Father John E. McGinn, Rector
Saint John’s Episcopal Church
Sandwich, Massachusetts 02563
August 19, 2007 Pentecost 20
Today’s sermon is taken from
the epistle Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1-12
One of the things I did
during vacation was I happened to catch some of the Red Sox games, and that is
probably not a surprise to you.
Unfortunately, we see the Yankees gaining on the Red Sox, but that is to
be expected also. But, you know, the
baseball season has been quite exciting this year around here as well, with the
Sandwich baseball team and going beyond that, the team from Walpole, Massachusetts,
that is going to the Little League
World Series.
I want to tell a story this
morning about the baseball season in the small Pennsylvania town of
Williamsport; and if you know anything about baseball, you know it is a time
when little boys’ hearts and egos are on the line.
A certain ten-year-old had
ridden the bench most of the season, but in the championship game his coach
finally called him up to bat. The little
boy’s whole extended family had turned out for this very special game. His parents and siblings and aunts and uncles
and cousins and grandparents and second cousins; they were all there, cheering
and clapping and shouting words of encouragement. The little boy swallowed his anxiety and
stepped up to the plate. He gripped the
bat and stared hard at the pitcher.
Woosh! The pitch flew by him:
Strike one, and from the stands his family cheered him on, “You can do
it, you can do it!” So he lifted his bat
again and he waited for the pitch, and again he swung and he connected with
air: Strike two! His shoulders started to slump and his hands
began to sweat as he stared down the pitcher one last time. Woosh!
Strike three! The other team
jumped and shouted for joy, and the little boy’s team mates gave him the silent
treatment as they left the field. Our
little batter slumped over on the dugout bench and put his head in his hands,
and he began to cry. His crying was
interrupted by the sound of his father’s voice.
“Son,” he said, “the game is not over.”
Lifting his head, the boy saw his family, all of them, even his frail grandmother,
spread out across the baseball field waiting to play. They began cheering loudly as the boy picked
up his bat and his father pitched the ball, and the boy swung. Crack!
The ball flew into the outfield and the boy took off for first
base. As he rounded the bases, cousins
and uncles and aunts shouted words of encouragement; and somehow all those able
adults were unable to corral the ball that the young boy had hit. As the boy headed for home base, his father
stood behind the plate with open arms, and they celebrated his home run by
lifting him on their shoulders and carrying him around the baseball field. What a picture!
What a magnificent reminder
of today’s lesson from Hebrews that Jean just read. And these words: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so
great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw
off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us
run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and
perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the
cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
It is a vivid picture. In the grand scheme of our lives there are
cheerleaders. There is Noah and Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob and Sarah and Rachel and Rebecca and Moses and Joshua and
Jeremiah and Isaiah and Rehab, and other Old Testament heroes; as well as Paul and Peter and Mary Magdalene
and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and leaders of the New Testament church. And we might add, they are our loved ones,
family and friends who have gone before us.
We are not alone in our faith journey.
No matter how discouraging the events of lives are, we can make it
through with the encouragement of those who have gone before. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a
great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin
that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race that is
marked out for us.”
This is not a lessen this
morning for a cynic, for the cold of heart or spirit. This is a lessen for believers. It is very much like the lessen that says I
can do all things through Christ who strengthens me: Philippians 4, chapter 13. Those words are precious to the
believer. To the world, they mean
nothing at all.
A few weeks ago when I was
reading the book section in the newspaper, I saw that Christopher Hitchens’
book God is Not Great was on the best seller list. I had read something in Time Magazine about
that book, and I decided to pick it up.
I began reading it. Christopher
Hitchens is an atheist, or we might even stretch it and say he is agnostic; but
yet he thinks that religion and faith really don’t have a place in life. I found myself disagreeing with him more and
more, because I know how important faith is to me. There are realities of the spirit that are
perceived only by those in tune with God’s spirit. One of these is the great cloud of witnesses
surrounding us and providing us with courage and strength.
When I came into the church
yesterday, coming back from my vacation, as I came inside, I could almost feel
the presence of all those who come before: that cloud, that group of
witnesses. One-hundred-and-fifty years
our congregation has been in existence and all those people have contributed
their time and talent and treasure. I
can feel their presence. We are
fortunate to have a new building and many different things that have occurred
in the last few years, but we know we have built upon what those people did,
and we give thanks for that. Every time
I celebrate the Eucharist or I celebrate a funeral, or I celebrate a wedding,
there is that cloud of witnesses with me, encouraging me and strengthening me. My father and mother and all those loved ones
who have gone before. I feel that my
faith is built on what they provided, for they are there encouraging me and
strengthening me.
