University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

WHERE FAITH LEADS

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time                   August 19, 2007 (11:00)

This weekend begins a wonderful transition for new and returning students across the street and at other schools around us.  For some of the parents of first-year students here today, it is a bittersweet time at best, as I know well from personal experience. All these years you’ve recited the mantra: the only two lasting gifts we can give our children are roots and wings.  But now that the time for “wings” has come, it’s harder than you expected, and you can only hope that the “roots” have taken hold.

As for the members of the Class of 2011, in the midst of all the excitement about the college journey stretching out before you, I would imagine there is also, at least for most of you, a twinge of angst. All these months you couldn’t wait to spread your wings, but now that the time is here, well… don’t be surprised if a bit of homesickness creeps in from time to time. It’s only natural and, after all, it reminds us of our roots.

It’s a grand journey, this one you begin or renew here. It carries the potential for these to be some of the best years of your life.  You’ve heard all that before. What I want to say today is that the way you spend the next years could also shape your faith in significant ways.  I know some of you heard before you came here, “Don’t let them destroy your faith,” or “Be careful not to lose your faith.” Such people were well-intentioned, I know, but I want to say to you that reason is no threat to your faith. You will find in this faith community some remarkably gifted and capable people who have integrated faith and intellect admirably… who know how to ask the critical questions and yet emerge with their faith deepened by the mysteries they explore in science and literature day after day. We sincerely invite you to join us in that journey.

It is not “our” journey, of course. It is a pilgrimage that began long before any of us ever set foot on Franklin Street. At the entrance to Winchester Cathedral in England there is a sign that says it well. “You are entering a conversation that began long before you were born and will continue long after you are dead.”[1]  That is our expectation here as well.

The writer of Hebrews speaks of that continuing conversation as a race that is set before us… a kind of relay race that has been going on for centuries and in which we have a part to play.  It is the race of faith. It is a marathon, not a sprint. In fact, it might better be described as a steeplechase, because it is a race fraught with hazards and hurdles. The race is at times exhilarating and full of awe and wonder, but it also can be demanding and exhausting, when we truly need the strength of others to cheer us on and to help us reach our goal. It is a race that sometimes gets discouraging, when it’s hard to see progress being made. And, as the writer of Hebrews says so graphically, when undertaken in the face of opposition, the journey can turn dark and dangerous. Bob Jewett notes the way the writer builds to a “realistic climax of faith:”

It is not simply a matter of triumph or success; it is not quite an “endless line of splendor”; and those called to it must not expect that faith will provide much more than “an assurance of things hoped for and a “proving of things not seen.”

But such gifts are enough, he says. The faith in which the pilgrim stands can provide a noble courage and an ability to adapt pragmatically in the face of circumstances that drive lesser persons to compromise or despair. That, says Jewett,

is why the catalog of martyrs, with all its dreadful detail, provides so exhilarating a climax to this chapter on faith. It grips the hearer because it takes the tragic dimension of human existence with complete seriousness, and yet reveals a resistance to evil and a sense of calling that are so dynamic and firm they accomplish more for the human race than all the military victories of history. It reveals to the bewildered Christians [in his audience of hearers]… that …faith is not a shelter from the storm. It leads directly into the eye of the storm. But it leads [there] with power….[2]

This letter to the Hebrews is more a sermon than a letter, and it is not written into a vacuum, says Tom Long. Rather, its preacher addresses an “urgent pastoral problem:”

His congregation is exhausted. They are tired – tired of serving the world, tired of worship, tired of Christian education, tired of being peculiar and whispered about in society, tired of spiritual struggle, tired of keeping their prayer life going, tired even of Jesus. Their hands droop and their knees are weak… and they are losing confidence…. Tired of walking the walk, many of them are considering taking a walk, leaving the community and falling away from the faith.[3]

            The Preacher’s response is somewhat astonishing. He doesn’t propose organizational redevelopment. He doesn’t look for snappier worship and more relevant, contemporary music… or more appealing mission initiatives. Instead, he preaches about the nature and meaning of Jesus Christ.[4]  

            In so doing, he reminds his hearers that they are not alone. He encourages the congregation to sense and claim their place in that old, old conversation… their place in the relay race… and to realize that though the race is fraught with peril, they [and we] are always surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses” who have gone before us… those who have prepared the way and who watch us and encourage us and support us. He speaks of those who have modeled faithful obedience for us, who were tested by suffering: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph and Moses. He names a host of witnesses who endured even greater, sometimes gruesome persecution. Then, after “drumming the beat” of the pilgrims of old, he calls his congregation to join the chain, a chain made stronger by all those who have journeyed before us.

            In one of his poems, Wendell Berry begins,

In the great circle, dancing in

and out of time, you move now

toward your partners, answering

the music barely audible to you

that only carried you before

and will carry you again.[5]

            The preacher to the Hebrews calls the congregation to hear something like that music, as though sung by the great cloud of witnesses… to sense their presence.  They are those who have gone before us and modeled faithfulness for us. They have carried us,  says the Preacher to the Hebrews, but they also need us. They need us.  Of course, knowing ourselves as we do, we have no illusions of grandeur in this quest. Indeed, for the sake of perspective, Tom Long suggests that we think of the marathons held in our major cities each year, involving thousands of runners:

At the head of the pack are the world-class marathoners. Lean and speedy, they race through the course with astonishing swiftness. At the rear of the throng, however, the picture is quite different. There we will find the ordinary runners, a few more years under the belt, perhaps, a little extra weight over the belt, [pausing more frequently] to sip water and to catch [their] breath. There are also the contestants on crutches and in wheelchairs, courageously out on the course nonetheless. Sometimes one of the runners near the back will grow weak from the heat or faint from exhaustion. When this happens, other runners will stop to help out, compassion being more important than competition in the rear of the marathon.

