I was thinking about an example of faith, and I’m a movie person, so this image from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the image that always comes to mind.

He has to make the leap of the lion’s head, which is he has to walk across that cavern because the room with the chalice is on the other side and it doesn’t look good. It’s not an easy step to take. I have a real fear of ledges. Ledges show up in my dreams. I am so scared of falling from a ledge and it’s tied into my fear of heights.

But, we are called to take that step, realizing that we don’t know where it is. We don’t know how this is gonna work out, but what happens in the movie when he takes that step? He finds out there’s actually a bridge that’s camouflaged into the cavern below. So you can’t see it until you take that step of faith. And that’s who we are called to be.

That is what the Hebrew scripture, Hebrews 11:1-3 & 8-16, is all about.

It’s about encouraging people to continue to take the step of faith. That passage was written by a very educated Jewish person. It’s written in Greek, but it contains so much knowledge of the Hebrews and the Jewish traditions that the icons of the Jewish faith are lifted in it.

It was intended for a Jewish audience and written by someone who knew the story. Someone of Jewish background who has come into the church. Although it’s not stated in the letter, it seems that the people are starting to fall away, and he’s trying to convince them to stay. It’s possible that the people thought Jesus came and he said he was coming again, and that the end of the world was coming, and it hasn’t happened yet. They’re starting to question that, and he’s trying to keep them together by saying, “Don’t give up on the faith. Keep your trust because your faith is what leads you.”

This scripture focuses on Abraham and Sarah. He acted in faith. He followed God in faith. He never got to see what his homeland or that city that was being described to him. “By faith, with Sarah’s involvement, he received power of procreation, even though he was too old, because he considered the one faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” – Hebrews 11:11-12. He’ll never see that. He sees his children born. He has two sons, but that’s as much as he sees.

But it continues. There is more than we can see. That’s the scripture encouraging us in that light to keep the faith and to trust in God because things are not always what they seem. We can encourage each other and come together to direct the love and mercy so that we all become the people who God intended us to be. Because none of us are complete. None of us are done growing and learning. We’re all in that together.

Then we have this scripture, Mark 4:35-41.

This must have been a really pivotal story for the early church because it is in all three of what we call the synoptic gospels. That’s Matthew, Mark, and Luke because they share a lot of stories. John has a different take on things.

But we even have it in our stained glass windows. The second window has the boat on the stormy waters. Something happened in that boat that was so important that everybody had to know about it. I don’t know about you, but when I have heard this read and preached before, and I have preached it this way too, there’s that line from Jesus to the disciples. I have heard it in an angry or demeaning tone, more of a, why are you afraid? Have you no faith? But I didn’t read it that way today because tone matters. We don’t know how Jesus actually said it, but what if Jesus’s tone was one of love and compassion, which fits how Jesus operated in general?

So instead of coming off being angry and frustrated with these stupid disciples that never got it, even in the end. Because the end is never the end. What if he actually said, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” In an almost pitying and compassionate way?

He didn’t give up on those disciples, and he silenced the waves and the wind to help them have the peace and the assurance that they needed. That left them saying, “Who is this that can silence the waves and the wind? Who is this?”

He could have easily said, “Peace out. I’m done. Let me off the boat.” He could have walked to shore. He walks on water in another gospel, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t give up on them, and he doesn’t give up on us. Are we still willing to put our faith and trust in Jesus to guide us?

I also think that love is the goal because Jesus came trying to help us understand who God really is.

The other scene that came to me was this scene from The Replacements. I’ve said that to a couple of people, and nobody else seems to know this movie. Maybe I’m the only one who watches this movie, but this is a favorite of our family. It is about a Washington football team, it’s near the end of the movie, they’re in the final game of the season, and they’re losing. At halftime, like always happens, the commentator comes over and that’s Coach McGinty. Gene Hackman plays Coach McGinty. He says, coach, what do you gotta do to come back in the second half? And Coach McGinty looks at him a,nd he says “It’s all about heart, miles and miles of heart.”

