“Believing is Seeing” Vance L. Toivonen
READING Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. 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. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise; for he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old--and Sarah herself was barren--because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, "as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore." All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.
READING Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, p. 169
Faith is still a surprise to me, as I lived without it for so long. Now I believe that it was merely dormant in the years I was not conscious of its presence. And I have become better at trusting that it is there, even when I can’t feel it, or when God seems absent from the world…I appreciate…the wisdom of novelist Doris Bet’s assertion that faith is “not synonymous with certainty…[but] is the decision to keep your eyes open.”
SERMON
In order for you to have something to do during the sermon today, I’m going to pass these books around for you to look at. They’re Magic Eye books, books full of 3-Dimensional images one can see by staring at the pages. Now, if you’re like me, you need to stare for some time before the image comes into focus. So have some fun looking at these while I attempt to talk about what I think is a difficult subject – faith.
How many of you would say honestly that you have faith? Faith in God? Faith in the U.S. government? Faith in yourself? Faith in the Hope Church community? Faith in your family? We usually think of faith in terms of an object upon which we lean for strength in difficult times. Faith is something that sustains us, encourages us, and moves us forward. Faith is aimed at something or someone we place our trust in. Faith is directed toward something or someone we apply our loyalty to, or our confidence in. We could say, “I have faith in you” or “you have faith in me.”
This is not the way that the author of Hebrews defines faith, however. For this New Testament writer “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Let’s take those one at a time.
At Christmas every year we hear the angels declare that with the coming of the birth of the Christ-child there will be “peace on earth” and “good will to all.” But we know from having lived through many Christmases that this good news is still a hope, a desire, a grand wish, an angelic flap of wings. There is not good will on earth and peace to all. There is good will to some, and peace to few, it seems.
We gather here praying for peace, hoping for peace, wishing for peace. That is not faith. Faith is our ability to see beyond the reality of what is to another reality. What does peace on earth really look like? What does good will to all really look like? The person of faith sees this, glimpses it, rehearses it, and then seeks to live in such a manner as to have it grow into reality.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have a dream” he was expressing his faith. Here is an excerpt from that speech, a reminder of his words that burn in our memories.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."
King saw beyond the reality of 1950’s and 1960’s southern America to a new reality on a distant horizon, a reality we have yet to realize, even with all of the seeming social advances in this country. There is still racism in this country; even some in this room right now, if we dig deep enough inside ourselves. It is the residue of our forefathers and foremothers. It is hard to shake, like a nagging cold in the winter months. King saw that there would be a day when racism would simply not exist. Can we see that day? What does it look like? And an end to sexism, or any discrimination based on sexual orientation. What does that look like? Can we see it? Are we living it?
This is a part of what faith is, living what we cannot yet see; knowing that it is possible, even probable, to live into a future bereft of all that would deny the basic humanity of others. The writer of Hebrews uses the word assurance, which could also be translated confidence. Not only does the person of faith hope for such a new reality, she is confident that it will come into existence; that the dream will indeed become reality – no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
By these standards, then, we can ask ourselves just how faith-filled we are. I think that if we are to address many of the troubles of this world, it will take this kind of visionary faith on our parts. By the way, how are you doing on the Magic Eye thing? Is anybody having trouble seeing those 3-D images? Keep trying, as we move on to the second piece from the Hebrews definition of faith…
The Magic Eye II book reads on the cover, “Now you see it…” But what if you don’t? I talked with a librarian when I checked these out the other day who told me she had trouble with depth perception and simply could not see the images in these books. What if there is something that keeps us from seeing? Does our predetermined myopia doom us to a faithless life?
What if we cannot find a place in the universe for God? What if we simply cannot swallow the notion of a higher being, no matter how hard we try? What if our rationality precludes us from having convictions about things we cannot see? Does this preordain us to a faithless life? Can faith and reason co-exist?
This is a question the twentieth century philosopher and theologian Paul Ricoeur wrestled with. In his book The Symbolism of Evil, Ricoeur follows this very path of intellectual and critical thinking, and wonders if faith requires a return to what he calls a primitive naïveté. In other words, do we have to deny our intellect, and return to the ignorance of a former human existence in order to access things like faith in God, or the existence of a Devil, or other such mythological symbols that were once considered pure truth and reality?
His response to this rhetorical question is as follows,
Not at all. In every way, something has been lost, irremediably lost: immediacy of belief. But if we can no longer live the great symbolisms of the sacred in accordance with the original belief in them, we can…aim at a second naïveté in and through criticism. In short it is by interpreting that we hear again. (The Symbolism of Evil, Paul Ricoeur, p. 351).
Ricoeur suggests that we choose to believe, to have faith, as it were; that we choose to see what is not seeable, and to hear what is not audible. He calls this a second naïveté. As Ricoeur puts it, “…we have left the plane of truth without belief and come…to the believing for the sake of understanding which is also understanding for the sake of believing.” (Ricoeur, p. 354).
I did this the other night at the movies. I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum. The main character, Jason Bourne, was in some incredibly manic action sequences. One in particular, a car chase, tested my ability to do what film goers often need to do in a film of this genre, namely suspend disbelief. We all do this. We suspend disbelief when we sing a favorite, old-time gospel hymn that espouses a theology we cannot rationally justify. We sing the hymn because it is a familiar tune, or corresponds with a warm memory. We suspend disbelief when we spend time with children, understanding that we must let the child discover what you and I already know in her own good time.
We can do the same thing with our faith life. We can choose to place our trust in a Higher Power that we call God, even if our rational minds cannot process such a reality. We can read the Bible, with all of its mythological symbolism, and still make application of this material to our lives, and to our modern, sophisticated, technological, intellectual, advanced social climate. This is how people like Martin Luther King, Jr. are birthed into our world.
The important thing is that we do not give up on this seeing what cannot be seen, or hearing what is not audible; that we do not despair, but hope beyond hope that we can give birth to a world that is equitable and just and caring and warless. It is a faith that is there, as Kathleen Norris reminds us, “even when (we) can’t feel it, or when God seems absent from the world.” She quotes the novelist Bets who writes that faith is “not synonymous with certainty…[but] is the decision to keep your eyes open.”
So if you’re having trouble with that Magic Eye book, don’t give up. Keep staring at it until your eyes cross, water, glaze over, or become fixed and dilated. It is the same with our spiritual faith. It is our persistence of vision, our desire to see, which really matters, even if we never see at all, even if we never enter the Promised Land; faith will carry us forward.