Readings: Jeremiah 23:23–29; Psalm 82; Hebrews 11:29–12:2; Luke 12:49–56

“By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land,” the letter to the Hebrews celebrates, but just a few sentences later, the honor roll of faith continues, matter-of-factly: “Others were tortured, refusing to accept release. They suffered mocking and flogging, chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword….”

Faith in the invisible, promising God is not a work, not an accomplishment, not a reason for pride or self-satisfaction — but it involves staggering stakes and begets momentous consequences. Faith is not innocuous, private, or “safe,” because the God whom we believe is infinitely bigger than our imaginations and uncontrollably beyond our expectations.

Yet this God comes to us, speaks to us, gives to us, in word and music, in bread and wine, in the face of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. God whom no one can see and live, to whom the wrath of nations is as the morning mist, brings us into his own Father-Son-and-Spirit liveliness. It’s dangerous country, that land of the Trinity; it will not leave us unchanged. But it’s where we’re supposed to go, what we’re meant to be.