'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, 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.'
--Hebrews 12: 1-2
I can still hear her somewhere in the stands behind me. The pitch would come in, and I would swing, and if I was lucky I would make contact. Immediately, I would hear my mother, “Run, son, run!” Like what else was I gonna do?! But she was so excited. Eventually, I became a pitcher and gave up hitting because I was not very good at it, but Mama didn’t stop, instead hollering, “Pitch that ball, Son!” She was always so encouraging, and even when I didn’t get into a game she would throw that support to my teammates, so much so that “Run, Son!” and “Pitch that ball!” became cheers that my friends offered each other long after I had graduated and moved away.
With my mother after a college game in 2005.
I suspect some of you, like me, are former athletes. Some of you may have been performers, musicians, actors, or teachers. Some of you may have been in positions where you have needed to stand up in front of others publicly and be “on,” like the plethora of lawyers that we have in our church here in Asheboro, North Carolina. As I am sure all of you would agree, performing in those arenas can be downright scary, but it’s a whole lot easier when you’ve got someone encouraging you.
Nobody knows who the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews was—some say Paul, others say Clement, and even some say Priscilla and Aquila. Yet whoever the author was, he or she must have been either an athlete themselves, or at the very least understood the pressures of public performance. “Let us run with perseverance, the race that is set before us,” the writer says. The journey of faith that the writer’s audience was on, the same journey that we are on, could be compared to a race, one that is long and perilous, one in which those running might not think they can go on, as though they will never see the finish line. It is this race, the writer quips, that we are to run with perseverance.
Here we have another case of the ancient Greek being translated in different ways at different times. Both the New Revised Standard Version (the translation above) and the New International Version (everyone's favorite study bible) translates the Greek word hupomonee as 'perseverance.' The English Standard Version—used in a lot of Baptist traditions—says we are to run with 'endurance.' And the King James Version—NOT the one that Jesus used, contrary to popular opinion—poetically says that we are to run with 'patience.' The original Greek is translated literally as “ a patient and persevering endurance of evils while remaining or waiting.” It is with this quality that believers are to run the race of faith, and thanks be to God that it is not about beating anyone to the finish line because the one who has already done that, the forerunner of that race, the pace-setter, and the one who goes ahead of all of us is Jesus Christ.
But I suspect I’m not alone is admitting that remembering that fact is a lot easier said than done. So many hurdles are set up along this race. There are twists and turns, and sometimes even sudden, deadly drops. If any of us started this race thinking it would be easy, well, Jesus makes it clear that that is not the case. He warns his followers morning that he has not come to bring peace but division (Luke 12: 49-56. which was the Gospel text from this past Sunday). This is really tough for us to hear, but that is exactly what happened when Jesus offered liberation from so many of the socio-religious norms of his day. And since then we have seen what his coming has wrought. Family members have been pitted against each other, nations have waged wars over what it really means to be followers of Jesus, and in our own day the blessed name of Jesus is used to shame others and to promote violence and hatred of all kinds.
How then can we possibly run such a race of faith in a world filled with all that division, where so many insults and so much shame are hurled our way that we begin to internalize it and think that rejection, pain, and suffering, are what we deserve? How can we even make that first step of faith, if everyone in the crowd is booing us to the point that we cannot even take our place at the starting line?
Blessedly, the answer lies in the one who is the forerunner, in Jesus. He, according to Hebrews, is the pioneer, the perfecter of our faith, the one who has himself already ran his own race, and oh boy, has he faced that shame, those insults and boos. He himself has endured the shame of the cross, and as Hebrews puts it, he has 'disregarded that shame'. In our own time we’ve become so accustomed to the sight of the cross that we have positive feelings about it whenever we look at it, but the severity of the stigma attached to death on a cross cannot be undervalued. One who died on a cross, it was said, could never inherit eternal life on the Day of Resurrection. There was no greater shame, and yet Jesus has defeated that stigma, that shame, so that we too may overcome our shame. It’s worth noting that there is a big difference between shame and guilt. Guilt tells us that we did something bad, while shame tells us that we ARE bad. There is perhaps no greater weapon of division in this world than shame, especially when it is self-inflicted. Jesus, by taking on the greatest shame of his day, has liberated us from ours and has made it possible for us to join him in that race of faith.
Yet the race is long and difficult, and we sometimes wonder, even if we get started, whether we can finish. This is when we are reminded, as Hebrews puts it in one of the most poetic pieces of our Scriptures, that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. These are the ones cheering us on. Hebrews names them in the sentences preceding the quoted text above as Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtha, David, and Samuel, those whom the listeners of this letter would have known so well as faithful men and women who had gone before, who endured their own shame, but whose examples and words of encouragement were still with them. Yes, there are perils on the road, but that great cloud of witnesses is lining the road, cheering the faithful on to the promised day of God’s Kingdom. Centuries later the Christian Church would mirror this image when the faithful would line up to create a path through which the newly baptized would walk, all the while cheering and celebrating the newest member of the Body of Christ, reminding them that they would never be alone from that day forward.
I experienced this reminder first hand last Thursday. It was a full day of pastoral visits and celebrating the Eucharist at the local prison. I had some highs and some lows throughout the day and was even wrestling with some of my own self-inflicted shame when I sat down with this text to figure out how I would preach on Sunday. Just then, in the Panera Bread where I was sermonizing, Wildflowers by Tom Petty came on over the speaker. It was one of my mother’s favorite songs. I had planned to dance with her to that song at my wedding a year ago, but after her death I still chose to dance to it with my sister, whispering to her as we danced that "Mama is here." I knew in that moment, sitting in that booth with my iced tea and all of my Bible commentaries, that my Mama was there last Thursday, encouraging me just like she did when I played ball for all those years. She was, and still is, cheering me on.
All of you have those great witnesses who are cheering you on. When you don’t think you can make it any further because of the taunts, the assaults and the ridicule of the folks up in the cheap seats, they’re there. When you want to give up and give in to shame and fear, they’re there. They’re calling your name, filling you with the power of the Holy Spirit to keep moving, even if it’s just putting one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, one day at a time. To borrow language from writer Brene Brown, they are the ones who remind us of our worth, remind us that we are loved, and help make it possible for us to step into the arenas of our lives and be brave. Those witnesses, like Susan Mitchell and all those that I know you can name right now, some of whom are still here on this side of the Kingdom and some of whom have gone on to glory, they are lining the roads, and with them rooting for us, pushing us through, and giving us the encouragement we need, we will, with patience, endurance, and perseverance, finish our race. And we will win! Because we have them surrounding us, and we have Jesus, our pioneer and perfecter, leading the way to the ultimate victory of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God.
An Eastern icon of the Great Cloud of Witnesses.
