Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16
August 8, 2010
This verse from Hebrews is so often quoted: Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen. And for good reason. It’s really beautiful. It seems to say so much, such profound things, in one sentence.
But in my experience, these days often people think this passage means we have faith in God even though we can’t see God. It’s a kind of answer to atheists who insist they can’t believe something you can’t see or prove. We say, “We agree that we can’t see God or ultimately, scientifically prove God exists. But we have faith.” But that’s not very concrete – to just assert something, give a faith “statement” doesn’t tell us anything about what faith means in our every day, practical decisions and challenges.
I don’t think the early Christians or Hebrews would have defined faith as a belief in an unseen God. For them, God’s existence was a given. Faith for them wasn’t about whether or not you believed in God. It was much more concrete than that. Having faith was about how you made choices – what you did – asking whether or not it was faithful to God’s will for your life and for creation. Seen this way, faith is much, much harder then asserting some doctrine or belief. Faith is giving your whole life over to something, specifically God, and then acting accordingly in every aspect of what you do. It seems the unseen part is the goal of being faithful to God. We don’t always know whether or not being faithful will move us and creation any closer to God’s realm.
We see this when we read Hebrews and Isaiah.
Now I need to stop here and to admit something. I am terrible with names. I am terrible at remembering them. It’s embarrassing and I try to compensate, but it’s true. And this absolutely spills over into what I remember in the bible. Because I struggle with names, I tend to skip over all the complicated, hard to pronounce names in the bible – all those kings, all those people who were begat, all those places. I remember the big ones – Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Canaan, Jesus and the like. But when we get down to all the kings of Israel and Judah, the kings of Assyria and Babylon, I’m pretty much a lost cause.
But here’s the problem with that. The names matter. They help us understand what these authors and prophets were trying to say. In fact, it’s why it was important that John read the first verse of Isaiah, even though it seems like we’re just being hard on him making him read that list of names. The names remind us that there is a context to everything Isaiah says. The list tells us who Isaiah is speaking to. On behalf of Yahweh, he is speaking to real, live people who are doing real, live things. It is as concrete as you can get. He is telling them what to do in the face of some of the most difficult choices you can imagine. He’s telling them how to be faithful – and if we’re to understand what Isaiah is saying, we need to know something of those to whom he’s speaking.
The first verse tells us that two of the kings Isaiah was speaking to are Ahaz and Hezekiah; two kings of Judah in the 8th century BCE. These kings talked to Isaiah. He was a prophet of God. They asked for his opinion, and, quite often, they got his opinion even when they didn’t ask. What they asked about couldn’t get more practical in the case of a king. They asked him about foreign affairs, about how to govern, about what to do when faced with impossible decisions. Isaiah would tell them how to be faithful.
Of course when Isaiah gave them very specific instructions – which he was happy to do – some kings listened and some kings didn’t. So, Isaiah spoke to both Ahaz and Hezekiah, and if we remember those names from all those times we’ve read through the books of 1 and 2 kings :-), we realize that they represent the two extremes. One never listened and one listened all the time.
Both Ahaz and Hezekiah faced the same situation. They were kings of this small country that was basically, at that time, a sitting duck. Assyria – the lone super-power of the day – was making its way across the known world, taking small country after small country as it went. Currently they were moving in on the country to the north of Judah; Israel, the 2nd half of the once united kingdom under King David. As Assyria was moving in on Israel, Israel started to invade Judah in order to get them to join forces against Assyria. Such a suggestion wasn’t completely without merit. Ahaz knew, if Assyria conquered Israel, they were, without a doubt, next.
In the face of all this, Ahaz saw two choices if he was to avoid the inevitable bloodshed, and downfall of his nation at the hands of Assyria: Give into Israel and hope with forces joined they could defeat the Assyrians, or try to cozy up to Assyria in order prevent the worst from happening. He chose the latter. He chose to bribe Assyria. He chose to ingratiate himself to the king. And in doing that he chose the religions of Assyria, he built altars that mirrored theirs and then made offerings to their gods. He dismantled the altar to Yahweh in Jerusalem, took all the most beautiful pieces and gave them to the king of Assyria. In other words, he chose to place all his faith in the king of Assyria to save them from destruction. It was, you might say, faith only in what he could see.
When we turn to our prophet, we see that Isaiah’s evaluation of this choice was swift and unequivocal: wrong choice. Speaking for Yahweh, Isaiah says, “When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood”. Yahweh was not happy with the new forms of worship that came along with Ahaz’s decisions. God did not like the worshiping of other gods. God did not like that Ahaz had swapped faith in Yahweh for faith in the Assyrian king to save him. He made the wrong choice.
