Fear Vs. Faith

Debbie Cato
Hebrews 11:1-3; 8-16 and Luke 12:32-40
Fairfield Community Church
August 7, 2022 

Let us pray:  God our helper, by your Holy Spirit, open our minds, that as Scripture is read and your Word is proclaimed, we may be led into your truth and taught your will, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.  AMEN.

 

Fear Vs Faith

 

 Each week, I spend time just meditating on the Scripture passages before I even start to study and think about writing a sermon.  I let them work through my mind and my heart to hear what the Holy Spirit is trying to say to me through God’s word.  Hebrews 11 is in my top 10 or so favorite Scripture passages; I just love it. And when I read this passage from Luke, it really struck a cord.

 “Do not be afraid, little flock,” it begins. That phrase kept coming to mind as I thought about preaching today.  Do not be afraid, little flock.

It seems there is so much to fear these days. All the mass killings in this country.  Homelessness continues to increase as the cost of rent and housing escalates.  The cost of food and gas is challenging all of our budgets.  We are seeing the impact of climate change.  The continued war in Ukraine and how it is affecting the world economy. It’s beyond comprehension how hate seems to have taken over our country. And of course we continue to feel the impact of Covid. The media and our culture seem to encourage us to be afraid. It seems we have lost any common decency toward one another.  Reasons to fear surround us.

It is into this that Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock.”  Do not be afraid.  I found this calming this past week as I heard it repeating in my mind like a song stuck on just one phrase.  Do not be afraid.  Do not be afraid, little flock.

If you read all of Luke 12, you might realize that the first hearers of Luke’s gospel message also had reasons to fear things.  Luke 12 is filled with reminders not to worry or be afraid. 

You see, fear gets in the way of our perception of God’s way and we forget how He works in our lives.  We forget what He has done in the past and that He is still working now in our lives and in the world.

Given the harsh realities of the world, faith is the ability to see with the inner eye, to see what cannot be seen with the natural eye.  It is the ability to see God through the trustworthiness of His promises through all the past generations.  Our culture does not support our faith – “the assurance of things hoped for.” 

 It is thought that the Book of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians in Jerusalem to encourage them to persevere in the face of persecution.  Just like the hearers of this letter, we need to be reminded of God’s faithfulness because we forget.  To show us that faith is possible, the author of Hebrews gives us real life examples of people who believed without ever having proof; believed without ever seeing.

Hebrews 11 is a roll call of the faithful; naming those in every generation – a great cloud of witnesses – who courageously stepped out in faith based only on God’s promises. With his definition of faith in mind, the author of Hebrews starts leafing through the Old Testament if you will, stopping here and there to tell the story of faith’s heroes.  Face after face, name after name passes before the reader.  Names we recognize.  These Hall of Famers were righteous; they journeyed obediently in faith; they were tested by suffering; and they believed without seeing.  And hear this:  none of them were perfect!

We didn’t read the verses about Abel, who by faith offered a better offering than Cain.  We didn’t read the verses that remind us that by faith, Enoch was snatched from life, never to be seen again.  Because of his faith, God took him away so that he could escape death.

 And of course, Noah.  We all know the story about Noah and the ark and the animals and the flood.   The author of Hebrews lists Noah as a great witness of faith.  Why?  Noah lived at a time when the earth had become corrupt in the sight of God.  But Noah was a righteous man and walked with God.  So, God gave Noah the task of building an ark.  And he did.  Even though everyone mocked him.  They made fun of him.  Even his family.  But Noah kept building, based on his faith in God, and the ark saved his family and all the animals of the earth.   

But, let’s talk about Abraham.  Abraham was just living his life when God came to him and said, “Pack it all up, Abraham.  Leave this home of yours and go to a foreign land; a place you don’t know about and live there.”  And by faith, Abraham packed up his belongings and his family and his herds and took off.  Not because he had planned to move.  Not because he knew where this place was, and he always wanted to go there.  He went because God asked him to.  Abraham stepped out in faith.  In a big way.

