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| Strength for the Journey #13 Eyes on Jesus! |
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Eyes on Jesus!
Reading: Hebrews 12:1-13
This is the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and even in the midst of a larger cultural and historical framework that is filled with anxiety and fear, I find it extremely easy to be thankful this year. I am blessed with wonderful life circumstances, personally. I have a wonderful wife and two terrific sons. I am blessed to be able to do what I love doing and what I firmly believe I am called to do. I am called to preach, to be in settings like this one as a person who is asked by the congregation each week to bring a word from God. But I love teaching. I heard a movie advertisement this week for the movie “The Emperor’s Club” in which the theme sentence was “In every person’s life there is someone who made all the difference!” I suppose I got into the education business precisely because there was not just one person but several, particularly in the college world, that had enormous impact on my intellectual and spiritual life. They taught me how to think and how to love learning and they showed me the love of God with their lives and personal interest in me. I wanted to become that for others.
Not all of my teachers offered the same kind of learning experience. Some of them made learning so much fun you could hardly wait to go to class. Some teachers stimulated my thinking and opened my eyes to new things. I think in particular of those teachers who revolutionized my understanding of Scripture and faith. But the truth is that some of the teachers that had the greatest impact on my life were not fun, and I didn’t once look forward to going to their classes after the first day. They thought school ought to be challenging, difficult. They thought that the best way to teach was to push students to think outside the box and work in pressure situations and they demanded heavy, heavy workloads.
The teacher I resented the most at the time was my eleventh grade English teacher. As I recall, English was my second class of the day, which meant it started around 9:00—not an awful time, I suppose. He thought it was his job to expose us to classic literature. I didn’t mind being exposed to things that were fun to read. I read lots of books on things that I enjoyed, especially sports biographies of my favorite players. But he thought I needed to read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. I grudgingly made my way through that book, although it wasn’t nearly as much fun as reading about Willie Mays or Roger Staubach. I read it fairly carefully and got through the test okay. But then he decided that I needed to read every page of Moby Dick. I was doing all right with that until that long boring chapter on the history of sharks and whales. I couldn’t see the point of that at all. I found this little yellow booklet at the bookstore by some guy named Cliff and skipped the rest of Melville. Unfortunately, at test time, Cliff didn’t help me all that much.
I grew to really dislike the teacher at that point. After all, I had never gotten bad grades in English in my life and a bad grade now couldn’t be my fault! The other thing he did that I really hated each week was he made us come into class every Wednesday, at which time he would write a topic on the board and assign us the task of writing a 250 word essay that had to be completed at the end of the 50 minute class period. It had to be handwritten with no mistakes—correct grammar and spelling, no crossed-out words on the page. No proof-reading, no computer spell check. Write it exactly as it’s supposed to be the first time in penmanship that is easily read. Even if I could have done the rest of it right, my penmanship was illegible. In fact, after the first essay was turned in, he held my paper up as the example of how NOT to write!
It was only several years later that I realized that every paper I have written since, every sermon manuscript that I now write, has been dependent on the writing skills I learned in Mr. Bodine’s 11th grade English class. It was also several years later that I made the connection between good literature and writing. Good writers become that way only through reading good writing. For that matter, the speakers that keep my attention are invariably those people who, because they also are well read, know how to craft a phrase. They are voracious readers whose vocabulary and speaking and writing abilities have been honed by their familiarity with great writing and speaking.
Education that is worth anything is always like Mr. Bodine’s class sooner or later. Even in those fun classes, I later realized that the fun had no meaning unless there was some sort of arduous learning process also at work. It was great when great learning was also fun. But after being a student for almost 20 years and then being a teacher for much of the last 25 years, I understand that fun is not the goal. The goal is training, and training is work and training that makes a difference is hard. Sometimes it is both extremely difficult and even apparently irrelevant at the time. It is often not fun, often not what we would choose to do if left to our own devices. Training, education is an exercise in discipline. The greatest educational rewards come with the greatest personal effort and sacrifice and even pain and suffering.
Education, training, discipline. These are the same words that we also use to describe the parenting process with our children. Children are these gifts from God given on loan to parents for about 18 years. It is the parents’ job to grow the children from infancy to adulthood, to take them from the womb to responsible living as beings independent of their parents. It is a process filled with fun, with joy and laughter. But it is also a process filled with tears and pain, conflict and suffering. In order for the child to grow and mature, character and morality and ethical behavior have to be learned. All loving parents enter into the education process with their children and involve themselves deeply in the processes of training and discipline and education precisely because they love their children. To neglect that training and discipline is to neglect the child and stunt her/his mental and emotional and spiritual growth. Quality training will be painful at times. It will require children and the parents alike to hurt and suffer along the way of growing up. The goal is not the avoidance of pain and conflict. The goal is maturity, mental and emotional adulthood that matches up with the physical changes to the body.
