You know, sometimes just a simple word of encouragement can make all the difference. When you’ve run out of energy or ideas, when your back is to the wall, when for every step forward you seem to take two steps backward, just a word of encouragement—“we know you can do it, we believe in you, we’re with you all the way”—can strengthen your resolve, quicken your step, lift your spirits, and keep you going. As members of a small and often misunderstood religious community that stood out from the surrounding culture with painful peculiarity, these believers to whom the author of Hebrews wrote had known and knew what it was to be the subjects of crude remarks and tasteless jokes, of quiet intimidation and blatant hostility, of economic pressure and social ostracism, of prejudice and persecution. They knew what it was to struggle not only with those opposing powers from without, but, as all who have heard Christ’s call to follow and who have answered with their love and loyalty, these Christians also knew what it is to struggle with the temptations that rise within to deny that loyalty, to betray that love, to be a person other than the one God has called you to be in Jesus Christ. They needed encouragement, just as you and I sometimes need encouragement, to keep them on the right track, headed in the right direction, living the life God had called them to live in Jesus Christ. Nobody ever said that being a Christian would be easy. If they did, they lied to you. Again and again Jesus himself implored those who would come after him to count the cost of discipleship. “If any want to become my followers,” he said, “let them deny themselves, and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the gospel will save it.” Being a Christian means turning over the control of your life to another; it means giving yourself over to be remade in the image of Jesus Christ, dying to an old self in order to be raised to a new self; and that is never had without struggle, for while one part of you yearns to be made whole, another prefers brokenness; while one part of you greets the relinquishment of control with a sense of relief, another clings to the controls with unyielding tenacity; while one part of you is drawn to the light, another cowers in the darkness. Sometimes being a Christian can be difficult, painful, costly even, and we need all the encouragement we can get. So, the author of Hebrews reminds his readers that they are not the first to travel this road. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” We are not the first to run this race. Others have gone before us, others whose faith and love give witness to the fact that perseverance in the Christian life is possible. They have stood where we stand; struggled where we struggle, and have persevered in the face of the best and the worst that life could throw at them. They spoke the truth, kept their vows, acted in love, dealt justly and fairly with others, trusted God’s grace to sustain them, and lived as people whose lives were shaped by the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ in the midst of all times and circumstances. Look to them, to that great cloud of witnesses. See there among them the faces of those whose life-stories you know and in them find encouragement in your journey of Christian faith for today. They did it, so can you. The author of Hebrews, though, raises our vision one step higher when he summons us to look not only to the example of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters in Christian faith, but to the example of “Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of your faith.” The one who calls us out has gone before us, blazed the trail, and showed us the way to follow. He stood where we stand, struggled where we struggle. There is nothing that we might have to endure that he has not endured before us in spades. Look to Jesus, then, “the pioneer and perfecter of your faith, who for 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 might not grow weary or lose heart.” Having encouraged them with the example of the saints and of Jesus himself, the author of Hebrews further encourages his readers then and now with the assurance that even the things that try our faith and our loyalty, that cause us pain and perplexity, can be and are used for our benefit. “Endure trials for the sake of discipline,” he admonished. That might be loosely translated, “no pain, no gain.” In the short run giving up, giving in, compromising our values, winking at evil, saying what we know others want to hear, believing what is expedient, is usually easier, but in the long run standing true makes us better people. “Endure trials for the sake of discipline.” I’ve watched some of the Olympic Games this week, as I am sure many of you have as well, and I have been awed by the agility, the strength, the ability of the young athletes on the screen. Whether they go away with gold, silver, bronze, or no medal at all each one of them is a success simply in having made a place in the Games. I’ve also been awed by the incredible discipline that has enabled them to achieve a place there. That discipline is exercised not just some of the time but in every aspect of their lives. Their whole being has been focused on preparing them to be the best that they can possibly be. Of course, they would not be where they are without the aid encouragement of others—parents, families, friends, communities—and coaches who have not only trained them but have disciplined them. So God uses the trials that fill our lives and our faith to discipline us—not in any sense of punishment but in the sense of helping us to become the best that we can be. Hebrews tells us God “disciplines us for our good in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” No pain—no gain. “Therefore,” he admonishes us, remembering the witness of the saints who have gone before us, remembering that Jesus himself has blazed the trail that we follow, remembering that God disciplines us to make us holy, “lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet. . .for you have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. . .but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant. . . .” As a final encouragement for perseverance in the faith he holds out before them a vision of that heavenly kingdom that stands as the goal of the race. At the end of the race is not exhaustion and death, but a glorious reception, a victory party to beat all parties in the “heavenly Jerusalem.” But if the truth be known, though, what we really want sometimes is “something that can be touched,” that is, something that we can see and hold and control—a god who is close enough to call on but not close enough to meddle in the intimate details of our lives; a god whose will and purpose can be reduced to a short list of rules and regulations that are challenging but still well within the scope of our ability to keep; and a god who plays fair, that is who rewards us when we do right, who offers immediate, not delayed gratification. What we want is a god who plays by our rules and lives down to our expectations. What we get, though, in the Christian gospel, in God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, is a God who not only condemns the worst about us but who also judges our hard-earned best and finds it insufficient to save us; a God who does not promise us immunity to pain, hardship, difficulty, or disappointment but who promises “my grace will be sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness;” a God who does not shelter us from the harsh realities of the world, but who calls us forth into the very midst of the world’s suffering to speak and to live the word of his love and presence. What we get in the Christian Gospel is a God who demands: “If any would become my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the gospel will find it.” One of the gifts of being a pastor is being able to be with people in times and in the midst of circumstances in which their faith is sometimes severely tested. What you see, what I’ve seen, more often, far more often in those moments, is not desertion in the ranks but Christians growing, remaining faithful, holding to God in Jesus Christ. And that, I think, not simply out of desperation, or strength of character, but out of the realization that they have been they are, themselves held, held by God in Jesus Christ. What we cling to is not the fringe of a retreating god’s robe, but the arms of the God who has already wrapped us in his care. Ultimately, you see, it is precisely because we have come to something that “cannot be seen or touched,” to something, to someone, greater than ourselves who loves us enough to discipline us, to stand with us and sometimes to stand against us, that we can persevere at all. The race that we run, the journey we travel, is not merely a matter of personal choice, but of divine choice, and perhaps the greatest word of encouragement we can hear as we sometimes struggle to run that race are the words of God to the prophet Jeremiah when he called him to follow: “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.” J. Dudley Weaver |