Faith

MEMORIAL DAY: TO THE UNKNOWN SOLDIERS

Dear Family,

The Book of Hebrews, the substance of Bo’s present series, has a well-known Memorial passage. Chapter 11 is an illustrious roll of honor for deceased heroes of the fight of faith, including many of the great patriarchs and leaders – all among the soldiery in the Faith Hall of Fame. The fact is that Memorials, most of them anyway, celebrate well-known events or well-known people. Our city is full of such: The Lincoln, The Jefferson, The FDR, the Veterans of the Vietnam and Korean Wars, The Washington Monument. But we have another Memorial in the Arlington Cemetery, whose history is rooted in the grave of a British soldier who died on the Western Front in WW1. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey and at the Arc de Triomphe became the precursors of such tombs in so many nations. The one in Arlington was established by an Act of Congress in 1921, and is called ‘The Tomb of the Unknowns’. Written on it are these words: “Here rests an American soldier known but to God.”

This Memorial Day weekend, we looked at the closing verses of Hebrews 11: 35-40 and read words like these: “women … others … some … still others … they … these … them…” The people referred to by these general designations were equally worthy of memorializing, but we just don’t know who they are. They are nameless, and they appear on the pages of scripture unknown, and unknowingly. But in some strange way, more than the heroes, they speak in a relatable way to our own unpublicized lives. For every memorial to a well-known hero of faith, there are thousands of unknown and unidentified faithful, and that counts us in to be members of the Faith Hall of Fame too. Paul understood this. “Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth” (1 Corinthians 1:26). But the fact is that “He chose the lowly … the despised … the things that are not.”

When you read scripture, be on the look out for these kind of unknowns. On Sunday, I referred in more detail to several of them just from the Gospel records, who fought the good fight of pure faith. There was:

  • the little guy in John 2 who served the miraculous wine to the master of the wedding feast;

  • the guys in Mark 2:3-5 who tested the homeowner’s house insurance policy and lowered their friend through the roof;

  • he unknown boy with the now well-known lunch in John 6: 5-10;

  • the nameless, penniless widow in Mark 12:43 who is mentioned just every time anyone teaches about a Christian view of giving and stuff;

  • the leper, Samaritan, foreigner in Luke 17:15 who should never have been known by anyone;

  • the guys called “they” and “them” in John 11:41, who engaged the corpse of Lazarus by ignoring all the religious prohibitions, all the social and aesthetic protestations about bad odors, all the argumentations of natural reason that denied that dead men can live again;

  • the unknown, outcast, untouchable woman in Mark 5:24-34 who ends up being renamed a “daughter”, an intimate because of her faith;

  • the “guy with a water jar” and “guy with a house” who seemed to have been prepared for that strategic moment in Holy week when they facilitated the Last Supper no less and May 29, 2018 were simply at the right place at the right time for Jesus, despite appearing to be happenstance bit players, walk on’s, extras.

A bunch of nameless and unknown men and women were faithful and obedient and they are memorialized in scripture, the ultimate Book of Remembrance, and are memorialized today as you read this!

Like those nameless characters in the gospels, all of whom had nothing whereby to commend themselves, we come too – unknown. The gospel unknowns did not have the resources to commend themselves: they had no wine, no food, no legs, no money, no skin, no breath, no future, no hope. They had no leverage and they had no resources to buy in. But everyone of them ended up having an encounter with Jesus, and discovering that he had taken care of everything including the cost. They just arrived at His feet, put all they had into His hand, just simply trusted Him and obeyed what He spoke to them against the rational odds. Yes, they were on the fringe but they found out that touching the fringe of His garment and His life was enough. And despite the fact that their faith was unformed and uninformed, fragile and imperfect and even immature, the saving, healing grace of Jesus transformed them, and they were all memorialized, joining the roll call of Hebrews 11:39 – the myriads of unknowns who have found a place in God’s Faith Hall of Fame, not because they were voted in there by man’s approval, but planted there because of God’s personal remembrance of their faith and works of faith.

We are unknowns and there are plenty of reasons for us not to be included in the company of the faithful in the Faith Hall of Fame. No one is planning a memorial for us, or even writing about us in a book of remembrance. Our grave stones will mark the resting place of unknowns, but in the words of the Arlington Tomb, “known but to God.” We choose to be remembrancers of the Lord in our worship as we remember His works and His ways and His wonders; as we kneel at the altar and receive the eucharist; as we remember the way He has led us, as we recall the meanings of what He has done, and inventory afresh the requirements these memories make of us. But we are also provoking a remembrance of God through our lives and testimonies, making memorials like Cornelius (Acts 10), through our prayers and our generosity. We’re not just being memorials but making memorials.

There was one Memorial on the Mall I did not mention at the beginning. Did you notice it? It is the Martin Luther King Memorial, commemorating the death of a soldier in a battle for the image of God in all men. Would it ever be possible to imagine or believe that there could be sufficient memorials of prayer and giving that would attract God’s attention and invite His intervention to build a memorial as He did in Caesarea, to the breaking of the bondages of our racially rooted irreconciliations by the power of the same gospel?

