Our Common Faith

Sermon Hebrew 1:1-4; 2: 5-12 October 7, 2018 World Wide Communion

Our Common Faith

Our opening hymn this morning was Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. It is a hymn people know. I know because the congregation lets me know when we sing hymns that are unfamiliar. It’s uncomfortable to sing a hymn that we have to learn. But, this hymn we know it within our bones. It’s been around a long time, it’s easy to sing, and we like the words. When we sing the words it makes us feel pretty good.

The words tell a story. 

They tell us a story about God. 

The words tell us who God is; and how we respond to God because of who God is. God is merciful and mighty, God is holy, God is in three persons, God is evermore, God is perfect in love and power. All things fall down before God. Even if the darkness hides the glory of God, God’s glory is still there. 

That’s a lot about God in just one hymn.

That’s what our text from the letter to the Hebrews is like as we read it. 

It’s like a hymn. 

It tells us a lot about God. 

It begins very much the same way the gospel of John begins. It has words about God as if a creed of faith is being shared. The second chapter of Philippians has a creedal hymn as well. These moments in Scripture where we get a glimpse of how the early followers of Jesus sought to understand him and God are powerful testimonies of faith.

The hymn being sung by this unknown author of the letter, takes us back into the history of the prophets. God spoke to these prophets to speak to the people but then God chose a son to speak to the people, yet this son was not just a historical figure in one time and space. This son was also there in the beginning of creation with the reflection of God’s glory. Wow. Just wow. Not only are we hearing that Jesus was a real human sent down from heaven to engage God’s people as an example of God’s love and mercy. But, this same Jesus was there with God and also sustains all things by his powerful word. 

Now if you ask me that’s a lot of God speak. It’s a lot about a God way up there. But, perhaps, it’s really more about the God we have down here.

The God we have down here is a God who puts us into relationship with one another. The God who came down here is the thread that pulled all people back together from every corner of the world and every faith, color, oddness etc.

That God is still here.

We call him Jesus.

The work he did historically we have written in our gospels. We have a creed written about his healings, and his mercy, and his care for the widows and the poor. This creed wasn’t written until 1991. The Nicene creed that we read this morning is full of the substance of who and why God became flesh and dwelt among us.

It is full of the stuff that takes the historical 33 years of Jesus and expands his history from the beginning of time to the end of it.

The alpha and omega.

H. Richard Niebuhr says that Christ is revealed in our history as we view God through our experiences. Our experiences become our story and from our story we reason and interpret that which has value, to us such as economy, politics, and the human race. Niebuhr says we experience God, Jesus Christ, through our own inner history.

Our experience,

our story

becomes the thread

through which God

in Christ is revealed.

Roger Nishioka, a contemporary theologian, says that which we value is the thing that shows us authenticity. He says we want a connection with the God beyond ourselves that also binds us to the world in which we live.

How we encounter our relationship with God

in Jesus Christ is our story

to hold up to the scrutiny of others

and is one that has a need to be told.

Let’s take for example, as he does, the commercials on TV that grab our heart, the ones that deliver a message of unity and of relationship. The beer commercial with the Clydesdale horses, the coca cola commercials, even Cadillac cars have been coming out with ads that stir our hearts. Can our message of the church do that? Can our stories of our inner history with God do that?

Our faith in Christ is what drives us into history and into the world. The apathy that so many say they feel today was also happening in this church that this letter to the Hebrews is written. Can you imagine the church in the first century experiencing boredom? We thought that was just today. We thought the trouble we have with getting people excited about the church was a modern problem.

It’s not.

Apathy and boredom occur when we don’t know our story,

when our story can’t relate to the one around us,

when our story doesn’t come alive within us. 

We can’t make a story come alive within someone else.

The story itself has to be revealed within one’s own inner history.

We can’t force faith to be alive within another.

We can’t pressure anyone into the salvation history of God in Christ.

It doesn’t happen that way.

What we can do is sing the hymns, read the stories, tell of our encounters that have radically formed us and turned us on our heals into the world of faith.

The more we talk about how the powerful love of Christ came alive in us-

even if we don’t understand it we can speak it,

the more this becomes the experience of those who hear it.

These stories become the sustainers of the faith history.

The more we come together,

the more we listen to each others story,

the more we gather and sing,

the more these become part of our inner story.

In this way, faith is revealed,

Christ is seen,

and we become alive.

We come around the Table together. We eat the bread. We drink the cup. We do it together. God is here. And something is revealed deep in us.

We are changed forever.

God is at work. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God, Almighty. Amen.

Reverend Monica Gould

PCUSA