“It Depends on Faith”               Dr. Julie Adkins

                   Text: Genesis 12:1-9, Romans 4:13-25

 

SERMON

 

What a motley combination of characters we are given

          by this morning’s scripture readings!

Abram, together with Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew,

          and unnamed other “persons whom they had acquired …”

Paul, and by implication, his acquaintances in the church at Rome …

Matthew, who is a tax collector when we first meet him,

          Pharisees,

          a leader of the synagogue and his daughter,

                   a woman suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.

One, taking a trip without a road map;

          another, writing a letter to fellow believers;

                   another, getting up to follow a man he’s only just met;

                             two others, in search of healing.

What a combination.

Does anything at all tie them together,

          other than the fact that they all appear somewhere

                   between Genesis 1:1 and Revelation 22:21?

Or is this another of those cases where

          the editors of the Revised Common Lectionary

                   must have been laughing up their sleeves,

                   saying, “Wonder what they’ll do with this?!”

 

At first, I thought it had to be the latter.

I often feel that way early in the week,

          when you’ve just gotten done with one sermon

                   and already it’s time to think about the next.

One thing that did strike me about all three texts, though,

          is that they include or make reference to

                   stories about people responding to God in surprising ways.

Many of us will have heard these stories so often

          that we don’t think of them as surprising any more.

But let’s look back briefly,

          and see if we can recapture some of that.

 

And, since he comes first in time,

          let’s start with Abram.

We tend to remember him as Abraham,

          one of our ancestors in the faith.

But he started out as Abram.

          Not the “nice Jewish boy” of our later story.

Do you remember where he was from?

          Ur, of the Chaldeans.

Now, last fall I took a class in archaeology and the rise of ancient civilizations,

          and I can tell you that in Ur,

                   the God of Israel was not worshipped.

Yahweh, or however you want to pronounce that name,

          was probably scarcely known, if at all, in Ur of the Chaldeans.

Like other ancient civilizations,

          they had their own pantheon of gods and goddesses,

                   who needed attention or offerings or sacrifice or all of the above.

So when, in Genesis 12 verse 1,

          we find out that the Lord said something to Abram,

                   that’s the first time we have any record of

                   Yahweh and Abram ever encountering each other.

So how did Abram know it was God, or even a god?

Why in heaven’s name (literally!)

          would he even think to obey an order

                   to leave his kin, and the house of his recently-deceased father,

                   and the land belonging to his family,

                             and journey out somewhere unknown?

          when that order comes from a voice claiming to be a deity,

                   but not one that he has ever known?

Especially a God who tells him goofy things like,

          I am going to give this land to your offspring,

                   when Abram has no offspring,

                             and he and his wife are both already collecting Social Security.

It’s hard enough for those of us

          who have known God for most or all of our lives

                   to respond with obedience to God’s call and command.

How could it be possible for someone

          who had never known God at all until hearing that call and command?

What an astonishing story this turns out to be.

 

Paul’s story is, of course, a little different.

Paul, like most of us, was raised in the faith (the Jewish faith, in his case),

          he had been well educated in it,

                   he worked hard at keeping the Law and living a righteous life.

A little self- righteous at times, to be sure,

          but well-intentioned.

He probably knew his scriptures better than most of us do.

Yet he had no trouble recognizing that it was God’s voice that spoke to him,

          giving him new direction.

Granted, getting blinded by a bright light and knocked off your horse

          would get anyone’s attention …

But Paul knows instantly that it is God speaking,

          telling him, “You thought you were doing the right thing,

                   but you’re not.

          It’s not just those Christians that you’re persecuting,

                   but me.

          Cut it out.”

How could Paul recognize God’s voice

          telling him to do something contrary to everything he had ever known and done

                   up to that point?

 

More to the point of today’s epistle reading,

          what about the church at Rome?

According to the Interpreters’ Dictionary of the Bible,

          nothing is known about the founding of the church at Rome.

How did the word get there?

Did it start among the Jews, or the Gentiles?

Either way, what persuaded them?

None of them would have ever met Jesus face-to-face …

          perhaps some of them had been in Palestine on business and heard about him …

          perhaps one of the apostles had already made it that far with the news …

Even so, how did they know?

Here was something very different

          from anything they would have known

                   in the religions of ancient Rome.

How did they recognize it as true?

 

And what about Matthew?

