Preached on Sunday, November 17, 2024, the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, at Trinity Cathedral, Little Rock.

Words of encouragement from the letter to the Hebrews: “Let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith…Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23a, 24).

Today, we also get that wonderful, now famous, collect written by Archbishop Cranmer: “Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning,” the Archbishop has us pray; “grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life.”

Sometimes, that prayer proves to be more difficult than other times. Sometimes, Scripture hardly presents itself as something we want to “embrace,” as the Archbishop puts it. Our Gospel reading today is a good example––earthquakes and famines, wars and rumors, and so forth. Inwardly digest all that? No thank you.

But it’s not the Gospel reading that I find to be the most difficult passage today. No, it’s that passage from the letter to the Hebrews. “Let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith…Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.” These encouraging words aren’t actually that encouraging, if you think about it. The “full assurance of faith”? How is faith assuring? Some of us, maybe most of us, struggle with “having faith”: how are we assured by something that feels so elusive? “We have confidence,” the letter so boldly proclaims. But in all honesty, do we?

It is difficult to embrace this passage. It’s difficult to truly hear this passage, to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it. It’s difficult because, these days, it feels a bit silly for Christians to be confident. Assurance? Hope? Confidence? What assurance is there? What unwavering hope is there? How can we Christians be confident about anything at all? What gives the letter to the Hebrews the right to be so bold?

We tend to think “doubt” or “lack of confidence” to be a modern problem. I’ve been reading a book by English historian Alec Ryrie called Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt [1]. And in that book, Professor Ryrie reminds us of the common narrative of “doubt” in Christian history: seventeenth and eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophers exploding Christianity’s confidence in all things “God” by means of rational arguments. But Ryrie also reminds us that doubt has long been a companion of ours, even since Christianity’s earliest days—indeed, even since the letter to the Hebrews. Doubt has always been a real possibility, ever since the early years of the Church. And so, just as we might wonder whether all this talk of confidence is a bit overstated, so did our forebears in their own day, too. As such, the letter to the Hebrews makes a bold claim, indeed: assurance, hope, confidence. All this is to say: don’t think that the earlier Christians had an easier time shaking off doubt than we do. Christians in all times and places, including ours, need to hear this letter’s encouragement: be confident, be assured, be hopeful.

But whether it’s the first century or the twenty-first century, all of this proves difficult: are we actually assured by our faith? Are we actually made more confident by our faith? That’s what this letter seems to be saying: “in full assurance of faith,” it reads. Again, so often we struggle with “having faith”: how are we assured by something we struggle with, something that feels so elusive? How does something so subjective give us confidence? What’s so assuring about faith?

Of course, it all depends on our understanding of that word, “faith.” And unfortunately, it’s one of the trickiest words in the Christian dictionary. We Protestants love the word “faith.” Protestantism’s earliest debates hung on this word. Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin and yes, Archbishop Cranmer––they all knew that it all depends on how you define the word “faith.” And if we’re not careful, the Reformers remind us, our definition of “faith” can put us in a tough spot.

Now, a common definition of faith might go something like this: faith is our capacity to believe something or believe in something. It’s something in us as human beings, and some people have it and some people don’t. Some people make it look easy, perhaps because they have a particularly strong capacity for faith, as if it’s a talent or a special skill unique to that person.

But a definition like that does put us in a tough spot, doesn’t it? That’s what can make this whole notion of “ faith giving us confidence” so troubling. Only those with the capacity or the talent or the skill for faith are able to be assured of God, are able to be confident in the Good News. But the Reformers would remind us that the issue with that definition of faith is that it starts in the wrong place. When we talk of faith, we should begin not with us, but with God––not our capacities or talents or skills, but God.

Instead, a definition of faith would go something like this: “faith is a firm trust in the mercy of God promised for Christ’s sake” [2]. That’s how Archbishop Cranmer defined it for us in 1538, and the definition still holds up. Faith is an activity of ours, but, as I’ve said from this pulpit before, it’s a strange activity in which we don’t do much at all, letting God be God. Faith is an activity of trust, of opening ourselves up. And specifically, it’s an activity of trusting in God, not in ourselves, but in God’s mercy and God’s promises. We might even say that faith isn’t an ability of ours, but an inability of ours. Faith is that act of humility by which we say that we are unable to assure ourselves and to give ourselves confidence. That is what we Protestants mean by faith.

If we define faith in that way, things begin to change. Christian faith, then, is something that can assure us, believe it or not. We are assured when we open ourselves up to the goodness of God. We are given confidence when we let God be God, giving up the illusion that we can do x, y, or z. We can be bold when it’s God Whom we trust, not ourselves. As the letter to the Hebrews puts it, it’s by the blood of Jesus, not by our own works, that we have confidence. And that should give us deep, deep comfort.

Now, maybe you have been asking yourself: why, Thomas, are we spending so much time over one little word, “faith”? Why didn’t we just go with those far more interesting earthquakes and famines? Well, I think that, today, we need to be reminded of that deep, deep comfort given to us by the life of faith. There is so much going on right now, not least this Cathedral congregation taking our first steps into a new season of transition. And right now, it’s all too easy for us to get tripped up by a not-so-helpful definition of faith. It’s all too easy––all too tempting!––for us to think that assurance and comfort and confidence in the future comes only from our own ability to do x, y, or z––our ability to control x, y, or z!––but I’m afraid that that will just leave us disappointed.

But if faith is about God––that is, if, by faith, we give up the struggle and put ourselves into the loving and almighty arms of our Lord––then we will find the assurance and comfort and confidence we so desperately need in the upcoming days. Why? Because the God Whom we trust is faithful.

And so, my friends, “let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith…Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23a, 24). And in all things, may we not neglect gathering together to encourage one another (Hebrews 10:25). Amen.

[1] Alec Ryrie, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019).

[2] Articles of Religion, 1538.