sermons
Summer of Community
What Keeping the Faith Looks Like
Steve Watson
Jun 07, 2026
At the start of this year, I spent some time paying attention to my dreams for this church community. And as I was listening, and praying, and reflecting, three phrases came to mind again and again.
That all of us who want to can find a community of care and trust here.
That each of us and our community can grow to be more and more resilient.
And that we’ll all find the help we need to keep the faith in hard times.
Community of care and trust. Resilience. And keeping the faith.
I started the year with those as my biggest hopes for us. Still true now.
And so when I took some time this week to wonder what I would say to you today in my sermon, a fun thing happened.
The sermon I’d had in my mind just went flat. Maybe I’m not ready to preach it yet. Maybe now’s not the right time. I don’t know. But when I tried to focus on the idea I’d had in mind, I just knew it wasn’t going to happen.
So I did a thing I don’t do very often, but that now and then we do at Reservoir in the summertime when we don’t have these teaching series we picked. I went to what’s called the lectionary. The lectionary is the preplanned cycle of Bible reading and teaching for the global church. The basic idea is that it walks you through a lot of the Bible every one to three years. And in a lot of more formal, more traditional church traditions, preachers and pastors like me don’t just get to pick what we want to preach on. We’re supposed to preach from these pre-planned texts, set by a committee generations ago.
Anyway, I went to the lectionary and what did I find this week, but several different scriptures that all explore the meaning and the practice of keeping the faith. They explore what faith is and what it isn’t. And they give some direction and some inspiration on what keeping the faith looks like, and why that can be so valuable.
So I thought: how serendipitous, that I get to teach today on one of my big dreams for us all – for help in keeping the faith.
The first passage is a big moment in the first book of the Bible, Genesis. It says:
Genesis 12:1-3, 9 (Common English Bible)
12 The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you.
2 I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
those who curse you I will curse;
all the families of the earth
will be blessed because of you.”9 Then Abram set out toward the arid southern plain, making and breaking camp as he went.
So Abram, later called Abraham, and his partner Sarah, are considered the father and mother of faith in three great religious traditions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. No one pretends they would have been the first people to trust or worship God or the gods. Or the first family to try to discern and follow the wisdom of their creator.
But in the story of Genesis, they represent a new beginning of how we live and partner together, human and divine. And in the traditions of our religion, they’ve become a kind of archetype – a model, an inspiration – of faith.
So it’s interesting and important to look at the stories of their lives and notice what faith is and what it isn’t for them. Genesis, and the teachings in the New Testament that look back on it, have very little to say about what they named God, or the things people believed to be true about God and God’s world.
Faith for the father and mother of faith was not about the various facts and theories they held to be true. It was about taking a step forward in God’s direction, as best as they knew that direction.
Abram and his family think it’s time to leave home. To pack lightly, to travel through a desert wilderness, in search of a better land and a better life, where things can happen in them and in their descendants that will bless this whole earth.
It’s a story of exile and immigration, a story of hope and loss and trust, a family story – but not a private one, but one for the common good. And it’s a story about what faith looks like.
The faith of the ancestors is not about what facts or theories we believe to be true. It is about taking a step forward in God’s direction, as best as we know that direction today.
Faith is way less signing off on statements and beliefs, and way more about moving forward one step, one day at a time, in trust.
Last Sunday, over dinner at our community group, we were having a conversation about whether or not you’d had times in your life where with a big decision, you just knew in your gut exactly who or what you should choose.
And some of us had stories like this and some of us not so much.
But the one that came to mind for me was the time I knew that Grace and I were going to buy her childhood home and move in with her parents there.
This had not been part of my life vision board. Not at all. Grace’s folks owned an old two family home. They were aging and had some needs. And she’d brought up this idea with me. And I was like – no thank you. I didn’t really like the house or the neighborhood. We were living somewhere else we liked and where we imagined we could raise children. And, I don’t know, for white people these days, it’s not a thing to live with your parents or your in-laws.
I mean, maybe it’s a thing if you have to, but it’s not a thing you would choose. At least not for me. And Grace was cool with my lack of interest in this.
