Text Box: “The Sure Thing” Romans 8:35, 37-39   How many “sure things” do you know in life, things you are absolutely positive of, things you would “stake your life” on? Christian “assurance” some might say is not really a “sure thing” because it is based on faith and not something we absolutely know. To that I would reply that the assurance of God in Jesus Christ is about as sure a thing as we can know in this life, save for one thing, and that one “sure thing” is the very thing that drives us to faith against it. The book of Hebrews says “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” A more contemporary writer has said something very similar. “Faith is the dogged belief, despite all present evidence to the contrary, that there is something better.” It is interesting to note that neither statement views faith as necessarily religious, much less Christian (though we may infer from its context that the statement from Hebrews was referring to Christian faith). Faith needn’t be in the “right” things, it needn’t even be legitimate. It needs only to believe in, and presumably seek, something “better.” Now people can have faith in many things – in humanity, in a country, in an ideology, in a marriage, in an economy, in another individual. Sometimes such “faith” is little more than just naïve trust, but this is not really faith according to either of these statements. [To say I have “faith” in my bank or the Federal Reserve System does not mean I am hoping for something better, only that I trust they will perform in a predictable and satisfactory way]. The sort of “faith,” being talked about here always requires the hope and expectation of something better than we now have. By this understanding, our choice in life is relatively simple. We can live by what we “know,” i.e. by what we already have and can reasonably expect to have, or we can live by faith, i.e. by a hope and vision of something better. Now there are several good, practical reasons for choosing to live by what we know. It is relatively safe, it requires little expectation (we will seldom be disappointed,) and it takes little or no imagination. The “downside” of living by faith is the obverse side of these same things. Living by faith is risky, we can find ourselves greatly disappointed or disillusioned, and it requires a certain amount of creative imagination. Given such a choice, why then would anyone choose to life by faith rather than by what we know and can depend on? The answer is that the “sure thing” of living by what we know is, finally, hopeless. The only “sure thing” in this life is that you are going to die, and your children are going to sell all your junk at a yard sale. Your best hope is to have a relatively comfortable and happy “four score and ten,” because you are returning to dust and nothing you did or leave behind will ultimately survive. [The old saying that nothing is certain in life but “death and taxes” is a joke about taxes, the only real certainty of this life is death.] So it is not surprising that people would choose to hope for more, for something better. This “hoping for something more” often takes on religious connotations, but not always. It seems to be the common and unique ability of human beings to be able to imagine “more” or “better.” No matter how much money we have, we can always imagine ourselves having more money. No matter how well-satisfied we are with our jobs or professions, we can always imagine having a better job or profession. No matter how much we love and care for our husbands or wives, we can always imagine having better ones. It seems that it is simply human to be able to imagine things that “aren’t,” at least at present. One of the things that has moved human civilization forward is this constant hope and search for “something better.” But all of this ends at the grave. Anything “tangible” that we can imagine or hope for is, effectively, life-terminal. [Clearly the single biggest risk to living by faith is that it is possible, even common, to have faith in the wrong things. For most of the twentieth century millions of people gave their lives up to faith in Communism, a vision of an egalitarian society that ultimately proved to be false. And many of you may remember the tragedy that befell the followers of David Karesh some years ago because of their faith in his vision for the future.] So the question for us is not whether people can live by faith. Many obviously do. It is a matter of what faith we will live by. To live by faith in God through Jesus Christ is to choose to live in the dogged belief that the “kingdom of God” is real, both now “present” and yet still “unfolding.” It is more than merely “present,” it is also a vision of something better than the present life we now have and (perhaps) enjoy. If the “sure things” of this life are hopeless, the “sure thing” that Jesus offered the world is, by contrast, eternally hopeful. It is, as the Apostle Paul states, the stubborn and steadfast belief that nothing in this life, not even death itself, can separate us from the love of God. Interestingly, every kingdom’s “sure thing” is only sure if its premise is true. If all of life consists of what we have and hold here (in our short time on earth), then the only sure thing in life is death. If Jesus is right, then life by the faith he revealed has unending hope. Looked at this way, it shouldn’t surprise us that many would choose to live by Jesus’ “sure thing.” But is Christian faith, perhaps, just “wishful thinking”? From the perspective of a terminal world, the answer must always be, “yes, perhaps.” It is, however, the foretaste of this “better kingdom” that we receive in Jesus Christ that compels us, contrary to all present evidence, to believe. Once the grace and goodness of God are experienced first hand, it is difficult to go back to living a life without any hope. Today’s sermon title is “borrowed” from one of the better “teen love” movies now often played on the “free” movie channels. The movie is not the least bit Christian (and, in fact, I would not suggest allowing young children to see it), but it winds up making a very “Christian” point. Love, once truly experienced, brings with it a hope of “something better” that transcends the other “sure things” we have in life, even though love is, in itself, a most fragile hope. The “sure thing” in the movie is a (blond) girl in California of certain easy virtue. The story is about two college students who can’t stand each other but are fated to travel together from the east to the west coast, mostly hitchhiking. They, of course, fall in love, but the girl is already engaged to a nice safe nerd who is in school in California (her “sure thing”), and the boy continues on with his appointed date with the aforementioned blond goddess. The climatic end of the movie comes when an essay by the boy about his “sure thing” experience is read in class in the presence of the girl he now knows he loves. He recounts that just before the “point of commitment” the California girl looked into his eyes and asked, “Do you love me?” And that is the undoing of it all. She is a “sure thing,” but now only in the most limited and diminished sense. He has experienced genuine love, he knows what really “loving” somebody means, and this now pales in comparison. So, contrary to the present “best evidence” of what is real and what is not, what he can have and what he cannot, he walks away from the California “sure thing” with no certainty whatsoever that the girl he loves will have him. He willingly rejects the “sure thing” that he now has because, for all its risk and uncertainty, he has found a far more “sure” thing – someone he truly loves. Faith in the eternal love of God in Jesus Christ may be, from the vantage point of this dying life, only a wistful hope. But once we experience God’s love, it becomes the surest thing we can ever know.

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