"A Balcony View"

“A Balcony View”

Rev. Emily Krause Corzine

Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-12

August 8, 2010

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

            It was a summer afternoon on a little league diamond, not unlike the one’s here in our town. Kids gathered with their bats and gloves for an ordinary day on the field. The stands are usually empty as parents found their way to their favorite spots to set their lawn chairs. Umpires were geared up and ready for the first pitch.  Here’s how this small game turned into the best game ever.  Somewhere in the first inning after the first pitch, fans in their respective team colors started filling the stands, holding signs with player’s names on them. They were yelling and screaming for their team Lugnuts or team Mudcats.  Parents started looking around wondering what was happening at their usually tame little league game. The yelling for Team Lugnuts or Team Mudcats did not stop, as three gregarious male fans, took off their shirts, revealing their bare chests with the words Mudcats written across.  In the second inning volunteer vendors came out walking through the stands yelling, “Popcorn! Peanuts!”, as another person came handing out homemade programs and baseball cards of each boy on those teams.  By the third inning, the large white trailer parked in right field had opened and from the top had opened this large jumbo-tron. The NBC logo appeared and baseball sportscaster, Jim Gray had the booth with a perfect bird’s eye view to announce the game.  The recorded baseball park organ music played between innings and encouraged each batter, as the rowdy fans continued their enjoyment of this once ordinary game. This was part of a mission from a group of  20-30’s something’s that call themselves, Improv Everywhere. Their mission is to cause scenes and turn the ordinary into the extraordinary!  If you watch this on-line what you see on this day, any other little league game transformed into a World Series-like game, and it became the “Best Game Ever.” 

            There is faith in there. Something transformative.  Hard working little leaguers going through the motions of an ordinary game, experienced something transformative.  This was based on the premise that people who believed in making the ordinary-extraordinary, could offer these kids and their families something they would never forget.  The Improv Everywhere agents were convinced to make this little league game a huge deal, and they acted upon their belief to make it a reality.  On that day, these little leaguers believed in something that they never could have imagined for themselves.

            In our text today, we hear one of the most quoted verses in scripture.   “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”    The preacher simply “names those aspects of faith he hopes to encourage” in the members of the community. The preacher realizes that the congregation is tired and weary. Maybe they had lost hope, maybe they were tired of all that was required of them, serving the world, attending worship, tired of the spiritual struggle. Tired of waiting for the return of the risen Christ. Instead of consoling day after day, this preacher moves them forward with broad theological terms about the nature and meaning of Christ. (He says-Look! We have to keep moving here, we have to keep yearning and working for the world that is to come, even if we can’t see it.) (Tom Long, Interpretation, 113).”    

            Throughout this passage, the preacher balances what faith has and what faith perceives.  The affirmation that faith’s capacity to discern realities is not yet visible to the naked eye.  Faith has the double dimension of an inward reality that it already possesses in present time what God has promised for the future.   Tom Long writes that “people of faith have a confidence today, here and now, when all hell is breaking loose around us, that the promises of God for peace, justice, mercy and salvation can be trusted. (113)  Faith is a response to the trustworthiness of God.  But people of faith also embody an outward focus to the world to come.  It is the inward journey of faith that cannot be separated from the outward journey of the collective congregation into the world.  Paul writes that “what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal (II Cor. 4: 18).”  And with this challenge, we are sent on our journey.   

For Kathleen Norris, author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, “Faith is best thought of as a verb, not a “thing” that you either have or you don’t.” She refers to faith as “like energy itself-fluid, always in motion but never constant…surging and ebbing, sometime strongly evident and at other times barely discernible.”  

            All of that to say is that describing faith is not easy.  We all hope for things we yearn for things, and in faith ask God for things. Sometimes that hope is realized, sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it is not realized at all. We most often tell of our experiences of faith with significant examples from our lives of following God.  How do we know that we just have to “have faith” to get through that chapter in our lives, or we “had faith” that incident with a family argument would work out in the end.  How hard it is to follow God when you are not sure where God is leading you?  

When we do not hear an answer or see evidence of action, we can quickly disregard that God is present.  In the moments of anxiety when we do not hear or see evidence of our faith being acknowledged, we get nervous, and take things into our own hands. [We begin to bargain, we manipulate numbers, we misrepresent in words or even worse, we maneuver people.] And sometimes we are still left waiting for an answer, moving through our journey of faith without clear direction we initially sought from God.

 In the Old Testament, Abraham and Sarah waited a long time for answers that would seemingly never come; for Abraham, it was promise of land and blessing; for Sarah it was to bear a child.  It was their faithfulness, despite not knowing where God was leading them that set them out on their journey. They lived into a promise given by a faithful God; they became foreigners, leaving their home in Mesopotamia, they became pilgrims/nomads, living in tents and moving,  never settling in a place.”  They were exiles (strangers).  Abraham and Sarah exemplified a faith that responded to a promise without seeing it come to fruition.  In fact, they labored in the land but did not own the land that was promised.  But God promised them a better place, a “heavenly one.” God promises that to us.

Because of God’s promises we can hold both the inward and outward dimensions of faith. We hold fast to the promises of God and move forward to the future which is God.  Our faith is a gift from God, yet we live in a world that wants concrete, measurable accounts of that faith. We are afraid to live in the gaps. We are afraid to live in the uncertainty that faith can sometime give. Yet I think it is in the gaps (in the tension between the visible and in invisible) that we are invited to pay attention. Novelist Doris Betts’s assertion is that faith is “not synonymous with certainty, but it is the decision to keep your eyes open.” (Norris, 169).

            I prayed for you this week, as I do every week.  I pray daily for you as individual members of this congregation and collectively, as the body of Christ.  I take some time each day with a few pages in our church directory.  I see your faces and I know some of your stories, and I sit in prayer being present to the movement of the Holy Spirit.  This week, with this text, I wanted a different perspective, so I went on up to the choir loft to look out over the pews.  From this balcony view, I imagined where you usually sit (that can be predictable). What I also began to imagine were the gaps are between us. In what ways do we feel connected to one another’s journeys of faith and in what ways do we miss the mark of being fellow pilgrims on the journey?

Maybe the gaps left by those in our congregation who are away for the summer but who will return soon; those who have moved, those who we have passed away, or those who have chosen for whatever reason to remain absent.  Just like there are gaps here this morning, these spaces say something about who we are as a community of faith.   I wonder about those who mourn the loss of a loved one in private.  I wonder about those who have lost their jobs or who are on the verge.  I wonder about those who are angry and hold grudges, or those who are searching for church home.  I wonder about how the Holy Spirit moves in this place and in our hearts to offer us comfort and assurance. I wonder how many of us-flee from the quiet time of our lives (instead choosing to fill it with noise, clutter or gossip!) And I wonder what the spaces in between us might represent?

I wonder about the ways we feel called to recognize the spaces-these gaps in our journey together.  How might we be called to encourage one another in our faith? How might we be called to hold each other in prayer and help discern this inward and outward journey of faith together? How might we be called to live out our faith with joy?  How might we be willing to (as strange as it sounds), stand on the bleachers and call out someone’s name and encourage them in their day!

            Imagine the joy of the little league diamond when it was transformed into a life-giving venue.  The challenge for us is living the message of this inward and outward journey, without getting in the way of the Holy Spirit moving in and through us. How do we let the sacred be experienced in life-transforming ways, and how can Christian faith become incarnate in the life of a congregation and its members? It is partly our responsibility, but ultimately it is up to God.

Thanks be to God.