Proper 14, Year “C”: The Rev. Frank F. Wilson
Isaiah 11, 10-20; Psalm 50: 30:1-8, 23-24; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16, Luke 12:32-40
Believing in Advance What Only Makes Sense in Reverse
I open this morning with a little lesson in African wildlife. In particular, I speak of the African impala. It is a type of antelope, and it is an amazing animal. An African impala can jump as high as ten feet and can leap forward as far as 30 feet or more. Yet, quite interestingly, zoo keepers have discovered that a solid wall no more than three feet high can serve as a secure enclosure for impala. This is because an impala just will not jump over an obstacle if they cannot see the ground on the other side – that is to say, cannot see where their feet will land.
In other words, an impala has no faith.
Faith is a very little word. Only five little letters long. But it is a word of great significance in the lives of Christian people. After all, we sometimes even refer to ourselves as “a people of faith.” Yet faith is a word very much misunderstood by those who stand outside of the community of faith. Faith is a word, a concept, that can be difficult even for those of us who claim it as something like the epicenter of our lived lives.
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews has a lot to say about this matter of faith. He begins with something like a definition. He says that faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” [repeat] Now, I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but the author of this letter might have said: Faith is the conviction that a life lived in the presence and will of God is a life lived convinced that where God would have us go and who God would have us be is the better way. Patsy McGregor put it this way. Patsy says that faith is believing in advance what only makes sense in reverse. Faith is believing in advance what only makes sense in reverse. I know of no one, no couple, that has been more faithful in responding to God’s voice in terms of the calling on their lives than that of Todd and Patsy McGregor. You can read about their ministry in Patsy’s books (A Guest in God’s World and her latest book – Tamana: At Home in Africa.)
I met Patsy and her husband Todd right here in this very church at a time when I was Jerry Zeller’s associate here at Holy Family. At the time they were serving as missionaries in Madagascar. But they had family in Big Canoe whom they would sometimes visit on very infrequent trips back to the states.
In her first book, A Guest in God’s World, Patsy tells of the trials, the joys, the challenges, the surprises, and yes, the occasional doubts that would rear its head during their time on the large and politically fragile island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa. But mostly hers is a book about faith. Mostly it is an account of faith in action. It is an account of a lived faith that meant believing in advance what only made sense in reverse.
And as I read her book, I was reminded that faith is much more than a mental ascent. It is more than an abstract concept. “Faith,” writes Patsy, “has wheels on.”
I found the last chapter of Patsy’s book intriguing and not a little bit applicable to our subject this morning. She records that several months prior to their leaving Madagascar, she had a dream which she interpreted to be a sign from God that she and her family would be leaving Madagascar sooner than they had planned. It was time to do a different work in a different place. She was so confident that this was God speaking to her that she began to pack up the household. But time went by and no move seemed immanent.
She told her two young daughters of her conviction. Though they were saddened to think of leaving the only home they had really ever known, they too quickly embraced the idea that their mother’s vison was of God. However, few, if any others around her supported her vision.
She shared with her bishop, for example, that they might be leaving. The bishop quickly called Todd, her husband, imploring him actually, to “speak with his wife.” She was talking some nonsense, he said, about leaving.
Todd also put little credence in his wife’s prophetic sense of a new calling in a new place. In fact, the weight of disbelief in her prophesy by those all around her was so great that even she began to have moments of doubt.
Yet, in the end, the validity of her vision was borne out as the political situation in Madagascar became so bad, that leaving became the only viable option. The U.S. government had long since advised all non-essential personnel to leave the island. The McGregors were among the last Americans to do so.
Yet, during all this time, Patsy had held to the conviction that she was correct in her view that she had heard from God. She says that she never seriously doubted her vision. As far as she was concerned, the only mystery was the timing. “For me,” she said, “my packed suitcase was my symbol of faith.”
The McGregors had gone to Madagascar – to them at the time, a strange land – not exactly sure what it was they were to do there. Eleven years later they left a Madagascar dotted with churches and medical clinics that Todd had founded and a seminary they helped to build. They would also leave behind many friends, yet knowing that they would make new friends, as they would enter into new work in a new place. The McGregors found a new ministry in Kenya, ultimately returned to Madagascar, and now live in Florida where she is a spiritual director and he a coach and mentor for others in the mission field.
