Title: “Placing trust in what you have reason to believe is true”

Preacher: The Reverend Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner

Date: Sunday 4 August 2024, Evensong on The Tenth Sunday after Trinity

I don’t know how attentive you were during the second reading but there was the repetitive use of the phrase ‘By faith’. Again, and again the author tells us that “by faith Abraham”; By faith Isaac”; “By faith Jacob”; “By faith Joseph”; “by faith Moses” and so it goes on. I counted eleven uses of this phrase across these few verses.

Faith doesn’t always get a good press and I’m sure there are people who would much rather have a list of figures who acted “by reason”.  Perhaps most significantly, people are rightly concerned if faith is seen to lead to injury. In the case of Abraham, the idea that someone might be tested by God to sacrifice their child seems, and is, horrific. It’s why the Bible should always be read with care. Plucking out a verse here or there can do a great deal of damage. That’s why it’s important that the Bible is shared and understood in community – in the Church – and not simply on an individual basis. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s important that we all read the Bible ourselves, but I also believe it matters just as much that we discuss it with other people. Perhaps I can illustrate that with a rather well-known story of a young man who felt certain God had called him to be a vicar.

He’d read his Bible and said his prayers and, somehow, he was even given permission to see the Bishop. When they met the young man told the Bishop how God was wanting him to be a vicar, and get ordained. Perhaps he didn’t quite admit it to himself, but somewhere deep inside he even had a sneaking hope that the Bishop would just agree and ordain him there and then!

The Bishop sat and listened.

The Bishop thought.

Then the Bishop spoke:

“I’m very pleased to hear that God is calling you to ministry. Now I suggest you go home, and when God has told me that you should be ordained, I’ll give you a call”.

In the Anglican expression of Christianity, faith is never without reason. The centuries have taught us that we must use the intelligence God has given us, in conjunction with the Bible we inherit, to discern what God is calling us to do. The error of the young man was to believe that God’s call is individual, isolated and untested. The bishop put him right.

It isn’t always easy, and it won’t always be what we want to hear, but faith and reason must test each other, and our discernment is forged in a community. And discernment requires wisdom.

In our first reading from the book of Job, Job uses the idea of mining, and the people who work deep within the darkness of the earth, as a metaphor of the search for wisdom. When Job has finished speaking about all the amazing work of the people seeking gold and silver, he asks the seemingly simple question: “Where then does wisdom come from?” His point is that wisdom is about as hard to find as the precious metals buried in the earth.

It doesn’t come easily – it requires commitment, work and skill.

The answer for Job is that God is the one who knows where wisdom is to be found.

It’s in our relationship with God that we can bring together faith and reason, tradition and wisdom. And we find God individually and together.

The American theologian J P Moreland put it like this:

‘In Scripture, faith involves placing trust in what you have reason to believe is true. Faith is not a blind, irrational leap into the dark’.

“Placing trust in what you have reason to believe is true”.  Across all that long litany of people who acted “by faith”, it was not without reason or without wisdom. The prophets who were guided by God, chose a path which was different from the ways of the world. It was a path determined by a faith that grew in community, grew in relationship with God, and sought wisdom in deciding how to act.

Today we are also called and invited to make that same journey, using both faith and reason to build peace in a troubled world for all God’s children.