SUNDAY, MARCH 16 2025 - FAITHFULNESS
March 16, 2025
Deborah Laforet
“Faithfulness”
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by
your Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
Do you know the story of Abraham and Sarah? They are seen as the ones who started it
all, in the Christian faith, as well as the Jewish and Muslim faiths. God told Abraham and Sarah
to leave their home and travel to a new one. So they did. They packed up and left their family
and everything they had ever known to follow God’s call. This may not sound like a big deal,
but remember this was before instant communication and motorized travel. There was a distinct
possibility they would never see their families or go home again. To follow a call like this takes
trust, takes faith.
Last week we heard about God’s promise to never again destroy all creatures with a
flood. The sign of that promise was a rainbow. This week we hear another promise. God
promises Abram, who he renames Abraham, that he shall be the ancestor of a multitude of
nations. God promises that Abraham’s and Sarah's descendants will outnumber the grains of
sand in the desert and stars in the sky.
Now Abraham and Sarah were up there in years and they had no children, so they must
have wondered how God could make such a promise. If you’re interested, there are many stories
of Abraham’s and Sarah’s adventures, including Abraham pretending that Sarah was his sister
when they travelled through kingdoms because he was fearful of being killed so that Sarah could
be taken into the harems of kings. Interesting fella, Abraham.
After many years with still no children, Abraham and Sarah decided to take destiny into
their own hands and make the promise happen, by having Abraham impregnate a slave who
belonged to Sarah, whose child would then belong to Sarah. Stories like there are not only in our
bible but in our history books. The slave’s name, by the way, was Hagar. She gave birth to
Ishmael, who is the ancestor of the Islam nation, seen as a direct ancestor of the Prophet
Mohammed.
After this fiasco, God again promises Abraham that he and Sarah would have their own
child. This is the passage that Fred read for this morning. By this time, Abraham and Sarah
were in their nineties. When Abraham heard this promise he fell on his face and laughed. Later,
when Sarah heard, she also laughed and said, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old,
shall I have pleasure?” Sure enough, God kept the promise made to them, and Sarah gave birth
to a baby boy who they named, Isaac, which means, of course, ‘laughter.’
The story of Sarah and Abraham says a lot about faithfulness. In the Webster’s
dictionary, faithfulness is the quality of being loyal and steadfast. After reading these stories of
Abraham and Sarah, can we describe them as faithful, as loyal and steadfast, or is God the one to
be described as faithful, to Abraham and Sarah and their descendants. If it’s God who is
steadfast and loyal, not Abraham and Sarah, who struggle to understand God’s promises and trust
in those promises, what does it say to us about our attainability of faithfulness as a fruit of the
spirit for us?
As a church, this faith community and faith communities across our country, can be
compared to Abraham and Sarah in one aspect. Sarah and Abraham longed for children. I hear
this same longing in our churches. Where are the children? Why don’t they come to church?
Some churches bend over backwards to make it happen. They hire children and youth leaders,
they create weekday programming, they offer camps, and even, if all of these ideas succeed in
bringing children to church, people still grieve that the children don’t appear on Sunday
mornings for worship. Where are they? Why don’t they come? Not only do people fear for the
future of their church without young people being engaged, but they miss the presence of
children, of running feet, of high laughter and the free flow of tears, and the energy that young
people bring. They fear for the legacy of their churches and what it means as their community
shrinks and young people aren’t there to carry the burdens.
We’re lucky here at St. Paul’s. We actually have children and youth and their families
interested in joining us here on Sunday mornings and participating in the work of the church, but
they are still decidedly the minority, and can they keep the church going in twenty or thirty years
when our current base of members isn’t here anymore?
What does our faith tell us? Well, it does not tell us that young families shall always be
in church pews on Sunday mornings, or any other morning or day of the week. It does not say,
you shall always have a church building and will always have ways of maintaining and
sustaining these buildings. In fact, even when God directed the building of the great temple in
Jerusalem, there were times when that temple was destroyed and when the people had no access
to that temple, when people were exiled and when the land became occupied by a great empire.
God does not promise prosperity, stability, and comfort. What we are promised is that God will
be with us through it all.
• From the prophet Isaiah, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I
will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” (Isaiah
41:10)
• From the book of Deuteronomy: “It is the Lord who goes before you and will be with you,
and will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” (Deuteronomy 31:8)
• From the book of Joshua: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not
be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
(Joshua 1:9)
Some of you might be aware that we are in the season of Ramadan, when Muslim people
fast from sunrise to sunset. On Thursday, Oakville4Palestine met in our Friendship Room to
break their fast and they invited me to join them at the table. There were around 40 of us in that
room and we were all invited to introduce ourselves and share a little about why we were there.
I heard some very passionate and moving stories that night. One person talked about
bringing his family to Canada a few years ago because they couldn’t be safe in Gaza anymore.
He says now that his community and his former home are rubble. Others talked about previous
family members being removed from their homes during the Nakba in 1948. They talked about
the missing, the injured, and the dead in Palestine, and how many of them are children.
What stood out though was their hope and their faith that they would one day return to
their homeland. They talked about upcoming protests; a lawyer talked about their work with
people being stigmatized and sometimes fired from their jobs for speaking out; one person is
running for office in Mississauga. They mostly talked about how in January of 2024, they had
tried to speak to Town Council and the mayor had walked out on them. This event is what
brought them together. They went to that meeting as individuals or small groups, and came out
stronger, as one. Their faithfulness in the ability to one day be able to return home is what keeps
them fighting.
Faithfulness is hardest to hold onto when there is trauma, when there is struggle, when
there is loss, but this is also when we need it most. I have a phrase on a plaque in my office that
reads, “Leap and the net will appear.” It reminds me that I have to have to sometimes take risks
and have the faith that it will be all right, not that there won’t be suffering or instability, or
struggles, but that I’m surrounded by love, whether that be the love of God or love of family,
friends, and community. I’m never alone. That’s the net.
May we remember the loyal and steadfast love of God. May Christ be our example of
faithfulness in times of struggle. May we feel the Spirit always with us through the love of all
life on earth. May it be so. Amen.
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
(Introduce yourself. - Do not move or tap microphone.)
This week, we are again hearing a story from the first book in our bible, Genesis.
Last week we read about the first promise or covenant that God made to every
living creature and the rainbow that was a sign of that covenant. This week we
hear another promise, this time to two people and their descendants. I am reading
from chapter 17 of Genesis, verses one to seven and 15 to 16.
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to
him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. 2 And I will make
my covenant between me and you and will make you exceedingly numerous.”
3 Then Abram fell on his face, and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my
covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer
shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you
the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I
will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7 I will establish my
covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their
generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring
after you.
15 God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but
Sarah shall be her name. 16 I will bless her and also give you a son by her. I will
bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”
May the Spirit guide our understanding of this sacred scripture.