10 August 2025

10 August 2025 - The 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Transcript

Reading:  

Hebrews 11:1-2

Write:  

Faith is the realization of what is hoped for
 and evidence of things not seen.
 Because of it the ancients were well attested.

Reflect:   

We will read from the letter to the Hebrews for the next four weeks. Our attention is on Abraham for this weekend. Because of his amazing decision to walk by faith and leave everything he had, he is the first model for faith for any of us. Can you imagine picking up everything you own and walking into a foreign land because “God told you to?”

Then to hear that all the land is yours and that you will have progeny so vast as to be more than the sands on the seashore. But let’s back up.

What I quoted above, that was the start of our reading this weekend is the start of Chapter eleven. These are the verses that are skipped in our reading today:

By faith we understand that the universe was ordered by the word of God, so that what is visible came into being through the invisible. By faith Abel offered to God a sacrifice greater than Cain’s. Through this he was attested to be righteous, God bearing witness to his gifts, and through this, though dead, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and “he was found no more because God had taken him.” Before he was taken up, he was attested to have pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please him, for anyone who approaches God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. By faith Noah, warned about what was not yet seen, with reverence built an ark for the salvation of his household. Through this he condemned the world and inherited the righteousness that comes through faith.

It is by faith that the people of old sought some indication of who God is. It was a struggle to try to understand this mysterious God who is the God of all creation – the God of the universe, as it says in verse three.

But then, at the end of our reading from today, we hear the shocking story that Abraham believed God wanted him to kill his own son, Isaac. The last line of our reading today says, “He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead, and he received Isaac back as a symbol.”

That is a big assumption! To have that much trust in God is a great amount of faith. I am convinced that Isaac’s faith was not shaken by what his dad was about to do. Rather he understood – somehow – that God was going to see him through this and through the rest of his life.

So we go on:

By faith regarding things still to come Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau. By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph and “bowed in worship, leaning on the top of his staff.” By faith Joseph, near the end of his life, spoke of the Exodus of the Israelites and gave instructions about his bones. 

By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that he was a beautiful child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; he chose to be ill-treated along with the people of God rather than enjoy the fleeting pleasure of sin.

This section of Hebrews goes into a long description of what Moses did by faith to bring Israel out of the captivity of Egypt. And then he shifts gears just a little bit. Rather than going through a lot of individual information he gives a summary of a number of people in the history of Israel:

 What more shall I say? I have not time to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who by faith conquered kingdoms, did what was righteous, obtained the promises; they closed the mouths of lions, put out raging fires, escaped the devouring sword; out of weakness they were made powerful, became strong in battle, and turned back foreign invaders. Women received back their dead through resurrection. Some were tortured and would not accept deliverance, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others endured mockery, scourging, even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, sawed in two, put to death at sword’s point; they went about in skins of sheep or goats, needy, afflicted, tormented. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered about in deserts and on mountains, in caves and in crevices in the earth. 

Yet all these, though approved because of their faith, did not receive what had been promised. God had foreseen something better for us, so that without us they should not be made perfect. 

Apply:   

Can you tell I really like this chapter of Hebrews? You have now heard almost the entire chapter, which unfortunately does not get read in the Mass.

It is all summarized in the last two verses that I quoted: “Yet all these, though approved because of their faith, did not receive what had been promised. God had foreseen something better for us, so that without us they should not be made perfect.”

The something better resides in Jesus and the power of his cross and the power of faith that has been given to us – to us – that is so much stronger than the faith of the saints of the Old Testament. It is stronger because Jesus “backs it up” by his death on the cross. But I would contend that their faith individually was stronger than ours. Yes, the strength of faith goes both ways. We have so much more of a history of what God has chosen to do in his own self-revelation and what he has done in the history of the church that we can rely on these things to shore up our faith. The saints of the Old Testament did not have that – especially Adam and Enoch and Noah and Abraham.

Are we stronger in our faith than the saints of old? That is a great question. And chapter twelve addresses this question in its very first words that we will hear next week: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…”

But I am not going to go into that this weekend. Rather, I want us to look at our own faith – yours and mine – to discover how strongly we hold to the articles of faith, in the call to holiness that the saints of the Old Testament and the saints of the New Testament used to keep them going toward the goal of heaven.

We “stand on the shoulders” of the giants of our faith – both old and new. Hebrews says, “the world was not worthy of them.” Yet our goal is to be counted among them for the sake of God’s glory.

By faith… By faith… By faith… Amen.

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