To me, that’s love. It’s about the love and the person who needs to hear that comes back and saves the day, ’cause it’s a movie. But we have to have heart. We have to use, we have to follow the love in our hearts. Faith doesn’t make sense in our brains, but faith makes sense in our hearts. It’s our hearts that call us to have compassion, to share love, to encourage others. It’s in our hearts that we follow as people of Jesus.

That’s what he was teaching us: to follow our hearts, to be led in love and mercy. I know that we have not always been good at expressing it. We have a lot of German roots, and we’re very stoic. We don’t like to let people see our emotions.

The band and I are up here doing our best to get something out of you. Anybody awake? Some of you are more obvious when you’re sleeping than others, but you know, we try to keep this going and keep you engaged because it matters.

We have to learn to show our hearts. We have to learn how to laugh together, and I’m glad I got you to at least chuckle. We have to be able to express that love and that encouragement with each other. That’s when we will most fully be who God intends us to be. When we share the inclusive love and create a safe space for all.

Who comes looking for a relationship with Jesus?

May it be so. Amen.

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 This week I had a call from someone who’s not part of the church, but has a lot of questions about the church, about what we believe, and about how we have faith.

He had a lot of questions about what faith is, and I gave him my definition of faith, which to me is believing in something that you cannot prove. Hebrews 11:1 has this as the definition of faith, “Now faith is the assurance of things, hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

With those definitions, I want you to think about what it is that you have faith in? Where does your faith lie? I think an equally important question is why. What is your why? What is the why that helps you have that faith in this conversation with this person asking questions? He was asking, but how do you know that they’re telling you the truth?

So, what is your why? Why do you believe what you believe? I think it is so easy for humans. There’s a part of humanity where our default is to have more faith in ourselves than in anybody else. If we think about that, I think that’s because we think that we can control ourselves. We can have faith in that which we can control, but that is not faith.

And that believing in ourselves more than God is what broke the relationship with God. From the very beginning, God gave us everything, and we thought we knew better. Isn’t that still true? Aren’t there times when we think we know better? We’re so good at making up stories in our heads and reinforcing those stories. We see examples that reinforce the stories that we want, but all of that is following our agenda rather than God’s agenda.

One of our challenges in life, which doesn’t stop, is to learn to open ourselves to God’s leading, to open ourselves to God’s agenda, which is about love and forgiveness. Are we able to let go of that?

When I think about how we try to trust in ourselves because we think we can control ourselves, I also think about how we can control ourselves until we have a diagnosis that we can’t control, or we’re faced with the realities of aging and bodies. They don’t work the way we want them to, and we can’t do anything about it.

Having faith is challenging and that’s why I think we get this beautiful letter to the Ephesians.

Whether Paul wrote it or whether someone else wrote it later, we don’t really know. But it begins by praising the Ephesians for their faith, but then it goes on to pray that they would have wisdom and that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened.

If we ask this question of why it was written this way? I think we realize that it sounds like they were having a hard time. They had faith, but they weren’t as good at getting along with each other. Especially if you’ve read the whole book. There’s a lot about how they’re to be the body of Christ and what that looks like. But this is all the writer is asking, that they may have this wisdom and revelation, that they can have a stronger ‘why’ for their faith.

When everything’s falling apart and we pray to God and it doesn’t feel like God’s listening sometimes, but is that because God’s not listening or is it because God’s not doing what we want God to do, and don’t we have to wrestle with that? That maybe what we want isn’t the most loving and forgiving thing. Maybe it has more of our agendas tied up in our fears.

The author of Luke wrote both the Gospel and the Book of Acts and our scripture today, Luke 24:36-53, is the Ascension story or scripture in the Gospel of Luke.

There’s a slightly different account in the Book of Acts and one might ask, why did he write two different. accounts? Well, they have different purposes. This one is still trying to help the disciples to understand that their work was to continue the work of Christ.

