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Hebrews 11.1-3, 8-16

‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for …’ so runs a famous definition of faith from the letter to the Hebrews.

What most people hope for at present is for things to get back to normal. Normal would include being able to get out of our homes without worry, to do the ordinary things, to open for business, to take a holiday in the sun; and top of the list, to see and touch those whom we have, for months, had to love remotely.

All these simple and wonderful aspirations we hope we shall soon be granted. They will make our lives immeasurably richer. But can it ever be a case of going back to how it was before? Sadly, this won’t be possible for those who have lost loved ones or livelihoods to the virus.

The writer of Hebrews was realistic about this: we have no ‘abiding city’, he said, no resting place in this world where we can lay down absolute foundations. Covid hasn’t caused this to happen but has exposed and hastened the reality that nothing lasts for ever.

But this is where faith comes in.

Faith is a working frame for our lives. Without it, we have only fleeting moments, which we can’t rely on but can rather only enjoy as sand running through our fingers. Faith frames our often-troubled lives with an ever-lasting reality, an eternal home.

Building a cathedral is one way our ancestors attempted to say something about this. Though war and disease with little medicine meant they had no illusions about the transience of life, they set about building the largest and most durable structure they could.

In some ways it was just one building among others, doomed to decay; but in other ways it was a sign pointing to an abiding city prepared by God, where the living could come to look for a brighter future and even the dead could rest in hope.

If we have come to see ourselves as more fragile because of the virus, that’s no bad thing in itself. We may then search for a way to become sturdier, to grow in assurance that what we find in the top layers of life, what gives us pleasure and causes us grief, is by no means the whole story.

Some people worry about this. ‘Life is not a rehearsal’, they say, fearing that a focus on anything other than we can grasp is going to distract us from squeezing the juice out of the few moments we have on this earth.

Life is indeed not a rehearsal, but it is not the brief, final act of a tragedy either.

By faith it becomes possible to move mountains when otherwise we may have been defeated. And the Christian faith is that this future lies not only in an afterlife but also here and now – as solid ground on which we can build back better, with hope.

This is what the writer of Hebrews underlines when he says: ‘what is seen is made from things that are not visible’. Not visible yet, we should say perhaps – coming into view.

With centuries of empirical science behind us, we may find relying on unseen reality difficult, whatever the Creed may say about God making ‘all things visible and invisible’. However, modern science often has to accept the existence of ‘things unseen’ at quantum and cosmic levels, and content itself instead with studying their effects.

This is completely congruent with the way Christians operate. God is not an object among other objects. His rule is expressed through processes scientists and poets can only nibble at. And so we must live with God and study His effects.

Take Abraham. By faith in God he set out, not knowing where he was going. Reading the story backward we know where he went, but he only knew what he was losing – abundant life by the River Euphrates – as he set out in response to some inner intuition as to what the future held.

For us who have lost so much unwillingly, does it seem a folly that he did this willingly; that even when he reached the ‘promised land’ he lived there as a migrant, in tents?

Abraham faced many tests of his relationship with the invisible, but as we make our way with him on the narrow path of faith, we see the positive, permanent impact faith makes on him. Despite his many mistakes and moral failings, we see him getting there.

There is an eternal city prepared for him and us, and faith is the only way of getting there, the only way of making it, the only way to arrive at the final joy of resurrection.