Hoping Beyond Hope
The Rev. Amy Morgan
May 29, 2011
Romans 4:13-25
For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations")– in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become "the father of many nations," according to what was said, "So numerous shall your descendants be." He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith "was reckoned to him as righteousness." Now the words, "it was reckoned to him," were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also.It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.
I’m sure we can all agree that the Princess Bride is the greatest movie of all time. If you disagree, you obviously haven’t seen the Princess Bride, and you should.
The whole movie hinges on a promise. Wesley, the farm boy, makes a promise that he will return to his beloved Buttercup as he leaves to go seek his fortune in the world.
After a long absence, Buttercup gets word that Wesley’s ship has been attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts, who takes no prisoners. Buttercup knows that Wesley must have been killed. He did not keep his promise to return.
Through a series of interesting plot twists, it happens that Wesley does return, telling the bewildered Buttercup: “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.”
You see why this is the best movie of all time.
The reality Buttercup faced was news of Wesley’s certain death. According to all the empirical evidence available to her, it would be impossible for Wesley to fulfill his promise to return.
And yet, he does. Wesley keeps his promise, contrary to any realistic expectations.
Wesley’s return defies reality, flies in the face of certainty and truth.
This movie hinges on a promise. A promise that no matter what might happen, no matter what forces of the universe might frustrate our plans, love is stronger than death. This movie hinges on a promise.
Abraham’s story, while less cinematically appealing than the Princess Bride, hinges on a promise as well. God promised that Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as the stars, but there was no way God could keep that promise. Abraham was faced with the reality that he and his wife were too old to have children. And so Abraham had to choose between trusting what his eyes told him, trusting in the reality he knew, or trusting in God’s impossible promise.
Strangely, Abraham chose to trust in God’s promise. He chose to believe in the God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” He chose to believe that God would keep God’s promise – that God could keep God’s promise. He chose to believe that God controls the forces of nature – that God can break into the very reality that God created – in order to achieve God’s purposes. That is the faith of Abraham.
Now, faith is one of those churchy words that can be hard to pin down.
Many Christians equate faith with a formula for salvation, a personal proclamation that somehow grants us access to eternal life. But this understanding of faith is just the opposite of what Paul is talking about when he writes to the Roman Christians. It turns faith into a kind of work we can do to earn our salvation, to pay our way into right relationship with God. If we have to do something, say something, believe something in order for God’s promise to be fulfilled, then the promise is surely doomed.
For other Christians, faith is so nebulous that it’s like trying to pin Jello to the wall. Do I have faith? I don’t know. What does it mean? What are we supposed to have faith in? If we struggle to understand the doctrine of the Trinity or the multi-layered meanings and metaphors of the sacraments or the two natures of Christ we must have trouble with our faith. Maybe if we studied more, learned more about God, theology, the bible. Maybe then we could have faith. This is a big one for Presbyterians. But again, it turns faith into something we do, something we work for.
Many of us have this guilt about faith. We talk about “having faith,” like it’s something you can acquire on Ebay. If we don’t have it, we know we should. We want it, but we can’t seem to get it. Everyone keeps out-bidding us with stories of conversion or healing or miraculous rescue or divine encounter. Maybe if we just prayed more or went on a pilgrimage or had a near-death experience we could get some of that faith. We get jealous of other people’s faith because we think of it as a commodity, something we could get for ourselves if we just knew how.
What is faith? Is it something we sit around and wait for? Do we hope we get it, like winning the lottery? Some extreme Calvinists might lead us to believe that.
But if we examine the letter to the Romans, we are given a very clear, precise understanding of faith.
Faith, Paul says, is trusting God to keep God’s promise.
Now, the only way it is possible for God to keep God’s promise is if God is solely responsible for the fulfillment of that promise. Nothing that we as human beings do will help or hinder God’s promise-keeping. God’s faithfulness, God’s love, God’s promise of grace and redemption is bulletproof because it does not depend upon human faithfulness. Human sin cannot rupture our relationship with God because our right relationship with God rests solely upon God’s gracious action toward us.
So, how do we know if we have faith? How do we know if we trust God?
We live out our trust every day.
Every day, we live out our trust in something.
One of my father-in-law’s all-time favorite lines is from an episode of the TV show Dallas when J.R. is caught red-handed in an extramarital affair, and he says, “Suellen, who you gonna believe? Me, or your lyin’ eyes?”
We all trust in something, we all believe something. But we also have a choice about what we’re going to believe, what we’re going to trust.
How many times a day do you sign a credit card slip? That transaction is based on trust that you will fulfill your promise to pay the money owed for the goods or services you have purchased. We trust that the bank will pay the vendor. We trust, more or less, in human systems of credit, in promises made to pay what is owed, whether it’s credit cards or home loans or utility bills.
We trust that the money we pay into our pensions or to Social Security will be there when we retire. Now, our trust in these human promises has weakened in recent years, but that hasn’t changed much about the way we live. We still acquire credit and pay into our pensions, even when we see these human promises failing.
How much easier is it to trust in God?
Well, for one, we can’t see God. We can’t fully understand God. There isn’t a global consensus about God.
But how many other things do we trust in that we can’t see or understand or agree on?
We live as though we trust our next breath will be there. We live as though we trust the world will keep spinning in its orbit. We live as though we trust the forces of the universe will keep obeying the laws of nature.
But isn’t God bigger than all that? That’s what Abraham’s faith declares. Abraham’s faith trusts that it is God who puts breath in our bodies, God who spins the whirling planets, God who created the forces of nature. And therefore God can interrupt our reality in order to keep God’s promise. That is what God did for Abraham when Sarah bore a son. That is what God did for the world when Jesus was raised from the dead. “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it a while.”
It doesn’t take certainty in fundamental truths to have faith. It doesn’t take correct understanding to have faith. It doesn’t take experience to have faith.
All we need for faith is God’s faithfulness. And that is something we all have in spades. Our faith is simply a response to God’s faithfulness.
When Abraham looked at his elderly body and his barren wife He had faith, because God was faithful
When Moses wandered with God’s people in the wilderness
When Ester pled for her people before the king
When Mary said, “Here I am, the Lord’s servant”
When John the Baptist expected the Messiah
When Jesus went to the cross
When the disciples heard rumors about the risen Christ
When Paul sat in prison, writing letters to fledgling churches
When men and women are injured, captured, or killed in wars
When natural disasters destroy people’s lives
When our friends and family members die, and we are grieving and lost
When the value of our investments and homes are depleted, and we’re worried about how we’ll get by
When we lose our jobs, when we just can’t seem to get a break
When life doesn’t go according to our plan
Because it’s God’s plan that matters, not ours. It’s God’s faithfulness that is sure, not ours. It is God’s grace that will find us, heal us, sustain us, save us – not anything we can say or feel or do. God has been faithful.
And especially in those times when we feel let down by God, abandoned by God, betrayed by God – we can remember that God keeps God’s promises. God has not promised that our lives will be easy, or happy, or profitable, or comfortable. God has not promised life without temptation or fear or doubt or pain. God has promised to be faithful, to be always with us, to give us rest and light and strength. God has promised us grace and hope and love. And God will keep God’s promise.
Let us pray:
God of Promise,
We praise you for your faithfulness –
To Abraham and all the ancestors of our faith –
And for your faithfulness to us still today.
Help us respond in faith to your faithfulness,
Help us to trust in your promise of grace
And help us live lives that witness to
Our faith in you.
Amen.
