Hebrews 11:39-12:2
Taking Our Place in the Story
James Sledge March
17, 2019
Last April, Michael Gerson, Washington
Post columnist and former aide and speech writer for George W. Bush, wrote
an article in The Atlantic magazine
entitled, “The Last Temptation: How evangelicals, once culturally
confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the
least traditionally religious president in living memory.”[1] The
article is tinged with sadness at the moral demise of evangelicalism, something
Gerson deeply values as one raised in an evangelical home and educated at the
evangelical Wheaton College. Here are some excerpts.
Trump supporters
tend to dismiss moral scruples about his behavior as squeamishness over the
president’s “style.” But the problem is the distinctly non-Christian substance
of his values. Trump’s unapologetic materialism—his equation of
financial and social success with human achievement and worth—is a negation of
Christian teaching. His tribalism and hatred for “the other” stand in direct
opposition to Jesus’s radical ethic of neighbor love…
…The moral convictions of many
evangelical leaders have become a function of their partisan identification.
This is not mere gullibility; it is utter corruption. Blinded by political
tribalism and hatred for their political opponents, these leaders can’t see how
they are undermining the causes to which they once dedicated their lives.
Little remains of a distinctly Christian public witness.
Fear
and anxiety drive the “utter corruption” and loss of Christian witness Gerson
writes about. But fear and anxiety are hardly restricted to evangelicals.
There’s a lot of fear, anxiety, and pessimism in the progressive church these
days. Conservatives and progressives have different fears and anxieties, but we
can be equally reactive to our particular favorites. Fear, anxiety, and
pessimism tend to corrupt our witness. If we could only lower the level.
Perhaps something like the pep talk in the letter to the Hebrews could help.
Hebrews
isn’t a letter like those Paul wrote to his congregations. It’s more of a
sermon. Its preacher is worried about his congregation’s fear and pessimism.
They had hoped for a quick arrival of God’s new day, a setting right of a world
where small numbers of powerful and wealthy controlled things and enjoyed the
good life while most people struggled to get by. But that hadn’t happened.
Throw in the popular suspicion of Christians in the Roman world, add an
occasional persecution, and you have a prescription for fatigue, anxiety, and
pessimism.
And
so the preacher tries to rouse them. Like the coach of a struggling team, he
reminds them of all the greats that went before them and how they had triumphed
under the most difficult and trying circumstances. But then the pep talk takes
a rather bizarre turn. None of those past greats, says the preacher, received
what had been promised them.
Here
the preacher moves from pep talk to divine mystery. Greats of the past, the
heroes of the faith, cannot make it, cannot be perfected or made complete,
without us.
Modern
people tend to think of faith as private and individual, but for the preacher
and the biblical writers, faith means being joined to Christ by the Spirit, and
so also being joined to one another, including those we’ve never met, including
those we don’t like, even including those who died long ago. We are a communion
of saints, knit together into a huge tapestry connected, on the one hand, to
the risen Christ who draws us into God’s future and, on the other, to all those
who went before us. We help anchor that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds
us to God’s coming new day. At least we do so long as we are in Christ, as long
as we are following Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, into the
future to which God calls us.
This
image where our perseverance is linked both to the faithful of the past and to
Jesus and future to which he draws us, seem an ideal image for us at FCPC as we
prepare to put into place new structures for a new call. We seek to run with
perseverance the race set before us, responding to Jesus’ call that we gather those who fear they are not enough,
so we may experience grace, wholeness, and renewal as God’s beloved.[2]
As
we follow Jesus into God’s future, we know that we are surrounded by a great
cloud of witnesses who were faithful before us, who built this church, who
worshiped and ministered as disciples before we did. But their faithfulness is
not finished, is not made complete, without ours.
The
Spirit is still moving. Jesus is still calling disciples, and he calls us to
take our place in the long, moral arc of the universe that God is bending
toward justice and life. The tracing of that arc, the unfolding of God’s
salvation story, needs us, needs you. Where is Jesus calling you to take your
place in the ongoing journey to God’s new day?
This sermon is shorter than usual so that congregational leaders can take time each week to explain some of the new and exciting changes coming as the result of our Renew process.
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