Today’s readings: Wisdom 18, 6-9; Hebrews 11, 1-2.8-19; Luke 12, 32-48.
The alertness expected from all those who believe in a God – who is out there and in some form of life after this one – has always been coupled with the feeling of suddenness and the unexpected. In the past this led systematically to instilling a touch of fear and anxiety in characteristic Christian living. It led also great saints to become renowned for their awareness, in some cases even obsession, with death.
It was the fear of the judgment of God that had quite a hold on believers. On the contrary, it is the lack of belief in some form of reckoning that seems to make people let loose today in a culture of instant gratification. Particular attention shifting life’s focus on the afterlife, and for early Christians on its imminence, has always heavily determined the character of Christianity.
We have to admit that today, being taken up so much with earthly commitments and with issues of major concern for the very survival of so many people, as well as of the cosmos itself, the words of Jesus to “make an inexhaustible treasure in heaven” may very easily sound illusory.
Accountability is a buzzword in our culture. But it’s more an accountability towards commitments or promises made rather than the type of final reckoning emerging from a faith perspective.
All Christian existence stands within an expectation. What are we waiting for? Global economic instability, global climate change, and global environmental decline may have at least as much to do with fear for the future as the equally factual belief, for those who believe in a day of judgment.
As Paul Lakeland writes, “a faithful people is not marked by its jealous preservation of relics”. This can easily, in Lakeland’s words, reduce itself merely to a faith without hope. But in the light of today’s readings, we cannot afford to profess a religious faith that locks itself in a vision of the past.
On the other hand, we cannot go to the other extreme of a hope without faith. Our religious faith is rooted in the covenant of the Hebrew Scriptures, stressing God’s faithfulness to a covenant built upon a promise. As we read from the Book of Wisdom, “that night had been foretold to our ancestors, so that, once they saw what kind of oaths they had put their trust in, they would joyfully take courage”. God’s promises in Israel’s history were always “the saving of the virtuous and the ruin of their enemies”.
Most of the time, it’s our choices that make of us virtuous people or enemies of virtue. That is why the attitudes of watchfulness, recalled in Luke, are required. What Luke’s story about the household manager is stressing is that the steward was answerable to his master and to the servants alike. He could not be faithful to one and abusive to the others.
Luke underlines the need for watchfulness, while the readings from Wisdom and Hebrews give the reasons for the attitude of waiting which translates our faith into hope.
Faith without hope is dead. But hope without faith is blind. Faith finds its true nourishment in the Scripture, lest it be too spiritualised or lest it be reduced to mere devotion. It’s high time we call an end to faith in the service of an individualistic and other worldly piety. We are all called today to discover the mysticism of everyday life. It’s all about finding faith in small things, in unexpected places, in unlikely people.
The future of faith lies in hope; hope for the vindication of the countless millions who shall have died and suffered in vain if there is no truth to any vision beyond death.
The future of faith is not solely where we might imagine it to be. There are undoubtedly stories of sanctity, of grace and faith around us and in our culture. We just need the right understanding to look beyond the boundaries we ourselves set for the transcendent to open up to the kind of people with whom Jesus of Nazareth seemed to enjoy keeping company.