Use It or Lose It

Scripture: Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16


In 1959, the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Krushchev, made an unprecedented visit to the United States. This was right after the death of Stalin, and Krushchev, his successor, has already caused an international stir by giving a speech to the Politburo denouncing many of the atrocities and policies that went on in Stalinist Russia – the mass killings, the assassinations of political enemies both real and imagined, the elimination of anyone Stalin didn’t trust, which was almost everyone.

Krushchev was scheduled to speak at the National Press Club in Washington and it was widely expected that he would deliver a similar speech denouncing Stalin. And he did. After finishing his speech Krushchev opened the floor for questions. Someone called out from the crowd, “Mr Krushchev, you have just given us an account of Stalin’s many crimes against humanity. You were his right hand man during much of that time. What were you doing?”

The question was translated to Krushchev, and when he heard it he exploded with anger.
“Who said that?” he demanded.

No one answered.
“Who said that?” he repeated and glowered at the audience.

Silence.

“Who said that?” he asked again, this time low and quiet, with more menace.

Everyone in the room looked at their shoes.

After a moment, Khrushchev said, “That’s what I was doing.”

“On the Day of Judgment, Jesus will tell his true followers by a single criteria: they translated faith into action.”

Their faith produced works. That’s what faith does.

Mark Buchanon writes that if you’ve ever been to Niagra Falls you might know that a mile upstream from the Falls the Welland River joins the Niagra River and where the two streams meet, a passenger bridge arches across the Welland. Boaters can navigate beneath the bridge and enter the wide flow of the Niagra. But just before they do, they pass under a large sign posted on the bridge’s pylon. It asks them two questions:

Do you have an anchor?
Do you know how to use it?
The Bible asks us, “Do you have faith? Do you know how to use it?”

In the climactic chapter to the book of Hebrews, the great theme of faith is “translated” into “action imperatives” if you will, specific things to do with your belief. Take a look at some of these:

Show hospitality to strangers
Remember and visit those in prison
Tend your marriage and be faithful in it
Watch out so you don’t fall in love with money
Imitate the faith of your leaders
Do good and share what you have

A believer who really believes will do these things. It’s pretty practical. In fact, if things like these are conspicuously absent from your life, well, call the doctor, your faith may be on life support!

When my son is at football practice I listen to his coaches exhorting him and his teammates: “Do you want glory?!!! Then show me your passion!!!”

And I ask myself, am I at a football practice or at a religious rally? It must football because the audience responds with yells and approval. At church, we just clear our throats or yawn. Isn’t it telling of our times that the great words of Scriptures,words like Faith, Hope, Love, have to be redefined for generations that grew up in the church. You can’t just say love anymore, you have to attach an adjective and say “Tough Love” or “Selfless Love” You can’t just say “Faith” anymore and expect people to get the message. You have to say “Faith in Action.” You have to say “beyond belief” and “more than words.”

The only scriptural understanding of faith, the greek word pistis, is faith that “goes public” and changes lives. That’s the only definition for a biblical faith. There is no line in a biblical dictionary for “private faith.”

Remember, Jesus is our High Priest and we are called to hold fast to our confession. Holding fast really means going forth.

“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you might proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” 1 Peter 2.9

We are a kingdom of priests. One of the great truths of the Church that the Protestant Reformation recaptured was the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. It is basically this: this no special class of Christians that are supposed to “minister full-time.” We are all called to full-time ministry. We are the priests of the good confession, Jesus Christ came to seek and to save the lost!

You may feel frustrated and you may feel timid. In this regard we are like kids offering up prayers to God:

Dear God, I bet it’s very hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world. There are only four people in our family and I can never do it. Nancy

Dear God, please send Dennis Clark to a different summer camp this year. Peter

Dear thank you for the baby brother but what I asked for was a puppy. I never asked for anything before. You can look it up. Joyce
Dear God, I am doing the best I can. Really. Frank

No matter how ineffective we feel sometimes, there is no excuse for living faithfully. We have to go public. We have to believe with more than words.

Pat Conroy’s novel, The Prince of Tides, tells the tangled story, generations long, of the gifted but flawed Wingo family. Tom Wingo recounts the WWII ordeal his father, Henry, endured after his plane plummeted, tail wings aflame, over German soil. Injured and fugitive, Henry takes refuge in a Catholic church. The church’s priest, Father Gunter Kraus, is a good man but timid, and when he discovers Henry in his vestry, bloody and delirious, he’s torn between his compassion and fear. He wants to help, but he’s terrified of the consequences should the Nazis find out he’s harboring an enemy. Tom Wingo says:

My father’s presence had created a moral nightmare for the priest
And it tested the mettle of his character. The priest felt he had been
Given the soul of a rabbit in times that called for lions. . .My father’s
Coming had required the priest in him to rule over the man.”

Which is what the Father’s coming requires also in us. Christ has made us a kingdom of priests to rule and reign with him.

In an age that calls for lions, let the priest in you rule over the man.