September 15, 2019
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
How many of you remember Usain Bolt from the
last Olympic Games? He was amazingly fast. He practically strolled through
world records. Watching him run was like watching a superhero.
Superheroes are big right now. There have been
not a few films about superheroes in the past few years, with many more in the
works. We enjoy watching superheroes. Perhaps it is helpful to imagine that our
problems, or the world’s problems, could be solved if only there was one
person, one gifted with super-human abilities, who had the courage to take a
stand. Perhaps we like to watch because we can imagine being the superhero
ourselves, if only for a couple of hours, and it makes us feel powerful.
The Letter to the Hebrews holds up some
superheroes of the bible for us to remember. These heroes accomplished amazing
feats of strength and courage by faith, by the power of God working within
them. The writer lists several, but acknowledges there are so many that there
is not enough time to tell about all of them. And that’s just the ones in the
Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. Many more heroes and heroines could be added
from the New Testament; and from the two-thousand years of the history of the
church could be added millions more. What a great cloud of witnesses!
It is good to remember our ancestors, to
repeat the stories of heroism from our common history. Yet, we must do more
than simply recite the old stories. We need to understand how their lives, and
their stories, impact our lives. There is a paraphrase of Hebrews 11:40 by
Eugene Peterson that I find helpful in understanding the connections. “God had
a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to
make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours” (The Message). The story of their faith
is not complete without the story of our faith, and ours is not complete
without theirs, because we’re part of the same story.
We are part of The Story capital “S”, the big
story that, for the ancients, began with Adam and Eve. For us it began with the
Big Bang, or perhaps even long before. It is the story that is still being
told. The bible tells some very important parts of that story, but it is not
the whole story. And that is why we’ve been known to say “God is still
speaking.”
Imagine a relay race. The baton is passed from
one runner to the next. But this is not a sprint. This race is much longer,
longer even than a marathon. It is like the “Race Across the Sky,” also known
as the Leadville Trail 100 Run. That race is one-hundred miles of extreme
Colorado Rockies terrain — from elevations of 9,200 to 12,600 feet. Or perhaps
the race is more like the Olympic Torch relay, where the fire keeps passing
from one to the next over thousands of miles. And like a relay race, other
hands have kept the flame before us, and other hands will carry it on after us.
And one day we will join that great cloud of witnesses.
The story of the faith of Saint John’s United
Church of Christ in Union is like a marathon relay race. The story of the
United Church of Christ is like the Trail 100. And the big story of the
Christian faith, passed down through the ages, is like the Olympic Torch run.
There are others running with us, some who have been running for a long time,
and others who have only started to walk. Some cannot walk at all, and yet they
participate in the race as well. That is the story of our faith.
In his book, Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope,
Walter Brueggemann describes the story of the community of faith in which we
share “a past of life-giving miracles, a future of circumstance-denying
promise, and a present tense of neighbors in fidelity.” The stories of heroic
deeds from the past, the stories of faithful people following the will of God,
can inspire us today to be faithful to who we are, to keep on running the race,
no matter what is happening around us, no matter how things appear. Our story
is, as yet, unwritten, still unfolding, still being told.
Now, if the thought of trying to run 100 miles
at 12,000 feet of elevation makes you want to faint, remember this: keep your
eyes set on Jesus. Jesus ran this race before us, blazed a new trail, and set
guideposts on the way. Jesus continues to run beside us. And Jesus will make
sure that you don’t run this race in vain.
It might help to remember that those ancestors
of our faith that are mentioned in the Letter to the Hebrews, they were not
super-humans. They were human, just as flawed and failure-prone as the rest of
us. Moses wasn’t permitted to enter the Promised Land because he had broken
faith with God. Rahab’s life was spared, but her home, the city of Jericho, was
destroyed. David didn’t get to build the Temple because of that business with
Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, whom David murdered.
It is encouraging to me to know that even
these heroes of old were deeply flawed yet deeply faithful. Maybe there’s a
chance for me yet. Maybe I need someone to remind me that it’s not by my own
power – let alone super-power – that I endure or accomplish anything, or even
live. I am able to do what I can only by the power of God working through me.
We don’t run this race in vain, and we don’t
run it alone. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. We are joined on
the journey by family and friends, fellow runners who can encourage us to keep
going. And we have Jesus who runs the race with us, just ahead of us, guiding
the way.
We are running in the big race, the Story with
a capital “S”, and that means that what we do matters. It matters not just to
us, but to those who have gone before and are now watching us as we continue
the same race. It matters to those who follow us who will need examples of
faith to fortify them as they, too, run the course. It matters to those who run
alongside us, who fall and need a hand to get back up, and who reach out a hand
to us in need. What we do matters because we will have added our own stories to
those written long ago. Our faith story is not “apart from” the faith of our
parents or our great-great-grandchildren. We’re part of something greater than
ourselves, a bigger picture, an ancient story that is still being told.
As we run, we draw ever closer to the coming
of God’s reign – the peace, and justice, and healing of God so badly needed in
our homes and families and neighborhoods, and in places far away, like Iraq and
Egypt, the Sudan, Afghanistan, and Syria. We run a race which is long and hard,
but with the knowledge that God will not let go of us when we stumble or fall,
knowing that God will guide our feet, in faith we shall not fail to pass on the
fire. Amen.
