Trust

August 12, 2007     Proper 14 C

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20             Psalm 50

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16         St. Luke 12:32-40

The eleventh chapter of the letter to the Hebrews is sometimes called "the roll call of the heroes of faith."

Yet, strictly speaking, the Bible knows no heroes, for heroes are witnesses to their own achievements, whereas in Hebrews 11 the great figures of salvation history are brought forth, not for their heroism, but for their "faith," which, in the author's thought, is closely linked with hope.

What is faith? The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us:  "Faith is confident assurance concerning what we hope for, and conviction about things we do not see." It is not a function of organic vision. Rather, it is an act of seeing in trust.

John Kavanaugh, who teaches atSt. Louis University tells of his experience, concerning trust,

Long ago, when I spent a month working at the "house of the dying" in Calcutta, I sought a sure answer to my future. On the first morning I met Mother Teresa after Mass at dawn.

She asked, "And what can I do for you?" I asked her to pray for me.  "What do you want me to pray for?" I voiced the request I had borne thousands of miles: "Pray that I have clarity."

She said no. That was that.

When I asked why, she announced that clarity was the last thing I was clinging to and had to let go of. When I commented that she herself had always seemed to have the clarity I longed for, she laughed: "I have never had clarity; what I've always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust."

Thus Mother Teresa became for me a member of that cloud of witnesses to which the Letter to the Hebrews refers: heroes of faith, who had conviction about things unseen.

Real trust is one of the most delicate problems for people today. We have to risk too much and we have been disappointed too often, we say. Yet human bonding is entirely dependent on trust.

In the modern world we develop substitutes for human bonding. We overwork, overeat, live for parties and pleasure; we invent formulas such as "quality time" to fit the family and children into our loaded schedules, and in the United States we simply drop a husband or wife who no longer pleases us and go get another one.

Isn't this betrayal of trust? Can it be a foundation for human bonding?

A wonderful example of trust is Abraham in the Second Reading, even though St. Paul refers to it as "faith." The reading talks about risky deeds that God asked from Abraham: travel to a land he would somehow inherit, pass through great deserts and villages full of strangers, dwell in temporary shelters all the way, and most difficult of all, believe that Sarah would at last conceive and give birth, even though they were both "as good as dead" because of their old age.

And of course it got worse, not better. God ordered Abraham to make a bloody sacrifice of the son at last born to his old age. Kill him.

Time to cancel the trusting and save whatever you can of your life, wouldn't you say? How would you or I respond in the same situation?

But God had already promised that Abraham would have "descendents as numerous as the sands on the seashore." The question before Abraham was not whether to be obedient, but whether to trust in the promise God had made.

The scriptures say what he decided. Abraham "thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy." Abraham could believe because he had faith in God's fidelity.

Trust consists of more than just a generally sunny attitude. Trust means believing in someone.

Trust means believing in someone.

It means remembering the love residing in that person, remembering the promises, the pacts made in fidelity. It means taking the risk.

God has been with you even in the hardest patches of your life, when you no longer could see any evidence.

So it was with Abraham and Sarah, who believed they would give birth to a child in their old age (the very idea was enough to make Sarah laugh out loud) and make "descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands of the seashore."

The Letter to the Hebrews celebrates the faith of Abel, dead but still teaching us; of Noah and his improbable ark; of Jacob, at death's door, finally able to bless Joseph's sons; of Moses, the child unguarded and abandoned, who would one day lead a nation against impossible odds, into a territory his feet would never touch.

Faith felled the walls of Jericho and saved the prostitute Rahab. It was faith, the letter says, that discovered new lands, bestowed wondrous strength, and inspired uncommon courage in ordinary men and women.

"Some were pilloried, flogged, even chained in prison, stoned, beheaded, homeless, dressed in rags, penniless, given nothing but ill-treatment, living in caves and deserts and ravines."

They were all heroes of faith, the letter continues, but they did not live to see what was promised.

How much we have to learn from the great ones who have gone before us, not only the Hebrew saints praised above, but our own as well?those who, after Christ, believed in him despite adversity. We imagine faith to ease confusion, dull the pain, redeem the times, but we miss the testimony of the clouds of witnesses. Our faith does not bring final clarity on this earth. It does not disarm the demons. It does not still the chaos or dull the pain or provide a crutch so we might walk.

When all else is unclear, the heart of faith says, "Into your hands I commend my spirit."

So it was with all our heroes. "These died in faith. They did not obtain what had been promised but saw and saluted it from afar . . . searching for a better, a heavenly home."

Faith is taking God at his word when he makes promises for the future. Thus, the Old Testament figures become examples for the new Israel, the new wandering people of God.

The new people has also in each succeeding generation had to imitate Abraham, who "went out, not knowing where he was to go," and his family, who lived in tents because they had no abiding city here, but "looked forward to the city which has foundations."

Can you and I wait and trust?

God's love is always trustworthy no matter what it seems like. He girded himself and had us recline at table so that he could wait on us  (Gospel). And even though human love is not always trustworthy, we discern and pray and forgive, and then give it a try.

We are "strangers and aliens on earth," and we long for someone to trust. We long to be able to trust (Second Reading).

How can we, in an age based on seeing, really trust? How can we have faith to believe what we cannot see? That is the question that will come back to us again next week.