If it’s all right with you I want to
begin with the end of my sermon today. Sometimes I like to eat
dessert first. Sometimes I like to start at the end of the book, just to
see if I really want to spend my time getting to the place the author wants to
take me. And sometimes, I like to begin at the end of the sermon so
we’ll all know right where we’re going. So here it is:
I want to encourage you today to lace up your running shoes! Lace up your
running shoes, my brothers and sisters, because we have a race to run.
And it’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon. The road is hard and
we have a ways yet to go. But the finish line is waiting, and we do not
run alone. So lace up your running shoes, and let’s follow Jesus
all the way home. Amen! Thanks be to
God!
That’s what I want to say today,
and probably I should pray now and we could take up our offering and sing one
more hymn and get to an early lunch. Maybe you would be happy for me to
start with the end of the sermon every week, because, you’re bright
people. It probably doesn’t take you as long to get it as it does
for me to say it. And Lord knows, we all like an
early lunch! But I don’t want to raise false hopes because
I’m not going to do that every week, and I do have a little more left to
say today. Still, it’s especially fitting for me to start at
the end of my sermon today because our scripture this morning, Hebrews 12:1-3,
is the end of a sermon in Hebrews which begins with the chapter before, Hebrews
11, that famous chapter on faith.
I’m sure you’ve read it.
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” the author
begins, “the conviction of things not seen.” And he proceeds
to list one example after another from our sacred story: Abel, Enoch, and
Noah; Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac; Jacob, Esau, and Joseph. Moses, of course, and
even Rahab the harlot, whom God used to bless
The author of Hebrews is running out of
papyrus and His audience wants to get to lunch, too, so he writes:
What more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David
and Samuel and the prophets-- 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. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to
obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even
chains and imprisonment. They 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-- of whom the world was not worthy. They
wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. (Heb
11:32-38).
Look closely and you will see this
author defines faith as faithfulness, not just the tentative trust of an
enthusiastic moment, but an enduring conviction that inspires imagination and
incites action and sets direction and lasts a life time. Faith is God
working across the centuries through a long line of faithful souls to reach all
humankind with God’s limitless love. Faith is endurance.
Faith is perseverance. Faith is faithfulness. As Friederich Nietzsche said, “The essential thing
"in heaven and earth" is . . . that there should be long obedience in
the same direction; thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run,
something which has made life worth living.”
“A long obedience in the same
direction…” That’s the faith it takes to build a
church. John and I had the pleasure to visit St. Mark’s in
And listen to this…God is not
finished. God needs more souls to complete the work they began. God
needs you and me. “All these,” Hebrews says, “though
they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since
God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be
made perfect.” We are the “us” he is addressing. Their
work waits, they wait, for us to do our part. This leads us to our
scripture today, the conclusion of his great litany of faith, understood as
God’s labor through generations of faithful souls to stretch God’s
love down the centuries to you and me.
“Therefore,” the author
concludes. “Therefore,” Hebrews projects the story
forward. “Therefore” we are urged:
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. Consider him who endured such
hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose
heart.
I don’t use sports much in my preaching. It
tends to trivialize the gospel, and reduce its glory to winning a
game…even a Packer game. The Lord is so much bigger, and the stakes
are so much higher. I know this may not win me a lot of friends, but I
believe that our culture values sports too highly, as if somebody were a hero
of the Spirit because he can throw farther or run faster on any given
Sunday. The real heroes of the Spirit are those people who compete
against illness every day. The real heroes of the Spirit are those who
fight against injustice all their lives. The real heroes of the Spirit are
those who win out over bigotry and hatred and violence by the love of God every
given Sunday. And where are the crowds cheering for them?
