A sermon preached by the Revd Dr Trevor Jamison at
Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, North Shields, August 10th 2025
Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40
Owing to a technical fault, this service was not livestreamed
Several years ago, back in the very early 1980s, when I was a student at university in Belfast, I would have to visit one of the university’s administration offices on an occasional basis. On the wall behind the counter, which you approached in order to speak to the staff, there hung a framed poster. As I remember it, the image was of the sun shining, and it was accompanied by some text. And this read, ‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’
I don’t know that in these more secular times, and with a greater awareness of the sensitivities of how what you display in a public space might affect others, that university staff would get away with having a poster with a biblical text on show. For ‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ certainly is a biblical text. I recognised it as such at the time, though I would not have been able to quote you chapter and verse. I’m able to do so today, of course, not because my biblical knowledge has improved since then, though hopefully it has done so, but because it’s the opening verse in one of today’s Bible readings.
Hebrews 11:1 – ‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ People like us – people who acknowledge the label, “Christian” – are people of faith. But what is faith?
Well Hebrews 11:1 gets us off to a good start in answering that question: ‘Faith,’ we’re told, ‘is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ It is about our deepest needs and desires – the things for which we hope – and our convictions about how these relate to God; to the moving, sustaining force of the universe who cannot be seen by us, at least not directly. God is made visible to us, however, through the way he has worked through individuals, whole peoples and events, including in stories told to us through the Bible, both in its Old and New Testaments.
In fact, in this passage from the anonymously authored Letter to the Hebrews we’re presented with a New Testament author telling us about faith in God by reflecting upon events narrated in the very first book of the Old Testament. If you want to know what the assurance of things hoped for and conviction of things not seen looks like, suggests the author of Hebrews, then read Genesis chapter twelve and an incident in the faith journey of Abram.
What was Abram’s deepest hope concerning which he needed assurance, and how would he be convinced concerning God who cannot be seen? His deepest hope was for a child who would be his heir, but he and his wife had had no children of their own, and now being in advanced years there seemed to be little prospect of it: ‘O Lord God, what will you give me for I continue childless … you have given me no offspring.’ (15:3)
Abram needs to be assured that God will bless him and his wife, Sarai, with a child, and so Abram is invited to contemplate the night time stars, of which, in an age before urban light pollution, they would have been visible to him in their thousands: ‘count the stars, if you are able to count them … so shall your descendants be.’ (15:5) Abram is assured – reassured – of God’s ability to bring forth a new life where it seems unlikely to happen. After all, if God can roll this whole carpet of stars out across the night sky, then anything is possible.
And the upshot of this assurance to Abram is his conviction that all will be well: ‘he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness’ (15:6), or as the Letter to the Hebrews puts it, ‘by faith our ancestors [Abram included and prominent among them] received approval.’ (11:2) “Righteousness” is God’s approval given to us – not necessarily because we deserve it, but because God graciously decides to bestow it upon us.
So then, ‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,’ but such faith should not be reduced down being only something that you know in your head and feel in your heart, important though of all that is. It’s also about what you do, what actions you take as a result of this assurance from and convictions about God. And the writer of Hebrews makes that clear in the verses that follows, by remembering and reflecting upon Jewish ancestors, including Abraham.
Abraham’s faith meant that he had to move home, up sticks, or pull up tent pegs and go travelling: ‘he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.’ (15:8) Faith was not just a matter of contemplating the stars and going, “wow, that’s amazing, there must be some purposeful, creative power behind all of this.” His conviction that God had promised him land and children meant that he had to get up and get going to a new place, not matter that it might inconvenience him, and perhaps make him look silly to others.
And the same sort of thing can be said about the faith that Christians hold. It does not usually call upon us to literally move home, though in my own case it has done so on ten occasions up to now … so you never know! Faith, however, if it is to be a full faith, does involve action, not just the intellect of one’s good feelings about God and one’s self. And finally, then, to be convinced of that, just look to at Jesus – the one who is the ultimate assurance of the things for which we hope – and consider the picture that he paints for us in today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel.
Faith, says Jesus, is not only about assurance of things hoped for, and convictions about divine things not seen, but is also about actions, and actions which are undertaken in the here and now. First, he assures his followers: ‘Do not be afraid, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’ (12:32) Then he starts talking about actions in the here and now that relate to and have implications for you and the unseen heavenly realm: ‘Sell your possessions and give alms’ – support the poor – he says, and in doing so you will be making ‘purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven.’ (12:33)
And then Jesus presents all of that in the form of an illustration: be like servants awaiting the return of their master from a wedding banquet he says. Don’t just be sitting around, as though your status as servant of someone more important than yourself entitled you to feel good about yourself. Instead, be at work in the here and now, doing the things that your master wants to you to be doing, so that when he returns you have his approval – like God approved of Abraham’s faith – so much so that the master sits down to eat with you in your own special banquet.
‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ That’s what it said on a poster on a wall in an office some time around 1980. Whoever put that up on the wall intended to make a statement. I suppose they also hoped it would have an impact upon those who read it. It did upon me, though I very much doubt that they ever thought others, decades later and hundreds of miles away, would get to hear about it in a sermon preached forty-five years later!
Yes, ‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,’ a faith that leads to action, action in the here and now, including help for others; an unfailing treasure in heaven. May God enable us all to know and practise such faith. Amen.