The Rev. Linda McCloud
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
August 11-12, 2007

 

Faith for Six Impossible Things before Breakfast
Hebrews 11 

Alice in Wonderland has this memorable line where Alice says there is no use in trying to believe impossible things. The quintessentially foul-tempered Queen of Hearts replies to Alice, “I daresay you haven't had much practice.” She goes on to tell Alice, “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” 

Some see the Christian faith in just this way, that Christians have to believe six impossible things before breakfast. By this they mean believing that there is a God despite the fact we can’t see God, believing that God loves and cares for us, and so on. From this view, Christianity is just a bunch of things to believe with no proof and so it is no different than the Queen of Hearts telling Alice that she has sometimes believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. 

This is in contrast to our reading from Hebrews in which we are told that, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Here in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, faith is assurance and conviction. This verse is translated variously all with the same sort of meaning, but I want to read a few of these other versions, 

When I memorized this verse many years ago, it was in the venerable King James Version which says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The Revised English Bible translates, “Faith gives substance to our hopes and convinces us of realities we do not see.” Finally, the straightforward contemporary English of the New Living translation says, “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.” 

From this biblical perspective, faith is substance, conviction, evidence, and assurance. Faith offers proof. This is perhaps the sort of thing Augustine of Hippo, the great Christian writer of the fifth century had in mind as he wrote, “Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” 

Yet, isn’t this understanding or proof that comes only after you believe the problem itself? This is what some people complain about Christianity. The only proof you have is faith and how can you believe without proof? 

But the writer of Hebrews has an answer to this problem. He follows this verse “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” with both proof and inspiration.  

It helps to know that Hebrews was most likely a sermon—a well-written, if dense at times, sermon full of rhetorical devices. This eleventh chapter of Hebrews sounds like a sermon as it continues with a series of repetitions. Again and again, the text says, “by faith.” Today our reading clips out part of the text, to give us the part about Abraham, which is central to the writer’s case. But if we read it all we would get more of the force intended for the hearer. I’ll just give the first words of the verses and you’ll see the force of the building argument: 

By faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God…by faith Abel offered God a more acceptable sacrifice…by faith Enoch was taken…by faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built the ark…by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called…by faith he looked forward to that city…by faith he received power…by faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac…by faith Isaac invoke blessings for the future…by faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph…by faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites…by faith Moses was hidden…by faith, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter…by faith he left Egypt…by faith he kept the Passover…by faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land…by faith the walls of Jericho fell…by faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish… 

Then as this litany of events that happened by faith is ending he says, 

Well, how much more do I need to say? It would take too long to recount the stories of the faith of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and all the prophets. ...

 

All of these people we have mentioned received God's approval because of their faith.

The preacher is retelling the history of Israel through the eyes of faith. He tells of the men and women of Israel who were faithful in their own generation. It would be as if I retold the story of America, beginning with “By faith Columbus set sail across an unknown sea…By faith the pilgrims sought a land where they could worship God in peace…” and continued by faith and by faith and by faith.  

Perhaps to bring it closer to home I could say, “By faith Bishop Louttit asked me and my family to come to Camden County to start a new Episcopal Church. By faith we moved from seminary and bought a home rather than rented as we were confident we were here for the long haul. By faith we began worshipping in a house on land we bought for the church trusting that the house wouldn’t be home to the church forever. By faith we broke ground for a church building that would hold two-hundred people in worship though we were just over fifty on most Sundays. By faith we opened King of Peace Episcopal Day School with few students and little money in the bank. And all of this is without mentioning the individual lives transformed through the power of the Gospel in this place. The men, women and children who have been a part of this church, that gave of their time and energy and money to build up a church though they knew a Navy transfer or retirement would take them far away before the dreams for King of Peace were ever realized. 

That’s the sort of thing the eleventh chapter of Hebrews is trying to accomplish. What the writer is doing is to exhort the flock through showing the many miracles that already lie behind them. Miracles experienced by people who trusted that God had even more in store, not just for them but for all who would follow in the faith. It was an exhortation to hope. 

Hope for the things God has promised by seeing God’s faithfulness up until now. It is this litany of the past that prepares the people to look to the future. If we take even a cursory look at the litany in Hebrews, we see that there are people mentioned who were persecuted for their faith. We read of severe trials like Abraham and the near sacrifice of Isaac. We learn that the life of faith is not a bed of roses, but we are also reminded that God is faithful. 

What the writer does is give us two different reasons to trust in God. The first is just what we see and experience, it’s subjective. This is an account of the faith that says, “I have faith because I feel God’s presence when I pray.” You can’t prove this experience to anyone, but it is real to you. This is the part of our opening verse from Hebrews that the New Living Translation gives as “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen.” In my heart I have this warm feeling that gives me confident assurance. This is all that many martyrs had as they faced lions in the coliseum, singing hymns as they awaited their deaths with nothing more than the feeling that God was in the ring with them. 

But the second half of our opening verse says that faith is also, “the evidence of things we cannot yet see” this is objective. This is real, authentic verification, something on which you can count. And for his evidence, the writer of the sermon that is Hebrews gives a list of people who lived by faith, people whose stories we know and tell. These remind us of the stories in our own lives and in the lives of others. We have faith not just that faith is right. We also have a proven track record by people of faith that gives us a trail of evidence. It is like seeing God’s fingerprints all over human history and our own history. 

I know that when we step out in faith at King of Peace, we are not taking a firm stance in thin air. I know this because of the warm feeling of faith in my heart. But I also know it from the evidence, the solid proof that can be given for our successes when we took those steps of faith before. This is the substance and the evidence that faith provides. 

Far from believing six impossible things before breakfast, we can see that in the life of faith we have both blessed assurance and rock solid evidence. The six impossible things we face before breakfast are not crisis of faith. What we face every morning is a day in which we have to be the husbands, wives, daughters, sons, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, co-workers, and so on that God made us to be.  

Each day you face the seemingly impossible tasks of trying to live into being that better person your dog already thinks you are. And in the impossible tasks of juggling your responsibilities, faith is not a helpful add on. Something you can do when everything else is accomplished to add meaning to your life. Faith is the way you start you day. Grab hold of the substance and evidence of faith. Call on God to be present in you heart. Look back at the ways God has gotten others through impossible tasks. Then by faith call on God to be with you in the impossible day ahead, knowing that God has made the impossible look easy more than once before. 

Amen.