If you remember last
week when we looked at the book of Hebrews we talked all about faith. We talked
about how faith and hope so forever tied together, and that our hope lied in
the fact that the Kingdom of God was brought forth by Christ and yet not here in
its completion. We talked about how this gives us a hope of a transformed world
even in the midst of the brokenness we see around us, and we found that this
hope gives us faith to live by each day.
We found that this chapter of Hebrews liked to use Biblical examples of
people living by faith, and in particular last week we talked about the faith
of Abraham and his descendants. Today we
pick up in the same chapter, and once again the author is using Biblical examples
of faith. The reason for this however has seemed to change. Last week we saw that the author used Abraham
in particular to teach us about faith and about hope. Now in this part of the
chapter the author is no longer focusing on one person, but is giving a long
list of those who have lived by faith, from The Israelites in the wilderness,
to Rahab, to David, and yes Daniel. This list seems to indicate a switch from
explain what faith is, to showing how faith has been faithfully lived out.
Hebrews is giving us a long list of saints for us to admire, to learn from, and
to emulate their faithfulness.
When we start to talk about saints in today’s church it
becomes hard for us to relate to them. We usually picture saints as those old
men and women who are now etched in stone on the side of cathedrals. At Duke
Chapel for example as you enter into the massive doors leading into the chapel,
stone figures of John Wesley, Francis Asbury, George Whitfield, and Martin
Luther surround and watch you as you enter. If we aren’t thinking saints of the
past such as these we start thinking about modern day saints such as Mother
Teresa. And as is the case in today’s passage we also think of the Biblical
saints, Abraham, David, Moses and so on. All of this usually leaves us feeling
small and inadequate. We either beat ourselves up for never being as good as
those saints, or we say, “They were special, I don’t need to learn from them.”
And yet, here in Hebrews we find that we are supposed to learn from the faith
of these saints.
That is the good news however; we aren’t supposed to
follow the actions of these great saints, we are supposed to follow their
faith. As we discovered during the sermon series we did a month ago and as we
are still discovering in our Bible study, all of us are called to live and
serve God in our own unique way. We all
have different spiritual gifts, talents, experiences that shape how we live out
our faith. Not all are called to lead an enslaved people into the wilderness.
Not all are called to house spies that will eventually lead to the destruction
of your hometown. Not all are called to imprisoned in a den of lions, and not
all are called to be King. When we think about what each of these saints did,
we realize that they were all called for very different and unique
circumstances, ones that I doubt many of us will be called to do. We are
therefore not supposed to simply emulate the actions of these saints, but
instead we learn from the faith that leads them. How did Moses faithfully stand
up to injustice? How did Rahab faithfully use what means she had to house and
support other’s missions. How did Daniel remain faithful in the midst of trials
and fear? How did David faithfully discern the will of God? When we look to the saints these are the
questions that we should be asking. These are the questions that will help us
in our own calls.
And still, it becomes easy to answer these questions by
saying, “they were able to do all of these things because they were great
people, special people, unlike us.” Yet many of these great saints also had great
flaws. We celebrate David as the great King of Israel but he committed adultery
and used his power as King to have Bathsheba’s husband killed in war. We lift
up Rahab as one of the main reasons why the Israelites were able to take
Jericho, but Rahab was a prostitute. We lift up Moses for leading the
Israelites out of Egypt, but Moses himself was a murder. To add to this,
Hebrews all mentions the faith of the Egyptians as whole group, not singling
out one “special” person but lifting up the faith of the whole people. If that
wasn’t enough he talks about those special people who died for their faith, but
the author doesn’t even name any of them. All of this tells us that learning
from the saints is trying to just emulate them; because as we have seen many of
the saints we revere we just as flawed as us, and that there are just as many
saints who have lived in faith who we do not even know. What we do learn from
them is how to live faithfully.
Here lies one of the most crucial elements of this whole
chapter. Why is it important for us to learn this faith from the saints who
have gone before us? Do we learn faith for our own personal benefit, for our
own welfare? The answer here is no. As we talked about last week, our faith is
rooted in the hope in the Kingdom of God.