The Preacher… wants his congregation to know that the great race of the Christian life is often more like the back of the marathon than like the front. By the power of Christ [and with the help of the “great cloud of witnesses”] weary, discouraged, and somewhat out-of-shape Christians are encouraged nevertheless to “lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees.” God's race is not the Olympics; it is [more like] the Special Olympics, and runners who are ‘lame,’ that is, encumbered in many so ways, are encouraged to get out on the track and ‘to make straight paths for your feet’” (12:13).[6]

            This is not a race we have to run by ourselves. That may be the most important word I can offer to members of this year’s freshman class… indeed to all new and returning students. Come to think of it, it’s an important word for all of us.  None of us is in this alone, despite what we may think. It is our race to run, to be sure, but what I hope we discover as we do so is that there is much we have to learn from one another and from others beyond these walls.

            A good friend and I were talking this week about one of the year’s more stirring films, “Freedom Writers.” The film is the true story of Erin Gruwell, who is portrayed in the film by Hilary Swank. Ms. Gruwell was an idealistic, first-year high school teacher in Long Beach, California in 1992. She began her work that fall in the wake of the Los Angeles riots that erupted after footage of Rodney King’s arrest were broadcast, and her first assignment was to teach freshman English to a racially-diverse and racially-charged class of angry and disinterested students.  Her early attempts to connect with the students failed miserably, but as my friend noted, she was so passionate about teaching and so determined to make a difference that she wouldn’t let the students’ apathy or anger deter her from trying to get to them. 

On the surface, the only thing her students had in common was their hatred for each other and the understanding that they were simply being warehoused in the educational system until they were old enough to disappear. Despite her students’ obstinate refusal to participate during class, Ms. Gruwell tried various means to engage them on a daily basis. Then, a crisis precipitated a class transformation. A racially-motivated gang shooting witnessed by a Latina student in her class, and an ugly racial cartoon that the young teacher intercepted during class, became the most unwittingly dynamic teaching aids. The hand-drawn cartoon was a caricature on notepaper – of a black student with exaggerated lips.  “You think this is funny?” Ms. Gruwell asked, angrily.  She compared it to cartoons used for anti-Semitic propaganda leading up to the Holocaust.  The students were perplexed, though increasingly attentive.  “Holocaust?” one asked.  “What’s that?”  Shocked, she asked them, “How many of you have heard of the Holocaust?”  Only one student raised his hand.  “How many of you have been shot at?”  All the rest of the students raised their hands.

Seizing that moment, Ms. Gruwell made two assignments that would in time have a remarkable impact on her students.  She bought them each of them a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank and asked them to read it.  About the same time, she distributed journals and asked them to make daily entries about whatever was on their minds.  As the students began to write about their own feelings of helplessness and alienation in a world they couldn’t control, they also began to digest Anne Frank’s account of the world she couldn’t control – a world that would finally destroy her.  The connection they felt with her was utterly transforming.  Black, white, Latino, Asian – they all claimed that young Jewish girl as one of their own.

The students learned from their research that Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who risked her life to keep the Frank family hidden in her attic, was still alive in the Netherlands.  They all wanted to meet her, and so they raised enough funds to bring her to their class as a guest speaker.  When she did come to Long Beach and to the school, it was an emotional scene.  She spoke to the students about her experiences during the war, and afterwards, one of the students – and an unlikely one, really – stood and said to this remarkable woman, “I’ve never had a hero before, but you are my hero.”  She smiled, but then said, “No, no, young man.  No, I am not a hero.  I did what I had to do because it was the right thing to do.  That is all.  No, we are all ordinary people, but even an ordinary secretary, or housewife, or teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.  Yeah?  I have read your letters, and your teacher has been telling me many things about your experiences.  You are the heroes.  You are heroes every day.” 

Thinking about that moment, my friend said, “And they [did] become heroes; they [did] . . . as they [began] to stand up to the forces of darkness – the expectations of a gang, the lure of drugs, the ubiquitous violence.  Having found a hero, the youth [began] to act like heroes.”[7]  And where did they find the courage to do so? From a wisp of a woman from half-a-world away who was a witness… part of a large cloud of witnesses… who ran a race on behalf of a vulnerable world and translated that race into simple, though complicated acts of shelter and hospitality for the sake of those in harm’s way.

Sometimes heroism is inspired when we look to the One who set the course for us. At other times, it is encouraged by the examples of those who have gone before us… who, with a remarkable capacity to hear barely audible music and with a nascent courage nurtured in solidarity with the saints, joined the endless cord of faith and carried it faithfully, courageously, in many ways heroically… and have now bequeathed that cord to us. It is both gift and gauntlet, both grace and challenge, this Gospel around which we gather and toward which we lean. Having seen where faith has led that great cloud of witnesses, it will be something to see where it leads us.

To the students and other newcomers here today, we are so glad you have come. To those who have just returned, welcome back.  Welcome to this amazing, stirring and challenging race we share.  We hope you brought your running shoes.