We remember him most of all

          as the purported author of the first gospel

                   and as one of the twelve disciples.

But here we have had the beginning of his story.

Jesus is walking along, and he spots

          “a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth …”
You know, Matthew could easily have left that bit out,

          that he was a tax collector.

It doesn’t put him in the best light.

It means that he was a Jew employed by the Romans,

          and that most of the Jews probably hated him.

It means that whether he personally was honest or not,

          people perceived him as greedy, and unscrupulous, and a sellout.

Not someone that the scribes and/or Pharisees

          would have given the time of day to,

                   much less invited over for dinner and a few rounds of bridge.

So when Jesus said to him “Follow me,”

          how did Matthew know that this was for real?

If the “religious people” of his day had written him off,

          how did he recognize the voice of God calling?

                   Why did he want to follow at all?

You’d think that, the way the religious leaders treated him and all tax collectors,

          he wouldn’t want to have anything to do with God.

What did he see, and hear, in Jesus;

          that the professional “holy folks” had missed?

 

A leader of the synagogue,

          coming to beg Jesus to heal his daughter.

Again, the real “power people” of his faith

          have written Jesus off.

How did this man know that they were wrong?

That Jesus could, and would, do something amazing for him?

A woman, suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.

During that whole time,

          her religious community would have shunned her,

                   written her off as unclean,

                   avoided her, excluded her from worship.

How had she not given up on God altogether?

How did she know that Jesus was something different,

          and that his mere touch;

                   in fact, the mere touch of his garment,

                             would heal and restore her?

 

All of these stories

          introduce us, or re-introduce us,

                   to people who for no good reason

          recognize God, recognize Jesus, obey God’s will, do as God commands.

There’s every rational reason why they shouldn’t.

No prior experience,

          or prior negative experience,

                   or prior experience that would lead them in the opposite direction.

Furthermore, there is no apparent reason

          why God would have chosen them.

Abram was nothing special.

Paul, as we’ve said, was well-intentioned,

but just plain wrong about where God was to be found.

Matthew was something of an outcast among his own people.

So was the woman.

This motley combination of biblical characters

          has much more in common

                   than it appeared at first glance.

 

And it was in the process of my struggle to verbalize

          what it is that ties these stories together,

                   that my eyes fell on Paul’s own words:

          “for this reason it depends on faith.”

Bingo!

That’s exactly it.

What these different characters share with one another

          is their response in faith to God’s call on their lives.

Leave behind your kindred and your familiar country, and go.

          Okay, says Abram.

Why are you persecuting me?

          I’ll stop, says Paul.

Come and worship a God you have never known before,

          and give up all those supposed gods your leaders tell you to worship.

                   We’ll do it, says the church at Rome.

Follow me.

          I’m right here, says Matthew.

Faith.

The faith of a father who believes that

          his dead daughter can be healed by this miracle-worker from Nazareth.

The faith of a woman who doesn’t dare to speak,

          but believes that just a touch will make her whole.

Faith.

 

It didn’t matter that Abram never knew Yahweh before.

          God called him anyway.

                   And he responded.

It didn’t matter that Matthew was a tax collector,

          someone of questionable morality;

          Jesus said to him, “Follow me.”

                   And Matthew did, without looking back, so far as we can tell.

It didn’t matter that Paul had been playing for the wrong team, so to speak.

          Jesus said, “Come play for my team,”

                   and Paul suited up and started playing to win.

God’s call to us is never dependent on

          our good works, or our obedience to some defined set of rules,

                   even if the rules came from God!

It doesn’t depend on whether we are worthy, or distinguished,

          or educated, or moral,

                   or even whether we’ve ever even met God at all!

Something to remember at those times when we assume,

          as it’s so easy to do,

                   that having been in the church forever

                   makes us worthy of God’s attention.

Or, that because we’ve followed God in a certain way for so long –

          like Paul –

          that God intends for us to keep doing the same thing forever.

God calls anybody God wants,

          and asks of us whatever God needs.

And sometimes, the most faithful responses come

          not from the people we might expect,

                   but from those we can’t imagine God would have any use for.

 

It depends on faith.

Our faith in God,

          to respond and to follow,

                   even if the way ahead is unclear, or new, or weird.

And, God’s faith in us,

          to continue calling and waiting for our faithful responses,

                   not giving up even when we say no.

Thanks be to God for the gift of faith. 

 

Amen.

 

© 2002 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)