Cloudy
Hebrews 11:29-12:2

August 15, 2004

On Tuesday when I thought about this sermon I wrote that I would not bring the Olympics into the sermon as I expect a lot of preachers would today. But today is Sunday, a new week, and I will go halfway against my pledge. The author of Hebrews talks about persevering in the race set before us - and racing is a good part of what the Olympics is about.

A few years back Nike athletic shoes promoted their product with a then remarkable set of advertising images. A runner was shown in a wide angle photograph running across a vast landscape with a long and winding road stretching out seemingly to infinity before him or her. “There Is No Finish Line” the caption read. Nike understood what it took to be a serious competitive runner. Ironically, Nike is a Greek word that means “victory.” A victory implies a definite end or conclusion. But according to their slogan, one will get nowhere if one settles for a particular accomplishment and then retires. The pilgrimage never ends.

I have been searching for a long time. Searching for the Holy Grail of Christianity and of religion in general - nothing less than faith. I have, however, never really found faith. But on occasion faith has found me and that has made all the difference.

Faith is one of those five-letter words that has been used so much it has lost its specificity, and perhaps its serendipity as well. It has become a noun when it should have stayed a verb or some other less definite particle of speech. Nevertheless, faith is what we talk about religiously; faith is on every person’s lips. Hebrews talks about faith a lot, so it is appropriate to listen to how Hebrews talks faith.

What was read this morning is just a portion of a longer, rhythmic recitation of the history of faith among the characters of the Bible. The author begins chapter 11 with the most famous definition of faith in Christian thought: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” I have never really liked the tone of this definition, because faith has so often been interpreted in the light of this statement as a kind of blind faith. Faith is not based in present reality, but in the not has been and the not yet.

Yet, faith is real, living in the here and now, but it is neither a possession nor an achievement, nor is faith an identifiable list of correct ideas. Our Christian faith is not reducible to the Nicene Creed, or a list of doctrinal propositions many denominations utilize to distinguish between those who are in and who are outside their community.

Being human beings our rational minds - which were created and animated by God also - want to define and limit and quantify faith. But authentic faith is indescribable, for faith is constituted by our relationship with God, the wholly other, the ground of being, the Ultimate Concern. Try as we might, we cannot define God and pin God down to a few propositions we can print on a piece of paper. God is infinitely beyond our words and sentences. Therefore, faith in one person is often radically different from the faith of another individual. The author of Hebrews understands that faith is the strongest, but least predictable quality of a human being.

Clarence Jordan translates that famous phrase into “Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds.” That’s how we recognize faith -- in the way people actually live faithfully, not in the poetic beauty of their words about faith.

The author of Hebrews eschews talking about faith on a theoretical basis and starts naming names. By faith, “living by the Unseen” (Clarence Jordan), he or she recalls Abel offered a sacrifice more acceptable to God than that of his brother Cain. Abel offered vegetables from his garden, while Cain presented meat from the hunt, but it wasn’t the kind of offering, it was the kind of heart, the kind of relationship Abel had with God that mattered. And “through his faith he still speaks.”

The author doesn’t stop; indeed, he gets on a long roll. I can see her preaching at a revival meeting, a little call and response with the congregation. By faith, Abel was counted as righteous. By faith, Enoch skipped death completely. By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. The congregation knew the story of each one, they nodded their heads in agreement, and the light started to fill up inside them, understanding began to creep into their brains and hearts inexorably. This cloud of witnesses of the way people have faith in the presence of God was enveloping them, just like a real cloud saturates everything with its moisture.

By faith, Abraham said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place. By faith, barren Sarah was able to become pregnant, old woman as she was at the time. By faith, Isaac and Jacob and Joseph kept on keeping on with their conversation with God.

By faith, Moses lived a most unusual life, always keeping his eye on the One no eye can see. By faith, Israel walked through the Red Sea on dry ground, and the Egyptians had no faith and drowned in the same place. By faith, Israel walked around Jericho and the walls came atumbling down.

Oh, then there was Rahab and the author knows he doesn’t have enough time to fill out the whole story -- Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jepthah, David, Samuel, all the prophets. And then he gets up to the present day of his audience and talks about all the Christian witnesses to this faithful walking with God. The word witness in Greek is martyr and there were plenty of martyrs who suffered cruelly for their faith, but who cares about cruelty when God is walking with you?

It’s a good thing Hebrews was written in the first century and not the twenty-first century, for the author’s examples would fill volumes and volumes, tomes on end. And you and I sitting there listening and shouting Amen would be all worn out. That’s because there is no finish line. There are people in our memory and even acquaintance who persevered in the race and lived by faith, though never in a neat formula.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a minister in Germany and taught in the seminary just about the time Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party came to power. Dietrich knew that Hitler wanted to replace the worship of Christ with the worship of the FŸhrer, so he was part of the Confessing Church that resisted Hitler. Bonhoeffer became involved with a plot to assassinate Hitler - not the usual act of faith, but is there “a usual act of faith”?

The plot we know failed and he was imprisoned for years, writing remarkable letters and sermons to the world from behind bars, a contemporary Paul. Two days before his prison camp was liberated by the Allies, the Nazis made sure they finished their work and hanged Bonhoeffer. But through his faith, he still speaks.

Nelson Mandela demonstrated and protested and spoke eloquently and defiantly against apartheid, but he was imprisoned for more than 25 years. He kept faith with God and with humanity and when the world in South Africa changed, he emerged from prison not a shattered, broken man, but a man empowered by a faith we have seldom seen in its wholeness. He became President and initiated the truth and reconciliation hearings that brought out the worst of inhumanity, yet allowed a people to forgive and begin again. You cannot describe that kind of faith succinctly, but through his faith, Nelson Mandela speaks still.

There is no congregation of God’s gathered people that does not have a cloud of witnesses of how to live by faith. Esther Brandon was a daughter of this congregation who accomplished many things through her education and professional work both here and overseas. It was her faithfulness to her family that really raised our eyebrows, and how she threw herself into making this church work that elicited our gratitude and our memories. But through her faith, Esther still speaks and we can hear her clearly.

There is no finish line. You and I are not allowed to be spectators, however, though we may walk rather than run. A cloud of witnesses has soaked us through with their examples of the faithful relationship with God and we are called to persevere in the race set before us. It is only by our faith that dreams become deeds.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan