August 15, 2004 (Jimmie Johnson)


Hebrews 11:29-12:2

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. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace. 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--who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. 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. Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect. 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, 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.

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One of the holy privileges of being a pastor is that you are permitted to stand at the edge of intimacy and watch as persons or families go through the highs and lows of life. In other words, you get to see faith in action, close up and personal.

Whoever wrote the New Testament document that has become known to us as the Letter to the Hebrews might have been something like a pastor. She or he writes to us about people this pastor has known or heard of in the community’s past who lived by faith.

“Faith” is understood in the opening verses of chapter 11 as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Such a description of faith works for me. I don’t know of a better understanding. It is faith not so much as believing beliefs but more so as faith not losing heart and trusting even when the assurances are not self-evident and hard questions assault our convictions.

If this pastor or preacher who wrote this text were invited to Austin Presbyterian Seminary to give a lecture in a theology class, she or he might “fancy” the definition up, say it in words that have more syllables. In a seminary classroom, the pastor might want to give the definition of faith more intellectual pop and respectability. But this definition of “faith” as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” is not meant for theoretical reflection. This definition of faith is not being put out there for people to reflect upon from a safe place of objectivity and analysis, from the safety of the academy.

This description of faith is being given to people who are already running in a race, already in the fight of their lives. This definition of faith is being shared with people who just found out their spouse or their child has cancer or who just found out the next stop for their loved one will be a nursing home. This definition of faith is meant for parents about to send a child off to college or parents whose child just got a license to drive or the young soldier being deployed.

Faith understood as the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen is meant for others too. It is meant for those with lonely hearts and those broken dreamers who had no idea that years would fly by so quickly. This definition of faith is being offered to persons who feel responsible for the sins in their past and who want to know if God’s goodness and mercy really does follow us to repair and redeem. When they look back over their shoulder at their personal history, they see many predatorily made decisions and the faces of innocent people betrayed by their behavior, and they struggle daily with a guilt that weighs so heavily that they often fight hard each hour the temptation to assuage it all with some form of drugs or drink.

Also, this definition of faith is for people like us who live each day between the polarities of life and death, success and failure, joy and sorrow. I’ll never forget being seated by Susan Palmer’s bed in the emergency room. She could tell her body was going numb from the shoulders down and that doctors and family and friends were all rushing around, conferring and frightened. She said to me, “Boring sure sounds good right now.”

Obviously in a crisis, we are all reminded just how lucky we are simply to be alive when the day is routine and ordinary, and we are reminded how we take such a day to be empty of life until the crisis makes us see how it was brimming with life the whole time. Susan decided to respond with faith that though life breaks everyone, some grow strong at the broken places. And though she came back to us somewhat broken, she came back to us stronger.

Most of us don’t know the names tossed out in this 11th chapter and the first few verses which open the 12th. Our grandparents and even some of our parents might, but I doubt if there is anyone here under 50 who knows who each of these examples of faith cited is: Able, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, or the story of Jericho and how God’s hero in that one was Rahab the prostitute. Most of us don’t know anymore who Barak was, or Gideon, or even the King called David, or the strong one called Samson. Basically the parents my age dropped the ball in the 1970's and decided Christian education needed to change from old school style to new school style, and now we are, as a whole, a generation with no idea really of the stories in the Bible
and the people who lived them. So this morning I’ll not mention Samuel or Rahab or Sarah or Abraham.

I’ll just say the name of Bob Brothers who made sure every “i” was dotted and every “t” was crossed in the building plans for our church before he and Shirley headed out to care for a sick son in Colorado. Bob in his retirement had volunteered to serve this congregation during the 1990 construction and remodeling. He cornered me on the steps of the church one hot morning as I was arriving and said he was leaving town for a break from the heat and to see about his son. He knew I was about to leave on vacation, too, and wanted to review everything with me that needed to be done to complete the building and remodeling of our facilities. He looked at me with a look that meant “pay attention,” and then he said the strangest thing. He said, “Just in case something were to happen.”

