Today’s passage from the Letter to the Hebrews
is a continuation of last week’s passage.
Does anyone remember the thesis,
the text of Hebrews 11.1?
Faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen.
The chapter goes on to recount the faiths –
and infinite power of God –
of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah.
We concluded last week,
“All of these died in faith
without having received the promises,
but from a distance they saw and greeted them.
They confessed
that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth,
for people who speak in this way
make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.”
Last week’s passage
echoes the themes made explicit
in Philippians 3.20:
“Our citizenship is in heaven.
We look forward to a savior that comes from there—
the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Today’s passage keeps going
by offering summaries of crossing the Red Sea
and “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.”
Despite all of those wonders,
the Letter to the Hebrews says that none of those people
received what was promised.
Despite all of that,
none of them was able to know
the fullness of salvation that God was preparing
in Jesus’ coming to live with us.
Those who have walked in darkness,
have seen a great light.
We remember Christ’s death,
we proclaim his resurrection,
and we await his coming in glory.
By the standards
of the first and second generations of Christians –
the hearer-readers of the Letter to the Hebrews –
we’ve been waiting an awfully long time.
This delayed parousia we live in,
the delay of Jesus’ return making all things well
shows us how we grow in our technology
as we grow in our capacity
to harm one another
and our capacity to ignore one another
literally to death.
A friend in Kyiv has had to apologize
for disappearing as we text
because he had to go to the safety bunker.
He has access to a safety bunker.
The summit this week
between Presidents Putin and Trump
was about Ukraine
but didn’t include Ukrainians.
The military is becoming more present
in large cities –
first in LA and now in DC –
as they are tapped to allegedly
help fight crime waves,
which are not born out by statistics
or enforce immigration laws.
Those places seem far away from us,
but we need to be ready.
We have time to prepare
for how we respond and react.
Our Sanctuary Taskforce has already been working
on how this congregation will react
if ICE shows up uninvited
and probably without a warrant.
That’s why there’s a “Private” sign
on the Library door.
You can still access its treasures.
The Letter to the Hebrews is written
to faithful Jewish people
who have come to accept Jesus as their messiah.
That was not a popular position,
and it became hard to maintain both lives
the farther from Jesus’ ascension time got.
These people’s own families
wondered how they could abandon
the cores of their identity –
which did set father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.
In addition to their own family’s concerns,
the had an oppressive regime
that was governed by outsiders
who had access to unfettered
state violence.
Maybe those sent to control the local populations
were from Rome
but they could just as easily
have been from somewhere even farther afield,
sent by a far away emperor
to control the backwaters
as they just did their jobs.
This is why the Letter to the Hebrews
reminds these Christians of all those
who came before,
and who never saw the promise of God’s full salvation.
Last week’s passage offered assurance
that God has prepared a city
for those who came before.
They knew that their citizenship was in heaven,
and that they had to contend with
the trials and tribulations of this human life
and the powers and principalities of
this world.
Today’s passage offers them encouragement
to keep at it until
we see that city for ourselves.
Even expecting Jesus to come back very quickly,
they’re encouraged,
“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.”
In short, these passages to the Hebrews
are passages to followers of Jesus
through all time.
That is arguably true
of most of the New Testament,
but we don’t necessarily feel the same pressures
or know the same problems
that the church in Rome or Corinth did.
We know what it’s like, though,
to wonder “How long, O Lord?”
We know what it’s like to wonder,
“How is this pledge campaign going to turn out?
What will we do,
if things have to change?”
Life in this church community
is already changing some!
We don’t know what the full sum
of those changes will be
but know that Jesus is walking with us.
Neither at St. Hilda St. Patrick
nor in the streets
are we being stoned to death,
sawn in two,
or killed by the sword.
We look to Jesus
the pioneer and perfecter of our faith
as we set out to run with perseverance
the race that is set before us.
You’re listening and you’re working,
and we stand on the shoulders of giants.
Even as the world grows in our technology
and humans grow in our capacity
to harm one another,
walking in the way of Jesus’s cross
grows our love and grows our strength
to do the work God has given us to do.
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. Amen.