Last Sunday after Trinity
Psalms 148,150
OT Lesson : Isaiah 65.17-end
NT Lesson : Hebrews 11.32-12.2
Text: Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses … let us run the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12. 1-2)
Reading these words from the letter to the Hebrews, on the joyous occasion of the Festival of All Saints, the picture in our minds is perhaps one of marathon runners, buoyed up by the cheers of the crowd as they enter the stadium at the end of their race, exhausted but triumphant. Perhapst passing from this life into the life of heaven may have something of that same character. Who knows? Our first reading, from Isaiah was similarly characteristic of the hopeful Old Testament prophecies which foresaw a golden era when all the world would be drawn towards Jerusalem, that holy city, where the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.
But the picture in the mind of the Jewish Christian who composed the letter to the Hebrews will have been rather darker than that. The writer knew all too well that Isaiah’s vision of Jerusalem was a far cry from the historical reality of Jerusalem as he knew it at the end of the first century of the Christian era. Following the brutal suppression of the Maccabean rebellion of 167-160 BCE
against the harsh rule of Antiochus Epiphanes, who had tried to suppress all practice of the Jewish religion, an uneasy truce had reigned until Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans in 70 AD following another uprising. If the letter to the Hebrews was penned after that date, as is likely, the recent experience of writer and reader alike would have been shaped by the horrors described in the closing verses of chapter 11 – mocking and flogging, chains and imprisonment, death by stoning, sawn in two, torment, persecution, destitution. It is these martyrs who make up the great cloud of witnesses. It is in this dark context of violent persecution that the writer invites his readers to look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of their faith, who himself experienced the ignominy as well as the appalling physical trauma of death by crucufixion.
So, what does this take on the sacrificial heroism of the Saints have to say to us to-day? By all means let us remember and celebrate on this day the historic derring-do of Gideon and Barack, Samson and the rest, the Biblical heroes of the distant past, together with, in our case, the heroes of the Reformation and more recent times too; but let us remember too the cost of such steadfast devotion, and look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of their faith and ours.
For us the Saints are figures from past history, mostly from the distant past. Looking back, we can see what saints they were. Of course they didn’t have that perspective. They were living in the darkness or at least the uncertainty of their present day, and fearing the perils of an unknown future, just as we do. And it’s in that forward-looking context that we all need to look to Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
The saints never asked themselves what they should be doing to become saints; they just got on with the business of living following in the footsteps of Jesus. It would never have occurred to them to think in terms of establishing their legacy, as might a contemporary politician. They just got on with doing what the love of God in their hearts prompted them to do, and that is no more and no less than we too should school ourselves to do, by his grace. It may be no more than visiting somebody who might be feeling sad or lonely. But when we see the need, we just do it without giving any thought to what it may cost us to do. We open our hearts to the love of God, which is always reaching out to us, and in doing so we become a very small part of His ongoing activity in the world that he has made. We know from our reading of the scriptures what sort of a world he had in mind. We know what a mess we have made of it. But we also know that we can be shown how to nudge things just a little in the direction love dictates, without counting the cost or calculating the consequences, just leaving it to him – the pioneer and perfecter of our faith – to accept and use what we can offer.
So let us run the race that is set before us, praying that he will put good intentions into our hearts and enable us to bring them to good effect, to the honour and glory of his name, for the good of his people, his beloved children, and the advancement of his kingdom. Surrounded as we are by so great a cloud of witnesses to cheer us on when we might otherwise be tempted to give up, there can be no better way to carry forward our celebration of the Feast of All Saints.