I.Yesterday morning, Kelly Auditorium was a swarm of activity. Dozens of us gathered for Serve Together, a morning spent putting hands and feet to our commitments of faith. Together, we created food bags for the hungry and toiletry bags for the imprisoned, wrote notes to the anxious and hurting and created supplies for educators at Ashley Academy, organized supplies and spaces for those who journey alongside single moms trying to get back on their feet and filled carts with food for immigrant families who could use some help. We learned together, laughed together, ate together, and yes, served together. It was a great day, thanks to the tireless efforts of our Missions Committee and missions staff, and all who brought it to life.
As I visited each station of activity, among all the gladness you shared about doing meaningful work, I heard a running thread that connected one task to another and sounded something like this. “It is so satisfying to see a project completed.” You said this! (I said this!) It just took a bit of focused work, and from stacks of food sorted by type came a full stash of food bags, ready to be shared, and full carts of groceries, ready to be cooked and enjoyed in homes all around the city. From stacks of educational materials for elementary school teachers came full sets of flash cards, pulled apart at the perforation, sorted, bundled, and bound. From stacks of empty cards came a completed, stickered and stamped stack of notes to mail. From big tubs of toiletries came kits, and from spaces in need of tending came such grand organization, the volunteer team was pronounced “HGTV-ready.” There was a start and an end. Partial to whole. Undone to ready. Seen and complete.
There’s something about the experience of completion that tickles just the right part of our brain, isn’t there? Whether we’re talking about the fodder for our volunteer efforts, a freshly-mowed lawn or a clean counter and quietly whirring dishwasher, a final exam submitted or the finish line crossed, completion causes the dopamine and endorphins to hit just right. Unfinished tasks are resolved. Stressors are dealt with. Control is back under our fingertips. The mental clutter of what’s undone becomes the gratifying order of what’s done. Closure and conclusion and completion, oh my!
That you’re smiling and nodding tells me you get it too. Completion feels like it matters even more in this day and age where uncertainty is everywhere you turn, and despair crowds out hope, and any semblance of the world as we’ve known it seems to slip through our fingers like the sands of time. If only we could just know that all will turn out ok. If only we could just catch a glimpse of where this twisting, turning path will end.
II.“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” On the surface, to our modern ears, these opening words of Hebrews 11 might seem maddening. The assurance of things hoped for? In a world where we can’t agree on facts, we can’t be assured of anything. And the certainty or conviction of what we can’t see? In the world of AI slop and “fake news,” we can’t even be certain of what we DO see! Is this supposed to make faith more accessible or easy to understand?, we wonder.
“Indeed by faith,” the writers continue, “our ancestors were commended.” You see, all throughout the letter, the writer speaks to a Christianity in its second generation. The first followers of Jesus had passed on to glory, and their children were coming into their own. They’d been baptized and taught. Some even had become Sunday School teachers for the little ones. But in the writer’s view, these Christians’ discipleship had waned, along with their participation in worship, their commitment to Jesus, their interest in the new life he promised. There was no crisis, no urgent problem in need of urgent solutions. Rather, these Christians seemed a bit, well, bored, stagnant, languishing in the realities of their day that could dull even the brightest lights. Some experienced public ridicule, even shame and dishonor. For not only did Jesus die a criminal’s death on a cross, but he had not yet returned for good! That was the promise, of course! God’s good gift of Jesus was to be completed, and all creation would be made new.1 But here they lived, suspended in the swirl of uncertainty.
The writer knew that they’d need a story, an image, an anchor to encourage their faith and unhook them from the pessimism and worry that had stagnated their discipleship. And here, he turns to the ancestors.
This part of Hebrews is sometimes called the Heroes Hall of Fame, or the “roll call of the faithful.” “By faith,” he says, “Abel offered a good sacrifice. By faith, Enoch was taken from this life. By faith, Noah built an ark. By faith, Abraham and Sarah set forth on a journey with only a hope and a promise.” One by one, on and on, the faithful are lifted up. Their stories of uncertainty bear witness to the mighty, yet ordinary work of believing what you hope and trusting what you can’t see, all because of God who prepares and completes the work, God from whom all blessings flow.
III.For the writer, for the roll call of the faithful whose stories he tells, faith helps us see below the surface, underneath the shiny madness of this world toward the endless horizon of God’s new day dawning yet again. Faith has a long memory and a wide horizon. It’s as John Calvin said, “the firm knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us,”2 the very way that love and hope co-mingle and exist, Augustine claims.3 Faith is risking something big for something good. It’s planting sequoias in whose shade you will never rest. It’s summoning the ordinary courage to do extraordinary work, like raising a child, or learning the skill, or putting yourself out there, or coming out, or starting a business, or holding onto hope when the world is falling apart, or planting a garden when the seas rise and the planet warms.
