Sermon: Stepping Out in Faith

Sermon preached by Rev. Emily Tanis-Likkel, Eagle Harbor Church, UCC        

August 12, 2007

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Stepping out in faith

              Have you had the dream where you were trying to walk or run, and your legs seemed to be made of lead?  Recently I dreamed that I was in the midst of a crowd of people, and we were all headed toward the same goal, something of monumental importance.  Everyone was walking in the same direction, with slow, purposeful steps, everyone but me.  My brain told my feet to lift up off the ground, but I couldn't move them.  Suddenly the words “I believe, help my unbelief,” came into my head.  It was Mark 9:24, they were the words of a father who brought his son to Jesus for healing.  I prayed them aloud, and my legs began to move.  My feet were very heavy – plod, plod, onto the black cement.  I prayed the words again, “I believe, help my unbelief,” and I moved a bit farther.  I kept on confessing my faith and kept on moving.

              This dream may have morphed into an unrelated dream, to be lost forever in my subconscious.  But it didn't. Instead I had another dream in which I was profoundly moved by the experience of the prior dream.  This dream within a dream jolted me awake, told me, hey -- pay attention to this.  But why would it be significant? I believe in God.  I have faith.  Maybe this important dream was meant for someone else.  I didn't really know how it might apply until I ran across Kathleen Norris' essay on faith a few days later, and read “faith is best thought of as a verb, not a 'thing' that you either have or you don't.”  I digested that for a while and then the image of my lead legs trying to make headway on that pavement flashed across my mind.  I didn't know exactly where I was going in that dream, only that there were companions on the journey, and they were struggling too, but plodding along just the same. We needed to keep on going, keep on in the same direction, and there was a great urgency of life in the matter.  I think the dream was about needing to live by faith, to have assurance in what we hope for, conviction in what we do not see. It is faith that keeps us moving forward, it is faith that gets us unstuck.  We might not know exactly what lies ahead, but we step out in faith, asking God to increase our trust every step of the way.

              The Biblical book of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians who were stuck, they were trying to fulfill the old laws instead of living by faith in Jesus.  Their Jewish friends were putting pressure on them to abide by the Levitical laws, to worry more about what to eat and how to worship.  They were stuck trying to figure things out on their own instead of living by faith.  They were wrestling with the differences between the old laws and the new Covenant in Jesus.  They had a lot of questions about how to live faithfully.  They also had a tendency to mix the Gospel message with their own ideas of how to live, and as a result lived with an ample dose of fear and anxiety.  Sound familiar?  The author used examples of Biblical heroes as great models in faith to encourage them into getting unstuck.  The text reads, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.”  He and Sarah trusted God.  They knew that one day their people would no longer be living in tents in foreign lands, but that God would help them build cities.  They believed that God would bless them with innumerable descendants.  They had faith that even though they would not live to see all of God's promises fulfilled, that their descendants would.  They also trusted that God had prepared a place for them after their life on earth had ended.  The book of Hebrews tells us that when we live by faith we see the reality of our hope. We are given a glimpse of the fulfillment of God's promise to restore and renew the world.  We live in anticipation of God bringing the world to complete wholeness.

              I watched the movie Bridge to Terabithia last week, which is based on a children's novel written by Katherine Paterson in 1977.  In this story, life is tough for fifth graders Jess and Leslie, who are the targets of bullying at school, and don't get much affirmation from their parents at home. Jess in particular feels stuck in his present situation, but his new and only friend Leslie has discovered a secret that makes life fulfilling.  Leslie invited Jess to believe in a magical kingdom in the woods where they could go every day after school.  She said “Close your eyes and keep your mind wide open.”  He closed his eyes to what he normally saw, and when he opened them again he saw an alternate reality, a magical kingdom.  This began a new life for Jess, and he returned to school the next day with some hope.  Leslie and Jess ran to Terabithia every day after school to look for trolls and be king and queen of their kingdom.  They lived with that imaginative lens of in front of their eyes, and it gave them hope.  This reminds me of the Hebrews text, because the Christian faith is about believing what is unseen.  It is about keeping our minds open to seeing an alternate reality, the Kingdom of God.   One essay on the movie reads,  “Leslie opens Jesse’s inner eye to the world that can be discovered in our imagination. In time he becomes just as able to see the “reality” of Terabithia as Leslie has always been able to see it.”   Jess is freed by living his faith in Terabithia.

