In the movie, Cast Away, Tom Hanks' character, Chuck, is stranded on a desert island in the Pacific Ocean. To keep himself company, he finds a volleyball that has washed up from the wreckage of the plane he had been flying in before becoming stranded. Chuck paints a face on the volleyball with his own blood and names him "Wilson." Wilson becomes Chuck's only companion while he remains on the island. He talks to and sometimes even for Wilson to keep himself company during the lonely months. After four years on the island Chuck builds a raft that he hopes will take him out to sea, where maybe someone will find him. He puts Wilson on a wooden post on the raft, because he can't leave without his friend. At one point, as they are floating on the sea, far from the island, Wilson falls off his post while Chuck is sleeping. When Chuck awakens, he notices that Wilson is missing. He looks out at Wilson on the horizon. We see the depth of his attachment to Wilson by the anguish he feels trying to recover the wayward volleyball. Despite his efforts, he cannot reach Wilson. Chuck cannot let go of his raft, because he might not be able to return to it. He watches helplessly as Wilson bobs off into the distance, gone forever.
The author of Hebrews is afraid that the same thing that happened to Wilson is happening to Christians. He fears that the Christians, perhaps in Rome, who are reading the letter, might drift away from the faith (2:1). The whole purpose of the book of Hebrews is to swim out to rescue church members who are bobbing off into the distant horizon away from the faith they have professed. Perhaps they are weary of persecution. Perhaps they were tired of waiting for God to establish the full dominion, the time when God will bring peace and justice to all creation. Early Christians had been promised such a time, but the wait was beginning to weigh on them. At least some of them wanted to go back to their old faith. Maybe they just weren't as diligent as they once had been. In any case, they are in danger of drifting away.
The author of Hebrews remains a mystery to us, but he was passionate about bringing the church back to a strong, vibrant faith. The author of Hebrews was a brilliant person who had studied deeply. He draws on the Greek translation of the Old Testament, philosophy, and Jewish traditions to convince his readers to maintain their faith.
Before we zoom in on chapter 11, our text for today, it might be helpful to look just briefly at what the rest of the book of Hebrews accomplishes. We can't really understand any one part of Hebrews until we get some understanding of what the whole book is trying to accomplish. We often call this book the letter to the Hebrews, even though it doesn't start off like a letter. It may well have been a sermon. Whatever it was, the author dives right in from the very first verse. Without any pleasantries, the letter launches into a deep reflection on who Jesus Christ was. Within the first three verses, the author associates Jesus with prophets (God speaks through the son, v. 1), priests (purification for sins, v. 3), and kings (seated in majesty on God's right hand, v. 3). In the first chapter, the author uses some of the most creative ideas in the New Testament to describe Christ's divinity. Christ is the reflection of God's glory, the exact imprint of God's very being. Christ is the instrument of creation. With this cascade of ideas, the author firmly establishes Christ's place in the Godhead. Then, in the second chapter, the author works just as hard to communicate the humanity of Jesus. Jesus became lower than angels, tasted death, endured testing and suffering. Throughout the book, these two aspects of Christ's identity — exaltation and humanity — affect every argument the author makes for maintaining faith, for not drifting away. The very reflection of God's glory knows what it is like to live in our skin.
When we come to chapter 11, the author recounts the history of some of the heroes of the faith from the Old Testament. Chapter 11 condenses these stories into a highlight reel. He writes out of a conviction that these stories feed our faith. The church is coming to the point where not many of us know these stories by heart anymore. Hebrews encourages us to reread them.
He introduces these stories with a remarkable sentence. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (11:1). In a sense, each part of the sentence reinforces the other parts. Let us start with "things hoped for." We hope that God forgives our sins through Christ. We hope that God will heal creation of its sin and pain. We hope that God will redeem our present suffering. We hope for these things because of who Christ is, as Hebrews has worked so hard to explain to us. These things are still not seen, because they remain to be fulfilled. Faith is the persistent trust that these things will come to be in God's time, even though we do not see them. Faith keeps us going when the hope is not yet realized. Our faith can be strong because the hope is so well grounded in Christ. Faith feeds our hope and hope feeds our faith.
