Faith For the Journey

Sue Axtell, ESR Worship, Oct. 15, 2003

I will lead the blind by ways they have not known,
along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;
I will turn the darkness into light before them
and make the rough places smooth.
These are the things I will do;
I will not forsake them.
Isa. 42:16

One of my favorite songs of faith, Be Ye Glad, by Michael Blanchard, has a first verse that expresses my thoughts about the last couple years in this nation. It is quite a timeless song -- actually written to speak to the condition of the world in 1982. I’m going to sing you the first couple lines so that you’ll hear what I’m talking about:

At any time and especially in times of global struggle it seems appropriate to talk about faith. I’m hoping that this message will uplift you and that we will discover increased Faith for the Journey as we walk together into the future in community.

The Bible provides us with many voices who talk to us about lived out faith. A condensation of most of the voices say these two things:

The writer of Genesis claims that God credits righteousness to a person who has faith.

Just as a little aside: These days when we hear the word “righteous” it is with a rather negative connotation as in “self-righteous” which none of us want to be. However in the Old Testament, when a person was said to be "righteous," no suggestion of “sinlessness” is implied. Instead, the statement means that a persons actions are in harmony with their obligations - in relationship with God. They are being a willing part of God’s plan, joyfully and obediently using their gifts and talents in the places of need - within their family, their community or the world depending on their call. The word Obedience is often tied to Faith in the wisdom writings.

There are many vital stories of faith that pop up in the Old Testament: Abraham’s faith that indeed God would make a great nation out of his marriage to Sara who was barren until the miracle in her nineties produced Isaac, or Joseph whose faith led him from a death pit to the responsible role in Egypt that saved his family during a famine. Joseph was unusual in that he saw the results of his faith within his life span. Most did not.

When I went to Italy in May with Dena’s class to study Theology and Art, I focused my study on the very famous doors of the Baptistry in Florence. A man named Lorenzo Ghiberti, a goldsmith, was chosen through a competition back in the mid 1400's to illustrate stories from the Old Testament in ten bronze panels. Each panel had the whole story of each character designed into it in either flat or high relief scenes that came out of the panel. Michelangelo was one of Lorenzo’s contemporaries. The artists all watched each other carefully in those days to make sure that they didn’t miss any of the latest techniques - because art was changing so rapidly. Anyway, Michelangelo nicknamed Lorenzo’s doors the “Gates of Paradise” - partly because of their amazing artistry, but also because the Church in those days assured you that if you were ritually baptized by water and more importantly the ritual was performed by a priest of the Church - then you were guaranteed salvation. This reassurance was met with joy in that era before anesthesia and antiseptics - when husbands often outlived two or three wives because of the dangers of childbirth and plagues swept the country taking a third or more of the total population.

I’ve placed the picture of the doors here for you to look at. The technique used was that called “lost wax” impressions -first the finished detailed panel is carved in wax, then covered with hardened clay leaving pipe-shunts down into the wax. The wax within the clay is melted, hence “lost”, when the hot bronze is poured into the top. Quite a challenging process. The doors took Lorenzo and a team of artists over 25 years to produce.

When I asked myself - “Out of all the Old Testament stories (aside from Adam and Eve the beginning of Genesis) how did the doors end up illustrating only the stories of Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David and Solomon?”. The common denominator was that these particular stories of Old Testament characters were chosen to increase the faith of the community in Florence.

Art in the cathedrals was so important as a tool to tell the religious stories of faith, because most Text Box:

of the city’s population could not read. The doors were situated in the “piazza” a cobbled stone open market place, and most of the people in the town walked past them daily. The scenes that were in highest relief and best viewed were scenes like David and the giant, or Moses receiving the Ten Commandments (insert) - scenes to inspire faith.

In my study, I came across the New Testament text of Hebrews 11 that I’m sure Lorenzo was using to guide his illustrating. The chapter talks in depth about each of the characters in the door panel stories and contains some of the most thoughtful comments about faith that I’ve found in the Bible. I recommend it to you.

The first verse in this chapter in Hebrews is one that may be pretty familiar - especially when read in the wording from the King James version - “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

This is the cornerstone statement on faith for a Christian. We can’t “make” ourselves or anyone else have faith. There are no logical or scientific arguments that can cause a person to claim a relationship with Jesus as their personal confession of faith -their bridge to God. We each have to sit with this question, taking it to the depths of our souls - particularly in sad times. Wayne Muller in his book "How, Then Shall We Live?" writes, “I began to sense something beneath even the sorrow. I could feel a place inside, below all my names, my stories, my injuries, my sadness - a place that lived in my breath. I did not know what to call it, but it had a voice, a way of speaking to me about what was true, what was right. And along with this voice came a presence, an indescribable sense of well-being that reminded me that whatever pain or sorrow I would be given, there was something inside strong enough to bear the weight of it. It would rise to meet whatever I was given. It would teach me what to do.”

