I don’t usually go in to the church on Fridays, but last Friday I was there to meet a couple named Billy and Liz McCullough. Billy and Liz are from
Northern Ireland and they are visiting the area indulging Billy’s special
interest: Francis Makemie.
That’s a name that is very familiar in our region of the world. Francis Makemie is known as the founder of several churches on the Delmarva Peninsula, including ours. We all claim our founding
date in 1683, because that is the year Francis Makemie arrived on our shores. He was
invited to come here by Colonel William Stevens, who was an Episcopalian living
in Somerset County.
Makemie was apparently a good organizer, because he traveled among the Scots-Irish communities, who were all Presbyterian, and helped them
organize into congregations. Later, he helped organize the first presbytery in
America in Philadelphia.
He was also, I’m guessing, quite the diplomat. The Scots-Irish,
I’ve been told, were rather belligerent by nature. It was an ethnic group born
in conflict, and never seeming to escape it. As a result, they were fairly
suspicious of others, including other Scots-Irish communities. I am sure they
were not easy to organize. But Makemie managed to do it.
So as I sat down to think about this well-known passage on the meaning
of faith from the letter to the Hebrews, Francis Makemie was on my mind. He was
clearly a man well-grounded in faith. And being well-grounded, he was
constantly on the move.
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not
see. These words from Hebrews 11 are just about as familiar as any words of
scripture. They tell us, very succinctly, two things: Faith is assurance and
conviction. Faith assures us we are on solid ground and gives us the conviction
needed to take action. Faith is both comfort and passion, solace and purpose.
Because of this, faith is not passive. Faith acts.
And the letter to the Hebrews takes us backward to show us this. We go
on a stroll through our history to remember those individuals who were so
instrumental in building the structures of our faith. Abraham and Sarah set out
from their home, the land of their ancestors, because they were called by the
voice of God to do so. They traveled toward a place they did not know – not
only was this all uncharted territory for them, they literally did not know what
the game plan was. They simply journeyed on by stages, trusting in God to show
them the way forward, every step of the way.
Abraham and Sarah followed the call of God through barren wildernesses
and lands in which they were the aliens, the strangers. Places where their
lives were at risk.
Abraham and Sarah followed a promise. A hope. They did not see God, nor
did they see the land God promised them. They did not see the promised
generations that would be as many as the stars in the sky, as many as the grains of sand on the shore. But they, and all
those who followed them – Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Samuel, David,
and many others – acted by faith born out of hope.
This chapter of the letter is a recitation of the faith hall of fame. I
can picture all these men and women walking into a packed stadium like
olympians, doing a slow victory lap around the track while we cheer and
express our appreciation for the part they played. We are thankful for them all
– not just the giants of scripture, but all the church fathers and mothers, all
the way through our history, including Francis Makemie, who organized Wicomico
Presbyterian Church, which has stood as a place of worship for well over 300
years now.
There is something really cool about having such a long history. It
means we have a special story. It is an important part of who we are. Yet,
there is a danger of letting this special story overshadow everything else.
There is a real risk that we will let this special story become the end of our
story – instead of the pattern for our story.
The narrative in Hebrews shows us how each of these amazing individuals
– Abraham, Sarah, and all the others – lived in faith, acted courageously for
the sake of the promise of God. And it shows us how they died in faith, never
having received the promises, but only seeing them from a distance. Each one of
these heroes of the faith played a small part in the story.
We are a part of this story of faith – the assurance of things hoped
for, the conviction of things not seen. And if we look to these men and women
we read about in the scriptures, what do we see? If we look to these men and
women we see in the history books, what do we learn?
How do the faithful actions of Abraham and Sarah and Francis Makemie create
a pattern for us to follow? In venturing out for new places, not knowing what
they would encounter nor what would be expected of them, how do they guide us?
Francis Makemie had a religious conversion as a young man. While at
Glasgow University as a student, he experienced the call to become a minister.
He was ordained in West Ulster, Ireland in 1681 and almost immediately was
called as a missionary to America. Like Abraham, he was sent out
to a place he did not know.
Unlike Abraham, I suppose, he did know something about his mission, and
he went at it with zeal. He learned the territory, he adapted to the local
customs, and he left his mark here. The Makemie name lives on here on the Eastern
Shore.
After his work here, he traveled up and down the Atlantic coast from New
York to North Carolina. In New York he was arrested for preaching without a
license. Presbyterians were not especially welcome there. Makemie spent two
months in jail and endured a trial – which he won, but at great expense. His
case would later become known as a landmark case in the fight for religious
freedom in America, something written into our constitution that most Americans
are fiercely proud of.
Now, more than 300 years later, the Makemie Churches remain. They have
moved from one building to another to another, but are still serving the
communities in which they were established. This vast continent has been
covered from shore to shore with transplants like Makemie, who have planted
churches of all kinds.
Now in this place, more than 300 years later, religious freedom is
something we have come to take for granted. It’s hard for us to imagine a time
when Baptists and Congregationalists and Episcopalians and Catholics fought
with each other. We don’t need to fight anymore. And we don’t need to set out
for new unknown places anymore.
Does this mean the journey of faith is over? As the Apostle Paul would say, by no means!
We may not have to journey across physical distances now, but the church
is traveling through uncharted territory, nonetheless. We are journeying through
wilderness every day, where the things we always did before somehow make less
sense now. Maybe we’re sad about that. Maybe we miss those old days when things
made more sense, when the world made more sense to us.
But we owe it to the ancestors of our faith to keep moving forward. We
need to follow the pattern they created for us: move forward through the
wilderness, courageously, decisively, boldly. We must be willing to make
mistakes just as Abraham did and Makemie did. We must be willing to do this all
for the sake of the gospel.
The letter to the Hebrews says that these ancestors of the faith were
foreigners on earth, seeking a better land, a heavenly land. We too are seeking
this better land –
A land where all of God’s people will be at home, where children will
not be separated from their parents.
A land where weapons are no longer useful but, as Isaiah says, swords
are beaten into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks.
A land where there is bread enough for all, and all receive their daily
bread.
This is the land the scriptures tell us about. This is the promise of
God, that all our heroes of the faith have journeyed toward. None of them got
there; they only saw it from a distance. We, too, may only see it from a
distance. But we journey on
Through uncharted territory.
The church always has something to move toward, something to fight for
in this world.
Photo: Francis Makemie Statue at Presbyterian Historical Society. By Smallbones - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32095000
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