02.10 | Jump
Hebrews 11:17-40
‘By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son…’
Hebrews 11:17
It was enough to make any preacher feel the pressure.
My dad, a young vicar at the time, had set it all up perfectly. The illustration was one about faith — faith in the character of the Father. He’d got the stepladder ready at the front of church, prepped my older sister when she should come up, climb the ladder, and throw herself backwards into his arms. And yet, presumably somewhere between growing sense as to the dangers of jumping off ladders backwards, and a five-year-old’s stage fright, she was sat on the front row, refusing to budge.
My dad, his brain whirring for some theological point to squeeze out of this scenario, was then interrupted, as three-year-old me ran to the front, climbed the ladder, and jumped off, with my dad (without warning) just about making the catch.
I don’t claim much credit for this. I do remember that a favourite game at this age was jumping down the stairs for him to catch me, and so I was well practised in the art.
But the story has stuck with me. Because faith, at some point, has to jump.
This goes against the grain. For our pluralistic, individualistic culture has so privatised faith, to make it something of intellect or privatised ideas. Faith, our culture implies, is what you (privately) think. It is reduced to nothing more than your personal practices and your internal views. But we get edgy when we hear of people doing things about their beliefs. That sounds extreme. That sounds disturbing. That sounds fanatical.
Hebrews is almost comedically offensive to this viewpoint. The faith of those mentioned here is wild. It is proclaiming future blessings from a deathbed and abandoning fame and prestige for the afflicted. It is walls falling by marching priests with trumpets, prostitutes abandoning her city in favour of a people named after the Living God. It is prisoners facing lions and warriors chasing down enemies. It is people giving up their very lives. It is a child of promise on an altar.
This is not the faith of the privatised and the tidy. This is not the faith of introspection and naval-gazing. This is the faith that acts, gives up, risks, sacrifices, advances, and even dies. Because faith cannot be faith if it it is not activated by doing. Faith jumps.
One example defines today’s list: Abraham. As he bound Isaac and tied him to that altar, it is impossible to know the emotions that ran through him. The bewildering nature of this command. A despicable act that must have challenged his belief in the goodness of God to his very core. And yet, Abraham’s obedience, we are told, was built on something. It was built on trust in the promise of a future through Isaac. Abraham could only act in faith through confidence that God is so faithful to His word that not even death could interrupt it. Abraham jumped. And in doing so, he was set free from his vocation becoming his idol.1 In doing so, he established a culture of radical faith in his family, that would set the tone of a nation. And in doing so, on a mountain called Moriah that would later become a city called Jerusalem, he enacted a kind of faith-fuelled obedience that looked like the sacrifice of a son. The true Son, as He hung on that same hill many, many years later, perfecting those perfect promises.
Sometimes things look hard. Take courage. Sometimes we do not understand the path. Be assured: the Father sees your every breath. For our role in this moment is not always understanding. It is not necessary comfort, clarity, or serenity of circumstances.
It is merely faith. The readiness to take the next step, in confidence in the nature of the Father and His faithfulness to His words.
Because, faith, my friends, jumps.
Reflect:
What does acting in line with my faith look like today?
Pray:
Father,
I believe.
And yet,
I have sometimes lived as if
To believe means nothing more than
To theorise.
Father,
I step a little further today into the way called Faith—
Where your reality and your word
Do not remain closeted and hidden,
But manifests into the material:
Into words and choices and sacrifice and sound—
That here,
In this place of the jump,
I may truly know
The arms of my Father.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
2 Chronicles 8-9 | Psalm 116
Tim Keller beautifully examines this idea in his book, Counterfeit Gods
Reminds of a great book called “Love Does” by Bob Goff. 😊