Ninth Sunday after Pentecost August 10, 2025
Clergy of all stripes and denominations frequently find themselves in the hot seat! ‘It comes with the territory,’ a sympathetic parishioner once told me.
At a wedding reception, for example. You park your car in the lot and as you walk into the reception hall, you tell yourself: ‘Now, relax. Enjoy yourself. You’ve been asked to say the blessing. But after saying the grace, you I can sit back and enjoy the meal as one of the guests…’ just like the groom said at the rehearsal. It rarely works out that way!
Once the introductions are over at the table where you are seated and the wine is poured and the grace is said, following the initial, formal and awkward moments, the conversation picks up and moves along. Talk about the day’s weather always breaks the ice! Then the conversation turns to the usual fare: the news of the day; talk about families, hobbies, vacations. Someone remarks on the bride’s dress and hair. Someone else at the table smiles at the groom’s nervousness as he stumbled through his vows and fumbled with the ring. Someone always comments on ‘how nice the church looked.’ ‘How lovely the flowers were!’ And someone with a look of amazement always says something like, ‘You did a nice job…after all, reverend!’ It gets you scratching your head, wondering, ‘did I leave something out of the service?!’
There’s talk about workplaces and careers, children and grandchildren. And then – someone turns to you – always when there’s a lull in the conversation and most folks at the table are searching for the next topic of conversation. They lean over and ask in a conspiratorial ‘stage whisper’ (that you are sure can be heard at the head table) – “Now don’t get me wrong ‘reverent’” (that’s ‘reverend’ with a ‘t’ instead of a ‘d’), “don’t get me wrong reverent, when you look around at what’s happening in the world today…honestly, I mean honestly…how can there be a God?”
Suddenly you are thrown into the hot seat!
Everyone at the table momentarily stops, not wanting to miss hearing what might be said next, slowing down any quiet conversation with their neighbours. One man who asked me the question once added: “after all, reverend…who better to ask about faith than the minister!”
Put on the spot and dreading one of those conversations about God that goes on and on but goes nowhere, what do you say?
Any personal and fervent witness to God and to God’s place in your life – or God’s plan to save and restore humanity and all creation in Jesus Christ – somehow doesn’t do the trick! As you stumble and search for words, a tense silence descends on the table! But as the saying goes: God always provides!
I am always thankful for the one guest with a good sense of humour who appreciates your predicament. The one guest who saves you and jumps in with a joke, a pun, something funny to relieve the tension, change the subject and help you out of the hot seat. The wedding guest who asked the question might expect to hear a bit of textbook dogma and doctrine. But, when I – and you – are put on the spot, as people of faith, we know faith is far more than dogma and faith is far more than doctrine!
That old evangelical mantra – ‘make a witness for Christ!’ is never as straightforward and as easy as it might sound!
Put on the spot, people of faith discover that not far into any attempt at an answer, the words don’t flow and come as quickly as we would want. Sure, the formulas might come to mind: ‘God is love.’ ’God loves the world.’ ‘God loves you.’ ‘Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life,’ et cetera, et cetera.
Honestly, talking about your faith is as difficult as putting into words the true depth of your love for wife or husband or child or parent, or that kind and understanding friend or stranger who held your hand, didn’t let go and helped get you through a horrendous experience or time in your life.
Faith is a little word with a lot of meaning!
A little word so often misused.
A little word so often misunderstood.
As we’ve heard read, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews beautifully puts it: “…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen…” Hebrews 11:1
Both the wise author of the letter to the Hebrews and the Apostle Paul (in his letter to the Christians in Rome, chapter 4) devote a fair bit of time to the patriarch Abraham as they set out to describe and to illustrate faith in God. Both point out that Abraham clung to his faith throughout a long life – a life filled with changes in direction, many an upheaval, some pretty confusing dreams and some fantastic and unbelievable promises made by God.
Faith is something you and I grow into. Like a flower, faith begins as a small bud. It needs time to develop, and it needs nourishment to come into full life and beauty. Faith is constantly tried and tested through experience, through the events and the course of one’s life. We discover that faith does deepens and faith does grow!
