A Sermon
Presented by Rev. Merlin T. Batt
Intentional Interim Pastor
St. Matthew’s United Church of Christ
Maiden, North Carolina
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 12, 2007

Scripture Lesson: Hebrews 11:1-12:2
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I was flipping through the cable TV channels the other day and settled briefly on a channel which was televising a sermon by Thomas Dexter Jakes, better known to millions of people as “T.D. Jakes.” Rev. Jakes is pastor of a multi-racial, nondenominational church in Dallas, Texas, named The Potter’s House. Jakes founded the church 11 years ago with 50 families who relocated from West Virginia to Dallas with the Jakes family. Today the church has more than 30,000 members. It is one of America’s fastest-growing mega churches.  The phenomenal growth of The Potter’s House is based on the charismatic personality and the remarkable skills of Rev. Jakes.

How many of you have ever listened to one of Rev. Jakes’ sermons? He’s quite a powerful preacher, isn’t he? I was fascinated by his preaching style and caught up in the emotion he generates and evokes from his listeners. Watching him preach, I was reminded of the old saying among many African American preachers about how to preach a good sermon. The saying has many variations, but it goes something like this: “Start low…go slow…reach higher…strike fire…and sit down in a storm.”

Now it’s the truth that this old, white, mainline church preacher will never be able to preach like T.D. Jakes. But, in this regard I am comforted by the words of the old spiritual, “There is a Balm in Gilead,” one verse of which says:

  If you cannot preach like Peter (or T.D. Jakes for that matter),
  If you cannot pray like Paul,
  You can tell the love of Jesus
  And say “He died for all.”

Even if I can’t preach like T.D. Jakes, I can tell the love of Jesus; and I can recognize that kind of preaching even when it shows up in an ancient text like the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, our epistle lesson for today. It’s obvious that the preacher of Hebrews, while presumably not an African American, is no stranger to the kind of preaching practiced by T.D. Jakes. As another preacher, Thomas Long, points out in his commentary on Hebrews, the 11th chapter starts slow with the definition of the term “faith.” He says.

It goes slow, marching early on to an unhurried cadence of names and events. Then the pace quickens, the pulse races, as the sanctuary is filled with the stories of prophets and saints, the faithful courage of holy ones and martyrs. Finally this passage glows with the white heat  of fiery relevance as the Preacher summons the congregation to join the march, to life high the cross, to run the great race with faith and  hope.

So listen now as I read from this famous 11th chapter of Hebrews, and see if you don’t hear the sound of preaching which starts low, goes slow, reaches higher, strikes fire, then sits down in a storm!

Now faith (says the Preacher) is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old received divine approval. By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.

The Preacher begins his sermon like a philosopher, slowly and carefully defining the term “faith.” He takes on a big topic – faith – a concept that is large, round, and complex, but he focuses on only a small piece of its circumference. The Preacher doesn’t try to say everything there is to say about faith. No, he simply names those aspects of faith he hopes to encourage in his listeners: “Now faith,” the Preacher says, “is the assurance of things hoped for…..”

So what is he saying about faith? First, the Preacher is talking about what faith has. He says that faith has “the assurance of things hoped for.” In other words, faith already possesses in the present what God has promised for the future, and this possession is both an inward confidence and an outward force.

First the inward confidence: Again and again, as I move among the people of God in various congregations and listen to them speak about their lives, I hear them give witness to an inward confidence in God even when all hell seems to be breaking loose around them, a basic trust in God whatever difficult circumstances they face. 

I’ve heard it from many of you even in the short time I have served as your pastor. Things may be bad now, but it won’t always be that way. Hang in, hang on, says faith, because God is a God of peace, justice, mercy, and salvation. Eventually, it is a sure thing, God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So faith, in this inward sense, is a response to the trustworthiness of God, an inward “assurance of things hoped for.”

