Tenth Sunday after Pentecost August 17, 2025
The author of the letter to the Hebrews took on their shoulders the gargantuan and challenging task of writing about ‘faith!’
To distill the letter’s breadth of purpose, themes and goals into one expression: the writer of Hebrews was aiming to ‘open the door to faith,’ faith in Jesus Christ. And the author had a particular audience in mind – the Jewish people. As its title says, the letter is written to, and for, the Hebrews.
The identity of the writer remains unknown. Neither Paul nor any of the apostles is the author.
The letter begins: “Long ago God spoke in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son…” Hebrews 1:1-2
Now, last Sunday I opened the door to my, and your, exploring faith – the faith that draws us together in community and the faith we each claim. Again, what is faith? And what part does faith play in our lives?
Well…having opened the door, I want to step past the threshold and continue keeping faith as a focus. It is a theme that runs through the scriptures assigned for these Sundays. Faith is the theme that stitches the Sunday readings with often challenging and unsettling words and images from both Old and New Testaments.
My aim is not to have the last and final word about faith! Far be it from me to think, or claim, I am the expert.
Far from it! Faith for me, like faith for you, is always a work in progress!
Thinking of faith in terms of stages might be helpful. Faith begins like a small seed, takes root, sprouts, grows, gets stronger, puts forth leaves, branches and blossoms. The lives of many of the saints illustrate how faith grows and develops against many odds and encountering many hurdles. Faith rarely arrives full blown!
When we judge our faith to have reached maturity, we learn pretty quickly that we have some more growing to do!
Like a crystal prism lifted up to the light multiple times, there is always a different and bright array of colour and depth to discover and to see as never before! Faith is also like a wonderful painting, or favourite picture. Your eye catches something you have never noticed before and the discovery brings the picture alive afresh with new and richer meaning! So, it is with faith and our relationship with God.
Working back from today’s reading from the letter to the Hebrews, back to the opening words of chapter eleven heard last Sunday, we are told that, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1
These words are the starting point, the backdrop if you like, leading into today’s reading. It is good to hold onto those words as we work our way through the following part of Hebrews chapter eleven and on into chapter twelve.
Keeping their focus fixed on faith, the writer turns their attention to people and to events. The writer may, or may not, have had at their fingertips all the various written records of the Jewish people’s history and faith in a bundle of separate scrolls (or ‘books’ as we call them). But the writer nonetheless was aware and familiar with them. They were not bound in one book – a book we call the Bible.
There was Torah or the Law: the first five books of the bible; the Prophets: the larger-than-life, or ‘greater’ prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the lesser or ‘minor’ prophets like Micah and Zechariah; the history books: two each of the Chronicles, and the Kings; and, of course, the Wisdom literature: Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon.
The writer of Hebrews lists important people and events, beginning with the exodus from slavery in Egypt at the Red Sea. More than any other, it became the seminal event in the life and the history of the Jewish people.
Although there are many significant and memorable events, the experience of salvation in the waters of the Red Sea is the one event that sealed their identity as God’s own people. It is kept alive by the yearly celebration of Passover when the story of salvation is retold around the dinner table: unleavened bread, a roasted lamb shank and bitter herbs are eaten as a reminder and in thanksgiving for what God did for his people.
But events never stand alone. People – men and women, individuals, tribes, families and a nation – are tied up with the events of Jewish history. Abraham and Sarah and their particular story was front and centre. Today, the author of the letter recalls other men and women of faith: Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah and King David.
Their stories were engraved in the collective memory of God’s people. They were examples – and exemplars – of faith.
“By faith…” are the words we keep hearing in Hebrews. “By faith,” these men and women, and many others, not named “conquered kingdoms, administered justice…shut the mouths of lions,” (recall Daniel in the lion’s den), “quenched raging fire…” They all made it through troubles, struggling against odds greater than they. “By faith,” they got through and ended up the victors in many circumstances. “By faith,” they came through their trials and landed safe on the other side.
Once again (as in the opening lines of chapter eleven) the writer rises to some beautiful and sublime phrases –
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin the clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…” 12:1-2
As with the beginning of chapter eleven, the theme remains the same – faith is tried, and faith is tested – by time, by real life events and by experience. Like the runner in a race aiming to stay on course and to cross the finish line at the head of the pack, perseverance pays off.
Personal faith that grows and deepens is faith tried and tested, and not discarded when the going gets tough.
Without perseverance, you might say, the race is over before it has even begun. And perseverance is a gift, a gift (ultimately, I believe) from God a grace without which faith would wither and die.
The words read from Hebrews today are encouraging and hopeful. But the gospel verses from Luke, chapter twelve, are the last words from scripture read this morning. It doesn’t sound like the Jesus we expect to hear!
Certainly not the Jesus so often depicted in stained glass and Sunday School leaflets. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Luke 12:49
There is more than a hint of anger and upset in Jesus’ words: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” 12:51
Certainly not the ‘Jesus meek and mild’ we associate with the teacher and friend of little children!
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Fire is a sign and figure of judgement. Jesus is speaking about the fire that will separate and purify those who are meant for God’s kingdom. The “baptism with which” he is “to be baptized” is the cross that awaits him in Jerusalem.
You sense Jesus’ urgency throughout his words. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” 12:51
And, of course, what Jesus is talking about here is that kind of easy peace, that superficial and unjust peace we so often settle for, in our own day-by-day lives, and in the world.
We cannot simply ignore or overlook the fact that God offers us a vision of what human life can be, of what it should be.
Jesus’ words in Luke, chapter twelve, connect closely with the love-song of the vineyard in the prophet Isaiah (5:1-7). “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.” (5:-5-6)
There is a vision of what human life can be, of what it should be, offered by faith in the living God. We get glimpses of it when we let ourselves and our actions be shaped by faith, a faith that gives God more room in our lives and gives God a place in this real world.
Faith, faith in Christ, is seeing the world in a way that includes God. And faith teaches us not to live for ourselves alone, but also for others. Faith leads to ‘wholeness’ and to ‘holiness’ which leads to and produces a passionate concern for the poor and oppressed. Faith has to do with how we behave. But even more, faith has to do with who we become!
You and I need the gift and grace of perseverance!
‘Sticking with it’ and ‘sticking with God’ are good mottos to embrace. Good mottos for living by faith in God and faith in the Lord Jesus.
Amen.
Fr. Ted Hales