We hear a lot about faith today, and we become faithful by faithfulness, not by faithlessness, and there is the stumbling block for so many – there are things that we have to do or indeed not do in order to be faithful to the commands that God gave us – and these are of course underpinned by love, so it is by faithfulness to God that we encounter His love, and what He asks is that we understand His love through what He left us – the church, the scriptures, the Holy Ghost who gives life to those things. If there were an easier way, I would happily take it, but the feet of Him whose steps we follow did not themselves have it easy. Faithfulness, as anybody who has known love will tell you, requires commitment. Faith requires commitment.

Christians in the UK are having to face the reality that our numbers continue steadily to decline and society is no longer recognisably Christian in any meaningful sense. There are many factors that have contributed to this decline – the materialism of a wealthy society that can enslave the worse off with loans to buy rubbish that only the wealthy benefit from, a widespread amnesia about the nation’s Christian roots, the prevailing view that religion is a private matter – even among Christians who choose not to speak about their faith, the desire to be seen to be impartial in matters of religion and a consequent neglect of Christian teaching in schools – even Church schools - and an inertia on the part of many Christians when it comes to meeting the challenge posed by secularism. For this we are all to blame – from those who govern down to individual Christians.

All children, of whatever faith, deserve a thorough education in our Judaeo-Christian heritage if they are to understand our nation’s history and culture including our concept of human rights and duties to community, and we need to rediscover our own heritage of welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and working for justice and peace if we are to keep our Christian heritage – for it would be impossible to our forefathers to imagine bearing the name ‘Christian’ and not doing those things.

The second reading reminds us that faith was Jewish before it was Christian and indeed Abraham’s faith predates even the Jewish tradition. Abraham may have been an illiterate nomad but his faith in God was sure. It was the honest response of a human soul to his Creator. It was as pure as the response of fallen humanity can be and established a faithfulness and obedience to the world and call of God on which we also base our own hope, our own faith. His obedience was such that he was even willing to sacrifice his own son, Isaac, the very son through whom God would effect His promise. Isaac was as much the fruit of his mother’s faith as his father’s. Yet neither parent could have hoped to see the countless descendants that God had promised, that one day their ‘yes’, echoed and given a new life, a new Covenant by the ‘yes’ of Mary, would lead to a building in Blackpool wondering how we are to carry this on, how we keep the faith going – and the answer, we are told over and over again in the readings today, is to say ‘yes’ ourselves to the change and movement which comes to all who faithfully follow God and to have faith, even when things seen impossible. Maybe what we need to rediscover is the glorious liberty of not having to engrave plaques and stone with our names, but to live in such a manner that the Covenant of faithfulness is kept by us and those who follow us, Abraham, and his descendants forever.

Faith, hope and charity are the work of God’s Spirit within us. They are all connected and we should pray for an increase in all three. Just as Abraham recognized that his faith made demands of him, we must accept the demands being made of us – above all the demand to witness to Jesus Christ by what we say and do. The gospel is not just a reminder to act, but also a warning of the dangers of not acting on our faith. Much has been entrusted to us – in fact far more than was entrusted to Abraham. He will be the first to condemn us if we fail to witness to the truth that God has come to us in Jesus, to make His love for us visible and tangible. He will be the first to ask why he made the journey, and Mary to ask why she said ‘Yes’ and had faith to walk to the cross, and we who have been given all this, we have been so easy to lose it, to say ‘well, what can you do’. What can we do? Stay faithful, keep committed, keep loving the God who calls us and having the faith of Abraham and Sarah and Mary to leave our comfort and venture into the unknown and to the unknown where God is so often found.

We need solid grounds for believing in ourselves and grounds for genuine, lasting hope. We can only truly believe in ourselves if we first believe in God and in what His Son has promised to those who are faithful to Him. Now is the time to perfect our response to His great love for us. For those who are faithful to Jesus Christ there truly is no need to be afraid of where the journey will take us, for it will end in Him, the source of our hope and our longing, our love and our commitment. He is always faithful to that, let us pray that we may be so as well.