Faith and Hope

stjohnstmarkchurchburySunday, August 10, 2025

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I very much like the poet, Jan Richardson, and I’ve used her poems here more than once in the past. I’ll be (sort of) sharing another of hers with you at the end.

Following the death of her husband, Jan reflected on this verse from Ephesians chapter 1: So that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you (Ephesians 1.18). The hope to which he has called you.

This is what she said: ‘Hope is not always comforting or comfortable. Hope asks us to open ourselves to what we do not know, to pray for illumination in this life, to imagine what is beyond our imagining, to bear what seems unbearable. It calls us to keep breathing when beloved lives have left us, to turn toward one another when we might prefer to turn away. Hope draws our eyes and hearts toward a more whole future but propels us also into the present, where Christ waits for us to work with him toward a more whole world now.

What are you hoping for these days? Who helps you hope when it is hard to hope? How does your hope call you to see what is here and now?’

Assurance

Our passage from Hebrews begins: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

So, let’s hear Jan again, swopping the word ‘hope’ for ‘faith’ because I think it sheds some light on the word ‘faith’: Faith is not always comforting or comfortable. Faith asks us to open ourselves to what we do not know, to pray for illumination in this life, to imagine what is beyond our imagining, to bear what seems unbearable. It calls us to keep breathing when beloved lives have left us, to turn toward one another when we might prefer to turn away. Faith draws our eyes and hearts toward a more whole future but propels us also into the present, where Christ waits for us to work with him toward a more whole world now.

Future tense

Fred Buechner said: ‘Faith is a way of looking at what there is to be seen in the world and in ourselves and hoping, trusting, believing against all evidence to the contrary that beneath the surface we see there is vastly more that we cannot see.’

Desmond Tutu said something very similar but he uses the word ‘hope’: ‘Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.’

There’s a very close relationship between the words ‘faith’ and ‘hope’. As we’ve seen they are often used interchangeably. But there is a difference. I think ‘hope’ is ‘faith’ in the future tense. And all that we say about hope we can say of faith. But faith is much more. Faith involves trust in a person, which is true for the past and the present as well as the future.

Weary

The letter to the Hebrews was written to a community who frankly appear to be weary. Weary of the Christian life. Some were struggling with their faith whilst others were neglecting to meet together. The chapter before implies that they had suffered abuse and persecution and some confiscation of property. As a result, they’d become less confident, and their energy had waned. The letter is meant to encourage and reawaken the community’s faith.

Weary, less confident and waning energy. That can describe us at times, can’t it? Maybe it describes us now?

This chapter talks less about the power of God and God’s promises and more about our human experience of faith in those promises. And that faith sums up our dilemma. On the one hand it’s about assurance and conviction. On the other, it’s as yet unseen. It’s either not here yet – or, if it is, we can’t quite see it. Either beyond our reach – or within our grasp and we don’t know it.

Now visible

So, the writer goes back to the past to show that what could only be hoped for then, is now made visible. He uses the benefit of hindsight. In the verses missed out by the Lectionary are tales of Abel and Enoch and Noah. And after today’s verses on Abraham and Sarah we have Moses and then a whole litany of heroes, heroines and ordinary folk, folk who go unnamed.

Some of those hopes were seemingly impossible, like Abraham and Sarah having a child in their older age. And some didn’t happen in their lifetime. Abraham and Sarah did not see descendants as innumerable as stars in the heaven or grains of sand on the seashore. That wouldn’t happen until they were long gone.

But how often do we see the church written-off because of elderly congregations? If today you just had Abraham and Sarah and statistics to work with, then you wouldn’t have much hope, would you? Instead, it’s precisely those two people, long into retirement age, that God makes a new covenant with. God makes the most of the unlikely. Just like he picks a boy with a slingshot to be Israel’s greatest warrior king and an unmarried teenage girl to be the mother of Jesus.

Lineage of faith

So, too, things may happen to us and for us that are more than we could have possibly imagined. Or they may be rather different to what we expected. We too are a people who long for a better country, a world whose norms and customs are not what we experience now on a daily basis. Depending on where we live in the world that may mean Christians like us being marginalised or oppressed in some way. In some countries, maybe even martyred. These verses remind us that we are part of something bigger, a larger reality than what we see before us.

And by going through history in the way the author does he ties his immediate audience, and us too, into a lineage of faith going back centuries and millennia. We’re part of a long line of believers. Our family tree is more like a family forest. And in the next chapter the author goes on to say that all these heroes of the past are there willing us on as a cloud of witnesses.

Measures of faith

If we think of Sarah and Abraham, there were two parts to their faithfulness. One was holding fast to the promises that they’d been given. The second was to keep on moving forward. Their journey was part of their obedience. That takes a special courage, going out into an unknown future, but being assured that the future is with God.

How do we, you and me, measure up against those two measures of faith? Some of us might find it easy to hold fast. We know the stories from the Bible and the stories of the congregations here in this place from over the years. Stories of faithfulness at times and sacrifice at others. But perhaps we find it harder to move forward? We might carry lots of baggage with us.

Others have little trouble moving on and like to travel light. We are a people on the move, knowing our future is out there somewhere. We are ‘dressed for action with our lamps lit’, as the Gospel has it. But perhaps we need help learning to hold fast, learning stories of God being faithful in his promises. Stories of perseverance and endurance when the path gets rough.

We need both of course. Like Sarah and Abraham before us. Their lives and our lives joining both dimensions of faithfulness. In times of change and uncertainty, God was and is constant and faithful. May their faithfulness be an example to us so that we too may prove faithful in whatever the future holds for us.

Blessing of Faith

Here’s that promised poem by Jan Richardson: It’s called Blessing of Hope but I’m going to take a liberty and throughout I’m going to change the word ‘hope’ for ‘faith’ again. So, I hope she forgives me, but this is Blessing of Faith:

So may we know

the faith

that is not just

for someday

but for this day—

here, now,

in this moment

that opens to us:

faith not made

of wishes

but of substance,

faith made of sinew

and muscle

and bone,

faith that has breath

and a beating heart,

faith that will not

keep quiet

and be polite,

faith that knows

how to holler

when it is called for,

faith that knows

how to sing

when there seems

little cause,

faith that raises us

from the dead—

not someday

but this day,

every day,

again and

again and again.

Amen

‘Faith and Hope’ was delivered by Ian Banks at St Margaret’s, Heywood on 10th August 2025. It was based on Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16.

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