In looking back to the Old Testament, Hebrews begins with creation, "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible" (11:3). Sometimes the creation can inspire us. That anything exists at all is a miracle. Looking at God's creation can give us new insight into God's power and sense of beauty. A mountain, the ocean, the stars at night, the tender fragility of a newborn bird can touch something deep inside of us, and our faith perks up.
After talking briefly about Abel and Noah, he lifts up the example of Abraham. Abraham was the great patriarch who left what was familiar and comfortable to set out for the place God instructed him to go. His story begins in Genesis 12:1, where the Lord tells him, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you." Abraham set out into an uncertain future. He went in obedience, in trust, in a sense of adventure. The Abraham story raises an important question for us. Can our faith grow if we are too comfortable? Do we not have to take some risks in order to find our faith? Don't we have to venture out into the unknown if our faith is to stretch? Does faith grow in the soil of comfort? We do not have to move physically to grow our faith, but if we find ourselves too comfortable — in our thoughts, in our attitudes, in our ministries, in our relationship with God — will our faith grow into what it could become?
Hebrews wants us to understand something about these heroes of the faith. Despite their obedience and their courage, their trust and devotion, they did not experience fulfillment of their hopes and expectations. They only saw them and greeted them from a distance (v. 13). Abraham went through trouble after trouble, threat after threat, test after test. As just one example, when Abraham arrived at exactly the place God told him to go, he encountered a famine (12:10). Striking out with God on a great adventure wasn't always easy. Hebrews wants to make that point, because when his community has experienced persecution and trouble, they have been tempted to drift away.
We may feel a similar temptation. Church members rarely decide that they no longer believe the elements of the faith. They don't sit down one day and decide that they don't believe in God anymore. They don't consciously decide that the church has no mission. They don't decide that Jesus was just a man after all. That kind of thing is rare. Christians move away from the church in a different process. They tend to drift away. Too often, this drifting away happens when youth leave high school after years of participating in church. They go off to college, only to drift away from church. Other things seem more interesting, more helpful. Without the familiarity of their home church they don't have the motivation to get involved. People sometimes drift away slowly, one turned-off alarm clock at a time. Sometimes one bad experience at church, one argument, or one incident of hurt feelings will cause people to drift away. A change in pastors at a congregation will cause some people to drift away.
Underlying these reasons may be the feeling that we don't see much happening. Rather than ushering the dominion of God, the church seems to fall into a routine. What Hebrews may be calling us to do is to see how God is working even in the routine, even in the ordinary, even when it seems like nothing much is happening.
If we find ourselves tempted to drift away, how exactly do we feed our faith? How does faith grow stronger? Where do we find the assurance of things hoped for? True faith is a matter of both head and heart. Faith is more than simply checking the "Yes" box for a set of doctrines. Nevertheless, Hebrews teaches us that what we believe can feed the faith of our hearts. Hebrews calls us to ask ourselves what exactly we believe about Christ. Do we believe, even if we do not fully understand how it is true, that Christ was the reflection of God's glory? Do we believe that Christ has entered our world and tasted both the joys and agonies of being human? When we look back at some moment of humanness that makes us wince, do we believe that Christ understands that moment, and became like us to redeem it? If we do believe those things, what should we do about it?
If we accept that Christ is somehow both divine and human, Hebrews then invites us to wrestle with these Old Testament stories of faith. Each of the stories has its own nuance. We can read them and ask which one of them fits our situation the best. Which one has the most to teach us in our particular circumstances? From Abraham we learn that faith grows best in a soil of risk. We also learn that we may not see results right away. We may not know until the resurrection how God was working to use and redeem our efforts. In spite of the uncertainty we keep going. Being willing to wait until God's time to see the results is the assurance of things hoped for. Faith is maintaining confidence in God, even when we are still hoping. When we wrestle in our heads with what we believe and step out in faith, our hearts will follow. The sense of trust can begin to grow.
If we hang in there and wrestle with our faith until we have strengthened our faith, until we trust in our hearts, we will find something that surprises us. We draw on the heroes of faith like Abraham. When we restore our faith, when we swim back to the shore, no longer drifting, we may find that we take Abraham's place. Much to our shock, we become a hero of faith to someone else. Amen.