Benjamin Weir was a
missionary in Beirut, Lebanon. Some of
you will remember when he was kidnapped by Muslim extremists and held hostage
for sixteen months. During that time he
was locked in a barren room and unable to see another human being. His hands were manacled, he was blindfolded
most of the time, and even when his blindfold was taken off, he had no view
from his tiny cell. But this did not
defeat Benjamin Weir. An electric light
cord dangled from the ceiling; the ball had been stripped off leaving three
fragile filament wires exposed. For
Benjamin Weir these wires became a symbol of hope. They reminded him of the life-giving fingers
of God reaching down to Adam in the lovely Sistine Chapel. Michael Angelo was
so able to capture the strength of God. “And
here God, in this cell, was reaching toward me,” he wrote later, “reminding me,
saying, you are alive, you are mine, I have made you and called you into a
being for a divine purpose.” Benjamin
Weir could the see horizontal slats of the shutter outside the French
doors. There were one-hundred-twenty of
them. What could those horizontal pieces
of wood stand for? Benjamin Weir decided
that these represented that cloud of witnesses that we are reading about this
morning: champions of our faith, past
and present, who through times of trial have deserved the faithfulness of God. And, finally, his eyes lighted on two white
circles near the ceiling: one of the
right wall and the other on the left, and in reality, these were plastic covers
for electrical connections, but in Weir’s imagination they were something
else: they were ears, the ears of
God. And the Lord hears the groaning of
the saints, Benjamin Weir remembers, and as he reminded himself of all the
blessings of our faith, he was greatly encouraged and spiritually
strengthened. By the end of the day, he
said he was counting. Count your many blessings, name them one by one.
The guards outside Weir’s
room could only see a naked wire, a French door with slats, and two plastic
covers, but this Christian believer, missionary, could see much, much
more. He could see the hand of God at
work in his life even in these dismal circumstances. And so Benjamin Weir came out of this hostage
experience even stronger than he went in.
Could you do that? Could I do that? That’s faith.
I want to say this morning, that briefly here is what faith does for
us: First of all, faith helps us be all
we can be. Sometime back I was looking
at a copy of Runners World, and it mentioned a unique phenomena which they
called the “Bislett Affect.” The Bislett
Affect is named for Bislett Stadium in Oslo, Norway. More than fifty track and field records have
been broken over years at Bislett. No
other stadium can boast this kind of record setting, and it is not because of
the frigid weather in Norway. Runners do
not run faster just to keep warm, though that might make sense to some of
us. And it is not the altitude. Wind resistance is no different in Oslo than
in most other cities in the world. The
secret is the track itself. It is a
narrow six-lane track and the stands that surround it are very steep. According to this article in Runners World,
when twenty-one-thousand fans all scream, “Go! Go!,” in this kind of up-close
and personal setting you run faster. The
crowd forces you to keep your rhythm and push harder for one more stretch - for
one more turn. It is like being
surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. Such
faith helps us be all that we can be.
And it helps us, I think, to endure what we think we cannot endure.
All of us will come to
crucial moments in our lives, and when we are asked to endure what seems beyond
our strength, and it is beyond our strength if we try to do it alone, but we
are not alone. There is a friend greater
than any friend, and there is a cloud of witnesses cheering for us. We can make it. Whether it is a crisis with our health, a
crisis within our family, the loss of a loved one, a failure on the job -
whatever it might be - I believe that that is what the Gospel is about. We can go on.
We follow in a long line of people who are persevered and been
victorious.
Listen again to the words of
the letter of the Hebrews: “Therefore,
since we are surrounded by such great
cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that
so easily entangles; and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for
us. And let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the
author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the
cross, scorning its shame and set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
In the 1953, the first people
to climb to the top of Mount Everest were Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing
Norgay, a shirpa guide. Now, Norgay’s
son, Jamling Norgay, climbed Mount Everest in 1999, forty-six years after his
father. “I never felt so strong in my
life,” he said, describing his condition as he inched closer to the top. “It was as if my father’s spirit was with me.”
Jamling wrote a book called Touching
My Father’s Soul. In his book Jamling Norgay described what it felt like
standing one the world’s tallest peak. “I
looked down on the ruins of the Ronbok Monastery,” he writes, “where my father
chased yaks as a very young boy. Then I
turned back, and I saw him, my father.
He was right there behind me off to the side where a patch of rocks met
the snow. His face was shining -
beaming.” Jamling Norgay had a witness
to his climb: his father who had gone
before him.
And so have we. Faith helps us be all that we can be. Faith helps us endure all that we must
endure. And faith reminds us that we do
not live our lives alone. There is one
who is with us and there a cloud of witnesses who have climbed the mountain
before us. We will make it.
Amen