Now, faith may stop growing. And faith can wither. But faith may blossom once again after a cold winter of hard knocks, unbelief and neglect. Faith can mellow and faith can reach a character and a quality, a richness and a beauty, that is impossible to describe.
‘Faith’ is not ‘wishful thinking’…like waiting for your numbers to win the lottery. Nor is ‘faith’ all about ‘optimism’ – like working at a positive outlook whether your present days and immediate future be good or bad, happy or sad.
Faith is a relationship primarily. Faith is a relationship rooted in your experience and heightened and deepened by new discoveries about God (the other person in the relationship!). And new discoveries about yourself, about other people, about the world we call home! Even the most gifted students of relationships: sociologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and surprisingly, theologians, have to work pretty hard in nailing down a simple definition or description of a relationship.
Now Abraham was already past his prime when he ran into God!
I think most people will agree – it is hard to start new relationships once you reach a certain age! Relationships take time and they demand energy…and mental and emotional commitment. Relationships are taxing and frequently stressful…they have their ‘highs’ and they have their ‘lows’.
As with all relationships, faith in God is something you may feel like walking away from some, if not many, times! Like all true and good relationships, faith in God is something (some-one really!) you know that (in your heart-of-hearts) you let go of…at your own peril.
God told Abraham to pack his possessions, to gather his flocks and family and to set off on a journey to a promised land – to a foreign place he did not know. God told Abraham his descendants would inherit the land, and their number would be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. (2)
Sarah, his wife (well past her child-bearing years!), would be the mother of God’s own people. In Genesis chapter 17, God says to Abraham: “I will bless Sarah and I will give you a son by her…she shall be a mother of nations.” Genesis 17:16
Lest you think the scriptures are all about ‘religion’ and removed from everyday experience, Abraham’s reaction is natural and all too human…what you would expect. We read in Genesis, chapter 17: “Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said: ‘Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah who is ninety years old bear a son.’” 17:17
Today’s gospel reading from Luke, chapter 12, gives good advice about faith and our relationship with God. Without setting out to describe and to define faith, our Lord wisely frames faith in connection with God’s kingdom. “Be dressed for action” Jesus says, “have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet.” Luke 12:35-36
Now, we can’t be dressed for action with our lamps lit unless we have faith and trust in God, can we?
Faith and trust that God’s good purpose for our lives – and everyone and everything will surely come about is the foundation. Faith and trust in God truly anchor Jesus’ sayings we’ve heard in today’s gospel.
Henri Nouwen (the Dutch priest, writer and theologian) has written many books about faith and Christian living. In one book, The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life, he describes a revelation he had about faith. Nouwen starts out by saying that faith is ultimately a personal relationship with God. It isn’t about signing on to the right doctrine and dogma.
Nouwen describes a revelation he had at, of all unlikely places, the circus!
Nouwen went to the circus to see the Flying Rodleighs. They were a talented flying trapeze group he had heard about. He says he was mesmerized by their breath-taking performance. He describes how they flew so gracefully through the air high up above the heads of the crowd seated in the circus tent. At the end of the show, as people were leaving their seats and the tent was emptying, Nouwen felt he couldn’t leave without speaking with the troupe – especially the man who flew off the trapeze and did those amazing summersaults before catching another member of the troupe. He wanted to ask how he was able to perform with such grace and ease – and trust!
Nouwen writes that once he found the trapeze troupe, he talked to Rodleigh, the leader. He answered Nouwen by saying: “The public might think that I am the great star of the trapeze, but the real star is Joe, my catcher. The secret is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything. When I let go and fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me.”
“The worst thing the flyer can do,” he told Nouwen, “is to try to catch the catcher! I’m not supposed to catch Joe. Joe catches me!” *
The story says a lot about faith. The story says a lot about ourselves. Nouwen’s story from the circus says a lot about God. It is a good story to remember as we struggle to grow in faith.
And, as we tighten our belts and set out, by grace, to do God’s work – the work of his kingdom – in the world.
Amen.
Fr. Ted Hales
*Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life, The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, N.Y., U.S.A., 1999, pages 195-196) (3)