10th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15C

10th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15C August 14, 2022 After a long summer hiatus, I started back running this week. On good days, there is nothing I love more than a good treadmill-run. I show up at the gym like I plan to; I crank up my running playlist in my headphones, and run/walk exactly as I had planned to run/walk that day. As someone who has run off and on, her whole adult life, I am quite familiar with the pattern. For whatever reason, my first run back after a hiatus (assuming that I have set reasonable expectations for my level of physical fitness—which isn’t always the case), is usually a dream. It’s easier than I think it will be; the time flies by; I end my workout optimistic about getting back into running shape. But the second run after coming back, that’s the one that always gets me. Best case scenario: I make it to the gym; run the course I had planned, and it is 10 times harder than my first run back. My muscles are sore and I’m tired. My mind tells me that I can always just stop and walk or even just get off the treadmill—no one will even know, and so I often have to dig deep and push through to finish my planned course. I’m not always successful. So it has intrigued me this week that the writer of Hebrews, who is writing about faith in this week’s passage and in last week’s passage, talks about how faith, the life of the faithful is like running—entreating the followers of Christ who are suffering by saying, “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” Hebrews Chapter 11 is often known as “the hall of fame of faith.” It begins with a familiar verse: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Last week’s portion goes on to talk about Abraham and Sarah-how they trusted God and set out for a new promised land; how God made them promises that they did not live to see fulfilled, but how we as the people of faith know that God came through for them. This week’s reading name drops more of the faithful throughout our scriptural history and it is full of action: “By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.” Faith inspired the followers of God to conquer kingdoms, administer justice, obtain promises, shut the mouths of lions, quench raging fire, escape the edge of the sword, win strength out of weakness, become mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight…. For so many of us, faith has come to mean a sort of intellectual set of beliefs or even an emotional connection to God and each other, but in this chapter of Hebrews, faith is a physical response to the call of God to go to new places, to step out into the unknown because God tells us that is where we need to go. As another writer puts it, “The texts describe the faithful as people who set out for new places, anticipate new arrivals, wait for big changes, and search for new homelands. In these texts, the faithful are nomads. They wander. They contend with a holy restlessness…They work for the transformation of this world even as they yearn with all their hearts for another.” She continues, “Faith as it is described in Scripture is not, in other words, a destination. It’s not a conclusion or a form of closure. Faith is a longing. Faith is a hunger. Faith is a desire. Faith is the restless energy that pushes us out the door and onto the road in pursuit of the inheritance God has promised. Faith is the audacity to undertake a perilous journey simply because God asks us to — not because we know ahead of time where we’re going. Faith is the itch and the ache that turns our faces towards the distant stars even on the cloudiest of nights. [She concludes,] Faith is the willingness to stretch out our imaginations and see new birth, new life, new joy — even when we feel withered and dead inside. Faith is the urgency of the homeless for a true and lasting home — a home whose architect and builder is God.” i This chapter of Hebrews also makes it clear that a life of faith, this response to God’s call to step out into new places, isn’t always smooth or easy. The passage details all the ways that the faithful hall-of-famers suffered in faithfulness, in their stepping out into the places God was calling them. In our gospel reading for today, Jesus talks some about this, too, offering a description (and not necessarily a prescription) of what his disciples may endure as he makes his way to Jerusalem. So where is the good news in all of this? We come here looking for peace and solace, not more stress and difficulty in our already fractious, stressful lives! Why go back to the gym when we know that 2nd run back is going to be so much harder than the first? Years ago, I heard a remarkable, true story about phenomenal grace under pressure, about faith and patience in the face of extreme persecution and stress. It’s a story that aired on This American Life about a group of Girl Guides (the rest of the world’s form of our Girl Scouts) and their leaders who were taken prisoner in a Japanese concentration camp right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The leaders and the girls were at a school for the children of American and British missionaries and workers in China, and the children were taken, without their parents to the concentration camp. But here is what is remarkable about this story. They never stopped acting like Girl Guides. The leaders promoted cheerfulness and service to the girls for the entire four years they were captive. They had competitions (based on the thing they needed for their survival) that served as their merit badges, and they continued to sing throughout the whole four years the Girl Guide songs, songs of faith and optimism and hope. One girl remembers how they would frequently sing the song: “Day is done. Gone the sun from the sea, from the hills, from the sky. All is well, safely rest. God is nigh.” The leaders were not foolish. One is recorded as having written about her hope that when they were finally to be taken outside of the camp to be killed, she hoped she went first so she wouldn’t have to watch it. Yet, in the midst of incredibly stressful circumstances, those leaders chose to have hope, to do what they could to protect those children, and to be faithful in their calling. The narrator of the piece says it well: “There probably aren't many places on earth where you have less reason to be cheerful than a concentration camp. But it turns out, in a place like that, being able to be cheerful, to have a positive outlook, it's not dopey or silly. It's how you survive. How you tell the story matters.” ii Every time I show up at the gym and run on the treadmill, I become a runner. And every time we show up and break bread together in this place, asking for forgiveness for our sins, reaching out our hands and our very souls in supplication to be fed by the body and blood of Christ, asking to be transformed more into the image and likeness of the God who created us, and then accepting God’s call to go out into the world once again to share God’s love with a desperate and needy world; every time we choose mercy over taking offense, we choose doing what is right over doing what is easy, we choose kindness over meanness or indifference, we are practicing our faith, becoming more and more those people who step out in faith in response to God’s call. We give ourselves and our lives over to something bigger than our own self-centeredness. We participate in the story of all the faithful, being mindful that we need each other, in order for the fullness of God’s promises to be fulfilled. i.From Debie Thomas’ essay: Called to Restlessness. First published on Journey with Jesus blog in 2019. Full text can be found here: https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3420-called-to-restlessness-2 ii.From a sermon I preached at St. Columb’s Episcopal Church, Ridgeland, MS. 13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 13C; August 14, 2016