By Faith
Hebrews 11:29 - 12:2
Click here for the sermon: By Faith
We arrive at our passage this morning by jumping into the middle of a sermon already in progress. It was a sermon that the writer to the Hebrews sent – not just a letter.
So, we arrive at our part of the sermon this morning after journeying through a litany of heroes, a walk through the Hebrew Scriptures hall of fame:
Abel and his offering, Enoch and his strange disappearing, Noah and his faithful ship building, Abraham and his faith-led journey to an unknown land. Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses... and now we join this sermon already in progress at Verse 29.
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
29 By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. 30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. 31 By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient,[a] because she had received the spies in peace.
32 And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35 Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. 36 Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two,[b] they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented— 38 of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
39 Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40 since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.
12 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,[c] and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of[d] 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.
Recently I came across a memoir written by my great, great aunt Ellen. It’s a story of growing up very poor in Northern Finland where the sparkling beauty of the land stood in stark contrast to the backbreaking work of daily life. As a young woman, without much say in the matter, she set out with next to nothing on a ship bound for America. It’s a story of perseverance as she made a new life in New York City and eventually Detroit. It’s a story full of suffering as she somehow, against many odds and obstacles, found a way to make a better life, maybe not for herself, but definitely for her two sons and the generations that followed.
I suspect many of you here have family stories like mine. Stories of hard work and heartbreak, of desperation, hope, and grit. Some of these stories perhaps more myth than history, but certainly very real in the way they inform your family’s identity and your own.
In a world that changes faster than we can keep up with, shaped daily by new technologies, an unrelenting 24 hour news cycle, social-media-amplified voices yelling opinions and hate and more information than our brains can possibly process…in this world it is easy to feel adrift and unanchored.
And so, it is good to remember these stories of where we come from and who we are. It is good to step back and consider the bigger picture, to place ourselves in a longer narrative, to view ourselves and our world with a wider lens.
The preacher to the Hebrews knew the power of these stories to do exactly this. We don’t know very much for sure about who he (or maybe she!) was writing to, but we do know that whoever they were, they were feeling: fear in the face of persecution; they were feeling disillusioned with God’s promises and overwhelmed with the obstacles in front of them; perhaps adrift and unanchored.
The temptation to simply walk away and forget the whole thing was hard to resist. Settling for the way things are is an easier thing to do, like the Israelites in the wilderness moaning to return to slavery in Egypt because sometimes status quo can feel less scary than an unknown future.
The audience of this sermon knew the feeling well. And so the preacher reminds them of the stories:
He reminds them of Abel and Abraham, of Noah and Moses. Of the people who after fleeing Egypt for freedom thought for sure the dead end at the edge of the sea was the dead end of their story until an entirely unexpected new way was made through the waters. He reminds them of judges, and prophets, and kings, and a host of others who suffered, served, and lived according to faith in an unseen promise, the very same promise they (and we) are invited into.
To a disillusioned people, these stories are powerful in their ability to offer perspective, motivation, direction, and hope.
In the 19th century, British Missionaries to enslaved Africans in the Caribbean knew very well the power of these stories, and so the version of the Bible these missionaries gave to those who were enslaved was heavily and carefully abridged:
Gone were the stories of liberation and rebellion, gone were the stories of compassion and freedom, gone were the stories of Moses leading the people through the waters, gone were the words of prophets crying out for justice and fair wages, gone were the words of Paul declaring that all are one in Christ Jesus.
In fact, with all those stories removed, the Bible they had to offer was only 14 books long! Within those 14 books was only the small, convenient, self-serving story the missionaries wanted to tell about domination and power.
While this is a shocking, extreme example, the concept is a familiar one through history. This mis-telling, or careful editing, of the story twisted around the themes of conquest and power has been told by empires since Constantine. The story that would have us believe that God favors some people more than others – this version paved the way for Crusades and wars. For colonialism, white nationalism, anti-Semitism, for apartheid and slavery.
This story of privilege and supremacy laid the groundwork for the Doctrine of Discovery which did (and still does) so much harm to our native brothers and sisters.
How we tell this story matters. How we tell the WHOLE story matters. Even, and especially, when it challenges structures and powers we benefit from or just grown comfortable with.
When we listen carefully to the preacher to the Hebrews, the story he tells about our ancestors in the faith is a story filled with faith, but also with some seriously flawed characters, messy history, and examples we would do well NOT to follow (just look up Jephthah if you don’t know his story already). We can’t pretend that the history laid out here doesn’t also contain things like conquest, murder, misogyny – to dive into the list given to us this morning would take much longer than we have right now.
But woven through this very human history, and really, the thing that ties these stories together – is the promise of God that leads everyone forward. The preacher to the Hebrews doesn’t just offer a list of examples for nostalgia’s sake or to glorify the past, but presents the past in a way that the past looks forward to us… and beyond us. The past looks forward to promises yet to be fulfilled, it looks forward to Jesus Christ.
Woven through these stories is the work of God piercing through with words of freedom, justice, and peace, moving us always in the direction of God’s Kingdom.
The preacher here tells of Abraham who never saw his promised descendants numbering more than the stars in the sky. He tells of Moses who never entered the land he had led the people through the wilderness towards. The prophets who cried out for justice did not retire happily and satisfied with their work.
The promise of God throughout the ages has always called us forward. This promise has placed in our hearts, from the beginning of time, a vision of what life could be and currently is not.
The story we find in this sermon to the Hebrews is a story about hope.
Not pie-in-the sky hope. Not wishful-thinking hope. Not naïve-optimism hope.
But sure and certain hope that informs the way we choose to live our daily lives.
The kind of hope that refuses to settle for the way things are, the kind of hope that gets angry at injustice and compels us to raise our voices, to make difficult changes even at our own expense, to love those the world ignores, on earth as it is in heaven.
The cloud of witnesses cheering us on are those who lived by faith and yet did not receive the promise for themselves. They did the work they were called to for the sake of the generations that would follow, for the sake of the God who keeps promises not just to them, but to the whole world.
And so may we also not grow weary, but taking up this baton of hope from those who came before us, may we run this race with faith and perseverance, that by our running, the world would see God’s Kingdom in a new way. By the power of the Holy Spirit, may it be so. Amen.