God’s Love Leads Us Forward (In Faith)

Given by Rev. Kelly Nieman Anderson
Sunday, August 17, 2025

Powerful stuff in today’s readings. After all, in every reading we heard today, even in the psalm, there are harsh words – words of demand and division … words of discipline and determination. Because of that, I think it’s important to start with a clear reminder: none of the words about behavior and discipline has to do with whether or not God will keep loving us. God’s love is a given. God always loves us. God will keep loving us.

God’s love is the foundation of scripture, and that Jesus’ ministry was a demonstration of God’s love for us. Because God loves us, God wants the very best for us, and so the Bible includes descriptions of God’s vision of how we should live, as beloved people. In today’s scriptures, despite all of the harsh words, we are reminded that God’s love leads us forward in faithfulness.

The author of Hebrews compared “faithfulness” to running a race, but for me, it’s more like constantly maintaining an older building.

Our current home is in an older building that requires a lot of maintenance. There’s a long list of what’s been done before, and there’s a long list of what I still need to do to maintain the house. Sometimes, all this work feels like a marathon of patience and perseverance.

Yet, despite all of that… I still have faith that my house will still be standing when I get home. And, I still keep doing the things needed to improve it.

I’m not sure where all this confidence comes from, exactly. I don’t know who built my house. I don’t know who lived in it before me. I’m not sure how long I’ll live there or who will live there after me. I’ve never seen the foundations or building plans – and even if I did, I wouldn’t understand them. Still, I have confidence that my house will be there when I get home – in exactly the same way I left it this morning.

Many of you likely have a similar faith in your home as I do. Or, perhaps, this beautiful church building is like that for you. It might need work, and it might be full of quirks, but for most of us, we have complete faith that our house or apartment or condo or church or office or school will basically remain standing securely for a while.
Even when a professional technician uses some harsh words to explain what part of the building has gone wrong – or might go wrong in the future – we don’t question the entire foundation or assume the whole thing is going to fall apart. Our foundation of faith is built on God’s love, and that doesn’t change, even with the harsh words of today’s scriptures.

But, these scriptures do clearly explain that there are expectations about how we live, as people connected to God’s foundation of love. So, we need to make choices about our life of faith. We either choose the actions which will lead to love and peace and wholeness in the future… or we don’t. When we’re making those decisions about what to do next, it can be helpful to remember what other people chose to do in the past.

In our lives of faith, we also need reminders of what other faithful people did in the past. The Bible is full of stories about faithful people who trusted in God’s promises, despite their past failures and despite their present obstacles, and despite uncertain futures. These heroes weren’t commended because they were perfect. These heroes were commended because they had faith that God’s love leads us forward even when their own circumstances were challenging or even hopeless.
One of the Biblical heroes listed in Hebrews is a woman named Rahab. Unfortunately, like the rest of the scripture readings today, the slightly harsh language used to describe her can lead us to overlook the ways in which God’s love lead her forward in faith.

Rahab was born as a Canaanite during a time when the Hebrews were trying to destroy Caanan in order to enter the space they called the “promised land”. Rahab was an unmarried innkeeper during a time when all working women were called “prostitutes”. In the history of the Hebrew people, Rahab is an outsider and an outlier. Yet, she is listed in the long line of faithful heroes – and also in the long line of Jesus’ direct ancestors – because she chose to follow that Hebrew God.

Rahab’s choice must not have been easy. One day, Hebrew spies came into her inn, trying to learn as much as they could about Jericho, the city where she lived, so that their military could destroy her city. For some reason, she trusted those spies -and she stood against the authorities of her own country, hoping that the God of the Hebrews would offer her and her family a better life. For some reason, those spies she had trusted kept their promise to her, and when the Hebrew military destroyed Rahab’s city, she and her family were all protected. Even though the Hebrews believed that Rahab and her family were spiritually “unclean”, they soon welcomed Rahab and her entire family into their nation, and their families, and their homes. Eventually, she is listed as an ancestor of Jesus and then commended for her faith.

But I expect that choosing God’s side was not an easy choice for Rahab. To choose something that went against her culture, her nationality, her language, her religion, all to put her hopes on a God she’d only heard about and two people she barely knew… well, she definitely did showcase extreme faith for God’s love to lead her forward to a new life.

There are a lot of faithful people like Rahab in every time and place. God calls normal people like us, with all of our strengths and weaknesses, in spite of (or maybe because of) our successes and failures, to simply “run the race of faith”. Even when we are making good choices, and even when we rely on solid foundations, this broken world still sends division and sorrow. At those times, we rely on others in the community to support us.

In our lives of faith, we trust that God’s love leads us forward, and we rely on each other to make the choices now which lead to God’s abundant life later. Even when scary, sad, or sinful things happen, people of faith continue to choose God’s side – the side of love, and peace, and holiness, and wisdom. And, because we are confident in God’s love for us, people of faith try to do the things which align with God’s vision for us.

Choosing God’s way of love looks and sounds and feels different for everyone, but we are still surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. Perhaps a co-worker is showing love to all sorts of people, even when most everyone there is back-biting and fighting and disrespectful. Maybe a neighbor is using their time and resources to fight for justice and opportunities for all, even when it so often seems as if inequality and oppression keeps winning. What if you are called to bring God’s love into a family or classroom or team which is desperate for openness and honesty?

Faith is not immunity from suffering. Faith accompanies us amidst our suffering and then transforms it, in time, to resurrection. All of the obstacles along the way can feel like running a marathon – or maintaining an older building.
The old house we love has a lot of broken pieces. In order to fix them, we first had to “break” or tear down a lot of what was there before, and the process was uncomfortable and messy. But, because we knew our foundation was solid, we kept making the touch choices to transform our house into a healthy, safe, and peaceful home.

I believe that with encouragement from other faithful people, we can make similar tough choices in our lives of faith. When we struggle, we will re-read and re-tell the stories of God’s faithfulness, and we will encourage one another to keep choosing God’s side. Together, God’s love will transform us, and God’s love will transform the world through us. Together, we trust that God’s love leads us forward in faith until such time as we are in heaven, rejoicing with all the cloud of witnesses who went before us.