Getting Faith Right

A sermon for Proper 15
August 14, 2022

Like last week, our reading from Hebrews is all about faith. I think faith is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Christianity. That’s a problem. When we see faith wrong, it will ultimately lead us to see God wrong. We call that idolatry. 

Sometimes we can see faith as tokens we have because we’re really good boys and girls and try really hard. Put our five tokens of faith in the God-machine and get out a blessing. Not only is that the wrong way of seeing faith, but it’s the wrong way of seeing God. We end up worshiping a vending machine that is supposed to work for us! 

Instead, faith is rooted in a trusting relationship with God. Faith must be rooted in understanding who God is–our creator, our master, our friend. We dare to put it all in God’s hands, come what may. We trust that God’s got us, that God’s holding us, that God loves us, that God is bringing us home. We trust, even when things are bad or go a way we don’t like. That’s faith. 

Another way we get faith wrong is we think it’s an individual endeavor. We think faith is all about me, about what I think, about how I can impact what’s going on around me. We make religion all about me, me, me. 

But here’s the thing: religion, the word, means to bind together. True religion, or we might say true faith, is about binding us to God and to one another. We cannot be Christians on our own. Obviously we need to be yoked to Jesus. But we also need to be yoked to one another, bound together on this journey. Bound together, not just to people we like or who are like us, but bound together to the whole Body of Christ.  

In addition to the Body of Christ around us right now, Hebrews reminds us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, by those faithful who have gone before us. The saints. People like Abraham, Isaiah, Jeremiah. People like John the Baptist, James, and Mary. People like our grandparents who prayed with us; our parents who dragged us to church; all of those whom we love but see no longer. The great cloud that is supporting us in ways we cannot fully understand. 

The Christian life is a marathon. Hebrews today calls it a race that is set before us. If we’re going to finish this race, we need to lay aside those things that are slowing us down–the sin that clings so closely. We need to lay aside the ways we try to manipulate God, the ways we think this faith thing is all about us and what we can do by our own strength. And then we need to put on the true yoke of faith that binds us to Christ and to one another. 

We run this marathon together. We run it imperfectly, but Christ helps us along the way, and we help one another. We don’t give up, because it doesn’t all depend on us. And if we persevere, with the help of Christ and that great cloud of witnesses, we will make it. In the end, maybe that’s the best image of true faith.