Hebrews 11:1, Matthew 25: 37-40 , Galatians 5:22
The Super Bowl wrapped up this year’s NFL season last weekend. But that doesn’t mean we have to stop talking about professional sports drama. Today I actually want to take you back in time, to 2018, to what was a very dramatic moment for the Indianapolis Colts.
The Colts were searching for a new head coach. And they had made an offer to Josh McDaniels, who had been serving as the Patriots offensive coordinator. A contract hadn’t been formally signed, but things were in motion. People were talking about it. Assistant coaches had been recruited and committed to come to Indianapolis to work with him.
And then—and you might remember this—the shocking announcement came that Josh McDaniels was NOT going to come to the Colts after all. He was going to stay with the Patriots and the Colts were going to need to start their search over from the beginning. Now, besides the drama with this kind of announcement, besides how frustrating that would have been if you were the Colts, there was the element of those assistant coaches. Who had already put in their resignations where they had been; who had been picked by Josh McDaniels to come work with him; who some 2
claim did not even know that this shift was happening until they heard about it on the news.
And so these folks were worried. Because they knew how this game goes. They knew that once the Colts found their ACTUAL head coach, there was no guarantee that they would even have jobs anymore, and in fact, there was more certainty that they WOULDN’T have jobs. They fully expected that whoever the new coach was would just bring in their own people and they would end up in a really bad situation.
But the interesting thing about this story is that the Colts didn’t do that. They actually did the opposite of what everyone expected in this kind of situation. They came to the assistant coaches and assured them that their jobs were safe. They were going to be employed come next season. They could have faith that the organization was going to honor the commitment that had been made to them and their families.
And what a test of faith that would have been for these assistant coaches, and frankly, even for the Colts organization. There was a lot of stuff that they couldn’t control, there were many moving pieces, there was a whole city watching what they would do. And they just had to keep moving forward believing that they were going to get where they needed to go. 3
Today we’re in week 7 of 9 looking at the Fruit of the Spirit. And today (SLIDE) Faithfulness is our focus and we’re wrestling with this question—what does faithfulness look like for us? What does it mean to live by faith and let that faith guide us? How does our faith impact our relationships and bigger orientation to the world? There are probably some really great churchy answers that we could give, but the challenge with faithfulness is that it so easily crumbles when we take it out of the church walls and we walk into the chaos of our lives.
This verse from Hebrews 11:1 that was part of our Scripture reading says this:(SLIDE) Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
And this is one of the very familiar verses about faith in the Bible. It’s short and sweet, but it is also incredibly helpful as we try to apply what faithfulness can look like in the different areas of our lives. There are these powerful words of “assurance” and “conviction” and there’s a reminder that God is at work...even when we don’t see it...and that because of that we have reason to hope and act in that hope and live lives that reflect this really firm, trustworthy foundation we stand on. And even though there are so many reasons to give up on faith, there are so many reasons to give into the chaos around us, this verse from Hebrews 4
wants us to know that (SLIDE) Faith is more than a theory—it's a way of life.
And so we’re going to look at a couple of specific angles on how we live this out in our real lives. We’re going to look at our relationships, like interpersonally, and we’re going to look at the bigger picture of how we move about the world. And what role faith plays in this—because it turns out that faith is actually pretty critical to all of the ways that we show up!
So let's start with our relationships. What does it look like to have faith when we’re trying to be in community with other humans? I think one of the most important ways that faith shows itself in relationships is that it (SLIDE) lets us trust God to take care of our people.
It lets us believe that we don’t have to manipulate or control the people around us. We can just show up and be with them. We have a different kind of freedom to love when we’re operating from a space of assurance and conviction that God is working in ways we might not be able to see right now, and the way that we love from THAT place is really different than the way that sometimes we love from a place of anxiety or wanting to change people, or just letting ourselves get thrown off by every little thing that feels challenging in that relationship. 5
When I think about the role that faith plays in how we love our people, it makes me think of the “Let Them” theory that is really popular right now. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, but there’s a poem by Cassie Phillips called “Just Let Them” and there’s a book that just came out by Mel Robbins called “The Let Them Theory.” And I was listening to Mel Robbins break this down on an interview recently and she was sharing how having this mindset of “Let Them” can really transform our relationships. Like when we have someone in our life who is challenging for us to love and be in relationship with, we often try to change them. We often try to take control or manipulate their behavior and the situation. And fun fact, doing those things almost never actually frees us up to love people well. It doesn’t particularly let us love from a place of faith.
So the Let Them theory challenges that and says, what if, on things that are not truly harmful or life-threatening, what if you just let them do what they do and be who they are going to be and AS you let them, you let GO of trying to be the one to move the chess pieces and change all the things? For example, if you have a friend who every time you get together with them they are ALWAYS 15 minutes late. And you are a person who is ALWAYS five minutes early. And so this thing about your friend, really starts to irritate you. And so every time you get together with them, you’re not focused 6
on connection, you don’t see the child of God in front of, you see “you’re late!” And maybe you guilt trip them a little bit and are cranky for the first 10 minutes of your time together because you want them to change.
But what if you “Let Them” be late? What if you accept that this is who they are and how they operate and it’s not what you do, but it’s part of this person? Now, there’s another piece to this theory and it’s a piece that I think fits really perfectly with talking about faithfulness and how we live that out with each other. Because Let Them is a good start, but if we stay just there we can get a little self-righteous and just start pointing out everyone’s flaws. Not the aim of this sermon, not the best way to be in relationship with each other. So the second part of this is “Let Me.” Let them be late, but let me stop showing early so I can be mad about it! If I need to get there early, let me stop checking my watch every two minutes and feeling my blood pressure rise while I do it, and instead, let me carve out that 20 minutes to read or do a work task and I will let myself be pleasantly surprised if they are on time instead of seething with anger if they’re late.
