Faith... Take Two

​Young at Heart Message
 
When I created this week’s bulletin, I thought I would preach on the passage from Luke.
 
But, as the week went on and I began working on my sermon, I changed my mind and decided instead to continue our topic from last week on faith.
 
Today we heard a continuation of the “Hall of Faith” passage from Hebrews, and I think it’s worth continuing that discussion.
 
Earlier this week, I had my monthly Zoom call with my Spiritual Companioning group.
 
This month, it was my turn to lead the group, and I decided to do a Lectio Divina (Divine Reading) of one of my favorite prayers.
 
I’m sure I’ve shared the prayer with you before, but just so we are all on the same page, I’ll read the prayer for you now.
 
This is called “Patient Trust” by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
 
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability--
and that it may take a very long time.
 
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
 
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete. Amen.
 
The process for the Lectio Divina that we used was that I would read the prayer through twice, and then we took 10 minutes of silence to ponder the prayer, re-read it ourselves, and journal any thoughts that came to mind.
 
Now, I have read this prayer many times since I began seminary.
 
In fact, I used the prayer as the basis for my Credo that I had to write for ordination.
 
And yet, this opportunity to re-read the prayer and do the Lectio Divina allowed me to gain something new from the prayer that I had never thought about before.
 
In the past, I was more focused on the patience piece.
 
I read the prayer as a reminder that I needed to slow down, be patient with God, and recognize that many things I wanted in life came in time.
 
But this time when I read it, I really felt compelled to think about these lines specifically:
 
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability -
And that it may take a very long time.
 
I realized as I read these lines that this is an incredibly deep insight about human nature.
 
How often do we want to just get to the end result without having to go through the intermediate stages?
 
And yet, we also often learn the most from those very same intermediate stages we hope to skip.
 
I’ll give you an example, which I think is also a very useful metaphor for this concept.
 
As most of you know, I ran a full marathon back in May.
And, I crossed the finish line! Yay!
 
It was an amazing experience to be able to cross that finish line. But, the entire time I was training, even though I knew the training was what would ultimately get me over that finish line, all I really wanted was to cross the finish line.
 
I was impatient to get to that exact point.
 
But, do you know what I will remember more than crossing the finish line?
 
I will never forget the amount of work and training it took to get me there.
 
And, from the moment I crossed that finish line, I have been working on how I could improve for the next one.
 
I have been fiddling with my running schedule, my nutrition plan, the time of day I run, and I’ve been reading a ton of training advice.
 
And this time, even though I’m looking forward to crossing the finish line again next year, I am not as impatient to get there, because I now know that the best part of running a marathon is actually the determination, the grit, the motivation, the pain, the endurance, and the journey that happens before I ever reach race day.
 
I learned a lot about myself, what my body could and couldn’t handle, and, perhaps more importantly, what my mind could and couldn’t handle during the training journey.
 
And, while the training was a journey in itself, I also realized that I forgot to enjoy the intermediate stages of the race itself on race day.
 
I started that race, and immediately just wanted to be done.
 
5 hours and 11 minutes is a long time to be running, and I was so concerned with finishing that I forgot to appreciate and enjoy some of the elements of the race itself that were important.
 
The comradery of other runners, the volunteers that made that race happen, the police officers that ensured a safe race, and all the other elements that went into the race were things I never even considered on the day of the event.
 
There were so many people who were there simply to cheer runners on.
 
Someone handed me a popsicle at one point, which was an incredible gift.
Near the end of the race, a woman put a bracelet on my arm which I’ve worn every day since the race.
 
The bracelet says “You Got This,” which helped me get through the run, but it also applies to many other aspects of life.
 
The point here is that I was so concerned about getting to the finish line that I forgot, at least in the moment, to enjoy the race itself.
 
And, truthfully, I forgot to appreciate and enjoy the training leading up to the race too, even though it was months of work.
 
Unfortunately, this has happened more often that I would like to admit.
 
This same thing can be said about almost every other big thing I have accomplished in my life.
 
Teilhard de Chardin knew this, and he wasn’t wrong:
 
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability -
And that it may take a very long time.
 
The Message

So where does that leave us with regard to today’s scripture?

Well, I think the marathon example actually tells us an awful lot about faith.

Without faith that I would actually be able to cross the finish line, I would not have spent the countless hours training, I can tell you that.

It’s insane to run over 21 kilometers in one go every week!

And yet, I had faith that doing so would ultimately get me to that finish line.

I cannot tell you how many times I asked myself what the point was, or how many times I had to remind myself to trust the process.

It would have been easier to quit, but that would have meant giving up faith in myself that I could in fact do it.

We see something very similar in our “Hall of Faith” reading today.

The Hebrew people crossing the Red Sea had tremendous faith in God that God would help them get across that sea safely.

I guarantee they were impatient to get to the other side.

But they could not possibly have accomplished that end without a deep faith and trust in God, and without going through the “intermediate stages” of putting one foot in front of the other as the walls of water rose on either side of them, ready to drown them at any moment.

Likewise, the passage talks about people who went through some horribly difficult things – torture, mocking, flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.

They wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.

And I guarantee they were impatient to reach the end – but for some of them, they weren’t sure what that end would be. Perhaps simply an end to the struggle would have been sufficient in some cases.

But they had to go through those stages of difficulty in order to ultimately reach the goal.

The Hebrews passage ends by saying “let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus.”

Even this passage likes the metaphor of running a race to demonstrate that we must endure the race itself, including all of the preparation leading up to it, as part of the journey before we can reach the end.

The author knew that enduring the race often means enduring physical, emotional, or mental pain and anguish.

It means experiencing fear, uncertainty, doubt, anger, frustration, hopelessness, and perhaps even a lack of faith.

But it also means putting one foot in front of the other, continuing to move forward, and overcoming all those challenging emotions if we want to progress past that stage of the journey.

So there is no use in being impatient as we endure the hard parts of the journey.

We forget that crossing that finish line is so much more than the few seconds at the very end.

This applies to almost everything we do in life.

In order to reach the goal – the end result or the finish line – of whatever it is we are impatient for, we must journey through the intermediate stages.

And in doing so, we learn a lot about ourselves, about those we love, about life, and about God.

Our faith is often tested in the intermediate stages, and so is our patience.

But persevering and slowing down to look around as we embark on the journey is just as important, if not more important, than reaching the final destination.

As is often said, life is a marathon, not a sprint!

So, may you carry a deep faith with you in all you do, and may you practice patience and enjoy the journey.

May you have end goals in mind, but may you invite God to journey with you to get there, and may you become more aware of the lessons you can learn from the intermediate stages.

And, as Teilhard de Chardin so eloquently and accurately states, may you “accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”

Amen.
​
Let us pray:
 
Loving and gracious God, you are always patient with us, and yet we often forget that we must also be patient with you. Help us not only to be patient, but also help us to appreciate the journey. Whether it’s a short-term journey toward an end goal, or the journey of life, help us to slow down, be grateful, and perhaps even appreciate the challenges and joys of the “intermediate stages” along our paths. Above all, help us to trust in your slow work in our lives. In your holy and gracious name we pray. Amen.

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