Faith is a Journey, Not a Guilt Trip 8-10-25
Faith is a Journey, Not a Guilt Trip
Ps 33:12-22; Heb 8:1-3, 8-16
Ps 33:12-22
Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage. The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all humankind. From where he sits enthroned he watches all the inhabitants of the earth— he who fashions the hearts of them all, and observes all their deeds. A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save. Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and shield. Our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.
Prayer – God of Abraham and Sarah, of the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa, of Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King, Jr. – people of great faith have journeyed along paths laid before them, paths filled with potholes and great walls of oppression. Still you found ways to guide them to lands filled with promise, never once guilting them for their doubts and trials and fears. Remind us this day, that we too are on a faith journey, spiritual beings, who long for wholeness and completeness – fill our spirits with your love and assurance – we ask, O Lord – amen.
I can remember it like it was yesterday, and it has been nearly 20 years ago. It was probably about 7 in the evening when the phone rang. Shelton, one of the chaplains was calling to say that my friend Mike McCurry had been brought into the ER, and things were not looking good. I told her I would be there in a few minutes. I jumped in the car and rushed to the hospital, uncertain of what I might find, hope-filled that Mike would pull through, concerned for Suzie, Kendall, DJ and Brad, a quick journey with more questions than answers.
I arrived and walked in the back door of the ED. Shelton was standing outside of Trauma room 1 when she saw me. She shook her head with a look of sadness washing over her face. I walked in and the doctor was at the foot of the bed, one of the ER techs was standing over Mike, pushing hard on his chest, nurses were pushing drugs into the IV running into Mike’s arms. I thought to myself – CRAP – or something like that. Shelton walked me out to the family room where I found Mike’s parents, Suzie’s parents, Suzie, Kendall and DJ. Brad was away at college. Suzie told me what happened – that Mike was changing the front tires on DJ’s jeep when the car fell on Mike’s chest. DJ was in the corner, head down, feeling the overwhelming power of guilt upon his life – that somehow this accident was his fault. The doctor walked in, sat down, and said, “I’m sorry.” The shocking silence that filled that small room erupted with deep sobs from DJ and Suzie, from Mike’s mom and dad. Kendall just sat there in shock trying to understand what those words meant. “I’m sorry, we did everything we could, Mike has died.”
The next few hours were filled with disbelief and raw emotion as friends gathered to support Suzie and her family. DJ was a popular young man, a soccer player for one of the local high schools. Friends who heard the news came to ER to support him and his family. Nearly 100 young people gathered at the helicopter pad outside of the ER around 930 that night. The youth pastor from the church I grew up in was there as well, Suzie and her family were prominent members there. As I walked out to the helicopter pad, I heard the youth pastor utter these words, “We never know what might happen. Mike McCurry is the perfect example of the unexpected. If you want to see Mike again, you better get right with Jesus! Here is your chance!” I almost threw up. I walked over to him and quietly said to him that “if he didn’t take his spiritual abuse and manipulation away from my hospital then he was going to be the next patient in the trauma room.” I was furious – guilting people who are hurting, manipulating them to think that God wanted their souls at that moment was hideous to me and I believe to God. Faith is a journey, not a guilt trip.
Our text this morning from the writer of Hebrews was addressed to a beleaguered, wrung-out band of Jewish Christians who wrestled deeply with concerns of faith and doubt. Initially, the earliest Christians came from Jewish ancestry, worshipping in underground house churches. But before the end of the first century, their Jewish relatives, as well as their Roman neighbors, were harassing these Christians for their faith in Christ. By the time the book of Hebrews appeared, the early church had endured a long beating. Some were already suffering from imprisonment and the seizure of their property. Opposition and martyrdom would only intensify in the decades that followed.
Placing one’s faith in Jesus as Messiah was a bold undertaking for these Hebrew believers. Christian conversion often caused great division among Jewish families who ostracized their converted relatives. They expelled them from their families, synagogues, and the rich festivals of the Jewish calendar. It’s no wonder that many Hebrew Christians were dejected and were feeling overwhelmed for their faith. In faith, they recognized that Jesus as the long-expected Messiah. But emotional and religious abuse was taking its toll. Needless to say, morale was low.
The anonymous writer of the book of Hebrews exhorts the Jewish-Christians who were weary to remain faithful in belief of Christ. Our passage this morning is often referred to as the “Hall of Fame of Faith” by many preachers as the writer intentionally exhorts the community using examples from the past as examples of faithfulness. Perhaps faith is so hard to define that it’s better to use examples, to share stories, than to write a lot of theoretical things about it. It is the experience of real people in real relationship with God that can help us to grasp the meaning of faith, more than a precise or scholarly theological definition.
