22^nd August 2013

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Sunday 11 August 2013

Lessons - Psalm 14; Luke 12:32-40; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Those who were strangers and exiles on earth . . . make it clear that
they are seeking a homeland. (Heb. 11:13,14)

The importance of belonging cannot be underestimated. Our home has a special place in our affections. We are bound by common geography, language, law and social customs that enable us to remember the past and look to the future. Memories and hopes are shaped by shared values and history. A sense of place is extremely important in shaping our identity.

The loss of a place to call home can scar people for life. Children removed from their homes feel they do not belong. Refugees forced to flee their homes because of poverty, war or oppression long to go home.
Migrants may be happy but still feel a deep bond with their homeland. As we found in our recent visit to Myanmar, we can feel out of place in countries so unlike our own.

Attachment to place can also be a terrible thing. Patriotism can blind us to national faults and foster a fanatical spirit and a deep hatred of those who have other homes. Politicians often play on such fears! History is full of conflicts over the right to call a particular part of the earth 'home'. Conflict in the Middle East is typical of hostility that accompanies deeply held claims to our 'place'.

Our homes are powerful influences for good and evil. They nurture a sense of belonging, responsibility and loyalty without which we feel estranged.
But they also encourage us to treat people from other 'places' with suspicion.

With this in mind we turn to Hebrews. The writer speaks of the importance of a homeland. But instead of giving advice on how to settle down, he
speaks about those who are strangers in their communities.

Abraham and Sarah and others are 'pilgrims' who leave their 'home', 'not knowing where they are going' (v8; Genesis 12:1ff), trusting God's promise they and their descendants will share God's future. Wherever they settle they are to 'hang loose' to local customs and challenge ungodly 'life- styles'. They must not give their total loyalty to their society. Nor are they to become nostalgic about the past. They are to stake their lives on the divine promise of a 'future homeland' (v14), a 'better (heavenly) country' (v16), a 'city with foundations built by God' (v10).

Contrary to what some sectarian groups think, this does not mean despising the earth. The incarnation of Jesus shows that God loves the earth.
However, they are not to put their complete trust in the values of the surrounding culture.

They are not to go along with popular opinion (present) or be nostalgic
(past) or be seduced by fanaticism (future). Instead, while living in the present, they are to be alert to the 'better future' (home) that awaits the world in the gracious purposes of God. So they are to be 'full of hope' - looking beyond past and present suffering to the new heaven and new earth promised by God in Christ.

Hebrews does not encourage Christians to escape to a 'heavenly' home! This is not immediately obvious from the definitions of 'faith' and 'hope' at the start of Chapter 11: 'Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (v1)'

How can we be certain of what lies in the future? How can we be convinced by what we cannot see with our senses? Do not faith and hope seem to be irrational and unrealistic ways of discerning the future? Do not they seem so flimsy when compared to 'practical' knowledge that gets results in the 'real world'? Does not it seem more sensible to put our trust in present 'realities' and ignore what lies in the future?

Everything is not as it seems! We only discover the truth in science, history, literature et al when we do not take things at face value but look beneath the surface or explore what we do not yet know. Things that are now hidden from us can become opportunities for future knowledge.

Scientists put faith in the order of things even when their investigations do not immediately result in a new discovery. Explorers expect to find new places even when they do not know what a particular destination looks like. Without faith and hope, what is presently unknown would never be discovered! We would simply 'settle down' and accept that what we know already is all there is to know. The same is true of the venture of faith.
Faith and hope are the means by which strangers, exiles and pilgrims see the reality of God beneath and beyond the values of our settled communities.

We must learn to 'see' things beneath and beyond what is on the surface of our society so that we can live towards the future that God has prepared for the world in Christ. To look at our earthly home and its future in this way is to love 'this world' in the light of the fulfilment of God's gracious promise to Abraham 'in Christ'. Where he 'welcomed Christ from afar' (v13), we can welcome the future of the world in the light of that event.

This has 'practical' consequences for the Christian life. It means the Church must not 'settle down' and accept collective wisdom based on opinion. God has called us to be a community of 'strangers', 'exiles', 'pilgrims', who have been given a radically different way of being in the world. Such a life is not to be nostalgic (past), superior (present) or fanatical (future), but faithful in Christ's service and full of hope that what God has begun in him shall be completed in the fullness of time.

Such confidence is grounded in the Stranger who had 'no place to lay his head', who left his 'heavenly home' to make his home among us and was crucified by those who ruled his religious 'home' and his political 'country'. It is grounded in the failure of evil and death to defeat God's purposes for the world in his resurrection and ascension.

Therefore, we may face the future in hope and live in the present by faith, knowing that the past has no power over us, that our present responsibilities are important but not ultimate, and that the future is assured no matter what befalls us!

It remains to be seen whether Western Christians like us can grasp our calling to be 'strangers' on earth. It is not a problem for Christians in Myanmar or Syria! Perhaps the weakening of the connection between the Church and 'civilised society' in recent decades will enable us to see that we are becoming 'exiles' and 'pilgrims' in our own 'land' where beliefs and values no longer reflect the faith, hope and love of God in Christ.

How can we be 'at home' in a land where vulnerable human life is held cheap, where choice is embraced and virtue despised; where self-centred spirituality is applauded and faith in God's revelation in Christ is mocked - where, increasingly, 'everyone does what is right in their own eyes'?

In this situation, Christians are tempted to retreat to 'the good old days' (past) or seek acceptance by the modern world (present) or despise the world and try to escape into an other-worldly haven or force the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven (future). Nostalgia about the past, accommodation to the present or despair about the future are all signs that, despite their busyness, Christian communities have lost confidence in the Good News.

Too often, we take the world at face value and are not interested in plumbing the depths of faith (revealed in God's faithfulness to us in
Christ) or exploring the future of hope (the 'new heaven and new earth') that has come in him.

The Letter to the Hebrews was a source of encouragement to a tiny Church in a pagan society. It can also encourage us to live by faith and hope.
Whatever the challenges that await us, we are called to live freely and joyfully in response to God's gracious promise for the future already displayed in Christ.

In him we may be assured of the forgiveness of sin and the defeat of evil and death. Such assurance propels us, paradoxically, into a life that is very 'insecure'. What it means to be a 'pilgrim people' - to be shaped as a community of 'strangers and exiles' - so that the world might believe and be full of hope, is a task that confronts us today with a new urgency.

In a world that is increasingly hostile to the Gospel, and treats faith and hope as irrational, we are invited to proclaim the Gospel by looking below the surface of things and anticipating God's future. We are to be a people of faith (who rejoice in God's triumph over evil) and a community of hope (who look for a 'new heaven and new earth' - a new home) that shall come in Christ.

May we, like Abraham, Sarah and the early Christians, be strangers, exiles and pilgrims who love the earth and look forward to its perfection in Christ.

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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.