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen. Thus, sayeth the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews. That writer goes on to explain himself pointing to the example of Abraham, the exemplar par excellence of faith, reminding that Abraham was he who trusted God though the path, nor even the reason he was called to go down a certain path, was not clear – not clear at all. Yet, Abraham left a comfortable home for a tent in the desert. Abraham left behind the familiar for the unfamiliar. He was one whose faith had wheels on. Abraham would become no less than the progenitor of the nation of Israel. God had told Abraham and confirmed through his son Isaac that their offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and that through them the whole world would be blessed.[1] Yet, had not Abraham heeded the call by God to gather his family, pick up and move to a foreign land, for a reason that he did not yet know, no doubt we would not even know his name for God would have had to move on to another candidate. But Abraham did heed this call on his life and the rest, as we say, is history.
Finally, we find ourselves this morning worshipping and communing in this wonderful “cathedral in the woods,” the Episcopal Church of the Holy Family – the Holy Family, meaning, of course, Saint Mary, Saint Joseph, and, of course, Jesus. The reason we know Mary as Saint Mary is that she responded to God’s very special call on her life. Indeed, the angel Gabriel come to her with the message that by way of the Holy Spirit she would conceive and that the child in her womb would become known as the Son of God and of his kingdom there would be no end. And we know the rest of the story only because of Mary’s response: For in that moment, Mary said, here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. We have today the whole of the Christian story because of the faithfulness of Saint Mary. No wonder we are pleased to have named this church after her and her family.
Because of the likes of Abraham, and the likes of Mary and Joseph, and the likes of Todd and Patsy McGregor, and the likes of all throughout history who have heard God’s call on their lives – saints known and unknown; saints whose stories we know and saints whose stories will probably never be known – no doubt unfathomable good has been visited upon the earth. In other words, it would seem that when people of faith are faithful, not only they but the whole world is more balanced; is more as God would have it be – in other words is blessed. In other words, it would seem that lived lives that have God inspired wheels on are part of God’s action plan.
Well, we’ve spent some time this morning looking at the theology of faith. And we have done so through the eyes of prophets, saints, and missionaries. I end with a story that is told of another missionary whose mission field was, not unlike the McGregor’s, in Africa. At that particular moment in his life and work this particular missionary was focused on a certain native chief believing that if he could convert the chief, he would then be much more likely to convert the whole tribe. The chief was a very old man. And the theology of the missionary was very Old Testament. It leaned heavily on the “Thou Shalt Nots.”
Finally, after a long teaching and a Herculean effort on the part of the missionary at converting the chief, who was, remember, very old and somewhat frail, said, “I think I am beginning to understand. You say I am not to take my neighbor’s wife.”
“That’s exactly right,” said the missionary.
“And I’m not to take his ivory, or his oxen.”
“Oh no,” said the missionary.
“And I am not to dance the war dance and then ambush my enemy on the trail and kill him.”
“That’s absolutely right!” said the missionary.
With a kind of countenance of enlightenment, the old chief said to the missionary, “But I cannot do any of these things. I am too old. So, I see that to be old and to be Christian, they are same thing!”
Well, of course, the point of being Christian is not to be OLD, but to be BOLD in our relationship with God and our seeking to be in God’s will. For most of us that will not mean being called to foreign lands – though it might. For many of us that may not mean being called to places where we know not in advance the purpose – though it might.
But it does mean that to live lives of faith, we are to be ever seeking to live into that for which we pray: That is to say, live into the prayer which asks not that my will might be done, but rather that ‘thy will be done.’
It is to live a life that means living into a faith that has wheels on, whatever that means between you and God.
And it means to live a life that God calls us to — even though sometimes the outcomes may not be certain. Conviction of things hoped for is not about certitude relative to outcomes. In fact, by definition, faith assumes an absence of certitude. Faith is rather the conviction that living in God’s will is the better way. And it means knowing that sometimes a life of faith means believing in advance what only makes sense in reverse.
Amen.