Precisely because our ability to talk about God and our relationship to him is bound up in human experiences and understandings, the Hebrews writer uses this metaphor of education, of parental training and discipline to talk about the relationship of God to all of us whom God has claimed as his children through Jesus Christ. In chapter 12, in the midst of this ongoing exhortation to faithful living that began back in chapter 10, the writer speaks repeatedly of God’s training his children for holiness and spiritual maturity. Listen to these words:
In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children—‘My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts.’ Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he 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 peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:4-11).
Please don’t misunderstand the preacher’s language about trials and suffering at this point. He is neither suggesting that God initiates every hardship and bad circumstance or tragic suffering in our lives nor is he saying that such training or discipline is to be understood as punishment. This is not about God getting mad and spanking us humans with some horrible tragedy when we sin. It is the writer telling his audience that when they do indeed face horrible circumstances such as being persecuted and abused in their cultural setting because of their faith that they should view such circumstances as training exercises. They should remember that in the long range plan of God, we will be in his holy presence for eternity, and that training for holiness is often an arduous process. We must remember that our earthly circumstances are the temporary ones. Eternity with God is long-term.
This education language and this attitude regarding abuse and persecution and suffering comes inside a second image that controls verses 1-3 and 11-13 in chapter 12. The education/training metaphor is placed in the context of the athletic image of running a race. It is the athlete who knows best the value of discipline and training as preparation for the race. So the chapter began with the exhortation to run the race with endurance or perseverance. But this is no ordinary athletic event. Those witnessing the event are not your typical sports crowd. The scene opens out of the great legacy of faithful men and women described by the preacher in chapter eleven. The race being run is human history itself on this planet. The witnesses are all of the faithful whom the preacher has just described in these words, “Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect” (11:39-40). Now he continues, “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” (12:1). The cloud of witnesses are more than simply spectators. They are those whose faith testifies to us and gives us assurance regarding our own faith. They also provide models for imitation, with one stipulation. They could not be perfected apart from us, the preacher says. In other words this cloud of witnesses has a vested interest in us running and finishing the race! As their faith once testified, now we are the witnesses. We have what they did not have!
We are empowered to run not only by those who make up the cloud but by the one who has finally completed the race and already stands before us in the throne room. We see Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He is the trailblazer, the one who already is our champion, the one who makes our running possible. He is also the perfecter, the one described back in chapters 7-10 as the one who can perfect the conscience of sin and knock down every obstacle that would keep us from the goal.
Therefore, surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, the preacher exhorts his hearers in the first century and us today to “throw aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely.” We’ve seen the runners at the starting line take off their warm-ups and become just as light as possible for the race. We know the image. We also know that in Christ we have been freed from sin. So let us run with endurance. All races require training for endurance—one can’t run a marathon by accident. So the preacher tells his audience about God’s training program before returning one more time to the image of the runner who has already been on the track longer than he or she thought possible. “Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed” (12:12-13).
Drooping hands and weak knees. As one who spends quite a bit of time running each week, I know what that looks like and feels like. As one who has spent all of his life in church settings and made a career of either teaching in Christian schools or preaching in churches, I know what drooping hands and weak knees feel like and look like in that setting as well. As a person thoroughly entrenched in the cultural setting of capitalism and materialism, I know the weights that can become attached to life on this planet that can so distract one from that vision of Jesus in the throne room. As one who has been a member at times of struggling, arguing, splitting churches and often myself been more faithful to church dogmas and traditions than faithful to Christ, I know about weights that make the race so much harder to run. And the sin that clings so closely—yes I know about that all too well.
I also know too much about the world in which we live and the suffering that seems so often to be ill-timed, unjust, capricious, without regard for the goodness of a person’s life. But I also remember Jesus, and the description given by the Hebrews preacher back in chapter 5: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (5:7-9).
The pioneer and perfector of our faith learned obedience through what he suffered, thus being made perfect, becoming the source of our salvation. God trained that Son the same way he chooses to train his sons and daughters today. To run our race today we must believe that the path of our trailblazer is still the best way to run the race. So we look to Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, 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. Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart….. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.”
November 24, 2002
It is that consideration of Jesus that draws us back, week after week to the table. It is our participation in the body and the blood that continually reminds us of our identity as the living body of Christ. It is in eating and drinking together each week that the cloud of witnesses not only surrounds us but enlarges as we witness to one another and collectively open the windows of heaven into the throne room and the great heavenly banquet. Yes, we remember the cross event, we remember then, we even claim that memory as an event which happened to us. It is not simply that he died on that cross, but we claim to have died with him, so that now we might live with him. So this morning, we eat and we drink, we remember, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. So that those weak knees and drooping hands may be strengthen for the journey that lies ahead this week, so that others may see Jesus living in us.
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