Faith in Things Unseen

Genesis 15:1-6


Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Mary was a 46 year old woman who suffered from severe depression for most of her life. I met her while she was hospitalized in the psychiatric unit of the hospital where I was doing my chaplaincy internship. She was admitted into the hospital because she had told her therapist that she wanted to kill herself. Mary felt like she reached the end of her rope. She had been in therapy for years and tried different medications to alleviate her depression but nothing was working. She asked to see a chaplain because she was mad at God for abandoning her. She was a church go-er, she often prayed and listened to Christian music for inspiration but she could not feel God’s presence in her life. Her faith was gone.

I asked her, “What makes you think that God is absent?” and she said, “If God was there, he’d answer my prayers. I’ve tried going to church and listening to the songs and the preacher but it is not sinking in. The preacher keeps talking about how God is always supposed to be there but it isn’t sinking in.” I then asked her what she prayed for and she said, “I ask God to take away my panic attacks, I run around and pray pray pray. I think I’m better but the next morning I get a panic attack anyways.”

In this morning’s reading from the older testament we find Abram in the same quandary as Mary. He is hearing God to have faith in him, that God will be Abram’s shield and that Abram’s reward will be great but God’s message is not sinking in. “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless…You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” We remember that in the book of Genesis, God called Abram and his wife Sarai to leave their home and go to a new land without any real assurances, just a promise of blessing and prosperity. Abram and Sarai were “great in years” and yet they had no children because they were barren. Throughout Abram and Sarai’s journey to the new land, God speaks to Abram and Abram listens. God makes promises to Abram and Abram believes. God commands Abram and Abram obeys. However, some note “there comes a point…when Abram finally says, ‘Wait a minute. I have a question…How can this be, since I do not have a child?’” (1) How is it that this person who has the audacity to question God be lifted up as a model of faith.

In our epistle reading this morning, we hear the author share in his letter to the Hebrew’s the characteristic of faithfulness. Written to approximately 65 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection this early Christian audience had not seen the risen Christ but came to believe in him through the sharing of the Gospel. History tells us that some of the members of this young Christian congregation had suffered persecution, “some had already been subjected to prison and plunder of possessions and most had experienced hostility, ridicule, and shame simply because following Jesus, a crucified savior, set them at odds with the surrounding culture.” (2) The audience was expecting that Jesus would come again in their lifetimes and perhaps were disappointed that Jesus’ kingdom had not yet come, some were even leaving this church community.

Wanting to combat the melancholy of this community of faith and encourage Christians who were having trouble holding on to the hope of Jesus Christ, the author of the book of Hebrews gives us a definition of faith. The verse, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Could be reinterpreted to say more actively, “Now faith gives substance of things hoped for, offers a proving of things not seen…In other words, faith makes real in the present God’s things, often thought of as future.” (3)

We all hope for things, yearn for things, and in faith we ask God for things. Sometimes our prayers are answered, but sometimes things take longer like it did for Abram and Sarai in our older testament reading. They struggled to have children, a reality that many of us are familiar with either in our own families’ or those whom we care about who struggle with infertility. In spite of the obstacles that Abram faced “[he] [continued] to obey God and stay true to God so much that he followed God without knowing where God was leading.” (4)

It is difficult to follow God when we don’t know where God is leading us, especially when we don’t see proof of God’s action. We pray to God for that job, that good diagnosis, that cure and when our prayers seem to go unanswered we wonder if God is looking out for us. However, faith does not expect God to be like Santa Claus. Faith means that we trust that God is for us, that God wants what is good for us and that God holds our future.

Essentially faith moves the believer from merely wishing for change to becoming the change that they want to see in the world. By faith Abram obeyed God and set out for a new land which was his inheritance from God. By faith he was able to stay the course of his journey and tolerate the harsh realities of tent living by looking forward to the city that has foundations, the city of Jerusalem, whose architect and builder is God. By faith, he and Sarai were able to conceive and descendants were born from him as many as the stars from heaven and as many as grains of sand by the seashore.

Mary was wishing to change her depression. Having tried every medical treatment unsuccessfully that she could for her depression, Mary was running out of options. She had thought that God wanted her to give up because she felt God had given up on her. Unfortunately one of the physiological effects of depression is a feeling of spiritual alienation. It is like a gray cloud blocked Mary from feeling God and thus she felt that she had lost her faith.

Having exhausted all pharmaceutical solutions for her depression, the only thing she had left to try was Electroconvulsive therapy otherwise known as ECT, a somewhat risky treatment where seizures are electrically induced in patients to treat severe depression. She was nervous about the treatment but had a kernel of faith that it would work. One of the women on her floor was receiving ECT treatments and she was feeling better. As our visit was winding down, I wanted to hold fast to this bit of hope but I didn’t want to come off as too preachy. I read to her the scripture from Hebrews 11 and then I told her that it is not uncommon for people struggling with depression to think that God has abandoned them, that it was one of the physical manifestations of depression. But even though she couldn’t viscerally have faith, that she could hold on to the promise that is given in this epistle that God is with her even though she could not see God or feel God. She looked at me blankly and I told her that it’s ok to question God’s presence, even great people of faith like Abram had courage enough to question God. Amazingly as I got up to leave she called me back to prayer with her.

A few weeks later I came to her ward for a follow up visit. When I saw her I couldn’t believe my eyes, she was smiling, her eyes were twinkling. The ECT had been successful and she was going to be discharged in a couple of days. As we sat down to chat she told me how she couldn’t believe how good she was feeling. It was as if the gray cloud had lifted and now she was able to enjoy the sun. God did not abandon Mary, even in her darkest hour. Even though she thought she lacked faith, she still knew that God existed and that God was not done with her yet. This was the kernel of hope that she held onto as she had her ECT treatments. “And she believed in God, and God declared her faith as good and right.”

I never saw Mary again after she was discharged from the hospital, but I still think about her and pray for her knowing that God is for her just like God was for Abram, and Sarai and us and that it is God who holds our future in God’s hands.

May it be so.

Amen.

1.  Feasting on the Word
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid