Between Sundays for Week of August 11, 2025
The New Testament book of Hebrews was written for a community of Christians who were a generation removed from the events of the gospels. These were people holding onto hope in Christ’s imminent return and its delay was reaching crisis point. The community was encountering the inevitable struggles, sufferings, and even doubt, that accompanies people who confess faith in Christ’s promises. In this, like other books of the Bible, Hebrews is written for us.
Hebrews 11:1-3 and 8-16 are filled with references to “faith,” which the writer describes as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Abraham and Sarah are one example of our ancestors who embraced such a faith when they heard God’s call and the promise to make of them a great nation, when they were already old and childless.
Maybe what Abraham and Sarah really teach us is a faith that longs for something more. If the writer of Hebrews is addressing a community who were encountering the inevitable struggles, suffering, and even doubt that accompanies all people who hold fast to Jesus’ promises, then he was also reminding them that in the midst of the fear, anxiety, and uncertainty that accompanies life with Jesus, feeling like strangers in a strange land isn’t an indication of faithlessness or failure, it’s the inheritance for those who follow Jesus.
What if in these final instructions, the writer of Hebrews was inviting his first readers – and us as well – to give voice to the unmet longings of this world? To name the places where we still feel like nomads wondering in the wilderness, to identify the places where the world around us feels foreign, strange, or unsettled. What if the faith we are called to live in this place is a faith that calls us to a new home, a new world, a new way as Jesus envisioned and taught to his followers? And what if this faithful longing is not an exercise in futility, but a way of life this always blessed.
P.S. View Sunday worship through our YouTube channel and listen to the Gospel and Pastor Hoffman’s sermon (beginning at 26:35). Links to previous worship videos on Facebook and YouTube are always available on our website.
Faith Connection at Home
This summer we are encouraging ways for children, youth and families to make connections with each other through some fun meet-ups each month. Check out the up-coming events:
Tuesday, August 12th: Children’s Gazebo Series and Cookout Come meet us at 5:30pm at church for hot dogs in the courtyard, then we’ll walk together to the gazebo outside of the Fairport Library for a children’s concert with MisterGreene at 6:30pm. Bring a camp chair along for the concert. Let us know if you can make it, so we can make sure there’s a hot dog for you. Gazebo Concert August 12th Sign-Up.
Have another idea for a summer meet-up? We can help you get the word out! Contact Patty at faithformation@blcfairport.org.
Ponderings
Faith is not passive. It is active and daring, as we hear in Abraham’s story. It is the work of the Holy Spirit, who transforms us from hearers to doers. In his German translation of the Bible, Martin Luther wrote a preface to Paul’s letter to the Romans that articulates the notion of faith through these powerful words: “O, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them. . . . Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a thousand times.” (Martin Luther, Luther’s Works: Word and Sacrament I, ed. E. Theodore Bachmann, vol. 35. Fortress Press, 1960, 370)