If we learned our faith from these saints simply for our own benefit we
would be greatly disappointed. Sure, some of these saints that were listed
received great success. The ones that come to the top of the mind are once
again the Egyptians and their freedom,
David and his rise to King, and Daniel and his safety in the lion’s
den. For as many success stories Hebrews
lists, it also however lists just as many hardships and trials. “Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even
chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they
were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats,
destitute, persecuted, tormented- of whom the world was not worthy. They
wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.” And Hebrews
reminds us that both who found success on Earth as well as those who found
hardship and trials, “all these, though they were
commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised,” If we
follow the faith of our fathers and mothers, the faith of the saints, for our
own personal benefit, then we have to be prepared for the fact that is quite
possible, even likely that we will not receive what we are looking for.
Why then do we lead lives
of faith like those saints before us? It
is because we are called to work together with the saints in working towards
the Kingdom of God. Just as the saints faithfully followed the will of God;
bringing some great success and others hardship, we too are called to
faithfully follow God’s will. As Hebrews puts it, “Therefore,
since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside
every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with
perseverance the race that is set before us,” The author of Hebrews compares it to a race. A
race in which requires training; by laying aside those things that hold us back
and slow us down from running the race. A race that also requires perseverance,
which is why it is so critical to have the faith of the saints. Learning from
them seeing how to persevere in our success as well as in our failure. It is
not a race not is not unique to us; it is a race that has been run by so many
before us, and most likely will be run by many after us. It is a race in which we run, “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who
for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding
its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” What makes the race even sweeter is that we
are surrounded so great a cloud of witness. It is not just that others have
gone before us, but those that have run the race are still with us.
We may wonder how this is
possible, are we talking about ghosts or spirits that surround us? I would have
to say no, that is not what we are talking about, what we are talking about is
presence. So what do I mean by that?
First and foremost I must start this discussion by saying that there is an
element of mystery to the cloud of witnesses, and I think that may be a good
thing. Too often in our society we have to have all the answers or it just
doesn’t make sense to us; but by embracing the mystery we acknowledging that we
are not the sources of all knowledge and that things exist that are beyond our
realm of understanding. With that being
said, there are ways to help us understand how the cloud of witnesses are
present with us. One of the actions
within the church in which we celebrate this the most is during Holy Communion.
During communion we not only celebrate our communion with Christ, and we not
only celebrate our communion with each other, we also celebrate our communion
with all the saints, both living around the world as well as those who have
passed away. Through the sacrament of Holy Communion we are bound together
through the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, and we are able to
get a glimpse of the heavenly banquet laid before us when Christ returns in
final victory. It is an amazing union of
believers from all places, and yes even from all times.
Still the question may be,
how is this possible? Well, there is a
Cheerios commercial that has been on T.V. recently and someone online, (and I
wish I remembered who it was so that I could give them proper credit), but someone
pointed out how the commercial is a lot like our understanding of the communion
of saints. The commercial starts off with a mother and son
eating breakfast together. The boy looks
at his mom and says, “Mom, did Nana ever give you cheerios when you were a
little kid.” The mother nods and says, yeah she did. The boy continues his
questioning by asking, “Were Cheerios
the same back then?” The mother
replies, “Cheerios has pretty much been
the same forever. “ Here the boy makes such a profound statement that catches
the mother off guard and brings a tear to her eyes. He says, “So, when we have cheerios it is
like we are having breakfast with Nana.” Breakfast with Nana. In a way that is what communion is like. Though it may be celebrated in different
ways, the essence of Communion really has not changed since Christ
himself. For two thousand years people
have come to the table to be in communion with Christ and with each other. When
we come to the table it may not be breakfast with Nana, but it is communion
with the saints.
And yet Hebrews reminds us
that we are surrounds by that cloud of witnesses. That everything we do through
Christ we do in participation with the saints. We run the race before us, the
same race as David and Daniel, the same race as St. Francis and Mother Teresa,
and yes the same race as many of our parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters,
and friends. If that doesn’t excite you I don’t know what will. This service that we are called to is one
that people have been called to all over the world and throughout time. That
our lives are not some insignificant blip on the radar of history, but that
each of us are part of a much larger story, and greater race. That we can find
assurance from those who have gone for us; celebration when things are good,
and solidarity with the martyrs when things go bad. With this cloud of witnesses surrounding us,
I don’t know about you, but I have more confidence, more endurance to run this great race before
us, knowing that Christ is before us leading us in our way.
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