A lot of the time, when we’re practicing faith in our relationships, we just have to give our people to God. We have to be willing to admit that we AREN’T God in those 7
dynamics. And we can trust that if God’s got these people...then we can love them well...even in the tough situations. Even when it’s messy. Even when it takes a little extra letting go and trust on our part.
So our faith lets us love well in those really interpersonal moments. And, our faith also lets us love well in a way that makes a broader impact in our world, and this is where this becomes a bigger picture conversation of what it means to have faith and live out this fruit of the spirit.
I think in a lot of ways, faithfulness has a lot to teach us right now and it gives us a pretty good roadmap for how to be a human in the world. That second Scripture that we read may have taken you by surprise a bit. Where the Hebrews one is pretty tried and true, we don’t always talk about faith through THIS lens. It’s Jesus’ teaching of the sheep and the goats and basically he’s talking about what a faithful life looks like. And he’s zooming out here. He’s going beyond our personal relationship with God, beyond how we function in community with our closest people, and he’s looking at how we live out our faith on a much larger scale. How we care for others. How we approach strangers in our midst. How we engage in justice and mercy and caring for the oppressed. Jesus says—THIS is what a life of faith is going to look like. THIS is going to be the proof. THIS is how I know you’re 8
following me and living like you believe the things that I say. This piece of our faith is incredibly important.
What Jesus wants to make so clear here is that (SLIDE) faithfulness is deeply tied to justice. Pastor Mindie isn’t making this up; Jesus wasn’t sharing some NEW teaching when he said what we read; this is ALL throughout scripture. He is drawing from the very words that God gave the prophets who came before him, and we see that God has a DEEP, CONSISTENT focus on just how much justice matters. There is so much that feels unclear in scripture and kind of confusing, but this is one of those things that is consistent, and clear, and it’s in there from beginning to end.
And so I want to share just a few Old Testament verses with you on God’s heart for what our faith looks like lived out, to frame what Jesus is teaching here and also to remind us of what it means for us to live out our faith:
(SLIDE) Isaiah 1:17 Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.
(SLIDE) Micah 6:8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the LORD require of you 9
but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?
(SLIDE) Amos 5:21-24 I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. 23 Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. 24 But let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
God says, over and over again: if you want to live a life that shows you have faith, you have to be about taking care of people, you have to be about watching out for the vulnerable, you have to be willing to set down your own self-interests in order to make sure others are ok. We’re not here to CLAIM faith...we’re here to LIVE it.
And what is so transformative about looking at acts of justice through this lens is that justice links to faith and faith links to hope and hope links to love. So that’s what this flows from. It flows from this deep, incredible well where we experience the love of God and we practice the love of our neighbor, and we hold on to our commitment to be faithful 10
people. This kind of life probably isn’t easy...but it is really, really good. And it’s the kind of life where we get to be part of God’s huge holy work.
And truly, sometimes the huge holy work doesn’t feel that huge. In just a couple of weeks, the IPS school that my son attends, and several kids here at Midtown attend, is having its big annual fundraiser. We’ll have a silent auction at a restaurant, and it will be a really fun time. But I have to admit to you that I was feeling little skeptical about this fundraiser. Because right now, there are several things happening at the state level that would massively defund public schools. And IPS...there’s not a lot more to take away. And so I found myself in a little bit of a defeated place...like, really, we’re going to come together and raise several thousand dollars...will that actually matter in the big picture and in the face of things that are largely beyond my control?
But then I think about the kids at the school. I think about the stories that my son tells me about his classmates; I think about the people that he is getting to know and learn from and be in relationship with. I think about how a bunch of parents coming together to support our school can encourage the teachers and the administrators in what is a very discouraging time. I think about how it’s really faithful to keep showing up with whatever we have and building 11
community wherever we are. That’s not a waste of time, it’s not nothing. It’s showing up faithfully and doing something.
If you get the Midtown Message, this last week I talked about being people who act like thermostats, that we can be the ones who change the temperature of what’s going on around us. And I thought to myself as I wrote it and even as I thought through this message today that maybe we’re getting a little repetitive. I mean, I think this is the third or fourth week in a row I’ve encouraged you to participate, to live out these fruit of the spirit in really concrete, simple ways. But you know, maybe we need this level of repetition, because there’s another type of repetition that’s happening right now. We keep getting inundated with all the things that are wrong and all these people who are afraid and being harmed and so I can’t help but wonder if our role as a church, like THE CHURCH, the faithful people of God is to be repetitive back, but to do it with hope. To do it with faith. To say, this is the story we’ve been involved in since the beginning of time! It’s a story of love, it’s a story of faithful people following God. And because of that, we ARE going to show up. We are going to repetitively point back to the one who gives us faith in the first place and say THIS is our example. This is what we live. And we WON’T settle for just wringing our hands or doomscrolling because we have a faith to hold on to and to live out and that is what we are going to do. 12
Our faith lets us love well. Our faith lets us fiercely pursue justice and goodness. Our faith lets us live like Jesus. And our faith lets us hold on to the things we hope for deeply and to know that God is at work, even if we can’t see it yet.
Let’s pray.