Faith, Hope and Love - A Sermon

This sermon uses the following scriptures:

Deuteronomy 10:12-22

"And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to
fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve
the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to
keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding
you today for your good?

Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens,
the earth with all that is in it. Yet the LORD set his heart in love
on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all
peoples, as you are this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of
your heart, and be no longer stubborn.

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the
mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He
executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the
sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner,
therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall
fear the LORD your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and
by his name you shall swear. He is your praise. He is your God, who
has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have
seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the
LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.

Zechariah 7:1-10

In the fourth year of Darius the king, {on the fourth day of Chislev,
the ninth month;)  the word of the Lord came to Zechariah.    Now the
people of Bethel had sent (Sharezer and Regemmelech with their men to
pray for the Lord’s blessing, and) to ask the priests of the house of
the Lord of Hosts, and the prophets this question, "Are we to mourn
and fast in the fifth month as we have been doing these many years?"

Thereupon this word of the Lord of Hosts came to me:  Say to all the
people of the land and to the priests:  When you fasted and mourned in
the fifth and seventh months these past seventy years, was it for my
benefit that you abstained?  And when you were eating and drinking,
was it not for yourselves that you ate, and for yourselves that you
drank?  Were not these the words which God spoke through the former
prophets, when Jerusalem and the surrounding cities were inhabited and
at peace, when the Negeb and the foot-hills were inhabited?

And the word of the Lord to Zechariah continued:  Thus says the Lord
of Hosts:  Render true justice, show kindness and compassion to each
other;  do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the
poor; and do not plot evil against one another in your hearts.

2 Thessalonians 2:13 - 3:5

We give thanks to God for you always, my friends, beloved by the Lord.
From the beginning God chose you to find salvation through the Spirit
who consecrates you and in the truth you believe.  To this end God has
called you  through the gospel we brought, so you might come to
possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore, my friends,
stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you learned from us by
word or by letter.  May our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father, who
has shown us such love and in grace has given us unfailing
encouragement and so sure a hope, lift up your hearts and strengthen
you in every good deed and word.

Finally, my friends, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have
everywhere the swift and glorious success it has had among you, and
that we may be delivered from wrong-headed and wicked people;  for not
all have faith.  But the Lord is faithful, and will strengthen you and
guard you from the evil one.   We are confident of you in the Lord
that you are doing and will continue to do what we have told you. May
the Lord direct your hearts towards God’s love and the endurance of
Christ.

Luke 20:27-38

Some Sadducees (those who deny the resurrection), came forward and put
this question to Jesus, saying,  "Teacher, Moses wrote for us, that if
there are brothers and one dies leaving a wife but no child, then the
next should marry the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.
Now there were seven brothers;  the first married a woman but died
childless.  The second married and then the third, and in this way all
seven married but died childless.  Finally the woman also died.  Now
at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be, since all seven had
been married to her?"

Jesus said to them, "The children of this age marry and remarry;  but
those who are deemed worthy to attain a place in the coming age and to
the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage,
for they are no longer subject to death;  they are like angels;  and
they are the children of God because they share in the resurrection.
That the dead will be raised to life again is shown by Moses himself
in the story about the burning bush, when he called the Lord  "the God
of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."  God is not God
of the dead, but of the living;  in God’s sight all are alive."

———-

As a child I learned many little choruses and songs that taught me about the Christian faith and beliefs.
One of these little songs went like this:

    "Faith, Hope and Charity,
     That’s the way to live successfully.
     How do I know?
     The Bible tells me so!"

It had been many years since I had thought of this song,
but it came to mind as I was preparing for my message today.
Why?
Well, for one, in each of today’s scriptures we are presented with examples of what it means to have faith, hope and love.

Now we all know cliches and sayings about these three things,
and at times we recite them to each other.
A little bit of faith, we are told, can move mountains.
We often hear that "Hope springs eternal."
And who here hasn’t said that Love lasts, or at least should last, forever.

We hear these sayings and others like them over and over again-
so often perhaps, that the words behind them lose their meaning.
Faith, Hope and Love are, unfortunately, abused and misused words,
so much so that it may be time for us to take a new approach to understanding of they relate to our living Christian lives.