Historically Quakers have claimed that there is the seed of God in everyone and we would probably say that the still small voice Muller was describing is God. Henri Nouwen says in his book, The Life of the Beloved, that the greatest enemy of the spiritual life is self-rejection - in that it contradicts the sacred inner voice that labels us God’s “Beloved”. In Discernment of Calling and Gifts, we are reminded as an inspiration to our faith that we are as children of God, each of us having natural abilities, vocational training, spiritual gifts and gifts of personality that can be used in faith to nurture the people and projects we love in this community and beyond. We know that Faith itself is considered one of the spiritual gifts. Identifying and using what we love to do is one of the best ways to express our faith. Revering what we consider sacred and true will help us count each day as a gift to be lived intentionally.

We are all called by that inner voice to faith expressing itself through love. It’s our love, faithfulness and obedience that determines the use of our gifts for God.

Verse thirteen in the passage from Hebrews about faith says, “Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing.” What is the deal here? How can this be? What kind of God are we claiming faith in who doesn’t produce the answers to our prayers within days, months or even the years within our life time? Are we fools for God?

Perhaps so. Yet I’d rather be a fool for God than for many of the other reasons I’ve been a fool.

Our culture is not accustomed to delayed gratification. I became more and more aware of this as I studied the art in Italy. Europe is so much older than we are. The people in the early twelve hundreds who started pushing little pieces of brilliantly colored mosaic glass onto the surface of the domed cathedral ceilings as their offering to Christian Education had a whole different concept of faith. They had no expectation that their offering would be finished within their lifetime. In starting amazing religious scenes forty two feet above the floor, most were aware that their projects might be finished by their adult grandchildren. Their skills were put to use for the community, and faith in the completion of the task was fully resigned to God’s will.

Eugene Peterson author of The Message, paraphrased Hebrews 11: verse 13, saying:

By looking at the scope of history, I can pull my experience into the beginnings of their frame of understanding. We live by faith not sight. As one of God’s beloved children, my life’s graces and healed life wounds are now the role model for my children as they address their life tasks - some of them the same as mine and some very different. At 52 I have begun to get a vision of the continuing community of faith moving from the past into the future. I can imagine myself at 80 being able to wave my greeting at what I think the Lord has promised me in faith, claiming it in faith for generations yet to come. This concept of living not in our time but in Kronos time - God’s time - is the reason I picked the scripture Dorothy read to you from Isaiah earlier. We are like the blind being led by faith along unfamiliar paths into Gods light by ways we have not known. And God has not forsaken us.

If I had been the artist of the Gates of Paradise, one of those panels would have been about Ruth because Ruth was a Gentile - one of us. Ruth was not Hebrew, she was a Moabite woman. She married a Hebrew man who had come to her country to escape a famine in Judah. When her father-in-law, brother-in-law and her own husband died within ten years, Ruth chose to travel with her mother-in-law Naomi back to Judah and continue practicing her adopted religion. Naomi tried to get Ruth to stay in Moab when she returned to Judah, but Ruth would not. A rabbi I listened to once about this story said it would have been less embarrassing for Naomi if Ruth had stayed home in Moab and that in true Hebrew fashion she tried to ditch Ruth three times. I imagine the complexities would be similar to those one of us might experience bringing an Iraqi daughter-in-law back to the US now. But Ruth showed her faith in God and the Hebrew community adopted her. She is a alien - yet part of the direct genetic line that leads to the birth of Jesus. I’m sure she didn’t know the honor in store for her when God counted her as righteous. She was just living in harmony with God’s plan to the best of her ability. Her inclusion in the Old Testament lineage confirms for my faith that we too although perhaps unaware are the chosen and Beloved.

1 Sam 14:11 tells us that fear of failure betrays a loss of faith in the covenant promises of the Lord. I have crises of faith. I think everyone here does. And it’s at those times that community - stepping in to walk along side us on the path- becomes so important. People in this community have prayed for me about personal health concerns and with me for my children. I remember with gratitude the support given to me a couple years ago when my Mom was sick, my daughter was going to Saudi, and my son was having real trials in Michigan all at the same time.

The Joys and Concerns sharing before Common Meal that binds us together in compassion provides this Michigander with partners in “faith” here in Richmond. Prayer and watchfulness blend faith and action. We can be God’s hands and feet to each other in ways that keep faith strong.

I think rather than leaving the “heart and the soul of a nation, laying wounded and cold as a corpse” I should perhaps finish the song