Sermon for August 10, 2025

Readings:

Genesis 15:1-6
Psalm 33:12-22 
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

Many of you know that the Andy Griffith Show is one of my favorite shows of all time. I have preached about it several times. If you are a younger person and don’t know the show, go and watch it. You can stream it online. If you are an older person and grew up with it, it is worth watching again. The show is an intentional throwback to a different time and place, it is idealized and sanitized, but it is nonetheless a reminder of personal qualities and values that could use a revival. 

I think my favorite episode of the show is called Mr. McBeevey. Opie is out playing in the woods and he comes back to the sheriff’s office all full of stories to share with his dad, Andy, and deputy Barney Fife. He tells them that he met this man named Mr. McBeevey, who spends all day up in the trees, wears a fancy metal hat, jingles when he walks, and can make smoke come out of his ears. Andy and Barney naturally assume that Opie is telling a fantastic tale about a made-up friend as children sometimes do. And then Opie says, “and he gave me this quarter.” And as Opie holds up a real quarter, Andy’s demeanor changes. It is one thing to make up a make-believe story, but it is another thing to tell an outright lie, and Opie seems to be crossing the line. When Opie insists that he is telling the truth, Andy drives out to the woods with him to find this Mr. McBeevey, but of course there is no sign of him. Opie refuses to change his story though. Mr. McBeevey is real. Andy and Opie drive home and now Andy is getting very cross. Make-believe is one thing and that’s fine, but Opie needs to understand the difference between the truth and a lie. Andy is resolved that he is going to have to punish Opie. 

So Andy goes to Opie’s room for a father-son talk which is just one of the best scenes ever. He explains to him the difference between the truth and a lie and he tells him what the consequences will be if Opie persists with this Mr. McBeevey story. But Opie says (crying), but Mr. McBeevey is real, and if I said he wasn’t I would be telling a lie. Don’t you believe me pa? And you see this change come over Andy’s face. Before he had looked stern and disappointed, and now you could just see this sense of bewilderment and love. So Andy goes back downstairs. And Barney, who is always a little too eager to act in every situation, says to Andy: well, aren’t you going to punish him? And Andy says, no. Barney replies, you don’t mean to tell me that you actually believe in this Mr. McBeevey do you? And Andy says, no….but I do believe in Opie. No, but I do believe in Opie. 

I love that scene so much. Andy cannot comprehend the story that Opie is telling. It seems magical, nonsensical, unbelievable. Andy has serious doubts or questions about this Mr. McBeevey, what he doesn’t doubt though, is his son. Andy’s relationship with Opie and love for Opie his him the strength and the courage to say, I don’t understand this, I don’t know how this can be true, but I am going to trust you. My friends, that is faith right there. That is how faith works. Faith is not about certainty. Faith is not about seeing is believing. Faith is not about understanding. Faith is not as much an act of the mind as it is an act of the heart. Faith is a response to a relationship. It is an act of love. 

Our second reading this morning is the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews. I remember once when I was in college I met a guy who had memorized the entire chapter and would perform it and I supposed if you are going to memorize a chapter of scripture this is an excellent choice, because it is all about faith. The passage talks about the faith of Abraham and Sarah, believing that God would do the impossible for them. There are a few verses missing there this morning that also talk about Abel and Enoch and Noah, and later we hear about Issac and Jacob. And we are told that “All of these died in faith, without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.” The great patriarchs and matriarchs of our faith, they had to trust in God and in their relationship with God, more than they trusted in themselves. Abraham and Sarah had doubts about where or not they would ever have a child, I assure you, but they trusted in God anyways. To be a person of faith means to be able to believe in things that you cannot yet see. To be a person of faith means to lean on love more than you lean on understanding or your own perceptions of things. 

You do not have to understand the meaning of everything Jesus ever said in order to love and follow him as the son of God. You don’t have to have a clear blueprint of heaven in order to believe in it. You don’t need to comprehend every single article of the creed in order to stand and say it will all of us every week. You don’t need to be able to explain why bad things happen to good people, or why good things happen to bad people. You ought to read the bible and pray, but you don’t need to be some great theologian to be a great person of faith. All you really need to be a person of faith is love. You need to love God and the more you are able to love God, the easier it will be for you to believe and trust in the promises that God makes to you. Love God, love Jesus, love whoever it was that first shared their faith with you. You don’t have to wait for a miracle or a sign to start loving God. You don’t have to see in order to believe, you have to love. When we stand every week and say the creed, we are not proclaiming things that we ourselves have seen: we weren’t there when God created the earth, we weren’t there when Jesus was born or when he suffered and died; we weren’t there when he rose from the grave; we may have encounters with the Holy Spirit, but we weren’t there when it spoke through the prophets, and so far none of us have seen Jesus come again to judge the quick and the dead, we have not experienced the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come. Most of the things we proclaim in the creed have nothing to do with our own personal experience of God. It is the accumulated experiences and witness of countless generations of faithful people that have loved God, and experienced God’s love in return. The creed is a witness to the God we love and worship. We worship a God who creates. We worship a God who sacrifices and suffers. We worship a God who inspires and warns. We worship a God who judges, forgives and redeems. 

Living in relationship with this God means learning to use your heart as well as your mind. Sometimes love and relationship can open your heart to believe things that your mind cannot comprehend. At least, that is what happened to Andy when he decided that while he struggled to believe Opie’s story, he still believe in Opie. 

I guess I should add that at the end of that episode, Andy is wandering around in the woods trying to figure all this out, when he just utters the name “Mr. McBeevey.” Suddenly a voice from above says “Hello? Is someone calling me” Andy is completely startled and he looks up and down from the pole beside him climbs a telephone repairman with a metal helmet, and tools dangling from his belt that jingled when he walked. Andy was never happier to meet a telephone repair man in his whole life. Mr. McBeevey was real, and yes…he even had a trick to make smoke come out of his ears.