The World Was Not Worthy
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
Twelfth after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Hebrews 11:32- 40
Twelfth after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Hebrews 11:32- 40
32And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— 33who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, 34quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. 36Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented— 38of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. 39Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.
Can we truly imagine being thrown to the lions? Or being drawn and quartered, or sawn in two by a wooden saw, as tradition holds Isaiah was? Can we imagine being put on trial for our beliefs and be in peril of our lives for them?
Can we really say how we would respond … how we would react, if we woke up one day and there were jackbooted paramilitary police knocking down our doors and hauling us over to the regional jail because of what we gather here to do, and go out from here to live?
There are multitudes of ways in which our faith can be undercut, co-opted, and watered down … some blatantly and others surreptitiously, without our being aware of it … something as simple as allowing a whim to give us a ready excuse to skip church, or as stealthy as avoiding studying those passages in the Bible that make us uncomfortable, uneasy, or which don’t fit into our neat little boxes we try to put God in. We try to explain away stuff that makes us struggle with what we try to understand about God.
It is, after all, a heavy undertaking. The time we spend here, or at home, studying and thinking about … PONDERING … what scripture says about God, is supposed to have some sort of effect on how we carry on with our lives.
Juan Carlos Ceballos, the speaker at the retreat we just came from, who pastors a church in El Paso, Texas, and works at the Spanish Baptist Publishing House there, and who served as the Director of the Seminary in Ecuador, his home country, before moving here, reiterated for those of us attending the retreat in one of our sessions, the fact that there is a cultural influence on the Christian faith that worked its way in when the Christian Church became … accepted, once it became officially sanctioned, and that is the division between the study, or the learning of the faith, and the DOING of the faith. It is an idea that comes from the Greek philosophers – the idea that there is a life of the mind and another, separate life of the body. There is an implicit assumption on the part of those who engage in the life of the mind that it is a ‘higher’ form of living, that those who engage in a living by the labor of their hands are somehow ‘lesser’.
Hmmm … can we think of any examples of that in our society?
That dualism has worked its way into the church. Who is held in higher esteem, the Pastor or the custodian? What does our worship focus on as ‘the main course’? (The preaching?) The description of the services in the early church that we find in the book of Acts sets no hierarchy of importance between the singing of hymns, the joining in prayer, and the word of exhortation or instruction. So how has that worked its way into our traditions, and why?
Are we on some level separating our beliefs from our practices? In isolating the WORD from the living out of our lives, are we allowing ourselves, giving ourselves permission to, in some subtle, unconscious way to say ‘this (hold up Bible) is for the mind, for the spirit, but doesn’t always apply where the rubber meets the road?’
The thing is, we do not find evidence in scripture for the pursuit of the knowledge of God and Christ as a goal IN AND OF ITSELF, it is rather understood and expected and even … DEMANDED that knowing God, knowing Jesus PRESUPPOSES that our lives will in some way SHOW that relationship, DISPLAY that relationship, if you will. It is not ONLY an expectation that the custodian take time to study scripture and spend time in prayer and devotion, but also that the preacher spend some time scrubbing floors or dishes or painting or … whatever … that it not be ONLY the pastor who engages in visiting the sick and homebound, or leading a Bible study, prayer time, or mission trip, but ANY church member may be so prepared. It is a VERY level playing field when it comes to putting our faith into action, folks. We are ALL expected to do it!
So how does all that connect with the passage we just read?
Here it is: I tend to become intimidated when I even HEAR the name ‘Paul the Apostle’, or SAINT Peter, or James, or any of the folks named – Moses, David, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Obadiah … Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David and Samuel, Hudson Taylor, Adoniram and Anne Judson, Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, Dietrich Bonhoeffer … or even Alma Hunt – and I’ve MET her!!! She’s tiny!!! Stands up to just about my waist!