Of course, the truth is, we learn as we read on in Isaiah, we know that either choice would have been the wrong choice. Isaiah had already told him, ignore the nations to the north, they will be of no consequence. Ignore Assyria, it will be of no consequence. Very clear, very concrete: Isaiah said do neither. Ahaz, like most of us I suspect, did not trust a prophet or a god who would give such bad advice. Ignore them??!! They were closing in and killing as they went. So of course Ahaz chose to ignore Isaiah, ignore God. He did not trust Yahweh could save him. He did not trust there was an option that he couldn’t yet see.
On the other end of the spectrum is Hezekiah. Hezekiah, serving as king shortly after Ahaz, faced the exact same situation. But the difference between he and Ahaz, the difference that affected the course of history for the people of Judah, was that he saw not two, but three options. He saw the third way of faith. He chose to listen to Isaiah, every word. He chose to trust – even when his and his people’s entire lives were at stake – He chose to trust that Yahweh would show him a third way.
And what was the third way Yahweh showed him? He and his people were to worship God, and God alone. And when you worship God and God alone, you do not offer sacrifices at the altars of other gods. You do not build altars that look the Assyrian altars. You do not gather for religious festivals that have nothing to do with Yahweh and the covenant you have made with Yahweh. But most important, as Isaiah points out, worshiping Yahweh and Yahweh alone means caring for the poor, the oppressed, the orphan and the widow. Isaiah said God hated how king Ahaz was worshiping – not because they were gathering to worship, but because they did not worship Yahweh. Isaiah knows this because they did not care for those God most wants us to care for. Ahaz left the poor destitute and the orphans abandoned.
Isaiah, speaking for God, says these words to Ahaz: “Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” And that was exactly what Hezekiah did. That was his choice. Crazy, actually. To respond to very real threats from the super-power of his day by caring for the least in his kingdom. But indeed, what Isaiah prophesied was realized. Yahweh came through for Hezekiah. The threats from both Israel and Assyria dissipated. Yahweh kept the promise even though any rational person would see that this third way could never lead to such an outcome.
Faith in Yahweh – the crazy faith of Hezekiah – is presented in the prophetic tradition as a third alternative that is always choosable. But it’s always a choice the world would think foolish. Faith is a conviction – to get back to Hebrews – that God and God alone offers a guarantee of a future we can’t see, but we trust it is the only future where all of humanity will flourish.
Which brings us to Abraham and Sarah – the models of faith for the author of Hebrews. The examples that show us what he meant when he said “faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen.” God gave them a guarantee of a future – one that was literally laughable to them because it was so improbable, so unimaginable: descendants when they were too old and childless; a promised land; a whole new world than what they knew. But God’s guarantee was all they needed to set out, do what no sane people would do. They somehow trusted this crazy God and so were faithful in their actions.
Looking at Abraham and Sarah we see that this faith – this ability to choose the 3rd way, the ability to do the crazy, hard things – requires three things. First, we have to trust that the city of God exists and it’s better than where we are. To actually believe it is possible, as Isaiah says, for wolves and lambs to lie down together even when we can’t see the way this could ever happen. Second, to trust that it’s worth the risk to set out toward that city, even though we can’t be positively, scientifically, see-it-with-our-own-eyes, sure it exists. And third faith requires the conviction that it’s still worth it even if we know we will not reach the city of God in our lifetime. Abraham and Sarah didn’t get to the promised land – they knew they wouldn’t get there, but they set out anyway – simply because the God they had chosen to trust above all else had told them to go. That is faith. And remember, the third option never seems viable in a pragmatic world. That’s the craziness of faith – not just that we claim to believe in a God we can’t see, but that based on who that God is, we do crazy things that make no sense in an either/or world.
This is certainly a different way in our world. Faith like this leads us to impractical acts in the face of real and difficult choices. But that’s what life in God is about – believing in and trusting in possibilities beyond ourselves, beyond our lives and dedicating ourselves to that without ever really getting to see exactly what it is.
Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a beautiful prayer that I think describes the life of faith so well. He writes,
“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”
We’re not queens or kings, we’re not Sarah or Abraham. But we are real people with real lives and we come here because we want to be more faithful. And so here, we allow the prophets and Jesus to paint a vision of God’s realm and tell us how to move in that direction. Here we speak in visions and hope of what can be. Here we claim there is something better, and even though we can’t see it and may never reach it, that’s enough to take the risk. Here we declare the way forward is found in serving the least, the lost, the broken and the hopeless. Here we seek the third way of faith. It’s crazy. It’s not pragmatic. But that’s faith. Amen.
