August 10, 2025 "God's Faithfulness"

9th Sunday After Pentecost

Genesis 15:1-6

Psalm 33:12-22

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Luke 12:32-40

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

grace and peace to you from the one who faithfully loves us Amen

One of the paradoxes of being in relationship with God

is the amount of uncertainty within absolute certainty.

God makes promises

 and it is absolutely certain

that God will fulfill those promises,

but we don’t know how or when.

As I’ve heard it expressed before,

 we know how the story ends,

we don’t know what is on the next page of the book.

And we humans are not huge fans of uncertainty,

we like to know what is coming next

 and we’d prefer if we have some control over how it impacts us,

 but life with God means surrendering the illusion of control

while still trusting in God and the ultimate promise.

 This is faith.

Abraham has a great gift for faith. 

When he is seventy-five years old

 God comes to him and tells him to leave his home

 and everything familiar

 and go to an undesignated place

 that God will show him,

and God promises to make Abram

(that’s still his name at this point)

a great nation.

And Abram goes.

 Trusting God he packs everything up, heads out

 and settles in Canaan where God tells him to,

 and he goes on about his life,

 trusting God to keep the other part of the promise

but after many years

 and no sign of any movement on the part of God

Abram has questions,

 because what God is promising seems impossible at this point

‘God, I’m having a hard time understanding how you’re going to make this promise a reality, I’m getting old and I don’t have any kids…”

 and God takes Abram outside and tells him to count the stars,

 “if you are able to count them. Then he said to him, ‘so shall your descendants be.’ and [Abram] believed the Lord”

Abraham has a great gift for faith.

He trusts God to keep the promises God makes,

 even when it seems impossible,

as it says in Hebrews “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,

the conviction of things not seen.”

 Faith,

 the kind of faith that Abraham has

cannot be severed from hope.

 Hope sustains faith,

 hope looks at an impossible situation and says

 ‘nevertheless I believe that this will resolve as it should.’

 Hope is Abraham naming the reality of his childlessness

and continuing to converse with God,

 and based on this hope trusting, having faith in God.

Abraham has a great gift for faith,

God’s faithfulness is even greater.

Yes, Abraham picked up and left home at the call of God,

and God showed Abraham where to settle,

 just as God had promised.

But there are several instances leading up to this point where we hear about

Abraham getting in a jam

of his own making,

traveling to escape famine

and lying to the local ruler about his wife being his sister,

he does this twice,

and each time,

God gets Abraham out of the pickle he’s gotten himself into,

so when Abraham has the audacity to hope for what seems impossible

and to believe it when God says that it will be so,

 it’s not without a foundation,

 God has made it possible for Abraham to believe the impossible

because of God’s own past faithfulness,

because of God’s love.

As 1 Corinthians 13 states “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

We have been given a great gift, faith,

 the assurance of things hoped for,

 the conviction of things not seen,

 and this gift does not disappoint

because it is given to us by the one who is completely faithful,

who spoke the world into being,

who went to the cross

through death and resurrection

for us

who has continued to love us

and remain in relationship with us

even as time and again we have tried to take matters into our own hands

gotten confused and stuck,

 and God has come to us in love and forgiveness,

told us ‘do not be afraid’ and urged us forward in very real ways.

In our gospel we hear just such a reassurance and direction

 Jesus has just told the parable of the rich fool,

 so called because he placed his trust in the future

in something other than God,

namely his abundance of possessions,

possessions which can do nothing to save him

 when his life is demanded of him.

 Be rich toward God

Jesus urges and then goes on to tell his disciples:

 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.”

And goes on to point to the birds of the air

 and the lilies of the field

 who God cares for,

 and if God cares for them,

 how much more will God care for the disciples

 so “do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and the Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”

  God knows what you need

 and will care for you Jesus says

and a way to practice trusting in God to care for us

 is to share those things that we would otherwise be tempted to trust instead of God,

not only does this aid our relationship with God,

 redirecting our heart to treasure God rather than stuff,

it also begins to enact the reign of God,

 the reign where there is abundant life for all,

 the reign that has come near in Jesus

 but will come to its fullness when Jesus returns,

 an event for which we are to prepare and be on the watch

like those servants who are dressed and have the lamps lit

 so that they may greet the master when he returns,

even in the middle of the night. 

 But this level of trust and preparedness is difficult to maintain,

especially for long indeterminate stretches.

 Continue reading the story of Abraham and Sarah

and you will find that even after this time of reassurance

 they still try to take matters into their own hands,

using Hagar to produce Ishmael,

and God is still faithful to them and to the promise

 even as God make space and provision for Hagar and Ishmael.

God works on a timeline much different from ours,

and in our lifetimes, we see only a small portion of what God is doing

 this can lead to us trying to take matters into our own hands,

or even to become disheartened

when we look around and it seems like what God is promising is impossible.

 Looking around at the world right now

at the things people are doing to one another,

 war, imprisonment, famine

it feels like we are farther than ever

from the fullness of the kingdom of God,

and yet there are moments

 where we glimpse bits of the kingdom breaking in,

God working through people helping one another

sharing their possessions

reaching out in love across division

to care for others simply because they are human

these are signs of God's faithfulness and love.

 Hebrews notes that all of the ancestors of the faith

 “died in faith without having received the promises,

 but from a distance they saw and greeted them”

When despair over the world and our role in it threatens to consume us

We must greet the promises from a distance

In whatever small way that we can find

Indeed Jesus does this each week

bringing us together in community,

back to the stories of the ancestors of the faith, like Abraham,

who was far from perfect

but who trusted God,

 had faith in God,

and through whom God still worked

even though Abraham didn’t see the ending.

 And having heard the stories of our ancestors in faith

 Jesus then brings us to the table,

 keeping the promise that he made his disciples on their last night together,

 the new covenant in his body and blood,

 as close to us as bread in our stomachs and wine on our lips,

and having tasted the faithfulness of God,

 we are sent back out to greet the promise of the kingdom

in whichever way it comes to us

 and while our time in the story of God and the people is short,

We trust that God is faithful to the end of the story 

Even if we don’t know what the next page holds. Amen