This scripture puts us back in Easter, which seems like a long time ago, seven weeks. This puts us back on Easter Day, and the disciples are confused and scared. They’re scared because they watched the one that they were following, the one that they loved, cherished, and believed had the answers. They watched him be killed. They didn’t do anything about that, and they were afraid that they were next.

Then they heard about this empty tomb, and they really didn’t know what to do about that because they didn’t have his body. So, where was his body? Luke 24:36-53 comes right after.

The story about the road to Emmaus, if you remember that story where two other disciples were walking and they met someone and they invited him back for dinner, and during the breaking of the bread at dinner, all of a sudden they realized he was Jesus, and he disappeared. Now they’ve shown up with their story. They’re confused and they’re scared. In the middle of that, Jesus just shows up and says, “Peace be with you.” Every time he shows up in a resurrection moment, he says, “Peace be with you.”

The word that he uses is (i-ray’-nay) means peace of wholeness. It’s a wish of health and welfare for them to be whole. In other words, don’t be afraid, scared, or self-limiting. He’s inviting them. He’s trying to give them this freedom to open themselves to the rest of the world. To open themselves and do the work that he was doing, meeting people who were struggling and offering them love and forgiveness.

I often say it’s about doing the next most loving thing. Anytime we have a challenge and we don’t know which way to go, what is the most loving thing to do, or what is the most forgiving thing to do? That’s what God is doing with us. That’s how God’s trying to guide us in loving and forgiving ways. That’s what God’s looking for us to do.

God was looking for the disciples to let themselves out of the locker room. Don’t be closed down, but be open. Be open and go out. Go out into the world. Make a difference in the world.

All of creation was meant to be in harmony. From the very beginning, we pushed back on that. We thought that we knew better, or we wanted to do it our way.

The reason Jesus came, the whole incarnation, is all about Jesus, God coming after trying in so many different ways through prophets, priests, and through the writings of the Psalms. God needed another way to get our attention.

He came in the body of Jesus. In Jesus, He showed us how to live, but the disciples wanted that to continue. They said, ‘Don’t go away. Stay with us because life is better when you are here.’ We’d probably say that too. We’ve got a mess here. Come on back and straighten this out.

But that’s not the point. Jesus is probably saying, ‘You didn’t listen to me the first time.’ That’s why Jesus gave us the Spirit, and the Spirit encourages us to go out in love and forgiveness. It’s about repentance and transformation. We live transformed lives so that others realize the joy that we have and ask themselves, “Why are they so happy? Why can they look at this mess and be okay?” It’s because we have hope in something bigger than all of this as reformed people.

I was just reminded yesterday at the Interfaith Coalition, Lee Barrett was there talking about the reformed tradition and saying how, because we believe that God is sovereign and that in the end all will be well, God will win. That was last week’s scripture in Revelation. That, in the end, it will be the garden again, and all will be well.

We are called to live through this time to look for and stand for justice and to make sure that everyone is treated equally and with equity. Make sure that we are living in ways that are loving of our brothers and sisters.

As I was sitting with all of this, I was still struggling and wasn’t clear that the why was so much a part of the questions that I was asking. I ended up finding myself at Rader Park, sitting on the steps at Brubaker Run, watching the water. That’s a place that is comforting and calming for me.

As I sat there and thought about the river, I thought we were meant to be like the water, trusting that God would guide the way. There will be bends that will have to be gone around. There will be falls that we experience. We’ll have to go around the rocks, the impediments, but we will also help to purify with that love and that forgiveness. We’ll wash away the impurities, and we’ll promote and bring life-giving properties to all that we meet.

Knowing that the way leads us towards God. So we follow the way. But, I encourage you this week to think about why you follow the way and where you draw your reasoning from. What is your big why? For why you believe and have faith that you do.

In these trying times, we need to hang on to our why. That is why our hope is our resilience in these trying times.

May it be so. Amen.

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