Then a few days later, he and Shirley went out to care for their ill son. And one morning while being a good dad, he mowed his ill son’s yard, then sat down in a chair in the yard so as not to alarm anyone and gently passed away of a sudden massive heart attack. And I could tell you of Shirley’s faith as she noticed the sound of the mower had stopped and how she saw Bob was sitting so still in a lawn chair, how she took him a drink of iced tea and found him at peace but gone. I could tell you how Shirley stood in this very pulpit one Older Adult Sunday and spoke of the love she received from you, the ordinary people of her congregation

I could tell you of Clint Brazelton married to Julia and how they gave up a son, they called Sonny, to cancer and how in retirement they moved back to Waco and how Julia was willing to come back here and make friendships with all of Clint’s people and acquaintances and join this his old childhood church. I could tell you how Clint in the last weeks of his life went almost daily to the hospital with heart failure, still serving as an elder and telling Julia not to worry anyone about his hospitalizations. I could tell you how he and she said goodbye one morning and then she called me. I could tell you how she has herself served us all as an elder on the Session, as a faithful friend in Presbyterian Women, and as a member of the Pastor Nominating Committee that brought us Associate Pastor David.

I could tell you how Julia and Shirley in the graceful elegance of their quiet personhood have taught us all about trusting in the goodness and hopefulness of what cannot be seen and how to keep on keeping on when the “new and unknown” are all we have and life is starting all over again even when you are not young. I could tell you how we never get over our losses but we can get through to feel that life has purpose still and that the Invisible Holy is everywhere around us.

I could tell you about one winter evening up in the old church library during a session of officer training when the elder and deacon nominees were asked to tell of a saint--someone through whom the light of God’s love shined-- from their past. I could tell of how Walter Smith spoke of his father, a small town Texas physician. He spoke of him not as the light but as an instrument of the light. With moistened eyes, he spoke of him, remembering a loving dad faithful to his vocation. Several of us in the room could not speak of our fathers in such a way, but through Walt’s words, we were reminded that though our dads were not the agent of light that Walt’s father was, the more important task awaiting us now grown sons and daughters was to forgive and reclaim. And, as importantly, Walt’s words reminded us that we as dads and moms
could try to live so that our children one day in the autumn of their lives would speak of us as agents of light.

But then each of you could stand up and tell us names of those who are no longer here or in your life but who really are in a strange way. You could tell of those who live in your memories, who reside up in the invisible balcony of your lives, clapping for you, cheering you on, telling you to keep on keeping on. You could tell of those who remind you of the gift of faith so that you trust in the assurance of things hoped for and in the conviction of things not seen. You could tell of those who remind you to be your best most loving self, to keep your eye on the prize, on what you know to be the way home, so that you, yourself, serve someday as a name from the past that inspires others toward tomorrow.

That’s all the writer of Hebrews is doing today in this passage. He or she is telling us the things worth proving can neither be proven nor yet disproven and we are to live each day and night in the trust that God is weaving it all into a web of Providence that will one day make sense and reveal it was more than worth it just to be a part of it all even though there were at least as many tears as sounds of laughter. This house is full of the invisible ones every Sunday.

On my walk one morning this past week, I was making my way through the neighborhood when the morning light was just making itself known in the darkness. I had been thinking of odd things in the dark of that morning, things like terrorists, dirty bombs, starving children in Sudan, some of you fading away from the vibrancy that once characterized you, and of church members who had decided to go elsewhere where they felt the Bible was more prominent. I saw a little boy making his way down the sidewalk of his grandfather’s house. He was getting the morning paper. Suddenly he became aware that his feet were soaked from the wet lawn and he was leaving footprints on his grandfather’s sidewalk. With no awareness I was watching him there in the light and the darkness, he began to dance and prance over his newly discovered footprint power, filled with the fun of aliveness in the early dawn of his life.

What we have to do is help each other remember that although the world seems edging into night, it is the dawn that is breaking and behind it all there is a God who loves us so much that this God dances and prances with the sheer joy of loving God’s creatures. Faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

 

 


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