 And if we kept reading the rest of Hebrews 11, we would find Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses and others.  Each of whom did something by faith though they did not understand and though they were each afraid. 

 Faith is a hard thing to explain, isn’t it?  It’s a human response of trust and gratitude that pours out of God’s unconditional love for us, built on a foundation of God’s promises.  Faith is often how we are able to cope with the challenges of life.  We have faith that God is in it.  Somewhere.  

Somehow. How do we know?  Often we don’t!  Faith is “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”   Faith is trusting in the promises of God just because God is God. Because of what God has done in the past. 

Faith can also provoke hostility and ridicule.  People laughed at Noah for building the Ark. I have trouble believing that Sarah was thrilled about packing up her life and moving to a foreign place when Abraham told her the news.  The Israelites were consistently hostile toward Moses as he led them out of Egypt.  Whenever they were unhappy, they turned on Moses. “Take us back to Egypt.  It wasn’t so bad there!” they cried.  And Jesus, well he was certainly mocked and tortured for his faith.

I think faith is a kind of seeing.  We see something compelling in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus and in the communal life of his followers.  I think faith is the perception that the way of Jesus is the way I want to be; the way I was created to be; created in the image of God.   Faith is the awareness that the meaning of life goes way beyond the creation of wealth or power or privilege; but rather it is about loving God and loving one another.[1]

Faith puts us at odds with the dominate culture when culture is telling us that it is O.K. that some people are marginalized and excluded from positions of power and privilege.  That it is O.K. that some people are treated as sub-human and hostility and ridicule and economic discrimination become legitimized.[2]  That it’s O.K. to encourage and spread hate toward people that may look or believe differently than you or I.  Do we believe that everyone is made in the image of God or not? Here, faith becomes courage.  “Do not be afraid, little flock,” says Jesus.

In our passage in Luke, Jesus reminds us several times that we must always be ready.  Do we stand up and speak and put our faith; the teachings of the Gospel into action, or do we stay quiet and be safe?

It is for times like this that we need to be able to remember the persons and events from the past who were faithful even when they did not understand; even when they were afraid.  Our story is a great story that reaches back farther than Abraham.  Abraham who trusted God and left his home without knowing where he was going.  None of these ancestors fully received the promise that God offered.  They remained strangers and foreigners, sojourners and pilgrims, even in the land of promise.  They died in faith without seeing the promise fulfilled.

We cannot watch every part of our own lives and those we love.  Fortunately, we do not have to, for we know from Scripture and the Holy Spirit that God is watching over us.  What gives our faith a firm foundation is that Jesus Christ is Lord and holds our future, come what may on earth.  Faith is ultimately a gift of the Holy Spirit.  Our opportunity is to respond to God’s initiative of this incredible grace.[3]  

Let us pray:     Gracious and Loving God, your forgiveness is unshakable.  Thank you for never seeking to find fault in us, yet always going before us and getting our attention with your gracious way.  Thank you for giving us your Holy Spirit and our faith to believe that you are always with us and always in the world regardless of how  much there is to fear.  Continue to help us to have faith even when it is hard to believe and hard to see your presence.  Help us to be the hope that others so desperately need.  Help us to be the hands and feet of Jesus by living out our faith the way Jesus lived out his ministry in the world.  In your Son’s holy name we pray.  Amen. 

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[1] Feasting on the Word.  Year C, Volume 3.  Hebrew 11:1-3;8-16.  Theological Perspective.  Page. 330.  John Shellby.
2 Feasting on the Word.  Year C, Volume 3.  Hebrew 11:1-3;8-16.  Theological Perspective.  Page. 330.  John Shellby.
[3] Feasting on the Word.  Year C, Volume 3.  Hebrew 11:1-3;8-16.  Pastoral Perspective.  David E. Gray.  P. 332.