Why do I become intimidated? Because they have, over the years, become the giants of the faith, the trailblazers, the models whereby we pattern and live our lives … we tend to put these people on pedestals, because they lived (for the most part) so long ago, but also because we have become familiar with their accomplishments, or their sacrifices – even to the point of death. I could never imagine myself … and very few people I know … maybe one or two … being named in the same sentence with any of them.
And yet, let’s take a look at the rest of the passage … the people the writer goes on to describe – those who …
Can we really say how we would respond … how we would react, if we woke up one day and there were jackbooted paramilitary police knocking down our doors and hauling us over to the regional jail because of what we gather here to do, and go out from here to live?
There are multitudes of ways in which our faith can be undercut, co-opted, and watered down … some blatantly and others surreptitiously, without our being aware of it … something as simple as allowing a whim to give us a ready excuse to skip church, or as stealthy as avoiding studying those passages in the Bible that make us uncomfortable, uneasy, or which don’t fit into our neat little boxes we try to put God in. We try to explain away stuff that makes us struggle with what we try to understand about God.
It is, after all, a heavy undertaking. The time we spend here, or at home, studying and thinking about … PONDERING … what scripture says about God, is supposed to have some sort of effect on how we carry on with our lives.
Juan Carlos Ceballos, the speaker at the retreat we just came from, who pastors a church in El Paso, Texas, and works at the Spanish Baptist Publishing House there, and who served as the Director of the Seminary in Ecuador, his home country, before moving here, reiterated for those of us attending the retreat in one of our sessions, the fact that there is a cultural influence on the Christian faith that worked its way in when the Christian Church became … accepted, once it became officially sanctioned, and that is the division between the study, or the learning of the faith, and the DOING of the faith. It is an idea that comes from the Greek philosophers – the idea that there is a life of the mind and another, separate life of the body. There is an implicit assumption on the part of those who engage in the life of the mind that it is a ‘higher’ form of living, that those who engage in a living by the labor of their hands are somehow ‘lesser’.
Hmmm … can we think of any examples of that in our society?
That dualism has worked its way into the church. Who is held in higher esteem, the Pastor or the custodian? What does our worship focus on as ‘the main course’? (The preaching?) The description of the services in the early church that we find in the book of Acts sets no hierarchy of importance between the singing of hymns, the joining in prayer, and the word of exhortation or instruction. So how has that worked its way into our traditions, and why?
Are we on some level separating our beliefs from our practices? In isolating the WORD from the living out of our lives, are we allowing ourselves, giving ourselves permission to, in some subtle, unconscious way to say ‘this (hold up Bible) is for the mind, for the spirit, but doesn’t always apply where the rubber meets the road?’
The thing is, we do not find evidence in scripture for the pursuit of the knowledge of God and Christ as a goal IN AND OF ITSELF, it is rather understood and expected and even … DEMANDED that knowing God, knowing Jesus PRESUPPOSES that our lives will in some way SHOW that relationship, DISPLAY that relationship, if you will. It is not ONLY an expectation that the custodian take time to study scripture and spend time in prayer and devotion, but also that the preacher spend some time scrubbing floors or dishes or painting or … whatever … that it not be ONLY the pastor who engages in visiting the sick and homebound, or leading a Bible study, prayer time, or mission trip, but ANY church member may be so prepared. It is a VERY level playing field when it comes to putting our faith into action, folks. We are ALL expected to do it!
So how does all that connect with the passage we just read?
Here it is: I tend to become intimidated when I even HEAR the name ‘Paul the Apostle’, or SAINT Peter, or James, or any of the folks named – Moses, David, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Obadiah … Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David and Samuel, Hudson Taylor, Adoniram and Anne Judson, Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, Dietrich Bonhoeffer … or even Alma Hunt – and I’ve MET her!!! She’s tiny!!! Stands up to just about my waist!
Why do I become intimidated? Because they have, over the years, become the giants of the faith, the trailblazers, the models whereby we pattern and live our lives … we tend to put these people on pedestals, because they lived (for the most part) so long ago, but also because we have become familiar with their accomplishments, or their sacrifices – even to the point of death. I could never imagine myself … and very few people I know … maybe one or two … being named in the same sentence with any of them.
