Proper 15C / Ordinary 20C / Pentecost +13 August 14, 2016
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent more time than usual watching television this week. Every night we gather at the pool or on the beach or in the arena to watch the top athletes of our time compete in the summer Olympics. Names like Michael Phelps and Simone Biles, and Simone Manuel and Mia Diradoe become the stuff of our daily conversation. We thrill with them as they achieve what they have worked for throughout their lives. We are filled with national pride as they stand there on the podium, medals around their necks, national anthem booming. For a brief time, these Olympic athletes will be the heroes of our day. And this year, they provide a welcome respite from a political season that feels less than honorable at best. We need a hero.
In the letter to the Hebrews today, we hear a veritable list of ancient heroes…starting with Rahab and including Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the Prophets. Their stories of faith in the face of persecution include Olympic sized courage and podium worthy heroism. They saved nations in battle, they put out raging fires, they were victorious in the lion’s den and against larger than life human opponents as well.
This letter to the Hebrews was written to a community who needed to remember what it was like to have faith. They were a small community of believers in Jesus and their faith was dwindling. They were being persecuted, ridiculed, and the Roman government, who had crucified their teacher, was looking at them with suspicion. They had believed that Jesus would return soon, in their lifetimes, and with every day that passed, it was becoming harder and harder to imagine that this would be the case. All of the Apostles, those who had actually walked with Jesus and heard his teachings first hand, are dead now. His teachings and the stories about him seem to be fading in their collective memory.
Have the faith of your ancestors, says the writer of Hebrews. Lean into their stories for inspiration. Learn from them what it means to be faithful witnesses in the midst of hardship.
But the list of those faithful ancestors is a curious one. It begins predictably enough, with the Israelites as they passed through the Sea of Reeds, or as it is sometimes called, the Red Sea, to safety on the other side….fleeing from the Egyptians. But then, the examples of faith become a little more unexpected. The walls of Jericho, for instance, are given faith….inanimate objects are said to have faith. Rahab is held up as a person of great faith…and this is unusual for a number of reasons. That a woman would be the first named person in this list of those with great faith is unusual itself. And Rahab’s reported profession was perhaps not what one would expect from someone said to have great faith. But her story, which is found in the second chapter of the book of Joshua IS a story of faith. Rahab took great risks to help the Israelites capture the city of Jericho. In so doing, she also insured the safety of her family.
The others named in the list were also unlikely heroes of faith….Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel…..their stories are all complicated and include times when they faltered along the way. Yet God used them. And they are held up to the early church and to us as the faithful.
I want to pause for a moment here, because this is where this reading today just begs for us to pause and ask this question: Who are the examples of the faithful in our lives today? And I would suggest to you that this is both a question for personal reflection and a question for us to consider as a community.
Because what we learn from this reading is that the great cloud of witnesses of the faith are not going to be standing on a medal podium with their achievements on display to the entire world. What we learn from this reading is that the great cloud of faithful witnesses, in our own lives and in the lives of this community of faith, are more likely to be those unlikely people….just the everyday folks….being used by God in ways big and small and in between. But they are people whose faithful presence and faith filled action in the world are making the world a better place.
What is also true about being a person of faith is that our faith is not a magical inoculation against the hardships and difficulties of this life. We are reminded that in the midst of all of their successful acts of faith, those named in today’s reading endured mockery, scourgings, chains, and imprisonment. They were stoned, sawed in half, and beheaded. They were homeless, penniless and treated poorly. And worse than that, many of them did not receive what had been promised to them.
Walking in faith is like this, sometimes. It can mean that the hardships we endure will be many. And that is simply the way of the world. Being a person of faith is not like Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility or a shield around us to deflect all harm. And even if we are physically safe, our actions and beliefs as people of faith and followers of Jesus may drive a wedge between us and those we are closest to, as Jesus noted in the Gospel reading today.
What, then, does it mean to be people of faith? What do those named in the reading today and those that I’m just guessing are being called forward in your mind and heart right now…what do they share in common, in their faith?
To borrow from theologian Paul Tillich, faith is the courage to affirm hope in spite of despair, to take our share of responsibility, confess our shortcomings, and allow God to change us. Faith is doing the small things, because someone needs to do them.
Here in this place, in this community, I find heroes of the faith teaching the children and making the coffee and mowing the lawn and setting the table. Here in this place, the faithful have said that having neighbors without food and without shelter is not acceptable and then were courageous enough to do something about it. Here in this place faith is a teenager reminding us that if we print a whole new bulletin every single week we are endangering the sustainability of God’s creation. And faith is the willingness of a council of adults to listen and heed her words. Here, in this place, faith drives a car to pick up a friend for church or deliver a meal.
Here, in this place, we gain courage and our faith grows by remembering the great cloud of witnesses that has run this race before us. Those with courage to build a congregation out of a neighborhood Sunday School and then erect a building after that, when there wasn’t much in the way of development north of here. Those who worked faithfully for the word of God to grow and serve on this corner of Creation, even though perhaps they wouldn’t be around to see it come to fullness. Know that life changing and life giving things have happened here because the faithful people were willing to trust God and then step up and serve God. They moved forward through doubt, hardship, turmoil, and uncertainty, believing in the mission God had set before this congregation.
And so we, too, move forward and step out on faith. But not alone….never alone. We are surrounded by the cloud of witnesses that has gone before us here and by our own cloud of witnesses….those we hold in our hearts….those who throughout their lives served as examples of faith to us. And all of them….all of them….are the cloud of witnesses cheering us on….wildly applauding us, if you will, as we run the race with perseverance…..and whether we finally take our place on the medal podium or whether we don’t even manage to finish, our faith will be brought to perfection, not by what we have done or left undone, but by Jesus the Christ, who is the author and perfector of our faith.
Thanks be to God and let the church say…Amen.