The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Faith, Hope and Charity
Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Among the propers appointed for this day, once again it is the collect which caught my attention.

In it we pray to God to “increase in us the gifts of faith, hope and charity.” This is another ancient prayer of the church; Christians have been praying it in corporate worship for many centuries. The words clearly draw upon First Corinthians, chapter 13. This is the well-known passage where Paul speaks of God’s gifts of faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. It’s a bit interesting that this passage is so commonly chosen at weddings. The sort of love Paul is talking about in First Corinthians is not romantic love, eros, it is agape. Agape, the self-giving, generous love, derived from God, sometimes translated as charity. There is certainly a place for agape in marriage, but it’s not what most dewy-eyed couples are thinking about on their wedding days.

But to return to the collect for today. We pray for the gifts of faith, hope and agape or charity.

Many of you will be aware of those questions on standardized tests where you have to pick which item doesn’t fit in the list? They give you a list like apple, pear, orange, tricycle, and you have to identify which item does not fit in the list.

Faith, hope, and charity. At least for me, at first glance charity doesn’t seem to fit in this list. It’s different. It’s an action. Charity is about what we do in the world for others. Faith and hope are just about us, God’s gifts to us. And they’re not actions; they’re internal qualities.

So, while these are all good things—faith, hope and charity—charity seems out of place in this list…

Or maybe charity is not the odd one in this list. Maybe it’s the key to understanding the other two. Charity is an action. It’s about what we do. Maybe that’s the key to a better understanding of faith and hope.

Bernard Brandon Scott (in the Saving Jesus curriculum) talks about the huge shift in Christianity’s self understanding that took place primarily during the time of Constantine and the writing of the creeds. Christianity shifted from being primarily about praxis, a set of practices, to being primarily about belief. Being a Christian used to be about what you did. Then it became about what you believed. Scott thinks this was a disastrous shift.

We definitely live on this side of that shift. We equate faith with belief. For us, we think that to have faith is to have belief in at least most of the affirmations of the creeds.

Scott and others point out that in the Bible, faith was a verb. English doesn’t even have a word for faith as a verb. In the Bible the people who Jesus commends for their faith are commended for their actions, for what they do. For example, those who are healed by Jesus have come to him at considerable personal effort and risk, trusting in his presence and power. He doesn’t quiz them on their belief; he commends them for their action in coming.
 
Some sort of belief usually motivates that action, but it’s not necessary. You can act even on those days you’re not sure any of the creed is true. In fact, that’s what Christians do. (And, as an aside, in that action you will often enrich your belief.) But it’s the action that seems to count. And action is always a choice.

Faith is the choice to act in trust of God’s presence and God’s love. To venture out, trusting in God’s presence and love. To venture out of your personal space, your personal identity, your personal safety, your personally constructed world, risking, offering your actions, your time, your resources, in trust of God’s presence and love.

Ultimately, faith is not about whether you believe that Jesus is “very God of very God, begotten of his father before all worlds.” Faith is just about acting like Jesus is real. Act in the world like Jesus is real in the world.  Act like Jesus is real.

So faith, like charity, is really about how we act in the world. It’s not so much some intrinsic quality; it’s about what we do with our lives.

What about hope? It is certainly my prayer that God will increase the gift of hope in me. And what I think of when I utter that prayer is a yearning to feel hopeful.

A sermon by Bruce Epperly (in a recent issue of Christian Century) on this morning’s Scriptures focuses on the Deuteronomy reading. Moses has done so much, worked so hard and yet he is not given to reach the Promised Land.  It seems supremely unfair.  About this, Epperly writes: “What we do in the present shapes the future and the future of those who follow us. We are always planting seeds for fruit that we will never harvest.”

It was never about Moses getting to the Promised Land. He would have made a lot better time traveling by himself. It was always about the future of God’s people.

Hope is about planting seeds for fruit that we will never harvest. Epperly also quotes a statement attributed to Martin Luther: “Even if I knew the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today.”

Hope is about acting in the present on behalf of the future. It is about creating beauty that will endure; it’s about sowing seeds of justice that will only bear fruit with future generations; it’s about living sustainably so that God’s people in the future will be enriched by the resources of God’s creation. It’s not about feeling hopeful. Hope is about acting for the future.

So like charity and faith, hope, too, is about action.

I talked about charity last week. Maybe not by name, but charity is acts of generosity through which we share the abundance of God’s blessing and goodness that we have with others. Charity is about distributing God’s blessings to God’s people. Give unto God’s people all the richness and blessing that are God’s.

So faith, hope, and charity do all fit together in this list of God’s gift. They are all about what we do as Christians. They are all about how we act, how we practice our Christianity in the world.

Almighty God, increase in us your gifts of faith, hope and charity. Give us the desire and the ability to act faithfully, in thanksgiving and proclamation of your real presence in our world. Give us the desire and the ability to act hopefully, acting not only for ourselves, but on behalf of future children of God. Give us the desire and ability to act charitably, generously sharing in your self-giving love for others. Almighty God, help us do what Christians do.