Faith – stepping into the unknown

Betty Stroud

Year C 2025 Pentecost 9

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

As we think about faith and what it might mean, I believe the first verse of the passage from Hebrews is worth considering – so let’s look more closely at it.

‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’
Firstly, the customary understanding of the words ‘ now faith is the assurance of things hoped for’ asserts the obvious truth that faith involves confidence about things that cannot presently be verified.

But if we look more closely at the translation of the Greek word for ‘assurance’, we find that what it is actually saying is that in faith the believer already anticipates the final outcome – already anticipates the reality of what is believed.

This is not to say that believing makes something true or that whatever one actually believes will happen, but rather, that faith itself has a power that transcends reality.
Secondly, the ‘word translated as ‘the conviction’ of things not seen, doesn’t just mean a personal, internal belief that something will happen. Instead, it means that faith is the ‘proof’ of things not seen.

Looked at in these two ways the verse is not just a platitude about belief. It is much, much, more.

It is a highly provocative claim that faith itself moves in the direction of the realization of those things that are presently beyond demonstration.

And it is in this light that we can look at Abraham and Sarah’s story.

By faith, these two people uprooted their family – which included the whole household, and undertook a journey which led them away from everything that was known and comfortable into the unknown.

Abraham and Sarah didn’t just undertake the journey on some whim. If we can believe the biblical account, then something far greater than a whim was driving them. I believe that what drove them, was God’s Spirit, which enabled them to move in the direction of realizing the things that God had promised them.

So some questions we might ask ourselves today are:

‘How is our faith – both personally and as a congregation?’

‘Is it a faith that enables us to move in the direction of the realizing of things which we cannot at the moment demonstrate?’

Do we have Abraham’s largeness of faith? The openness to God’s Spirit that enabled him – in spite of his not being able to see the outcomes, to step out – to take a journey into the unknown?

At the beginning of last year this congregation looked at dreams and visions and ways ahead, which culminated in the document ‘The Mission of Christ is the Un/mission of the Church.

In formulating the document you talked about how you might tell the Good News of the Kingdom; how you might tteach and tend each other, and those of the wider community in this place’; how you might safeguard the integrity of creation and ways you might help in the transformation of society which pursues justice, peace and reconciliation.

This year you’ve moved from the stability of a minister who was with you for 18 years, to having me for five months, and now you’re looking at ways ahead, and how you might remain true to those visions of last year.

I spent a goodly number of hours on Friday night not sleeping. My mind was in overdrive as I thought about the future direction of this congregation. Last night, as I wrote this message, I came up with some thoughts which were prompted by my thinkings of the previous night – along with reading and listening that I’ve done over the years, and I want to share them with you.

I wonder whether sometimes we go about things in the wrong way. We want to see very clearly and have the right outcomes and plans mapped out before we dare take any step ahead.

And so we spend a lot of time in making sure that we do all the right things: we hold planning days, we hold surveys, we talk endlessly about whether this or that is the right way ahead, we allow the past to intrude into our deliberations and hold onto aspects of the past that should be left behind.

We say things like, ‘We don’t have the money.’ or ‘We don’t have the people.’ or ‘What happens if we fail?’

Now I would be the first to say that we need to do our homework. We need to deliberate – to pray and to consider where God might be calling us.

But then, I believe, we actually have to be prepared to take steps of faith – not knowing whether they will actually lead us to the place we intend, but trusting that God will lead and guide us.

Quite often, I believe, we have to be prepared to step out in faith knowing very little about where we might end up. For some of us that’s a scary thought.

Abraham was told by God to ‘go from his well-known country to a land he would be shown’. How scary would that have been?

Whenever I go on holiday, I mull over maps, I read about places, I determine some of the places where I will be staying.

When I plan holidays, I’m generally not following some call of God to go to a place I know nothing about. On the one hand, I determine where I might go – what countries I will visit and what I might like to see, but, on the other hand, I leave a large number of days in my time away where I don’t book accommodation – because I’m not certain what town or village I might end up in. Some of you would find this scary as well. Well, I guess it is in a way, but it’s also exciting and opens up lots of possibilities.

As well as being scary, stepping out and knowing little about where we are going, can seem to be madness.

So many of us need to know: ‘how much it will cost’, ‘how long will it take’, ‘what difficulties we might encounter and how we might overcome or prevent these’, and so on.

So many of us think it’s madness to not have things fully planned.

For many of us, stepping out not knowing where we are going brings up all sorts of problems, not least of which is the difficulty we have with one another about deciding which turn, or road, we should be taking.

Have you ever been in a car with three or four people travelling to somewhere you’ve never been? Even with a map or GPS, people’s worst natures can be revealed. You come to a place where there are three or four options and everyone in the car has a different opinion as to which way you should go. From my experience, things can often become quite heated.

It’s much the same in our church.

We all have different opinions as to which is the best way to go.

We all think we know what is the right way.

And, so often, if we don’t get our way we are inclined to mutter something like, ‘well … that’s not what I would have done.’

So often, if the way taken turns out to be wrong, then we are very prepared to say, ‘I told you so.’

Or perhaps the outcome of our differences of opinion means that we actually don’t even start the journey, preferring instead to stay in the safe world we know.

Faith: Moving in the direction of the realization of those things that are presently beyond demonstration.

Only God knows where this church will be in ten years time. But …. I believe you can know that if you are prepared to step out in faith moving in the direction of the realization of those things that cannot presently be demonstrated, then things will happen. Exciting possibilities will be opened up – maybe things beyond your wildest dreams. Maybe things that, God forbid, might not perpetuate the church as you know it.

In this context, faith is the belief that God’s hopes and dreams for the bringing in of God’s reign, will be realized through us – perhaps even despite us.