United Methodist Church Hyde Park, NY

SIXTH SENSE
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

A pastor told her small son that he should wash his hands because there were germs living in all that dirt. He refused and complained: “Germs and Jesus! Germs and Jesus! That’s all I ever hear around this house and I’ve never seen either one.”

Isn’t that the way it is with faith? Faith is belief in the existence of something even though you can’t see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, or touch it. Not one of the five senses is the basis for having faith; no combination of them can prove what we believe by faith. Some have claimed that there is a sixth sense – an intuitive or extrasensory knowledge, a kind of knowing that is derived by means other than the ordinary human senses. Have you ever said to someone that you can’t explain how you know something – you just do? I think that the author of the letter to the Hebrews is defining faith somewhat in that way. This definition – probably the most well-known of all – says: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith is knowing what, in a sensory way, cannot be known or even perceived. People of faith “see” with spiritual eyes what cannot be seen; they “hear” with their souls what ears cannot hear. Let me tell you a story that illustrates what I mean. This is “The Story of Shlemiel.”

Once, in a small town, a group of people decided that they would put together a band to play at weddings and bar mitzvahs and such. Anyone who wanted to be a member could try out. Unfortunately, in that town, there lived a fellow named Shlemiel. Now Shlemiel was a simple sort of fellow, the kind of fellow who tries to do right. But everything he tries seems to turn out wrong. Everyone cringed when he tried out for the band. When he played the trumpet, it sounded like somebody was doing something terrible to an elephant. When he played the violin, dogs howled from miles around. Finally, not wanting to tell him he couldn’t be in the band, people let him play the drum. They figured he could do the least damage with the drum. They just didn’t know. They would start playing, and for a time, Shlemiel would keep time with their music. But soon he would get excited. And as he got more excited, he would beat louder and less in time with everybody else who was playing. Soon, he was playing to his own rhythm altogether, which completely wrecked the song. They tried their best to correct this, but they never could. One day they were engaged to play at a very important wedding. The famous rabbi, Israel ben Eliezer, the one who was called the Baal Shem Tov, was going to be there. They wanted everything to be perfect. They told Shlemiel, “You know, you don’t really have to play the drum, you could just pretend to play it and not really hit the drum with the drumstick.” Well, Shlemiel thought he could try. The day of the wedding came. The band took the stage, and there in the crowd sat the important rabbi, Israel ben Eliezer. They began to play. When they began, Shlemiel did just what he was told to. He didn’t even hit the drum with the stick. But he was staring at the famous rabbi, almost entranced by his presence. Little by little, Shlemiel began to hit the drum with the drumstick, at first, in time with everyone else. But then, his drumming became louder and louder and less in time with the rest of the musicians, until finally, he once again was completely out of time with everyone else, playing to his own rhythm. And they just had to stop.

They took Shlemiel by the scruff of the neck, dragged him out to where the rabbi sat, and said, “Rabbi, Shlemiel has something to say to you. He wants to apologize.” But before Shlemiel could speak a word, the important rabbi, the Baal Shem Tov, said, “While you were playing, your music was so beautiful I was transported. It was as if the heavens opened up above me. And there, sitting around the throne of God were other musicians – a heavenly band – playing the most beautiful music I had ever heard in my life. When I returned to myself and looked at you playing here, I noticed that there was only one musician playing in time with that heavenly band. It was Shlemiel.”

Sometimes I think that people of faith are all a bunch of Shlemiels. People of faith are different from other folk. They seem to have some sort of spiritual sixth sense that allows them to discern what others can’t perceive. People of faith hear God’s voice calling them into an unknown future, and they march through life to its soundless beat. People of faith see God’s vision of what will be, and they move forward toward it. People of faith know, with a certainty unaided by any sensory perception, the reality of God’s promises before they ever come into being. We all wish for proof that God exists, that heaven is real. But that’s not faith.

In one of her best-known poems, Emily Dickinson describes faith this way:

I never saw a Moor –
I never saw the Sea –
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be.

I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven –
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given –

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (NIV) This is why Abraham, for all his faults and false starts, for all his missteps and spotty moral track record, is held up as a prototype for faith. He heard God’s silent call, he saw God’s invisible vision, and he believed and responded to the promise without ever seeing it come to full fruition. That’s faith. “Faith means putting our full confidence in the things we hope for; it means being certain of things we cannot see.” (Phillips) That’s just what Abraham did. It’s what all people of faith do. They know that in faith things hoped for become reality. And they live today as though tomorrow’s promise were already fulfilled.

What does such faith look like? Let me offer one last illustration. A drought was destroying a farming community. Finally, when they were desperate enough, the people there called for the rabbi to come and pray for rain. He told the people that when they showed him they truly believed, he would pray and God would send them rain. They organized themselves into a prayer chain. They fasted for one week. Then they gathered at the synagogue on the Sabbath. But the rabbi said, “I still cannot pray for the rain because you do not yet believe.” “How can you say that?” they cried. “We have prayed around the clock; we have fasted.” “Ah,” said the rabbi, turning to leave, “but where are your umbrellas?”

There is probably not a single one of us who hasn’t said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” But faith doesn’t work like that. Quite the opposite, in fact! Some things have to be believed to be seen. That’s faith.