of our gifts.

Faith. It's not just about what we think, or even what we believe. It's about how we live, making choices.
What we do
is the proof of our faith;
how we live
is evidence
of what we really believe.

"Faith is the expression of things hoped for,
the proof of things
not seen."

We believe in God, we say.
So prove it.
Prove it in your life.
In what you love,
in what you do
in what you choose.

©Raewynne J.Whiteley, 2007