“Running the Race in Faith(=Trust)” - Sermon for August 14, 2016

As always, please comment below on your thoughts on the sermon, your thoughts about faith=trust and your thoughts about faith not equaling trust, or perhaps equaling something else! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

“Running the Race in Faith(=Trust)”
Sermon, Year C, Proper 15, August 14, 2016
© Rev. David J. Huber 2016
Plymouth UCC, Eau Claire, WI
Focus Scripture: Hebrews 11:29-12:2  and Luke 12:49-56






Last week we talked about faith, which is what this 11th chapter of Hebrews is about. I said last week that I think a good way to think of this word, to envision what the word “Faith” means, is to think of it as trust. To have faith in God is to trust God. To have faith in another person, as well, is to trust that person. To have faith is to have trust.

Trusting in God’s presence. Trusting God’s promise of love and redemption. Trusting that the Holy Spirit will never lead us into something that God does not want to happen, or that is in contradiction to God, but that the Spirit will only blow us into a fulfilment of God’s vision. Even if that means the Spirit is blowing us into difficult or anxious times.

So to have faith is not simply to believe in Jesus, whatever that word “believe” might mean. When people say, “I believe in the Bible” or “I believe in Jesus”, I like to ask them, “What does that mean to you?”

To have faith is to trust. To trust Jesus enough to follow in his footsteps. To follow on his path of loving our neighbor, doing justice, healing the world, to fulfil God’s vision, to run the race set before us in whatever way we are capable of running the race.

I’m thinking of running this week because of the Olympics. As we watch the Olympics, we do see some athletes better than others, but usually the winners and the ones who come in at the end are still within seconds of one another in a race, or a point or so in events that are scored, etc. These are exceptional athletes at the top of their form. I bring that up because a friend posted on Facebook this week saying that they should do in the Olympics is have one average person in every contest just as a comparison to see how truly extraordinary these athletes are.

And also with faith/trust/following Jesus. We’re running the race, and some of us are far ahead of the pack, and some of us are far behind, not running anywhere near as fast. But we want to at least keep running. Or speed walking. Or, I suppose, a saunter. Even a crawl. So long as we are moving forward. We all have our own speed, and all Jesus asks is that we keep going forward, to keep trusting God. Like a coach, “Keep moving! Keep moving!”

I mentioned last week that we don’t know who wrote this letter, and we don’t know to whom it was written. Many of the letters in the New Testament were written to a specific congregation or person that is mentioned right in the letter, but not this one. This one only says that it is to the Hebrews, and that is a title given to it probably a hundred years or more after it was written; not a title given by the author.

It lists a number of faith moments in Israel’s history, in the history of the Jewish people. Being as the letter is to “The Hebrews”, it is a good bet that this was written to a congregation of Jewish followers of Jesus, though probably it had some Gentiles. But being mostly Jewish, they would know their history and would know who the people are who are mentioned in this passage. It’s a kind of shorthand, as he, or possibly she - this could have been written by a woman - reminds them of the cloud of witnesses that have gone before them. That other people have endured difficult times. Other people, their ancestors, have trusted in God.

At the time the letter was written, which was likely in the range of 60-100 CE, there was anxiety and difficulty as well. The Jewish leaders and the Roman Empire were persecuting these “Christians”, these followers of Jesus, this upstart new religion. Jesus followers were being arrested, murdered, harassed, stoned, thrown to the lions, imprisoned, martyred… terrible things were happening for those who called themselves followers of The Way, or followers of Jesus. It was a time of trial. A time very much like Jesus said in the words in our Gospel. It was literally “A time of division, five in one household divided two against three and three against two, daughter against mother, father against son, in-laws against in-laws.”

That was the reality for many people at the time. There was division within families. This new radical movement of Jesus was considered to be dangerous. I’d like to see it become dangerous again! It was considered too radical, and against the Roman Empire, because of the movement’s vocal witness that said that poor lives matter, and women’s lives matter, and lepers’ lives matter, the lives of those who are on the bottom matter. It caused division. It was opposed to the way of the Empire, and that made it dangerous to be a follower of Jesus. So there are instances, and we have recorded stories, about the divisions that happened within families. A daughter becomes a Christian, for example, either out of a Jewish or a Roman family, and the rest of the family says, “No, you can’t do that, it’s too dangerous! The followers of Jesus are being killed, arrested, harassed…” or maybe the family says, “No, you can’t do that, because that is not our religion. You are abandoning our religion, and you can’t do that.”

There was literal division within families. Some out of concern for safety, some because they didn’t like this new upstart religion. People were ratting out one another, tattling on their neighbors to the Roman authorities or others trying to hunt down these horrible Christians who are sharing food with one another, talking about loving their neighbors, resisting the ways of the empire.

There also was division within the larger family of Judaism around Jesus. There were numbers of Jews that started to follow Jesus - and of course, he himself was Jewish - and became what we now call Christians. But not all Jews did. So within Judaism there was tension around that. At the time of this letter being written is when that tension was coming to a head. The Christians were still worshiping in the synagogue, as well as doing their Christian worship. It was during this time, the span of 60-100 CE when this letter was likely written, that Christianity began to separate itself from Judaism and leave the synagogues entirely. So this is being written at a tense time. There is division within the religion out of which Christianity comes, and within the greater culture. A tense and anxious time when it would be easy, even forgivable and justifiable, for someone to let go of their Christianity and just pretend that Jesus never happened. To play it safe. To say that they are not a follower of Jesus. To pretend like that never happened. To go back to life as it was as a Roman or a Jew or whatever they might have been.

The letter writing here is encouraging the people, saying, “Don’t give up! Trust in God!” Trust that this movement that Jesus started is, indeed, God’s will. This is a movement of the Holy Spirit. The writer encourages the people about not giving up by lifting up stories of the faithful - the trusting - who listened to and followed and trusted God. He lifts up those that we in the church might call the saints who went before us, or the great cloud of witnesses as the writer uses here. A witness is simply one who shows their trust in God so that others may see it and be inspired by it and emulate it.

So the writer lists some examples of the faithful to inspire. “By faith, the people passed through the Red Sea.” That’s the exodus out of Egypt. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell. That was the entry into the promised land. By faith, Rahab the Prostitute was saved. Rahab lived in Jericho, she was not Jewish, but she helped the Jewish spies who came into Jericho to take it over, and because of that she survived. Others are lifted up by name: Gideon, Barak, Jephtha, David, Samuel, the prophets. All who through faith, who through trust in God, endured hardships, did great things and endured hardships, including martyrdom and sometimes fates worse than death. They stayed faithful. They remained trusting of God. “Look to them,” the author of Hebrews says, “and be inspired to get through this time of trial. Don’t give up on who you are. Don’t give up your trust that God is working good. Don’t give that up.” It would be easy to do so at this time, but because this time is difficult that is why we must be most trusting in God. And since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, look to those who have gone before. Trust in their faith, as you trust in God. Not only the witnesses of the far past, but look also, and trust the faith of the recent witnesses. People that the audience of this letter would or could have known, their contemporaries, who were staying faithful even when they were sent to the lions, prison, or had other things happen to them. Look to the saints who have gone before, and the saints who are around us.

Now in 2016 we have another 2000 years of witnesses and saints, from the time this letter was written, whose stories we can rely on to inspire trust and faith. We have our contemporaries, too. Think of the witnesses of this congregation, in the present time and going back 130 years to our founding. All these saints who went before us who have built this congregation and kept it going, kept the Word of God being spoken and preached and lived here in Eau Claire, who left us a legacy of faith and trust as Plymouth United Church of Christ. Who did so during times of external and internal struggle, and anxiety about the present and the future, within the congregation, within the greater church, within society.

These people who remained faithful and trusting in God as the world was turned upside down numerous times, plunged into depressions, world wars, smaller scale wars around the world, globalism, changing fads and fashions, changes to ways of being the church, changes in culture…and surely conflict within families - biological and the church family, two against three, mother against daughter, son against father and so on…

There really is no period in human that there is not anxiety and trouble and conflict. Probably few times in our lives that we don’t have our own anxieties, conflicts, and struggles within and without. But, the writer here is saying, trust in God. Trust in God’s love, faithfulness, compassion. Trust that God will not let the Church down, but that God is using the Church to bring word of God’s love to the world.

Look out to all those saints who have gone before us, to that cloud of witnesses. They all moved forward in faith. They all moved forward in trust. Trust in God to do as the letter writer here says, “To run with perseverance the race that was set before them, looking to Jesus.” Staying focused on Jesus. That Jesus’ path is the path to follow. The saints point us to Jesus so that we may have faith and trust to run our own race, looking also only to Jesus.

Amen.