Rev. Harriette Cross
Rust and Englewood UMC
August 15, 2010
The Cloud of Witnesses and those who come after us
Isaiah 5:1-7
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
12th Sunday after Pentecost
Year C
What it takes to run a 4000 mile marathon
For 111 days, Charlie Engle, Ray Zahab, and Kevin Lin ran across the Sahara Desert. They went through Senegal, Mauritania, Niger, Libya, and Egypt until they reached the red sea. During the race of endurance, they faced 100 degree weather, freezing nights, sandstorms, tendinitis, sickness, aches pains and many blisters. In spite of all of that the hardest part for them was to find water clean enough to drink – it wasn’t like there was a water station waiting for them at any point. This was all a part of a 4000 mile marathon across the Sahara. This was quite an accomplishment.
I try to be a runner, but am in no means a ready to do a marathon. But I do know that running takes a lot of practice, endurance, and perseverance. Running a race is a lot like being a Christian, a faithful Christian. Someone who was able to keep the faith, serving God until the end. Church members who weather conflict and remain joyful, loving and faithful.
The epistles use the metaphor a lot of running a race who knows if Paul was a runner himself, but we know that running was an important part of the culture of the time. The Greeks were always running somewhere. Hebrews uses the running metaphor to encourage us to be ready to run the race before us.
What faithfulness does
As I said earlier, the message of Hebrews is for us to be faithful – to live faithful. But what does that mean. Before I talk about what faith means – let me talk about what faithfulness does. Faithfulness is loving, kind, understanding, patience, willing to wait, willing to endure. Faithfulness is the 7th of nine fruits of the spirit. Galatians list the nine fruits as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Fruit because these are qualities which take time for us to acquire, none of us are born with them, they develop as a faithful response to life circumstances.
Faithfulness waits, faithfulness is disappointed and hurt, faithfulness makes a decision to be loyal anyway.
The Book of Isaiah as an example of what faith does
That is the message in the book of Isaiah. It starts out as a love song – let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. Any who heard those words would have known that a vineyard is a metaphor for a bride – someone worthy of being loved, looked after, and fruitfully enjoyed. They would be expecting a happy song about a love fulfilled, instead that get a lament about a love unfulfilled, and owner who took the time to loving grow a field, who cared for it tended it, and waited for the day when the field would give good fruit. Instead the fruit was rotten and not even fit to eat. The owner is angry and vows to destroy the field for disappointing him. Jesus even talks of a fig tree which does not produce fruit and must be destroyed.
The owner is so hurt that things did not turn out the way he was expecting that he vows to not only stop taking care of it, but to not rain upon it. The story reveals that the vineyard is the people of God and that God is the keeper who was expecting justice and found only bloodshed amongst his people. How is that a story of love? When the lover was hurt by those he loved? Because this is also a story of God. Love is the nature of God. Sometimes you have to love people enough to be honest with them, to tell them that they are wrong and to call them on their sin. People have to be reminded that no matter how much I love you, I can’t save you from the consequences of your actions.
Sometimes we have to be told that no matter whom you are, and how stuck your are in your sin, I may be hurt, but I will never give up on you or your ability to do the right things when held accountable. That God love for us – to love us just the way we are, through the good times and bad times, always patiently waiting for the good times.
A couple and their example of faithfulness
A husband, who was going through early onset Alzheimer’s disease – wrote a letter to his wife of his fear of losing her, of the day coming when he would no longer recognize her, or speak to her – he didn’t want to lose her that way.
She responded back to him in tears that I will continue to love you and care for you, not because you know me or remember our life, but because I will remember you. I will remember the man who proposed to me, I will remember the man who fathers and helped raise my children, I will remember the things he loved to do, the movies we watched and cried over, the times he held me hand, the times we prayed together. I cherish the obligation, commitment, and opportunity to care for you, because I remember you. And she did all throughout his illness. When he did forget her, he did forget his life, he did forget his own name and he eventually died. How is that a love story? That is a love story because that is a story of what faith does. It endures through it all.
What Faith is
That is what faith does – now let’s talk about what faith is.
In the bible, in both the Hebrew bible and the New Testament – faith and faithfulness are used interchangeably. The Greek word is pistos. The word epistle – is a letter of faith sent to the people.
Faith is to give oneself over to wholly to be loyal, to trust, and to be dependable. Faith for Christian means to have an insatiable appetite for god, to be in constant pursuit of holiness. To stay in the situation for the long haul- to endure.
Those who have come before us
The writer of Hebrews reminds us that faith is not just about us – it is about those who come before us. Our role models, our teachers, our parents, our mentors, those who hung onto the faith throughout the ups and downs of history. Especially in African American culture, we know that many of those who fought so hard for us to get where we are had to make a lot of sacrifices. Many of them never saw the world they were hanging onto – and we are the fulfillment of what some never saw for themselves. And yet through it all, they hung onto faith for something in the future.
We can learn a lot from those who run before us. Someone once said that as we get older, running the race of faith means being determined to run no matter what, sometimes we have to be urged to lift our drooping arms, finding strength to move our aching knees and being determined to find a straight and flat course to run so that we don’t have to struggle to get up the hills in life. Running the course of faith is not a short dash to glory, but endurance and perseverance to the make it to the end.
We are never alone in our race – because we have those who have gone before us, always cheering us on being an example for us. Hebrews says the our greatest example of faithful endurance is Jesus Christ, who went to the cross on our behalf, confident that one day we would understand and follow his in his journey and his example.
Setting a faithful example for those behind us
Our most important task in the race called life is to remember the example we set and the path we pave for those behind us.
I volunteered for the Chicago marathon last year, the only way to get a jacket and a hat was to volunteer on Sunday. My job was to stand at the front of the starting line before the race. My friend criticized me and said that I should have been running, I explained that if I had run, I would have been at the back somewhere struggling all day knowing good and well that I was in over my head and would not finish.
But instead I was at the start line in front of 30,000 people. With that many people in order to prevent a stampede, you have to order the runners, and put the very fastest in the front. Our job was to form a human chain so that no one started too soon, and as soon as you heard the buzzer, to get out of the way and watch the wave of humanity cross the start line on the way to finishing a race.
What an amazing feeling it was to channel the energy of the fastest people on earth – a lot of people choose to run in the Chicago marathon because it is a straight flat race, where you don’t have to strain yourself to run.
But to watch that energy and power go forward for that moment believing that anything is possible and that they can conquer anything in life was amazing.
My point is that there 30,000 saints or more in the race who have gone before us and shown us the way. But there are 30,000 saints after us looking to us for an example of faith.
God is always faithful to humanity, God is always going to understand, god is always going to call people, and God is always going to be present in the lives of the people.
When we look around the room we may ask, but where are these people- how is God as work in their lives, How is Christ bringing salvation to their lives – it is a matter of faith for us to realize that they are out there, they are coming, they are discovering faith, and they are joining the race.
We don’t have to step aside; the we have to step forward to lead to run the race of faith that has been set before us. Let us pray….. Amen.
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