Faith: Past, Present, and Future

‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’

‘For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’

‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’

What wonderful scriptural sound bites we have today! Good stuff. The kind of scripture you can take into prayer, mull over and sit with until you hear the message in it for yourself. That is one great way of studying scripture – to pray with it, to let a short phrase of it echo over and over in your mind as you listen to God’s voice in it for you. To let it go deeper than your head. As our confirmation class discussed this week, it’s taking the opportunity to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the scripture, so it becomes a part of you. Different than just racing through the reading like we do with the news, or the latest beach read.

But there’s a message for our heads in these scriptures today as well, I think, taken all together. They describe for us the life of faith, showing how to move forward in response to God’s call. Faith, says the letter to the Hebrews, requires both knowing our past and looking forward to our future. The ‘assurance of things hoped for’ is that knowledge that comes from recognizing that things we hoped for, prayed for, dreamed of, actually did come to pass. It means recognizing God in what has already happened. While ‘the conviction of things not seen’ looks ahead to what is not yet known, believing that things will come to pass as God promises, just as did things in the past.

Sometimes I find it hard to remember all of that. When I come to a fork in the road, a hard decision or a transition or just a new unknown, I can completely forget that I’ve ever been through something like this before. Not actually forget – but forget in my heart somehow, forget that I grew and learned through something rather than being destroyed by it, forget that it takes time instead of happening all at once. And forget that God was with me in it. So whatever I’m about to step into feels catastrophic and unknown and scary, and I’m certain I’m going to fail. My brain might know better and try to argue me out of it, but my heart and stomach are certain that the worst is about to happen. It’s hard to feel faithful – but then somehow, sometimes, I step through into a new set of feelings, and it all feels possible and exciting, at least for a little while. Which always feels like an amazing moment of the Holy Spirit showing up right when I need her.

Sometimes it seems that we’re better at one or the other of these – seeing God’s hand at work in the past, or trusting faithfully as we move into the future – but we’re not always fluent at doing both. For some of us, we tend to dwell more on where we have been. We know our stories, the stories of our family, our church, our country. We love remembering those stories, pointing to times we experienced the power of prayer, or times when our children were young, or times when the community around us was thriving and dynamic. We are well rooted in the assurance that things we hoped for came to pass. Others of us focus more on moving forward into the future. We see possibilities that lie ahead of us and we’re restless, we want to try new things. We pay attention to the shifts of culture and the different things people talk about, the music they listen to, the needs and hungers around us. We’re eager to move ahead to those, to the things unseen and still off in the distance.

But of course, the one needs the other – the folks who hold fast to the stories of old sometimes need help letting go and laying down their baggage in order to move into the new. The folks who are impatient for what is coming need help rooting themselves in good tradition, in stories of faithful endurance and the sense of God’s promises come true. The two need each other in community to live out the full life of faith. That’s a gift of being a Christian alongside others, that we have other people to balance us out and teach us other ways to think about God in our lives.

We’re working on planning our 50th anniversary celebration for this fall, 50 years of worshiping in this lovely church (and 65 years of being a church community!). It’s a chance to collect ourselves around the stories from our past, to remember the names and the hopes of those who came before us. We’re thinking of oral histories, a chance for people to tell stories – even people who have moved away from here. And of combing through old photos. And of a self-guided walk around the property, noting the gifts and treasures given by St Francis people of the past. Like the timeline you all worked on during the interim process, it’s a chance to together tell and relearn the stories of who you have been, the people who have made up St Francis and made it what it is now.

But we also want the excuse to invite new people here – to put some burgers on the grill and welcome our neighbors to share, as well as to bless all the pets and animals in the region. (Put the word out: it will be Saturday, October 4!) There are even plans afoot to celebrate the St Francis Day feast with foods from 1975 – hello fondue! We want to welcome people here to share our stories – but also to hear theirs, and to listen intently to what the Spirit is doing in this place. And then together to begin shaping the stories that are to come. St Francis is a special place, and it’s one that’s dear to many people. We want to extend the community of those who come here, and find out what God will make of us next. This celebration will get us started down that road.

I tell you this partly so you can get thinking about it, about your memories of this place and its people, whom you might invite to take part, what you dream of happening here in the next 50 years. Everyone is a part of this, no matter how long or how little you have been at St Francis. But I also think there’s a way in which an anniversary like this can stir a little reflection in each of our own lives.

If you were alive 50 years ago, what were you doing then? What did church mean to you? What was God up to in your life? If you could live 50 more years, where do you imagine being? Do you look forward to that? do you dread it? How might you invite God into what is still to come?

There’s a prayer exercise that was developed over 500 years ago by St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. He called it the Prayer of Examen, and prescribed it to be prayed at the close of each day. You ask God for help in reviewing your day, bit by bit, remembering what you did, who you spoke with, what happened around you, and how it all felt. As you think through the day, you take note of when God felt particularly present to you, and when God felt absent as well; when you were in right relationship with God and others, and when you strayed away. Then you offer thanks for the good things of the day, and ask God for help with the hard things, and then commit the day to God – asking God to be present with you in the next day as you begin again. It's a powerful way of remembering, of learning from our lives instead of just floating through them. And it’s also a way of training ourselves to notice God more consciously in the present. Once you’ve prayed the Examen a few times, you start to shift from just noticing where God was in the past, to noticing where God is in this moment. You learn from your past how to step into the present and future. And you learn, as scripture reminds us over and over again, not to be afraid.

Do not be afraid, little flock, says Jesus. God has done so much for you already, you and this community God has called you into. Take a moment and see that, and be thankful. Faith has brought you safe thus far. So then travel lightly into the future; let God show you the treasure, what God has in mind for us all. All kinds of good things await. So may we welcome God’s promises when they come, and share that good news with the world.