But faith, like its object, can’t be seen. Faith, like its subject, cannot be completed. So how can we find our way toward it? How can we see it when we look out and only see cruelty? How can we trust it when we struggle to trust at all? When the human movements stack up – the Age of Enlightenment, Age of Reason, Age of Outrage – all the tides of this modern and postmodern life pull us toward certainty, toward moving beyond what we’ve inherited, toward being angry about what we can’t see or know, how might our ancestors give us a smidgen of faith when we feel our open hands become closed fists?
IV.Towering over Barcelona with “ruthless audacity,” as one art historian put it, La Sagrada Familia, or Basilica of the Holy Family, is among the most famous cathedrals in all the world. A UNESCO World Heritage site and symbol of the city, La Sagrada Familia welcomes over three million visitors a year into its stone walls, these crowds summoned by the cathedral’s unmistakable architecture and fascinating story.
I’ve told you a bit about this story, but we’ve all slept since then and need a refresher. You see, on March 19, 1882, work began on a new cathedral in Barcelona. But when the cathedral’s original architect quit the project not a year later due to differences in opinion about the cost of materials, perhaps it was a stroke of inspiration that summoned the project’s new visionary: a young and upcoming local architect named Antonin Gaudi. Just 32 when he was hired for the project, Gaudi turned La Sagrada Familia into his magnum opus. Gone were the traditional architectural designs that would couch La Sagrada Familia comfortably alongside other cathedrals of its time – no pointed towers and flying buttresses and neo-Gothic style. In its place came elements of Gaudi’s wholly unique style: dozens of spires and facades and doors and columns and carvings, all representing the vast and rich symbols of the Christian faith.
Now let me just say – I’ve seen a lot of church buildings in my lifetime, but nothing I’ve ever seen could have prepared me for the scope and sequence of La Sagrada Familia when Josh and I visited back in 2022. You see, when Gaudi designed it, he knew it wouldn’t be completed in his lifetime. As he was known to say, “my client – God – is not in a hurry.” Indeed, the Nativity facade was the only part he saw complete. He dreamt and designed and implemented, knowing that he’d have to hand over his plans to someone else to complete. But his plans were so clear and he so trusting, that the work continued after Gaudi’s death in 1926. Since then, more than a dozen architects have worked on the project, one right after the other, their names stretched across a timeline of the project like a relay race team: each taking the handoff from the one who’s gone before, and carrying the baton for their stretch of the work. As Gaudi said: “I know the personal taste of the architects that follow me will influence the work, but that doesn’t bother me. I think the Temple will benefit from it. Great temples have never been the work of just one architect.”4
Some 143 years later, the handoffs continue. And though the anticipated “completion” date will arrive in 2026, I bet Sagrada Familia will never be fully complete. For when Gaudi saw worlds that were not yet visible, he inspired a chain of others to do the same. By faith, Sagrada Familia has come to life, and by faith, the roll call of that great cloud of witnesses who made it possible inspire the rest of us to plant, to move, to journey, to build, to hope for what we can’t yet see until the ultimate completion carries us all the way home.
V.Remembering the faith of the ancestors, being inspired by the architects who passed the baton to us, letting those who have come before carry the faith when we cannot, stabilizes us amidst our despair. They remind us that we’re not the first ones here, that in the vastness of time, ours is but a bit journey. Others have faced hardship and uncertainty, stressors and violence, lack of control and an absence of completion. They may not have gotten to the promised land or seen the fruits of their labor, but their lives mattered. Their faith carried. Their hope refused to be diminished. And by their faith, our faith has new life.
Their stories are like those glimpses and whispers from afar that Frederick Buechner speaks of on the cover of your worship guide. Their impact feels to me a bit like when you throw a rock in a murky pond. You’ve done that before, I’m sure. For when the rock lands in the water, for a moment, the scum and the film and the swirl falls away, and the water is clear. Those are the moments where we see God, where home comes into full view, where love brings us back time and time again. So that when the film covers again, by faith, we continue to move. By faith, we see it!
By faith, Martin had a dream. By faith, Sojourner had a plan. By faith, Gaudi had a wild imagination. By faith, Nelson knew “it always seems impossible until it’s done.” By faith, Teresa had unending compassion. By faith, Martin Luther reformed what needed reforming.
By faith, Alfred Holland put an ad in the paper, asking if there were any other Baptists in Winston and those first four saints who gathered and formed what would become the Winston Baptist Church took a leap beyond what they could see or imagine. By faith, 154 years later, we sit here today.
By faith, a church was planted. By faith, a church bears fruit. By faith, a people hold on – relentlessly, tirelessly, stubbornly – to the truth that all people should be granted the dignity to live and move and have their being on this earth, and that God made it so in Christ. By faith, they carry on, drawing strength from those who have come before to bend the arc of justice and bring about the dawn of God’s new day.
By faith, you and you and you and me carry our baton toward the ultimate completion. We may not know how the story ends. We may not know when it is complete. But by faith, we carry on. Amen!