Hebrews 11 tells the stories of many people of faith who we know of from the stories contained in the Old Testament (Hebrews 11. 32 – 12. 2). These are the great figures of the Old Testament; Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. The section we have heard read this evening comes towards the end where the writer of Hebrews realises that he is running out of space and does not have room to fully tell the stories of all those that he wishes to mention.
In shorthand he asks us to picture many who because of their faith have experienced persecution, torture, poverty and ill-treatment. Finally, he asks us to picture all those who have lived lives characterised by faith as being like the crowd filling an enormous stadium and cheering us on as we run our race of faith through life. All these wonderful heroes of the faith who lived such exciting and eventful lives, they are cheering us on in our endeavours to all live lives that are faithful to God and his purposes. Not only are they there supporting us but the writer to the Hebrews says that their experiences are not complete and that only in company with us will they be made perfect.
As God’s people, we are on a journey or running a race with an end point, a destination in view. What is this endpoint or destination? It was set out for us in our reading from Isaiah 65 and is the coming new creation; the moment when God will make a new heaven and new earth fusing the two together to create a new existence for human beings in a world that is characterised by joy and not sorrow.
This is the wonderful future towards which we run, for which we minister both in our individual lives and together as a Church and towards which those who have gone before us and who now cheer us on from the stands point by the way in which their lives were lived and the inspiration that their lives provide for us.
Madeleine Channer is a lovely former nurse who was a member of the congregation when I was at St John’s Seven Kings. She wrote a book called Echoes from the Andes telling stories of those she met while nursing in Peru. Her book is, I think, imbued with this reality about which we have been speaking. In the book Maddy says that she went to Peru “with the aim of serving” but that her actual experience was that she received as much, if not more, than she gave. The Rev. Colin Grant, to whom Maddy dedicates the book, and the Doctors with whom she worked in Peru all influenced her deeply but it was the beauty of the Quechua people that influenced her most profoundly. Maddy writes:
“Things were happening in my heart and mind. I had come to Peru with the aim of serving, but I was receiving. As well as the emergence of spiritual truths, the Quechua people exemplified priceless qualities: humility, generosity of spirit, quietude, kindness and longsuffering.
Like the petals of a flower gradually unfolding to the rays of the sun, this was another unfolding, another lifting to the light. It shone into the corridors of my mind, and into the shafts and labyrinths of my soul like a searchlight. I saw and beheld; the Spirit of God was moving, spurring me on, the Spirit of life and peace.”
In this short extract from the end of Maddy’s book, we see how the examples of those around her where both an inspiration and a lesson to her and how they were used by God to move her forward in the race which had and has to run. It can be the same for us as we look for God in the people around us and as we find out about those people of faith who have gone before and who are alive today and ministering in different parts of the world.
We have this large crowd of witnesses round us and we have Jesus in front of us. We know the destination towards which we run; the joy of the new earth and new heavens. So then, let us rid ourselves of everything that gets in the way and let us run with determination the race that lies before us. Amen.
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David Grant - Wake Up Everybody.
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