My Feral Faith
Hebrews 11:29-12:2, Psalms 80:8-19
Our across-the-street neighbor in Birmingham is a kind woman, a retired professor and department chair, a lover of poetry, a devoted Quaker who meets the world with peace and compassion. One of her morning rituals includes setting out a bowl of cat food and water for the feral cats in the neighborhood. When she went out of town, she recruited her neighbors to come refill the bowls each early morning. And we said yes not because we loved the cates, but because we loved Ms. Nancy. Now, if these had been her pets, I wouldn’t have questioned it at all. Pets kind of have a contract, right? When you adopt them (formally or informally), you agree to feed them and water them and keep their vaccinations up to date. Our dog has several other stipulations written into his contract and he reminds us often when we are not fulfilling them.
There’s no contract with the feral cats. They’re feral. They show up or they don’t. There’s food or there’s not. Would it be so bad if the feral cats forged for their own food a few days? Isn’t that what it means to be feral? Living in a state of wildness; anything that is untamed, or savage in nature, aggressive or uncontrolled. You might hear someone use feral to describe a disease, or a creature with a feral snarl, feral teeth, feral instincts. “Who do these feral children belong to?”
This week when I saw a written piece titled, My Feral Faith, I was intrigued having never seen that word used to describe one’s faith. It made me consider the meaning of the word, feral, with more intent. It’s meaning not just wild and untamed, but more accurately used to describe something that was previously domesticated, house-trained, broken-in.
The writer volunteers that his faith, once tame and housebroken, is now wandering loose, creeping through the shadows, avoiding house and town, purposefully hiding from God. He is proud of his wayward independence and is enjoying being invisible from the One who watches over all.
It happens doesn’t it? A perfectly domesticated faith runs off when it gets tested or tempted or tired. Like a house-cat that leaps for an open door to escape. Friends, your faith may feel feral and untamable or it may feel fragile. Your ancestors in faith experienced the same hardships, set-backs. They were not unblemished faith warriors. They had feral and faithful reputations. They just stuck with God, kept trusting that what had been promised would come to be. And God promised them something better than they could have imagined.
In our scripture today, the Preacher continues to parade a succession of heroes and heroines of faith before his audience. He reminds them of their ancestors and Moses who were delivered from the Egyptians by crossing of the Red Sea. He reminds them how the walls of Jericho fell when the faithful trusted God and marched around them for seven days. Then curiously, the Preacher includes Rahab in the list. This primarily Jewish Christian audience remembers that she is not only a prostitute, but a Gentile, an outsider in every way. She literally lived in a dwelling built into the outside wall of her city. But even she trusted in the Not Yet promises of God. Rahab trusts God before she is permitted to live among the people of God – at a time when she believes that she could be killed when the Hebrew armies come to take her city. Hers is a tremendous act of faith which is why she is included in this litany of saints and also why her name is one of only five women included in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus.
After talking about Rahab, the preacher claims that if he had more time, he might go on and on. And in typical preacher fashion, he does. Citing a list of characters who trusted in God and led the people of Israel. Is he improvising in the pulpit? Perhaps. Is that how he gets Samson’s and Jephthah’s names in there? Because those two have some explaining to do. Or does he throw in those names to remind his hearers that despite having made choices with tragic consequences, they were still included in the Hebrews’ lineage of faith?
You know what that means for us? That there is room for feral followers, like us, in God’s not yet Kingdom. The verses continue with both stories of success and of gruesome acts of violence and torture that many were subjected to for their faith. All these heroes were lauded for their faith even while they didn’t live to see the promises of God fulfilled in their lifetime. But the assurance of Hebrews is that they WILL receive something BETTER. When the preacher says, “better,” his hearers know he is talking about Jesus. In ch. 1, he said Jesus was “better than the angels.” Jesus introduces a “better hope” and a “better covenant” in ch. 7; “better promises” in ch. 8; sealed with “better sacrifices” in ch. 9 and all of this allows us to possess an inheritance from God that is “better” (ch. 10).
It’s all building up to the climax of his message:
Imagine, running into an Olympic arena… Your outer layer soaked with rain and sweat…you finally get to peal it off for the final lap. You can run unencumbered. The stands are filled with all these saints, the triumphant victors named in Heb. 11, plus the apostles, the men and women of the early church and everyone who has cheered you on in your faith journey. Everyone in your faith family who has gone on before you rises to their feet, cheering. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of faith… Fix your eyes on Jesus, the one who knows the suffering and hardship of this life better than anyone, is beckoning you forward.
Two people in that cloud of witnesses who understand keeping the faith in the brutality of the race are Howard Thurman and his grandmother. Thurman tells of her remarkable faith that sustained her through her childhood as a slave. What she and other slaves discovered through faith was that [quote]“the bitter contradictions of life are not final and that hope was built into the fabric of the struggle. This meant to them that the [tragedy of their lives as slaves that had been thrust upon them] could not be separated from the God in whom their ultimate trust was placed.” Hope is woven into the fabric of the struggle. They transmitted this “secret” to their children, he says. They didn’t have the luxury of a feral faith. They fixed their eyes on Jesus and trusted in the not yet Kingdom even though their lives were not even their own!
More people who are running the race and trying to keep the faith are –
Rick and Ellen Burnett who serve as field personnel with CBF in Immokalee, FL (N. Fort Myers). Weatherly supports the Burnetts for many reasons, but one of those is because Huntsville is Ellen’s hometown. In Immokalee, the Burnetts run an organization (Cultivate Abundance) that is addressing what they call an “ironic food insecurity problem” because it’s a farming town. Rick writes, Since August 1, our community, population approximately 25,000, comprised mostly of Mexican, Haitian, and Guatemalan migrants who harvest most of the United States' wintertime tomatoes, has been occupied by various law enforcement agencies, often pulling over vans full of workers and detaining unknown numbers, even those with visas and work permits. The entire community is traumatized, with many afraid to leave their homes to work or go to the market. As this contributes to even more food insecurity, the efforts of Cultivate Abundance and Misión Peniel to address local food insecurity are even more necessary. But under these conditions, it's even risky for their local volunteers to come help. Rick said this week, “We wouldn't blame our team members and volunteers for not showing up at the Misión Peniel garden. But yesterday, they were there, taking some risk to help make certain that their neighbors will have food each Friday.”
There are communities of neighbors who are living in fear right here in Huntsville. Our LGBTQ loved ones and ESL students don’t have the luxury of a feral faith. They’re wondering if they can continue to live and work consistently in places like Alabama. The struggle is real for them. And as people who want to be known for love and concern for our neighbors, we don’t have the luxury of a feral faith either. We have to continue to transmit the message of hope and trust in the not yet Kingdom. It’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon. And we must fix our eyes on Jesus and keep running this race. Amen.