The Sauntering Pilgrim

If you’re trying to build a life of faith on a solid foundation, the last advice you probably expect to hear is to “[leave] behind the basic teaching about Christ,” teaching about repentance and faith toward God, about baptism and resurrection and eternal judgment (Heb. 6:1-2).

A solid foundation is essential if you want to build a solid faith, a shelter to withstand the storms of life. Build faith on anything other than a solid foundation, and when the rain falls and the winds beat against your house, your faith is likely to fall like a house of cards.

At our Lenten study last Thursday, we talked about some of what makes up our foundations of faith. We talked about Charles Bang and Ralph Loew, former pastors of Holy Trinity, people you might expect would help lay a foundation of faith. We also talked about Betsy, Dan, Ed, Sam, Isabell, and Edith. We remembered parents and grandparents, college friends, neighbors, and an AA sponsor. We talked about people who helped us lay the foundation for a life that is whole and full and that endures when the storms hit.

Jesus also spoke about foundations. Everyone who takes these words of mine to heart and acts on them, he said, will be like a wise person who built a life of faith on rock (Matt. 7:24). He taught about abundant life, about repentance and faith toward God, about baptism and resurrection and eternal judgment. Why would the writer of the letter to the Hebrews ask us to leave those things behind? Why leave behind what our important influencers taught us about life, abundant life, more and better life than we ever dreamed of having?

Well, we don’t actually leave those things behind. We recognize that, just as there’s more to a building than its foundation, there’s more to faith than its basic teaching. There’s a building that’s meant to stand on that foundation, and if we stop with the foundation, we never complete the building, we never realize what the foundation is meant to support, whether it’s a simple house or a great cathedral.

From its beginning, Christian tradition teaches us something many Christians never hear. It teaches us that the foundation laid for our faith is there to support a building, something greater than the foundation.

What I remember of the church in which I grew up is that its main concern was individual salvation, and its identifying question was, “Are you right with God so you’ll be assured of a place in heaven after you die?” I don’t remember much concern with the aspect of the gospel that’s meant to transform our life in community here and now. Faith was a private matter, and we were to demonstrate by our moral character that we had been “saved,” that we had “accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.”

Such faith was not, is not, wrong in itself. Our individual relationship with God is where faith is planted and begins to grow (cf. Jer. 31:31-34). It’s where God works even before we know anything about God or about how God is working in our lives. Such faith is misguided only when it stops there, only when it doesn’t build the house or cathedral that includes and shelters every person – everyone – and every other element of creation as well. As good as any foundation may be, it’s of no use at all without the building it’s meant to support.

Jesus began his ministry by calling disciples one by one and starting them on the journey of a lifetime. He helped them lay a foundation for the abundant life he offered. He taught them by what he said, by manifesting eternal values in his way of living, and by engaging them in learning by doing. Hear something, and you’ll soon forget it; see something, and you may remember it; do something, especially often enough, and you’ll come to understand it. The best way to lay a foundation for faith is to practice faith until you have it, with all the stumbling, falling, and getting up again, in the laboratory of lived experience, and then to live faith because you have it.

And what the disciples learned is that, while Christian faith is always personal, it’s never private. Christian faith may start with our personal relationship with God, with the law of God that’s written on each of our hearts, but it never stops there. On a solid foundation, it builds a cathedral of surpassing splendor. As St. Paul wrote, the aim of what God is doing in each of us personally is the reconciliation of all of us universally. And that good news is the message God entrusted to us to proclaim publicly, to share with others as often and as widely as we can (2 Cor. 5:19).

It’s a message central to what we understand God is doing. In his last night with his disciples, Jesus prayed for perfect unity among his followers so that the world may know that he came from God and that God loves the world just as God loved Jesus (John 17:20-23). The purpose of our faith, the aim of our healed relationship with God and our inclusion in the church, is not to gain for ourselves a place in heaven after we die; if we stop there, we miss the point of the gospel. It’s to help reconcile the whole world here and now – everyone without exception of distinction – and to be credible witnesses to what God is doing.

That’s why in Matthew’s gospel Jesus begins his ministry by calling his disciples personally and ends his ministry by sending them into all the world to teach the world what they have learned of life (Matt. 28:19-20). He spends time with his disciples in the laboratory of lived experience helping them lay a solid foundation for their life and faith and work. Then when he leaves them, he sends them into the world to build what the foundation was intended to support, to finish building the cathedral he began.

“So,” as Eugene Peterson paraphrased the passage from Hebrews, “let’s leave the preschool finger painting exercises on Christ and get on with the grand work of art” (Heb. 6:1-2 The Message). Let’s proclaim the message with all we say and do. Let’s build the holy city, the new Jerusalem, that St. John saw coming down from God as a bride adorned for her husband, the blessed community that will be the home of God (Rev. 21:2-3). That’s the work of faith, so let’s get on with it.