So I don’t use sports much in my
preaching, but I can’t avoid it today, since the author of Hebrews
takes a metaphor right out of the athletic contests of ancient
He told me that at mile 16 you cross the
Williamsburg Bridge from Queens into Manhattan. You’ve run
sixteen miles with cheering crowds and suddenly, the bridge is quiet –
just the sound of feet pounding the pavement and deep breathing. He
confessed that it is so tempting to quit because you still have ten miles to
go. But as he rounded the big sweeping exit from the bridge and looked up
I can relate to that because me life has
been filled with encouragers who kept me going when I was tempted to quit…some
of whom are filling these pews this morning. We all have those
“cellar voices” who criticize and reject
and discourage our every step. The people who say we have no right to
exist…he politicians who pander to the prejudice of hate…the
internalized voices twelve-steppers call “stinkin’
thinkin’” which tell us that we
can’t do it, that we don’t deserve it, that we might as well give
up. But thank God, we also have the balcony people: friends and partners
who love us no matter what. Family and church family
who say, “Way to go! We believe in you! You can do
it!” Preachers who remind us how Jesus included everybody in
God’s love and that that includes us, too. We have
“a cloud of witnesses” Hebrews insists.
I want to celebrate that cloud of
witnesses today, all the people who have kept us going when the going was
tough…the spiritual heroes of scripture Hebrews lists in chapter eleven…the
saints of the church who have laid down their lives before us…our own
personal saints who shared the gospel, who lived the gospel for us to
witness…the saints of this church who made our being here today
possible. Thank God for each of these souls whose faithfulness God has
used to build our lives … to build our church … to extend the great
cathedral of God’s love. We have
to always remember the importance of running the race together. People
often say to me “Pastor, I wouldn’t have made it through this
without my church” When jobs are
lost…when partners are lost…when they get a scary diagnosis from
the doctor that sends them on a detour they never expected to take. The church
was there to pick them up and keep them going. Look around today and
thank God for one another. You are the church to each other, and none of
us can finish this race alone.
Of course, the most important person who
is always running beside us is Christ himself. Jesus,
the Christ, “the trailblazer and finisher,” who goes ahead of us to
prepare the way and comes behind us to complete what we leave undone but is
beside us “always, to the end of the age.” We are
never alone. What challenge do we face he hasn’t endured before
us? What struggle can we have that doesn’t pale before the cross he
endured for our sake? “Who will separate us from the love of
Christ?” asks the Apostle Paul. “Will hardship, or distress, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword…? No, in
all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us”
(Rom 8:35,37). In the race we run with Jesus
there’s no way to lose because God is the finish line.
I know it gets hard. We get
weary. We lose heart. We have other ways to spend your money
than giving sacrificially to build a church that will still be here ministering
when we are gone. We have other ways to spend our time than in endless
committee meetings and messy ministries to people who may not even pause to
thank you. But who else will do it if we don’t? And where will the
people who need it most find a church with open doors if we let these doors
close?
Do you still believe in the dream God
gave us to be a church “like nowhere else?” You are
literally saving lives here. You are Jesus telling the despised and
rejected they are God’s own beloved. You are Jesus standing with the
prophets calling for justice and righteousness. You are Jesus healing the
sick and feeding the hungry and offering peace in a violent, war loving
world. You are Jesus, leading God’s lost children back home,
promising a place prepared, showing them the way to the finish line in
God’s eternal arms. You are the body of Christ, the church,
finishing the race, completing the work begun by those beloved faithful souls
who have gone before us. Is anything more important for us to do?
You be faithful, too. You be faithful,
too. So….
Lace up your running shoes, because, my brothers and sisters, we have a race to
run. And it’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon. The road
is hard and we have a ways yet to go. But the finish line is waiting, and
we do not run alone. So lace up your running shoes, and let’s
follow Jesus all the way home. Amen! Thanks be
to God!
May we pray?
Lord, hold our hand while we run this race. Because
sometimes we get tired. We get discouraged. We get
afraid. But look at the people you’ve sent to help us. Our friends and partners. Our
leaders and saints. And Jesus, who is always
with us. Thank you for those who have blazed the trail before us,
for those who keep us going now. Bless us as we do our part. Use us
to bless generations to come so they won’t have to fight the fights we
fight to get your church to love all your children and include them in your
tender mercies. Bless this church that with each year we might celebrate
getting closer to the goal. We know you are with us and that you also
wait for us ahead at the finish line, and by your help, we’ll run this
race and reach home together, winners all in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa