August 8, 2010

Bishop Ross Bay

Pentecost 11     
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16     Luke 12:32-40


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I was talking with one of our church school boards recently about the nature of the particular character of the school. Part of the discussion centred around the question of what it means to call ourselves Anglican Christians. People around the room talked about what they understood Christian to mean, and the kind of attributes and ideals that might attach themselves to Christian people.

Things like tolerance, forgiveness, love and humility were to the fore. I was relieved when someone mentioned that it was to do with being a follower of Jesus Christ. But I found myself thinking that one of the things about being Christian that is important to me, is the vision of things being different, transformed into a new kind of reality.

So the writer to the Hebrew says “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”. That is a statement about believing in a different future, a better future, God’s future for the planet and its peoples. A lot of what we read in Hebrews has a kind of dualism attached to it. There is a dualism of above and below: the real heavenly world, and the transient earthly world which offers reflections of what is above. There is also a dualism of the present age, and the age which is yet to come. These spatial and linear dualisms reflect a combination of platonic philosophy combined with a primitive Christian eschatology, that is a belief in the saving intervention of God at the end of time.

The idea of the two worlds is particularly evident in the writer’s contrasting of the earthly and heavenly temple, and the discussion of the role of Christ as the great High Priest. There is a lot in that which has the sound of the philosopher Philo about it. He was a Greek Jewish philosopher, and his work influenced many early Christians who found in his writings fresh insights into what it meant to hold to a future hope.

Dualism is treated somewhat cautiously in theological circles today. Too strong a dualism can remove from us a sense of real responsibility for ourselves and our actions. The idea of a perfect heaven that represents some kind of destination, in contrast to the imperfect earth which is a place to escape from can cause us to place little value on this planet and our actions as creatures who inhabit it. A disconnect between physical and spiritual reality can lead people to imagine that the body has no value other than as a container for the soul, and at its worst extremes has led people to regard the body as inherently evil. As if most of us don’t have enough problems with self-image already.

So we are inclined to take a more integrated view of such things. We may speak of heaven and earth, of the spiritual and the physical, but in doing so we understand them to be part of one reality. Heaven is not a place to head to, but is the presence of God in our midst now. The spiritual is mediated through the physical, and cannot be separated from it. The sacraments of the Church bear testimony to that.

And yet faith tells me there is more. I have assurance of things yet hoped for; I have conviction of things not yet seen. But I do not believe they belong to another world or an alternative reality. And neither in the end do I think that the writer to the Hebrews believed that either. For in this great chapter about faith, the annals of great figures of faith from the past are recounted. And all of them are people who not only believed there was more, but who also worked to make it so. Abraham and Sarah made their journey into the unknown. Moses gave up a life as part of Egyptian royalty to identify with his own people. Rahab helped the Hebrew spies escape safely. And so on, and so on. Today we might remember Mary McKillop in our own annals of figures of faith. August 8th is the date in the church’s calendar now set aside for her, the founder of the Josephites in Australia. One of her sayings was “never see a need without doing something about it”.

Believing and working. Faith calls forth this synergy from us. The ideas are present in what we heard from Luke’s gospel today. The parables are of someone returning home to servants after a marriage feast, and of a thief breaking into a house. The images speak of preparedness and alertness. They suggest more than sitting and waiting for someone else to act. Rather they give the idea of people who are constantly seeking what can be done, and are ready to act when the opportunities arise. 

I hope that each of us may carry within us the dream of something being different. It might be in our own personal life. It might relate to our family or community, Maybe it’s about the church. Perhaps we are able even to dream nationally or globally. Whatever the dream of transformation and change might be, can we allow it to become an assurance of something hoped for, and the conviction of something we cannot see? Faith allows that to be so.

But in doing so we should always understand that we are part of the work of transformation. We are part of making change. God does not place such dreams within us for no purpose. And if faith offers the assurance and conviction that such dreams can become reality, then faith also offers us the motivation and the power to bring that reality to life. Believing and working, the synergy of faith.

Towards the end of what we heard from Hebrews, we read “All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them”. Alongside all of the hopeful encouragement offered by those figures from the past, it is a sobering reality check. Believing and working for the dreams of faith is hard. We do not always achieve what we dream of. Sometimes things continue to lie ahead of us. Our glimpses of them are real enough, but we do not see the substance of them.

William Wilberforce is well known for his part in the movement to abolish slavery. It was some 20 years before the Slave Trade Bill was passed and slaves would no longer be carried on British ships. William Pitt who had worked with Wilberforce to achieve this had died the year before. It would be another 26 years before a law was passed to abolish slavery more generally in the British Empire, and Wilberforce died 3 days after.

How many were the women through generations who died in the hope of gaining equality with men through the tight to a parliamentary vote, before Kate Sheppard’s generation made it a reality? It would be another 40 years before the first female Member of Parliament was elected. Kate Sheppard lived just in time to see that reality.

Believing and working, glimpses and substance. This is the stuff of faith, the vision of things which will yet be different, transformed .

Dream, believe. Work, keep hope. Together with God, we can play our part in fashioning this world more into the image of all that God intends for it through the liberating love of Jesus Christ.