Hebrews - Back to the Burning Bush Report #5 Invisibility of faith
The account of Moses’s distraction by a bush that appeared to be burning but never consumed is well known. The initial distraction quickly transformed into a holy encounter with God, Moses removed his shoes and walked barefoot on holy ground.
This is as typical as it is unique. Something gets our attention and before we know it, we’re grappling with a depth of thought that carries us towards God…or God comes close to us.
I’m reading through Hebrews in the New Testament (my money is on Paul as the author, but the authorship isn’t known).
This series is like a journalist reporting on scenes he’s been sent to comment on.
Report 4 – Invisibility of faith
‘Faith is…the evidence of things unseen…the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things that are seen were not made of things that are visible’ Heb 11v1,2
Where are we with science? With Physics? On the macro level, we have the mysteries of the Big Bang and black holes, where matter and energy are intimately connected. And on the microscopic level, we have subatomic particles popping in and out of quantum fields. So, even in Physics, the relationship between the visible and the invisible isn’t dissimilar to the author of Hebrews’ assertion about the origin of ‘stuff’.
Poets, of course, have been swimming in these waters from time immemorial.
The question that confronts us in terms of biblical revelation, as opposed to a scientific or poetic exploration, is ‘is it true?’
Jesus, quoting Deuteronomy 8v3, said ‘Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’ Mt 4v4
Do you? Do I?
Before reading the opening verses in Hebrews 11 the other day, I had always seen the references to the ‘word of God framing the worlds’ and ‘things seen being made from things unseen’ in v1 and v2 as referring to creation and disconnected from the fairly chronological list of individuals showing great faith from v3 onwards.
Better, I propose, to see verses 1 and 2 as foundational understanding of how reality works and the list from v3 as evidence that the revolutionary thinking of the Bible about faith is true…not just philosophically, theologically, or intellectually but in the very stuff of day-to-day living.
The biblical worldview is the world is shaped when the word of God is revealed to an individual who hears it, believes it, and then builds their life around it, so that what was invisible (no one can ‘see’ or ‘touch’ the word of God originally spoken), creates a real space-time event in human history.
And that this is normal. And we are called to live this way. This is how to live as a fully human being in connection, in relationship with the living God.
‘Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen …was moved with godly fear and prepared an ark’ v7
‘Abraham…was called to go to a place he would receive as an inheritance…and he went out not knowing where he was going’ v8
No one could see the warning given to Noah or the word spoken to Abraham. But the visible world and its history have been shaped by their responses to the invisible word that created invisible faith in each individual.
It is exactly the same now.
We are duped when we think ‘faith’ is something we ‘should have’ and act as if we have it. I’ll give two examples from my own experience to illustrate how this works – and doesn’t!
During a worship service, a man asked me to pray for him. He was quite young, in his 20s, and his hair had fallen out. I prayed for him. A few years later, I saw him, still bald. I had made a schoolboy error. I agreed to pray for him at best from compassion, at worst from politeness…after all, I’m British and it would have been rude to refuse!
On another occasion, as a leader of a small group, I led the group in prayer for a young woman who had been diagnosed with cysts on her ovary, preventing her from becoming pregnant. Months passed, and there was no change.
The same schoolboy error.
I went back to the group and confessed that I had led the group to pray on the pretence that I had faith. I felt it was my duty as the leader to have faith. But I had none. Only a vague hope. I said to the group, ‘Let’s start again’. During the time we set apart for prayer, one member heard from God that the woman would be healed by Christmas. She was. And went on to have children.
As Paul taught, ‘faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of God’.
Or, as Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’
If we want faith, we should ask to hear the word of God. Maybe then, like Noah, we’ll be moved by godly fear and build something visible in the world from the invisibility of our faith.