Hebrews 11:29-12:2 – “A Well-Worn Path”
I learned the stories of the Bible through flannel board narrative in Sunday School as a child. While not as high tech as a 3D Moses crossing the Red Sea on Blue Ray, it stretched my imagination to make room for these people and their stories. To this day when I read about Samson, David, or Joshua I see their images on green flannel. As we grow older these people still seem larger than life and their faith can seem out of reach.
As much as we want to relate to them, you can’t help but feel disconnected from them in some way. The image of this text reminds us of Greek gods looking down from Mount Olympus on us mere mortals and our foolishness. Some people think God is just like that… removed, amused, & indifferent, but that’s not our story.
The writer of Hebrews believed the early church needed to hear these stories again. They were at risk of forgetting or worse, becoming indifferent toward them. Many people today have done just that. We need to tell these stories to one another, to sing them to one another, to ask hard questions of them and one another. This is our story.
These are Real People.
If I asked you to name a few of the greatest U.S. Presidents, I doubt any of you would name James Tyler, William Henry Harrison, or Franklin Pierce. Some of these names you would expect to find here: Abraham, Moses, David, but others you may not have ever heard of or at least wonder what put their name in this list of great men & women of faith.
Illus: Hodges Chapel at Beeson Divinity School has a dome 90 feet above the pulpit featuring an amazing work of art called “The Great Cloud of Witnesses”… featuring portraits of Perpetua, Thomas Cranmer, John Leland, May Hayman among other more familiar names like John Calvin & Dietrich Bonhoeffier, but not one portrait of Elijah, Peter, or Paul in the Great Cloud depiction. There are examples of ordinary people who lived exemplary lives of faith and made significant contributions to the Church.
I love the Bible because you get honest depictions of people as they are… triumph and failure, virtue and vice. We see them at critical moments of decision when they acted in great faith but also in moments of weakness when they stumbled.
Illus: Billy Graham is one of the more recent figures in the Church who can seem larger than life to many, as though his faith is somehow above and beyond our reach. In his autobiography Just As I Am he described his first meeting with a President at the White House with Harry Truman… That story is important to me because it humanizes him.
I can relate to people who make mistakes, who have questions, who have doubts, who try again. I can’t relate to people who get it right every time… who never blow it. While these people and their stories seem extraordinary to us, their lives were marked as much by their shortcomings as by their faith:
• Those who crossed the Red Sea did a whole lot of complaining and begging to go back to Egypt before the waters ever parted
• Rahab wasn’t exactly a role model of virtue, considered an outcast
• Gideon asked for a sign from God three different times before he agreed to do what God led him to do
• When Deborah commissioned Barak to lead an army of 10,000 against a multitude, he told her, “I’ll go if you go with me, but if you don’t go, I won’t go.”
• Samson was a strong man with a weakness for women and partying that cost him his life
• Jephthah tried to bargain with God and make a deal that would guarantee him victory on the battlefield
I’m not disparaging these people or their faith. I’m trying to make the case that they were real people just like us full of faith and doubt, hope and despair, love and cruelty. Many of them overcame enormous odds and are remembered for heroic deeds, while many others paid the ultimate cost and met tragic ends. They were real people just like us, and their story is our story.
This is a Real Journey
What is faith? How do you describe it? Some would say it’s something you either have or you don’t. You can have a lot or a little. Jesus sort of blew that theory out of the water when he said if you only had faith the size of a mustard seed you could move mountains. It’s not about measuring up against one another. I don’t know who said it first but “faith is a verb.” It’s an action. It’s a way of living. This writer describes it as a running a race.
I was warned by my preaching professor in seminary against “preaching the illustration instead of the text.” This illustration of the Christian life as a race is one that far too many have too literally. We have all seen people jockeying for position, elbowing others out of the way to get to the finish line first to make a name for themselves. The irony is that Jesus said “the first shall be last and the last shall be first… you must lose your life if you want to save it.” Everything is upside down in His kingdom.
Illus: You’ll find it hard to believe, but I’m not a runner. I don’t understand anything about running other than the exhaustion of it, so I asked someone I knew to explain it to me. She described the importance of fueling your body properly so you don’t run out of steam, which is most critical in endurance running. You can’t eat something healthy for breakfast the day of the race and expect to finish. What you eat and how you train every day for weeks prior to the race is where the fuel comes from that enables you to finish. She said if she didn’t run with a group she would have given up on training for a marathon months ago. When she doesn’t feel up to it or when she falls behind, someone falls back to run with her to get her across the finish line. That’s a race worth running.
This life of faith is no 50 yard dash to the finish. It is a journey that we set out on to follow after Christ. It is a journey that we take together. I’ve known people who have hung up their track shoes and decided to go it alone, and I’ve come close a few times myself. As a country preacher I’ve had several people tell me, “Me and Jesus got our own thing going. I can have all the church I need in my bass boat on Sunday morning or on my back porch overlooking the lake.”
Some of the most divine encounters we have are in moments of solitude or time spent outdoors taking in the beauty of creation, but it is only a small snapshot of the greatness and wonder of God. You need a wide-angle lens to take it all in. We are so unique and diverse that you can never get the whole picture of who God is just by looking in the mirror. As we get to know one another with all of our giftedness and personalities, we see a bigger and clearer picture of who God is.
When we are open about our struggles of faith and the difficulties we face on the journey, others can relate to what we’re going through. We can encourage one another, pray for one another, and get through life with others to share the load.
Illus: Karen Armstrong’s autobiography described her struggle with faith as a young nun in a rigorous convent prior to the reforms of Vatican II, and how she lost all faith, left the church, and started her life over as a secular. The funny thing was the more people that read her story the more they were encouraged by her struggles with faith and drew inspiration from it. Many described having their own faith renewed and invigorated by her honesty and vulnerability.
She went on to work on another book on the Apostle Paul. She blamed him for all the misogyny and ills of the church that she left behind, but the more she spent time reading his letters and tracing his footsteps in the places he traveled the more she developed a fondness for him and his faith. His story changed her and renewed her faith. She learned that there was more than one way to live a life of faith. She could leave the pain of her past behind her and start over on a new journey.
This journey makes a Real Difference
Many people like Karen have felt at times that if faith is a journey it is just endless circles going nowhere… that it doesn’t make a difference, and there’s no use to keep trying. The opposite of faith isn’t doubt. It’s giving up, allowing fear and hopelessness to dominate our lives. Faith is a choosing love over fear, hope over despair.
This text makes it clear that there is nothing easy about this journey. It’s always easier to do nothing. Always easier to be afraid. Always easier to give up.
“Any work done faithfully and well is difficult. It is not harder for me to do my job well than for any other person, and no less. There are no easy tasks in the Christian way; there are only tasks that can be done faithfully or erratically, with joy or with resentment. And there is no room for any of us, pastors or grocers, accountants or engineers, word processors or gardeners, physicians or teamsters, to speak in tones of self-pity of the terrible burdens of our work… Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence.” Eugene Peterson
The most subtle temptation we face on this journey will be to underestimate what impact this life of faith has on others.
There will be times when you run in here on Wednesday night on two wheels after a long day on a full moon with kids going crazy, and you may be tempted to think that what you’re doing is going in one ear and out the other. They’ll remember what matters.
A life of faith is Real People on a Real Journey that makes a Real Difference.
This story is our story. We are not alone in the journey. It may be a straight and narrow way, but it is a well-worn path…
“May all who come behind us find us faithful.”