But one afternoon, I went for a run, and near the end, this obscure Bible passage from the stories of the life of Jesus came to mind. It’s s a story about our money and our resources and what we do with them, and a story that has connections to how we honor our parents, and what good and bad religion look like. And as it came to mind, I just knew in my gut that God was bringing this story to mind and that today, it was about Grace and me and her parents and the reasons we should buy their house and move in there with them.
I mean: I just knew it. Like this was a call, like it was meant to be. And I told Grace about it and she was like: that checks, sounds good. Let’s do it. And so we did. More than 20 years ago.
Honestly, I’ve looked back on that choice with mixed feelings. I’m not always sure if it’s worked out for us. The finances of the purchase were complicated and costly. It’s an old house, and there are times when fixing it up has felt like a money pit. The living in that community and living with in-laws has been … complicated. There have been some headaches. I still think: I wouldn’t have chosen this on my own.
But when I shared this perspective with our group, Grace was like: no regrets. She’s had the same complications I have. It wasn’t a choice she was looking to make, but an act of filial piety. But she knows we were moving in faith – taking a step in God’s direction, as best as we could see it. So she said:
I think we’ve been rewarded. Not with money or anything, but in a deeper way. I think it was a good thing to do and God’s honored our faith.
And I like to believe Grace is right – not just for us, but for all of us.
In my daily prayers, I actually remember Abraham and Sarah’s names, and the names of all the other founding fathers and mothers in the book of Genesis.
I do that for a lot of reasons – to remember that me and everyone I love are part of a bigger story, to remember that just like them, we don’t have to be certain about anything or even have it all sorted out what we believe. But because God is good, God’s vision is to love and bless us. And that’s not just a promise for me and mine, but it’s bigger than that too. God wants to bless and love me and mine and all of us together. God’s invested in beautiful personal and small stories that are part of a mosaic of beautiful collective and large stories for all of creation.
And faith looks like trusting this is so. And trusting the best way I can try to live today like that is true.
And all of that is good and pleasing and beautiful and holy.
Trust is beautiful.
Trying is beautiful, no matter what happens.
And small beginnings are beautiful too, even when we don’t know the ending.
I was talking with one of you this week, and you said you are so grateful that you can be part of this church and have no idea whether or not you think the stuff in the Bible and the facts and beliefs that are part of this religion are true. And you talked about how not knowing whether a bunch of stuff is real or true, you find it helps you make meaning of your life and the world week after week, and it anchors and inspires and holds you in good ways.
And I love that honest reflection. Because I think this too is what faith looks like, that whatever you think you believe to be true, you try to take steps forward in God’s direction, as best as you know that direction today.
Alright, two more things I want to say about keeping the faith.
The second passage from the lectionary readings, we’ll take two little parts of. They’re both from Matthew’s stories of the life of Jesus.
Matthew 9:9-12 (Common English Bible)
9 As Jesus continued on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at a kiosk for collecting taxes. He said to him, “Follow me,” and he got up and followed him.
10 As Jesus sat down to eat in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners joined Jesus and his disciples at the table.
11 But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
12 When Jesus heard it, he said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do.
13 Go and learn what this means: I want mercy and not sacrifice. I didn’t come to call righteous people, but sinners.”
Here Jesus is pulling together his quirky little school, his first small band of followers that will grow into the Jesus movement. And he picks this person Matthew that nobody likes. To the Romans, he’s this Jewish guy who’s good with numbers, and they look down on his culture and think he’s a loser, but they use him to collect their taxes and run their empire. And to the Jews, he’s a sell out and a traitor – a mark of shame on their culture and their family name.
Some of us know what it’s like for people to look down on us and disrespect us and underestimate us again and again.
And some of us know what it’s like for our religion or even for our family to hate, or to grieve that we are who we are.
Oh, what a heartbreak. What a horrible thing. People can be so cruel.
But Jesus calls bull on all this. He loves Matthew. He chooses and calls Matthew. And Matthew isn’t just love and chosen and included, he ends up with a book of the Bible named after him, and his name and the imagined renderings of his face show up on stained glass and art in millions of churches across the millennia.
Because isn’t God like this – to reverse our hasty judgments, and to take the ones who’ve been misunderstood and excluded and shamed and make them the cornerstones of something beautiful.
There’s this bit about the meaning of faith here too. A quote from the old prophet Hosea that Jesus makes the centerpiece of his teaching on faith.
Healthy people don’t need a doctor, the rest of us do.
God desires mercy, not sacrifice.
Faith is not about being good people: conformity to any particular standard of morality. And faith is not about being correct people, based on any particular understanding of the stuff you most believe or the way you need to look and live.
Faith is the hope that there is love and help and growth available for us, and for everyone else, and faith is about saying:
I’m in on that. I’ll take the love. I’ll take the help. With the help of God and friends: I’ll heal. I’ll grow.
I love that this teaching is happening on a day each month we set aside to name celebrations and griefs in our lives so we can be known and prayed for.
Because this day always reminds me just how amazingly wonderful and just how hard and painful life is. For all of us.
And we share parts of this together, knowing that the stuff we celebrate – what we name as blessings. We’re just thankful. It doesn’t mean we’re better people and it doesn’t mean that we’re more faithful or more rewarded when we celebrate. It’s just a gift, and we say: yes.
And the stuff that’s hard – the hurts, the losses, even our own missteps, it’s not a sign that there’s something wrong with us, or that we’re unchosen or ineligible, it’s just a reminder that life is hard sometimes, and we all need help. And that faith is hoping and believing that God loves us, and God has goodness and growth for us, even when things are hard.
Which brings me to the last thing I want to say. Which is that faith is hanging on all of this when it’s impossibly hard.
That bit about Matthew and mercy and and doctors and faith is immediately followed by a story of people reaching out to Jesus for help when things are impossibly hard – parents whose 12-year old kid is dying, and a woman who’s been so sick for 12 long years, that it almost feels like she’s dying.
And in both cases, Jesus is so tender and sweet. He calls them sons and daughters. And he helps them out, but then he acts that he’s not the one who’s done anything special at all.
Matthew 9:22 (Common English Bible)
22 When Jesus turned and saw her, he said, “Be encouraged, daughter. Your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed from that time on.
Your faith has healed you. Your faith has saved you.
I was in another community group years ago, where for a year we studied the book of the Bible that most uses this language about the saving power of faith. It’s a letter called Romans that talks about father Abraham and mother Sarah and how much faith means. And the more we studied it, the more it became clear to us – just like it has to so many scholars these days, that the faith it’s talking about isn’t believing all the right things, and it isn’t doing all the right things either.
We’re all sort of stumbling forward as best we can anyway, and God doesn’t care that much about how supposedly correct we think we are. No faith is about faithfulness, it’s about keeping the faith, it’s about hanging in and hanging on.
And that is one ingredient in what saves us.
Things are bad in our country right now, but what do we do with that? We can give up on it, and on the one hand, that’s fair. But if you give up on it and stick around, what do you have left?
Despair? Chronic fear and misery? Fighting for just yourself and your group, and saying: to hell with everyone else. We’ve tried all those things, and none of those help make for better lives for us and our descendants.
The only choice we’ve got if we care about that is to find some way to keep the faith, to hang on and hang in, and do our little parts to make a more perfect union, and to protect the rights and lives of those we love, and to try to do that in a way that protects the rights and lives of other folks too.
Whether any of us chooses to or not, I think being a faithful American calls for that.
American or not, hanging in with your country or not, this is some of what faith is:
- Faith is taking a step forward in God’s direction, as best as we know that direction.
- Faith is the hope that there is love and help and growth available for us, and for everyone else.
- And faith is hanging on and hanging in, even when things are impossibly hard.
It’s leaning into what’s good and true and beautiful, even when other people aren’t. It’s walking in the Way of Jesus, even when we don’t know how much difference it can make. It’s living like faith, hope, and love are good and real and true, and they matter still.
I still think that with the help of God and friends, that faith heals us. That faith still saves us.
Can we pray for that?