But we Christians know there’s more to faith than an inward assurance or confidence in what will be.  Yes, we believe that the dark forces which oppress and destroy human life will eventually yield, that God’s promises will be fulfilled someday. But we Christians also believe that there is a power to the promises of God, a power which is operating here and now, making a difference in people’s lives. In other words, when the Preacher of Hebrews says, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” he means both that faith possesses an inward confidence, and it possesses an outward power to change circumstances, to change the world. Let me give an example.

A couple of weeks ago on a Monday, Adele and I went to Charlotte to tour the Levine Museum of the New South. Have any of you toured this museum? We particularly wanted to see the special exhibit “Families of Abraham,” a photographic record of the everyday lives of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Unfortunately, the day before, Sunday, there was a torrential downpour in Charlotte, and sections of the museum had flooded, thus closing the special exhibit on Monday, which unfortunately for us was its last day in Charlotte before moving on to Raleigh.

The point is, we didn’t get to see the traveling exhibit, but we did take time to tour the museum, which focuses on the history of the South, particularly the Charlotte area, from the end of the Civil War to the present. Especially for newcomers to this area like us, it was a fascinating and informative review of the history of our region of the country.

As you might expect, part of the museum display was devoted to the civil rights struggle beginning in the middle of the last century, a struggle for civil rights and human dignity, which in significant measure was motivated and sustained by Christians, people whose faith propelled them to make changes in society, often at great risk to themselves. In that difficult period of American history, Christian faith gave to those who protested, both black and white citizens, an inward confidence and an outward power.

Think of it this way: Faith as an inward confidence sings “We Shall Overcome,” believing that one day God’s will for justice will be done. Faith sings of victory in spite of how bad things are in the present. And faith as an outward power, acts with boldness: marches in the streets, sits in at lunch counters, and demands changes in the law. As the Preacher of Hebrews says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for.” Even now, faith partakes of inward confidence and outward power.

Or, changing the example, faith as an inward confidence trusts God’s promise that, “mourning and crying and pain will (one day by God’s grace)  be no more,” and it trusts in the face of the hard reality of so much mourning, crying, and pain. And faith as an outward power acts with boldness in the midst of it. Faith prays for those who mourn, serves tenderly those who weep, and works tirelessly to ease the pain of those who are wounded. You might say, then: inwardly, faith moves hearts - and outwardly, faith moves mountains!

Faith moves hearts and mountains, says the Preacher. And then he begins to name names as he mentally flips through the pages of the Bible, the names of those whose faith moved hearts and mountains: Noah who, warned by God, concerning events as yet unseen, took heed and built an ark for the saving of his household; Abraham who by faith obeyed God when he was called to go out from his home, not knowing where he was to go; Sarah who received power to conceive even when she was too old for such a thing; Isaac who invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau; Moses who left Egypt not being afraid of the pharaoh; the people of Israel who crossed the Red Sea as if on dry land.

And if you continue listening to the Preacher of Hebrews, you hear the pace picking up as he says, “And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets – who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword…”

The Preacher is moving about now, pacing, agitated, passionate. The pulse races as he speaks of Christians in his own day who “suffered mocking and scourging, and even chains and imprisonment…were stoned…sawn in two…killed with the sword…went about…destitute, afflicted, ill-treated.” And of these everyday heroes of faith, the Preacher says, “The world was not worthy of them.”

Then the near-exhausted Preacher looks out at his congregation. He scans the crowd making eye contact with this one, then another. And in that high and holy moment, he calls them to join the great company of the people of faith, the people who have inward confidence and act with outward power. He says to his congregation, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside very weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that his set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith….”

Friends, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, which means that even today, for you and for me, faith in Christ Jesus who loves us, yes, who died for us, that faith has power even now to move hearts and move mountains.

Let us pray:
O God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father, even our faith in you is a gift from your hand. We do not create faith, summon it forth, or make faith real in our lives. We receive faith as a gift of your Spirit. So grant us such faith that we may live in every circumstance, especially the hard and challenging circumstances, in the assurance of things hoped for. Fill our hearts with confidence that you will be fully and finally victorious over the dark forces that now bring your people distress of body and soul. And give us power to move mountains, toward that Day when Christ shall come with shout of acclamation to heal this world. Amen.