My impression is that we have trouble with the word “faith.” We too quickly equate faith, and its cognate noun and verb, “belief” and “believe,” with accepting propositional statements about God and the meaning of life. We Presbyterians say confessing our faith is essential to Christian living. When we confess we make statements about God and life’s meaning. Sometimes we speak of faith as if it’s agreeing to accept something that doesn’t make sense unless we see it through “eyes of faith.” We “take it on faith” even if everything tells us it’s impossible. Mark Twain said it through Huck Finn, “Faith is believin’ what you know ain’t so.”
We may understand that like any journey, faith involves risk. We love Kierkegaard’s phrase “the leap of faith.” We often speak of a leap in the dark, across or into an abyss. We often think we have to leap, or lurch, alone. Truth is, that jump isn’t very dangerous, and we don’t make it on our own. Yes, it takes us beyond what we may know and trust on our own, but Someone holds our hands and leaps with us, or catches us, or teaches us to fly. If doctrine, “the faith,” comes into it, it comes on the other side – after we have leapt – after we have started the journey.
When the writer of Hebrews speaks of ‘faith,’ he speaks of faith in action, faith as a journey in which people, having been met by God, venture forth with God. We are thereby invited to think about faith not as a set of propositions to be affirmed, not as a list of questions and answers in a catechism, but rather as a journey. Faith is a venturing forth with God beside us, sometimes with God encouraging us, other times with God carrying us, but always with God loving us.
I have to say I get really tired when I run across religious tracts in the hospital or when I see religious billboards on the highways. Invariably they are toxic in their theology – “If you were to die tonight, do you know where you will end up?” These faith generated guilt trips reflect our human need to manipulate and control rather than say anything about the manner in which God creates trust and faith with us. It is as if people think God needs to manipulate us in order to get us to be faith-filled. Somewhere, somehow they mis-interpreted the message that faith is a guilt trip rather than a journey.
I also must say that I get a little uncomfortable when I hear religious folks talk about their faith as if it is some protective coating that prevents, or protects, us from life’s travails. I have been doing some grief work with a young mother who lost a child a couple of years ago and she has really struggling with God right now because God didn’t protect her daughter, her family from tragedy. And I can imagine that even though Camp Mystic is a Christian camp, I can also imagine that some of those families are struggling with their notion of God right now, and that is normal and okay. Nowhere does it say in scripture that God wraps us in a cloak of protection from bad things happening. Scripture does tell us that for people of faith, it is road trip filled with travels and travails, with obstacles and challenges. Faithful people like Abraham and Sarah, like Peter and Paul, like Mary and Martha, could only describe their faith journeys as filled with ups and downs, gifts and demands, hills and valleys. And, never once did God guilt them into faith.
The great theologian Richard Niebuhr, vividly spoke of faith as “shipwreck, gladness, and amazement.” There is nothing static about that. Sharon Parks discusses Niebuhr’s images of faith – “When people undergo the unraveling of what has held their world together, inevitably . . . there is suffering . . . It may feel something like a shipwreck. To undergo shipwreck is to be threatened . . . Shipwreck is the coming apart of what has served as shelter and protection and had held and carried one where one wanted to go – the collapse of that structure that once promised trustworthiness. Shipwreck may be precipitated by events such as loss of relationship, violence to one’s property, the collapse of a career venture, physical illness or injury, the defeat of a cause, a fateful moral choice that irrevocably reorder’s one’s life, betrayal by community or government, or the discovery that an intellectual construct is inadequate. These experiences may . . . dissolve the meanings that have served the soul.
When we do survive shipwreck – when we do wash up on a new shore – there is gladness, the gladness of relief and restoration . . . We discover something different beyond the loss . . . This gladness is experienced, in part, as a new knowing. And though sometimes this knowing comes at the price of real tragedy, which even the new knowing does not necessarily justify, we typically would not wish to return to not knowing that which we have come to see on the other side of the shipwreck. We do not want to live in a less than adequate truth, a less robust sense of reality, an insufficient wisdom.
Even if we accept dissolution of our self, our world, and “God” with steely and sophisticated courage, we may expect nothing more. The possibility of more has hitherto not been a part of our experience. Then we are met by the amazement of new meaning . . . Easter is what happens to us when we look back and say ‘we survived that?!’” (The Critical Years: The Young Adult Search for a Faith to Live By; pp 24-26)
As I look around this room I am aware that each of us has experienced our faith journeys in different ways. There have been ups and downs, gifts and demands, hills and valleys – faith has been a journey. At times the journey has felt like a shipwreck as it did for Suzie McCurry and her kids. And still, I can imagine on the landing side of those leaps, lurches, stumbles and bumbles, we all have something we have learned, something that has taken us deeper in our understanding of the Divine, something that makes us different and, perhaps, at the end of the day, more faith-full. And I am reminded yet again, that faith is a journey, and not a guilt trip – thanks be to God – amen.