Though you are unknown to the world at large, your prayers and your obedient works of faith, your daily trust in the Lord, your entrustment of your loaves and fishes assets into His hands, your gifts to the poor – all of these are a memorial offering and like Cornelius, you are thereby known to God and memorialized by Him. In the fight of faith, waging our warfare, armed and armored, we may live and die unknown by men – like those in Hebrews, we are the nameless others, the “these” and the “them”, but in the words of the Tomb to the unknowns, “known to God.” And may reconciliation be His reward to us as it was to Peter and Cornelius.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

ABRAHAM: OUR FATHER OF HOPE

Dearest Family,

Normally my pastoral letters are either a summary of what I taught about on Sunday or a focus on a particular point that was raised. This week, I am going to do something different and give you the gist of what I did not have time to complete. So here goes. If you remember, I was talking about Abraham, our father of hope, out of Hebrews 6. In Romans 4 he is described as our father in the faith, and how he is presented there gives us an anatomy of biblical hope.

Our father in the faith and in the hope.

1. Hope is about a Person: Everything is “in the sight of God, in whom he believed” (4:17). Our hope is all about who God is.
a. before Him: hope is utterly related to the dependability of God. It is not about my insight but about being in His sight. It is not about my perspective on the future but on the assurance of God’s presence there as well as here.
b. In whom: this is not about the grade of our hope or faith, but about the goal of our hope, to believe in Him, and to forever be with Him. Hope limits itself only to what God Himself promises.

2. Hope is about a Promise: “I have made you … Abraham in hope believed.” (4:17-18) Our faith is first in the One who promised, and then we exercise our hope in what was promised, but the ‘what’ never displaces the ‘who’. When there is nothing to go on, there is something to stand on. In the words of the hymn: Standing on the promises that cannot fail / When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail / By the living word of God I shall prevail / Standing on the promises of God. “I have made you…” (promise) is followed by “in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead” (hope) and concludes with “Abraham … became” (fulfillment).

3. Hope is about a Persuasion: “Being fully persuaded” (4:21). Where there was no conceivable hope (literally!) Abraham did not allow the facts of what he saw by sight (“that his body was as good as dead”) to overcome the holy facts of faith. The text says that he “faced the fact” but did not weaken or waver. It was a matter of fact, not a matter of fate. Hope did not deny the reality or the state of his virility or Sarah’s fertility. The New Testament nowhere plays down suffering and trial in order to elevate hope. On the contrary, as we have seen, they so often seem to be found in the same context. We are called to an unthreatened examination of the facts and to the unintimidated exercise of faith in the future facts that God has promised for us. As the saying goes, “Weak faith on thick ice is better than strong faith on thin ice.”

4. Hope is about a Provision: This deserves a full treatment, but there are endless products of hope in God’s future promise that are reaped in our present life. Strength and effectiveness of present discipleship is utterly contingent on our biblical hope. Abraham reaped present blessings as a result of his future hope. The birth of Isaac was not the full fulfillment of the promise. You could argue that until Jacob was born it was all up in the air. How interesting then that Isaac and Rebekah had trouble conceiving and also had to learn first-hand what it was to hope in nothing but the promises of God about their future. We cannot spare ourselves this calling to hope. We were saved in hope, have entered a living hope and so will never be apart from it. A study of the provisions of hope in the present will reap great benefits for you. For example:

a. Listen to Peter: He is committed to serve “as long as I live in the tent of this body because I know I will soon put it aside” (2 Peter1:13). It is because of the hope of what is to come that he is aware of the temporary nature of this life and therefore the need to escape the corruption of the world caused by evil desires and live a cleansed life. Hope provides both a motivation to change our life but also an empowerment to do so. Peter is also motivated to serve the Lord with “every effort.”

b. Listen to Paul In Titus 2:1-13, Paul lists many manifestations of godliness in those who seek to adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. The common mark of these people is that they are “looking for the blessed hope”. Biblical hope will totally affect how we steward our lives – “our talents, our time and our treasures.” You could argue that the differing qualities and strengths of believers’ discipleship are calibrated by their convictions about biblical hope.

c. Listen to Jesus: “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:19-20). The hope of heaven as a spiritual habit of mind, a “supernatural orientation” as Harry Blamires described it, settles the issues about what we value, and how we make decisions about what we invest in. It will also help us decide what we divest as of no usefulness in the work of the kingdom of God.

The biblical presentation of the challenges and choices of Abraham when it came to trusting the promises of God, believing in hope, hoping against hope and being persuaded that God had power to do what was promised, remains the curriculum for our own walk of hope. As his spiritual progeny, we should expect the same fruit in our lives as he experienced in his: strengthening in our faith and an explosion of continual glory to God. Hope fuels our work for God and our worship of God. Not only was his obedience at Mount Moriah a prophetic preview, a pre-run, of the sacrifice that would secure the hope of our salvation in and through Jesus’ death, but his refusal to lose his mind in response to the incursion of potential hopelessness, meant that he “reasoned that God could raise the dead.” Thus Abraham’s hope not only foresaw the cross, but also the resurrection, the conviction that was the ground of his hope, and the ground of ours. With Abraham, we will share the experience of what the resurrection of Jesus secured – our secure hope that we too shall be raised. Here’s hoping!

Hope fully,
Stuart

FISHING IN DEEP WATER (JUST GIVE ME JESUS SERIES)

4 And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” 6 And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. 7 They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. (ESV)

Luke 5: 4-7

SACRIFICE, FAITH AND OBEDIENCE

As I have read the Old Testament, I have been impressed with the teaching that blessings come as we follow the Lord by obeying His prophets. One of the most striking examples of this principle is found in 1 Samuel, where the prophet Samuel declares to King Saul: “Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams”

HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH

The basic social and religious structure of ancient life was built around the household, which was much more expansive than today’s family unit. In New Testament times, both Jewish and Gentile households included not only immediate family members but also a broad range of relatives, extended family groups, and kinship affiliations. Paul called the early Christian church community the “household of faith”