Sermon Proper 14C: Marie Alford-Harkey
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Proper 14C
Marie Alford-Harkey
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
August 7, 1016
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” I learned that verse as a very young person in vacation bible school, although I memorized it from the King James version as, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And I always thought that it meant that I needed to be 100% sure of whatever I was being taught about God, or I didn’t really have faith. I thought that this verse meant that I need to be absolutely convinced of things I could not see, or I was a bad Christian.
Now I understand it differently. The author of Hebrews goes on to hold up Abraham and Sarah as models of faith. They struck off for an unknown land based on the conviction that God was calling them to do so. They must have had moments of doubt, but the author of Hebrews says that they did things “by faith.” They lived as foreigners in tents in the land they had been promised. They had a child in their old age. The passage ends by talking about how heroes of faith such as Abraham and Sarah are people “seeking a homeland.”
That’s one definition of faith – seeking a homeland, looking forward to the heavenly city, desiring a better country. But it’s not necessarily knowing how one gets there. God told Sarah and Abraham to leave their country and go to a place that God would show them. No plan, no roadmap. Just “leave here and go where I show you.” And the text tells us that they obeyed “by faith.” They believed that the place they were dreaming of existed, and they followed what they believed was God’s call, even when they couldn’t see any evidence of it.
I am not generally a person who talks a lot about things that are not seen. I’m a concrete sort of person and I like things I can see. And yet….
When my grandmother died back in 2004, I remember telling some of the older women at church that it felt like she was very near to me, much more so than in the later years of her life. One of them said to me, “I know. It’s like we get them back, isn’t it?” It was the first time in my life I was so certain of something that I couldn’t see. I knew that my grandmother was near to me after she died, and that she was pleased and happy with me.
When I was a kid, I spent two weeks every summer with my grandparents in Charlotte, NC. I absolutely adored my grandmother and the feeling was mutual. From her, I learned about unconditional love at a very young age. She delighted in me, and made me feel as if there was nothing more important in the world than me.
My grandfather worked as a caretaker of a large estate, so most of my time when I was with them was spent with my grandmother. They lived in a house owned by the owner of the estate, and it had a lot of land around it. My grandmother loved birds and wanted to attract them to their lovely property. She had bird baths and bird feeders all around the yards of their house.
My grandmother also had an ongoing, all-out war with chipmunks. Do you all know what chipmunks are? There don’t seem to be very many of them up here. They’re adorable little rodents, shorter than squirrels, generally a rich nutty brown color with two white stripes outlined in black on their backs.
But for my grandmother, there was nothing adorable about them. They were terrifying monsters, making use of the bird baths and scaring away the birds, and climbing up into the bird feeders to help themselves to what rightfully belonged to the birds. My grandmother tried all manner of ways to get rid of them. She bought bird feeders on metal poles and greased the poles. She would see them in the bird baths from inside the house and run out yelling, “Go on, get out of here!” I thought the chipmunks were adorable, but was wise enough to refrain from saying so. To this day, when I see a chipmunk, I think of my grandmother, and I’m not really sure how she would feel about that.
When I fell in love with April, I knew that my grandmother approved. There was no actual evidence of this, of course. My grandmother had been dead for many years by then. But our first summer of dating we were in separate parts of New Hampshire, and seeing each other as often as possible. And chipmunks kept showing up when we were together. I had never seen them in New England, so I told April that I thought my grandmother was smiling on us. We got into the habit of saying hello to her whenever we saw one. Even though I couldn’t see her, I knew that my grandmother was present, taking pleasure in my happiness, and urging me on in my journey.
Being with April was an important part of my journey, because she understood my call. She believed in me, and urged me to follow that call, even when it was difficult.
And of course I was looking for signs, both about my relationship and my call. Because it’s hard to know where God is calling us. It’s hard to know what our vocation is, or what’s the next right thing. I have often joked that I would give anything if God was just send a memo. Just once. So I took those chipmunks as “evidence of things not seen.”
It’s really always about faith. God says to us, leave your home and go to a land I will show you. And it’s up to us to decide whether or not to obey at that moment. Whether or not to take the risk, to have the faith that God really can show us a land that we long for, no matter how difficult the journey to get there. Sometimes we’re ready, and sometimes we’re not.
The gospel passage tells us that it is God’s pleasure to give us that longed-for homeland. God’s pleasure. Sit with that for a minute. God wants to give us what we seek. That’s how much God loves us. When we are brave enough to take off and follow what we believe God is calling us to do, God wants to give us God’s realm on earth.
But here’s the interesting thing. God is depending on us to make this world closer to that longed-for realm. Jesus’ parable tells us that we need to be “dressed for action.” It’s not because God is vengeful and is going to catch us sleeping and condemn us to hell. Rather it’s because we need to be ready at any moment to take the next step in our Christian vocation of creating God’s realm on earth. We need to be ready for action because we are all God has to help create God’s commonwealth on earth.
We need to be ready even when we don’t know the end result, only the next right thing. “Leave your home and go to a land which I will show you.” That’s God’s call – go … even if you don’t know where you’re going.
That’s not easy. Journeys are hard, especially when you’re not entirely sure where you’ll end up. I’m sure many of you, like me, have experienced setbacks, disappointments, even tragedies. And I bet that many of you, like me, have seen those life events transformed in ways that you never imagined. Losing someone dear to you allows you to be with someone else who is experiencing grief. Messing up in a big way allows you to sit with others who have messed up and connect with each other’s humanity.
In the gospel story, Jesus tells us that our heart dwells where our treasure is. That’s where our faith is. That’s where our longing is. It’s where our treasure is. What is the thing that truly encapsulates the longed-for common wealth of God for you? What inspires you to keep answering yes when God says “Go to a land I will show you?” Where is your treasure?
For me, it goes back to my grandmother. For all the time that I knew my grandmother, she wore two rings that didn’t really fit together on her finger. One was a solitaire diamond and the other was a more ornate “vintage” ring. I know that one of them was her mother’s wedding ring and one was hers, but I can never remember which is which.
When I was an adult, my grandmother told me she was going to leave her rings to me when she died. This was well after I had divorced my husband and my grandmother knew that I was a lesbian. She must have believed that there was no prospect of my getting married. But she wanted to leave me those rings anyway. Not to my brother, who would surely get married, but to me. The only caveat was that I was not to alter them in any way. I wasn’t to make them into earrings or a pendant or anything else. They were to remain as they were.
These rings remind me of her faith. She was the only person in my family who was devoutly Christian. And she was the only person in my family who knew how to love me completely, and how to bless me with that love. Those rings are now my and April’s wedding rings. They serve to remind me every day of the love of God, as shown to me by my Grandmother. They also serve as a reminder of the journey, twisty, and full of chipmunks and love and heartbreak.
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” May we all find our faith in the journey. Amen..