              At times we may feel stuck.  We may believe in God, but that doesn't always mean that we are living by faith.  We may believe yet not be bearing any fruit.  We may be too anxious, too depressed, too lonely, or trying too hard to see past our own muck.  We need to say, “I believe” with our whole selves, by stepping out and living our faith.  If we live our lives with our minds wide open, we will see the reality of God's realm all around us.  It is like seeing Terabithia, only we don’t need to wait until after school to go there.  We live in God’s realm in our day-to-day life, by seeing people as Jesus sees them, by pausing for prayer, by taking time to act and time to be still.  Jess needed Leslie to help him see Terabithia.  We need each other to live by faith.  We need to remind one another to trust God when life gets tough.  Then we can be that for others, as Jess became when he invited his younger sister to see Terabithia.  We can share our faith with other people, and encourage them to live by faith.  We can share with them the difference it has made in our lives when we let go of trying to have it all together, when we allow God to work in us and through us.

              The promise that we place our hope in is not something that is entirely visible.  Abraham and Sarah trusted that God was gifting them with descendants, even though all evidence was leading to the contrary.  They trusted that God was leading them to the Promised Land, even though they didn't see it in their lifetime.  Living by faith is necessary through the unknowns in life.  Have you had a time in your life when your future was very uncertain?  Waiting for test results, whether or not you would get a certain job or house or finding out whether or not you would need to move.  Isn’t it the uncertainty that can be so agonizing?  Yet living by faith, being sure of what we hope for, comes with it an uncertainty about what exactly lies ahead.  We have faith that God will be with us, but we don't know where we will be or what we will be doing.  Ultimately our home is with God, and this eternal home is always our destination. 

              Faith is hoping and believing – faith is a verb.  When we live by faith we immerse ourselves in the Word of God, we pray, and we love one another.  We don't try to go it alone through this life, but rely on God to give us what we need for the journey.  We step out in faith even when we are uncertain, anxious, or afraid.  We tap into our imaginations to see beyond the everyday busyness of life, to see God's realm in our midst.  Jesus in the Gospel of Luke tells us that the Kingdom of God is not something of which we can say “'Look, here it is!' Or 'there it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”  The act of faith took our spiritual ancestors through uncertainty and into a new reality of God's promises to renew and restore.  Like Abraham and Sarah, we may not know exactly where we are going, yet our confidence in God's promises always leads us home. 

              In Bridge to Terabithia, Jess was stuck in life.  No friends, no confidant, no joy.  No real hope that things could be any different.  Have you ever felt stuck?  In my dream I felt like my feet were superglued to the pavement.  I think I was trying too hard to move, and when I let go, and uttered the words “I believe, help my unbelief,” that act of faith propelled me.  Faith isn't a thing that you either have or you don't, it's a verb.  It's the assurance of hope, the conviction of what is unseen.  It's  the reverse of the common saying, “seeing is believing.”  Instead, faith is “believing is seeing.”  It goes back to God's upside-down kingdom: First we believe, then we see.  Jess had to believe in Terabithia before he saw it, before he was forever changed by it.  We too believe in the Spirit, live by the Spirit, and then see the spiritual world all around us, and open ourselves to be forever changed by it.

              All this faithful living may make us odd, as surely those Jewish Christians who received the book of Hebrews felt odd.  Kathleen Norris tells a story of when she worked as an assistant in a Kindergarten classroom and how one five-year-old girl spent every afternoon painting huge blocks of color onto newsprint.  At the end of the school day she would ask to have her painting hung to dry so that she could work on it the next day.  She wrote, “The teacher and I were fascinated but soon found that we had to protect her from the other children, who, once they noticed that her paintings ‘didn’t look like anything,’ made fun of them.  The girl, remarkably, was undeterred, already adept at exile.”   When we believe, when our imaginations tap into what is beautiful and holy, we may seem strange.   When our faith is in motion, we have hope when our culture tells us to fear, we are mindful when society suggests escape.

              Our house band Two Boat Wait sings a song by the Dixie Chicks called I Hope.  The lyrics say “I don’t have all the answers but I hope for more love, more joy and laughter, I hope you’ll have more than you’ll ever need, I hope you’ll have more happy ever afters, I hope we can all live more fearlessly.  And we can lose all the pain and misery.  I hope.”

      Darrel Manson.  “The Necessity of Imagination.” www.hollywoodjesus.com

The Cloister Walk, p. 58-59.

by Emily Robinson, Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines and Keb’ Mo’.