And yet, let’s take a look at the rest of the passage … the people the writer goes on to describe – those who …
suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented— 38of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
Who were they? Fox’s Book of Martyrs chronicles the stories of many of those who gave their lives for the faith, and we could sit and read them and begin to feel smaller and smaller and more and more inadequate … and wonder and ask ourselves if we would have the courage to do the same if we were to be placed in the same circumstance … and somewhere deep down inside us there’s a voice that is saying ‘no, of course not! We would be crumbling … and we fall into a trap.
It’s a simple trap, it is just a thought process, but it is a trap still and all. It’s a trap that convinces us to believe that how we die is more important than how we live.
And while how we die will make a statement, it is how we live that will have the more lasting impact, I would dare say, and I would venture to say it is the harder of the two.
The writer of Hebrews again brings out the fact that those named in THIS section of chapter 11 as well as those named earlier, namely Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
… All these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.
So we have more examples of people who lived a promise they never saw fully manifested in their lifetimes. And yet, they did it – they LIVED IT – anyway.
What are we called to do, as followers of Christ? What are we supposed to BE while we toil and labor here on earth together? What CAN we become if we overcome our jealousy and pettiness, our narrowness of understanding? We can become the body of Christ.
What does that mean, to be the body of Christ? We can think of it in theoretical terms, in the form of a concept, but I think it’s actually pretty simple. What does a BODY do? Seriously, PHYSICALLY, what does a body DO? If it is not otherwise incapacitated, a body moves, walks, sometimes runs, lifts, turns, bends over, reaches up, reaches out, reaches down, rests, and works … it’s not such a theoretical undertaking, it’s not pure concept that we are talking about. It is a reality to put into ACTION!
The last verse of today’s passage gives us a clue, I think, of what we are a part of in a larger sense than just here locally … and the writer goes on to describe that in chapter 12. You’ve heard me mention it before – that cloud of witnesses. But what I’d like to draw your attention to here is where WE get included …
40since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.
So that they would not, APART FROM US, be made perfect.
There’s the promise we are ALL a part of … God has provided something better … and in that “something better” we will all be made perfect. He’s just gone through this list of Giants of the faith, of people who stood up to Lions, and Kings, who turned the world upside down. And he’s talking to people who are being beaten down – by life, by circumstances, sometimes by their own choices. And he’s saying ‘here’s the promise! We will, along WITH THEM everybody that we put on that pedestal – we will all be made PERFECT! How can we grab a hold of that promise? How can we live out what it means to be a part of the body of Christ? It means, to a degree, we live in the future. There is an unhealthy aspect to that, but that is a separate issue. There’s a part of not living in the present … it is an invitation to live in the present as if it were the future. We are part of the Kingdom. We are part of bringing that kingdom of God into the world that we live in now, here, today. And in living out that Kingdom here today, we are walking into a future where the kingdom will be fully manifested. That takes faith, perseverance, that takes endurance, that takes constant encouragement, and encouraging – whether we give it or receive it. And that is why we are not alone in this – that is why God has called us to family, to community, to be one body with many parts.
Let’s pray.
Loving God, sometimes we struggle with the simplest things.
And then comes along this incredible thought: that you are one day going to make us perfect. And it is your promise and you have asked us to live in that promise. So while we struggle and strive FOR perfection, help us together be your functioning body, here in Emmerton, in Warsaw, in Richmond County, on the Northern Neck, in Virginia, the United States, and the rest of the world. Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Our hymn of decision is number 287, ‘Take My Life, Lead me Lord’.
If you’d like to go ahead and open your hymnbooks to that
The invitation is to reflect, to decide, to choose.
To make yourself lead-able, to make yourself guide-able, to make yourself … what? To make yourself available to God.
Let’s stand and sing.
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