And I think the approach needed is found in the writings of a theologian named Emil Brunner.
Now, I know what you’re saying.
"Oh No, Pastor Will is about to go off the deep end and lose everybody in the process by spouting theology."
But just bear with me for a moment.
It seems Emil Brunner, at one point in his teaching and writing,
related faith, hope and love to time -
with the past, the future, and the present. 

Now that’s all the theology I’ll mention for today,
but it is enough, I think,
to allow us to view today’s scriptures and these three words with a different perspective.

For instance,
in today’s epistle we read Paul’s words to the church at Thessalonica,
with which Paul challenges the church there to stand firm and keep a strong grip on the truth and traditions they have been taught.

Now Brunner tells us that Faith is tied to the past.
That is, faith has to do with the ground upon which we stand,
the beliefs we have been taught,
the good news we have read and listened to,
the traditions in which we rejoice,
and the sense of joy that filled our lives in the past because of our connection to God.
All this makes it possible for us to develop and maintain faith.

Faith is possible for each of us because of our history.
Faith is ours because we have been taught the stories of the Bible.
We learned about Moses, Joseph, David, Mary, Jesus and others.
We learned the Apostles’ Creed,
how to pray the Lord’s Prayer,
and to sing the songs and hymns of the church.

We came to know of God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
and so we now have faith that God is our God as well.
We came to know of the love of God in Christ and how he lived this love for others.
Because of this we now believe that God loves us through Christ.
We were taught about Christ’s death and resurrection,
and it is only after knowing this that we are able to believe, as we do,
that death is not the end,
but we have faith that we live on after death.

Faith arises from our past - from the firm foundation and tradition of the church that Paul encouraged Thessalonica and us to remember.

Now the gospel lesson, on the other hand, takes up not the past,
but the future.
And in the gospel we meet a group of people who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead.
You see, there were two main religious parties in Jesus’ time -
the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
The Pharisees were the common people.
The Sadducees, however, were "the rich and famous" of Christ’s day.
They were the leaders and intellectuals.
Besides the economic differences, the Pharisees and the Sadducees disagreed a great deal on religious belief and doctrine.
The Pharisees, for instance, believed in an afterlife and the resurrection.
The Sadducees did not.
They felt that only the first five books of the Bible, the Torah,
what some call the books of Moses,
were the only authentic scriptures,
and since the Torah did not have any teaching they could find on life after death,
they refused to believe in it.
There is an old joke I have used many times before that helps us to remember this. 
The joke states:
The Sadducees did not believe in life after death,
that’s why they were sad, you see.

Anyway, the Sadducees try to trap Christ by asking him a question on a highly technical and no longer valid point of law concerning death and marriage.
They want to know whose wife a woman will be when she gets to heaven if she has been legally married seven times.
Jesus is not about to be tricked, however,
and he uses the question to point out the differences between the present age and the coming kingdom of God.

Instead of answering the Sadducees silly and pointless question,
Jesus ignores it and, as he often does, asks them a question instead.
Jesus asked them about four people who went before them:
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses.
He asked them: 
"Do you really think those men of God died?
Do you really think God made them disappear into clouds of nothingness or into dark oblivion?
Do you really think that God,
who loved them so much,
who influenced their lives so intensely,
would have forgotten those even you remember?
Do you really think God is a God of dead people?
Are you trying to tell me that God will overlook them or forget them?
Are you kidding me?

Then, when no answer is forthcoming from the religious professionals, Jesus answers his own question,
"God is the God of the living,
and, in case you smart guys haven’t figured that out yet,
this includes those who have died."
Death is not all there is.
The grave is not final.

And because of this, we, as Christians can hope.
Hope is always looking to the future,
reaching out to what is yet to be.
Hope sees the present time with all of its problems, worries and burdens and yet endures because it knows there will come a better day.
God’s day will come.

Now if faith is built upon the past, and hope looks to the future,
then where is love centered?
By now you know where I am heading, I hope.
Love, of course, centers on the present.
It is concerned with what we do now.
And today’s readings from Deuteronomy and Zechariah point us to the fact that love, our love, must take on flesh and bone and become a living reality in our own time and place.

In Deuteronomy, Moses asks the people of Israel a simple question, which he promptly answers,
“And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you,
but to fear the LORD your God,
to walk in all his ways,
to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD,
which I am commanding you today for your good?

Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.
Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them,
you above all peoples, as you are this day.
Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart,
and be no longer stubborn.

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God,
who is not partial and takes no bribe.
He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow,
and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.
Love the sojourner, therefore,
for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

Many years later Zechariah is faced with a group of people who question whether or not they need to continue the practices of fasting and prayer,
which were carried out twice a year as long as the temple was destroyed and lay in ruins.
But in Zechariah’s day the temple is being rebuilt,
and some want to know if they need to continue these difficult practices.
Zechariah, like Jesus in the gospel reading,
sees beyond the question that the people ask him.
And like Jesus,
he answers their question with a question of his own.

First, he questions their motives,
"During all those years of fasting and prayer were you serious and earnest about them?
Did you really intend to leave your sins behind and return to me?
Were your fasts and prayers for God’s glory or were they for your own?"

Zechariah then tells them that God is not concerned with their fasts and prayers.
God would rather the people act out their love and concern for each other,
by rendering justice,
showing mercy and compassion,
by not oppressing the widow or the orphan - the powerless in society,
and by not doing evil to each other.

Fasting and prayer is good,
but service to God requires more.
It requires a concrete demonstration of our love for others -

I am reminded of a story about a psychology professor that illustrates this.
Although he had no children of his own,
whenever he saw a neighbor scolding a child for some wrongdoing, he would say,
"You should love your boy, not punish him."
But one hot summer afternoon the professor was doing some repair work on a concrete driveway leading to his garage.
Tired out after several hours of work,
he laid down the trowel,
wiped the perspiration from his forehead,
and started toward his front door and a date with his shower.
Just then out of the corner of his eye he saw a mischievous little boy putting his foot into the fresh cement.
He rushed over,  grabbed him,
and was about to give him a few choice words when a neighbor leaned from a window and said,
"Watch it, Professor!
Don’t you remember?
You must ‘love’ the child!"
At this, the professor yelled back,
"I do love him in the abstract but not in the concrete!"

We are called to show our love in concrete and visible ways,
with honesty, mercy, kindness,
and the doing of good, not evil, to each other.

The points made by Zechariah to the people of his day are still relevant to us as a church today.
For far more important than anything we say,
are the things that we do,
and our actions must always be informed by love.
Faith and hope are good and necessary,
but service to God requires more.
Service to God requires love,
and without love,
faith and hope are useless and have no meaning.

This love is no small thing.
The early church had to find a word to convey this kind of love.
The Greeks had several words for love.
One word, eros, concerned sexual love.
Another, philia, was concerned with brotherly or sisterly love.
Neither of these would do.
A word was needed that would convey the total, unselfish, and un-self-seeking love of God,
a love Christians also needed to demonstrate.
The word they picked was not new,
but it was rarely used,
as rare as the type of love it signifies.
Agape is that word,
and it means unselfish love,
love given without condition,
even a reckless love that knows no bounds.
It is the love we see in Jesus,
and it is this love we, as his followers,
must also show to others,
in, I might add, very concrete ways.

So with a nod to that old theologian Emil Brunner,
we can say that without a faith built upon the rich history of past experiences of God,
we have no foundation on which to stand.
Without hope for our future,
without a vision of what is to come, the people perish. 
You cannot continue to labor in the work of the church day after day, month after month, year after year, without a hope for God’s good future.
But without a love seen in our day to day living,
we cannot know God, we cannot follow God,
we cannot take the name Christian and apply to ourselves.
Without Love we are nothing.

As Paul wrote to the church at Corinth:
If I speak with the tongues of humans or of angels,
but have not love, I am just a noisy gong or a clashing cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all the mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains,
but do not have love, I am nothing.

It all hinges on love, and don’t kid yourselves into thinking otherwise.
For without love for each other,
without love for every person who walks through the church doors,
without love for each man, woman and child that Christ died for,
we might as well save ourselves a lot of time and effort and call it quits right now.

"There are three things that last forever: faith, hope and love,
but the greatest of these is love."

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