GOD IS THINKING
Hebrews 11:1; Romans 8:18-25

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
December 24, 2004 / Christmas Eve

Some churches are eager to use Christmas time to solidify the faith, recite the creed, and reaffirm a certain list of dogmas and doctrines of the Christian Church that we have been repeating for the last twenty centuries. I believe most of those passages in the creeds: passages like "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth." Sure I believe that. But to someone who has been in the Christian faith their entire life, it is not a hard sell. That I believe in a God as creator is old hat. It is reflected in all my prayers, all my faith statements, and in most Christian art.

But the writers of the letters to the Hebrews and the Romans are looking for a faith that is more challenging than that. The writer of the first letter says that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the substance of things not seen." True faith is somewhat invisible; not demarcated, not seen. Let me give you an example of what I mean. I have faith that the day is coming "when peace shall over all the Earth its ancient splendors fling, and the whole world [shall] send back the sound that now the angels sing." I have faith that world peace shall come. I not only hope for it. I have faith in it.

That kind of faith is a little more difficult. If I were to ask you to publicly confess faith in God as creator, most church people could do that. If I ask you to confess faith that peace will eventually come to all the earth, that's a little harder.

Yet when the Bible talks about faith it is really talking more about imagination than doctrine.

Begin with hope. "Hope that is seen is not hope," says Paul, "for who hopes for what he sees?" If you were hoping for a new VCR this Christmas, and you already accidentally saw the box in the closet, you are no longer hoping for it. You have seen it. As a matter of fact, if you have been wishing for a gift, and you have already told a person who usually gives you what you want, and you know they have the material means to give it to you, that's pretty visible as well. That's not hope.

We hope for that which we do not see: a cure for cancer; enough affordable housing in Rhode Island for the poor; relief for the people of the Sudan; the safe return of our young women and men from Iraq; the redemption of the world. That is hope. These are the things hope is made of. "For in hope are we saved." If you think everyone else is going to hell, there is no hope for them, then you are not saved, you lack hope. If you think that dark, despair, and war shall shadow and choke the earth, and God is powerless, then you are not saved, for you have no hope.

Salvation comes only to those who hope for the unseen, the unexpected, the transformation into good.

All the bright joyous unseen events, and the possibilities that seem impossible, all of these dreams that are beyond our imagination, that's hope. And in hope we are saved.

And when you bind up all these hopes in a bundle, and believe in them all, each and every one, then that's faith. "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the substance of things not seen." The end of the AIDS epidemic in Africa – that's my faith. The fulfillment of the angels' song "Peace on Earth" – that's my faith. And it is a much harder faith than all those creeds and doctrines.

It takes imagination and realism to have real faith. Not really a "blind faith" that has no sense of reality. If you have faith because you refuse to recognize the reality of the evil around us, that's not faith, that's foolishness. Real faith means you know how bad it is, and your hope goes beyond it anyway.

Now how do all these hopes get fulfilled? That's really the rub for our faith,

Why can we have faith in that which is not only not seen, but hard to imagine? Because God is thinking.

An instrumental part of a God that is still speaking is a God that is still thinking. God is so creative. After all, we believe in a creator.

And God's thinking is more exciting that ours.

A lot of families make a big deal about continuing certain Christmas traditions that have been passed down to them. We must do this or that because we have always done it that way. It wouldn't be Christmas if it wasn't the same. Who were those long lost ancestors who invented these traditions? What was there in them that they could imagine something so new and different, and we haven't imagined anything new for decades of Christmases running? Are we thinking enough that we could give our family a new tradition this year? God is still thinking.

And then there is the practice of gift giving. Yes, we can always buy what is advertised on the television. But honestly, were you able to think up a new truly meaningful gift this year? One like or unlike something you gave before? One that carries sentiment and not merely cost money? So often we are stymied and grab anything in our last minute shopping spree. We just couldn't think of anything! Yet God is still thinking.

Jane Kenyon spent the winter of 1993 in Serbia during the time of the Bosnian and Serbian wars. You remember it, don't you? The ethnic cleansing? The longtime neighbors turned against each other? The cities divided, in ruins? Hate abounded. She went into an Eastern Orthodox Church to pray. While there the Spirit moved her to write a poem, a prayer. She called it "Mosaic of the Nativity."¹ Listen:

"On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:

"'We're descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?'

"God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow."

God thinks Mary into being. God thinks. And that is why we hope. And all our hopes joined together is our faith. And we can go to bed tonight with a wish list that would floor Santa, but is the work of God. In the blood Christ lodges and begins to grow.

Amen.

_______

1 – Kenyon, Jane, "Mosaic of the Nativity," in Watch for the Light, (Plough Publishing House, Farmington, PA, 2001), "December 10," pages unnumbered.