For The Sake of The Joy

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Proper 15 C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

²⁹By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. ³⁰By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. ³¹By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.  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. 12  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, ²looking 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.

I received word on Friday that Phyllis Thomas, a retired missionary from Chile, had passed away after succumbing to cancer.  While I waited to hear about the arrangements, I did a quick search to find out how long it would take to drive from here to Lillington, NC, and found that it is something over a four-and-a-half hour trip.   In my mind, I started reviewing my schedule for this coming week and tentatively rearranging things in case the funeral was going to be on a day that I could feasibly get away.  As it turns out, that service is going to be this afternoon, so I will be with my aunts and uncles in spirit, but not in person. 

I started to reflect again on the number of emails and notices that I’ve received over the last couple of years of the passing of dearly loved people – men and women – who have had a lasting impact on who I am becoming.  It makes me that much more grateful for the ones that I can still communicate with and thank them for what they’ve done and express to them how much they mean to me. 

This shaping that is going on, it’s not all in the past.  I received a book yesterday that I ordered several days earlier, and started reading it.  It is by Greg Boyd, Pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.  You may remember me mentioning him a couple of times.  The book is entitled The Myth of a Christian Nation; How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church.  I have listened to the sermon series on which the book is based, and it is a compelling and unsettling argument.  Even more so when we take into consideration that Greg preached the series over the course of a couple of months back in 2004, as the campaigns for the elections that year began to heat up.  He shares that, as a result of the series, about a fifth of his congregation decided they would rather go elsewhere to worship.  About a thousand of the then-5,000 member congregation left.  I think I may have shared that bit of information with you before, but it bears noting that discontent with preachers is a long, time-honored tradition, and one that is regularly exercised even today. 

But the reason I bring up the book is that I mentioned it online, on my facebook page, right after getting it out of the mailbox a little after noon, and after getting back home from being out with Jesus and Perla and Judson later in the evening, I had a wonderful, engaging three-way conversation about the premise of the book that lasted about three hours, and realized towards the end of it that that was a conversation that was helping me define and shape how and why I believe what I believe – thanks not only to Greg Boyd, the author, but to David Batlle, a friend from high school, also the son of missionaries, who now lives in Texas, and Alice Barbour Rusher, a woman who was in my journeyman group and who used to work at the Virginia Baptist Board until they had to downsize the staff.

Whether they realize it or not, in that engagement, in that struggling and sharing that happened over the course of those three or so hours, they became a part of that cloud of witnesses that the writer here refers to.  The difference is a minor one, in that those that are listed in the letter were all dead by the time their names and stories were being read, and the ones I’ve mentioned are very much alive.  But I could just as easily name some saints who HAVE made an incredible impact on my life and who are no longer with us: Emma Key Stark, Floyd and Lloyd Key, Bill Carter, Bill Andrews, Mary Jo Geiger, Donald Maccubbin, Gordon W. Turner.          

Make no mistake about it.  Baptists have probably just as many saints as Catholics do.  We may not have the formal procedure in place that canonization entails within the Catholic tradition, but we have our saints.  The difference is, since we are a congregational tradition, in our structure, the names of our saints generally don’t go beyond the local congregation.  Some do, of course.  Lottie Moon, Adoniram and Anne Rice Judson, folks like that.  Billy Graham is pretty much a shoo-in.  Others we could argue about, but there would be some in our cloud that would not be in others.  Folks that we could name and even with the smallish group of people that are here, some would nod their heads in agreement, and others would probably sit a little stiller until the next name was called. 

The point is, we can each think back through our lives and call our own roll call of the faithful.  The writer of this letter knew that, but he or she also knew the power that recalling lives that were known to a whole community did more to empower and encourage THESE followers of Christ to face the days ahead with the courage and the strength that they would need to meet those challenges, just as, in their minds’ eyes, they could imagine each of those who had gone on before faced their time of tribulation.

Again I would draw your attention to an almost passing comment that the writer makes about each of these people who have been named – in this morning’s text it is verse 39: Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, … it would seem to be reasonable to expect the litany to end in some way testifying to the fact that those who had gone on before DID receive SOME semblance of … recognition, or acknowledgement, or some kind of … well … I don’t want to put it so crassly, but … reward for their troubles. 

But they didn’t.  And yet they persevered in the faith.  They maintained their course. 

I’d like to draw your attention to a little word in the first verse of chapter 12: 

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,

That word “also”, what does it do and what does it mean?  It means that those heroes of the faith that were just listed, those spiritual giants whose shoes we don’t dare consider being able to fill, they were just as beset by ‘every weight and the sin that clings so closely’ – in other words, regardless of the differences in time and place, what we are struggling against remains the same across the generations and across the distances.  We are no different from them.  But what we learn from them is that despite those weights and that sin, we CAN move ahead in Kingdom work.

It is a truly outstanding list.  And it ends on a high note.  The list comes down to Jesus himself.  And the writer explains something about why Jesus did what he did.  Verse 2 of chapter 12:

 … 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.

Most of the people that I mentioned in my list from the cloud are missionaries.  That is only because I drew from those who have preceded us into heaven.  But not all of them were missionaries. Some of the people in the list served as Pastors, others as administrators and some as Sunday school teachers and parole officers, some as homemakers and WMU members.  If I had gone further into my list, I’m sure I would come across people who touched my life in profound ways but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what they did during the week.  It was only in that particular space in Sunday School or Training Union that I could tell you what they did that mattered. 

That phrase in verse 38 of chapter 11 – “of whom the world was not worthy” would begin to apply more and more as we explored who they were in the eternal realm. 

Why would anyone want to risk life and limb, health and wellbeing in the face of the persecution – whether in the form of a first-century lion, or beating, or a twentieth-century taunt or rejection, or twenty-first century rebuke or ridicule for the sake of extending the hand of fellowship and grace to someone that ‘the normal crowd’ would consider unredeemable –

For the sake of the joy that was set before him

I think the same could be said for each of the people on my list.  They did what they did for the sake of the joy that was set before them.  They endured separation from family, illness, loneliness; they endured living a life of anonymity in a culture that treasures celebrity for it’s own sake, regardless of what contribution is made or not…

As we ask ourselves what this means to Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, I would invite you to once again look to the example of Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, and imitate HIM, even as our cloud of witnesses sought to imitate him in their routine, quiet, and not-so-quiet lives.

May we all be found as faithful.

Let’s pray.