Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City,
August 8, 2004, The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C
by Adam Shoemaker, Seminarian

 Genesis 15:1-6
Psalm 33
Hebrews 11:1-16
Luke 12:32-40
 

            The Gospel of Luke is known for its emphasis on the place of the poor in the Kingdom of God.  For Luke, in fact, the poor are depicted as being especially blessed and especially set apart by God in some unique way.  And yet it is also clear that this special blessing does not come as a result of being poor – of lacking material goods or possessions, but rather is due to the fact that Luke seems to feel that those who are poor very often tend to exemplify a particular posture towards the world.  A posture of openness – a posture that, by necessity, reaches out beyond oneself and towards God and other people.  A posture of humility that Luke seems to have found lacking by those who had more wealth or more social standing.  It seems, in fact, that Luke often experienced the wealthy as claiming or holding onto a very dangerous privilege.  A privilege based upon and built upon individuality.  A privilege that allows those with money or power to choose whether or not they want to reach out to others.  To choose, in fact, to put forth a pretty convincing façade, to both themselves and others, that they don’t really need any help from anyone.  That there is no one in this world that they need to depend upon, thank you very much.

            And this distinction between these two very different postures – one of spiritual poverty and humility on the one hand and of arrogance and individuality on the other, becomes very important when one tries to get at what exactly it is we are talking about when we talk about having faith.

            As a result of our beautiful passage this morning from the Letter to the Hebrews, I have found myself thinking and praying all week long about faith.  What is it?  How is it obtained?  How is it spread?  And how is it sustained given all of the changes and chances and challenges of this life?  And my initial thought, particularly after reflecting upon many of the men and women I have gotten to know who pass through our parish soup kitchen week in and week out, is that I think faith is too often dumbed down and over-simplified in Christian circles.  That a text like we are presented with in this morning’s epistles is too often used to admonish us to maintain our faith blindly, unceasingly, and without question no matter what life throws in our way.  That a good and worthy Christian is some how only the one who exemplifies a steady “assurance of things hoped for and a conviction of things unseen” despite evidence to the contrary – and that those of us who may have a more difficult time with out faith; who wrestle with or entertain our doubts have just missed the boat and need to be encouraged to get on with the program.

            And this, to my mind, just does not strike me as being very realistic – very fair – it does not describe a conception of faith that gels with my own experience or the experience of anyone that I know.  For isn’t it true that sometimes life can just be too overwhelming?  That we can find ourselves in such a place that even the gentle words of Luke this morning, to “not be afraid for God desires to give us the Kingdom” – even words as consoling as these can feel extremely empty and extremely hollow?  For what happens when we’ve lost our job and can’t find work or can’t find work that will pay the bills, despite our best efforts?  Or when a partner of spouse dies, leaving us alone in our grief and without much needed and much relied upon financial support?  Or what about if we fall ill or lose the ability to be the person we used to be – left with nothing but anger and frustration?  Having faith means something totally different – the act of faith means something totally different during moments like these.

            So, in order to get a more realistic and more nuanced idea of what faith might be, I decided to go back over the whole of Luke’s Gospel and look for all the instances of where faith was either mentioned or in some way embodied – and I was really struck by what I found.

            For I had always been taught to look upon faith as an individual project and, to be sure, it is upon us to try in all our sincerity to wrestle with our own relationship to God, but the faith of the Gospel, at least as Luke describes it – seems far less incumbent upon the efforts of a lone individual as it is upon the work of an entire community.  That to have faith seems very naturally to include a dynamic of interdependence – a dynamic that implicitly recognizes that we all struggle along in very different spaces and with varying levels of belief.  That sometimes we struggle to believe in God’s abundance and other times we feel very powerfully God’s love and embrace.

            And so we are called to faith as Paul once wrote to be “heavenly partners in a holy calling.”  We are called to minister to one another – to encourage, inspire, and lift up all those around us – to recognize, in that oft quoted phrase of Martin Luther King that “I can’t be all that I am meant to be until you become all that you are meant to be.”  To recognize that all of our faith lives are intertwined and somehow diminished if we fail to offer the love and support that another woman or man may need to grow into their faith or to have hope in a better future.  Faith, in fact, means not just being open to God, but also means being open and vulnerable to other people and to be actively engaged in the world around us.  For it is only in, with, and through such mutual love that Christ is ultimately made known and real in our world and we are all granted the grace and the strength we need to persevere.

            And therefore, we are called upon to strive to develop the capacity within ourselves to be as open to God and other people as possible.  To try, as best we can, to be “spiritually poor” and humble – and to trust that as we struggle along in our vulnerability, we will all be lifted up by and through our efforts with others.

AMEN.

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