Cheers from the Sidelines--September 30, 2021

Cheers from the Sidelines--September 30, 2021

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin the clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us..." [Hebrews 12:1]

It's a relay race, of course.  This life of faith--it's a relay race, and we are part of a great chain of runners, each taking their turn with the baton, and then finding a place beside the course to cheer on the rest of the team.

That's what I think is so powerful, so encouraging, in this verse.  It's both sides of that image: that we're not alone as runners, and that those who have run before us are now cheering for us as we go.  We need to know both are true.

For this entire chapter, the writer of Hebrews has been highlighting the names, faces, and stories of our ancestors in the faith--their adventures, the challenges they faced, the strength they showed, and the way God worked through them over and over again.  But if all we had was a list of other people's great accomplishments, we might be left thinking, "There's no way I can live up to what THEY did!"  We might forever be worried that we're being compared to the calm but unswervingly faithful resistance of Daniel in the lion's den, or the trust of Abraham the migrant looking for a new home, or the courage of Esther saving her people from racist violence.  We could become paralyzed with fear that we don't measure up.

But the writer of Hebrews hasn't given us all those stories to remember because he wants to beat us into the ground with insecurity.  He's not trying to shame us into something, but to encourage us.  And so he tells us about all those who have gone before us on this road, and then says, "Oh, and by the way, they're still around us--they're still surrounding us all right now, as we keep running our part of the race.  They're cheering for you. They want you to run well, because we are all part of the same team."

And with that, everything is different.  It's not a competition across the church for World's Holiest Saint--we are all in this journey together, each of us uplifted by the others, and each of us helping along anybody who stumbles or gets lost or who, for some reason, is weighed down by a load of unnecessary baggage they forgot to leave behind at the starting gun.  Ours is a time that can be so fiercely individualistic that we can come to think that this life of faith is just a matter of Me-and-Jesus, where I don't rely on anybody else's help, and where nobody else can claim anything of me.  We Respectable Religious folk sometimes make faith sound like an everyone-for-themselves kind of enterprise, as though God is waiting at some heavenly finish line saying, "There's only room for the top three finishers, so get moving if you want a medal!"  But the writer of Hebrews insists that's not how it works.  We are all in this together, and the people cheering for you know what it is like to feel the strain of keeping on with keeping on.

That's just in: in the times when you and I feel weary from trying to be decent to our neighbors, to love like Jesus, to risk being unpopular or made fun of for hanging out with all the wrong people, for speaking up for justice and compassion, and from serving others behind the scenes, the ones who are rooting for us in that "great cloud of witnesses" are ones who have been through it, too, in their own ways.  And they have know what it is to fall and stumble and struggle in the course of the race, too.  They know, from Abraham and Sarah to your fourth-grade Sunday School teacher, what it is, like the old poet says, "to force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve their turn long after they are gone," and still to keep going.  And rather than go somewhere else and put their feet up because their leg of the race is done, they are there at the sidelines, whooping it up with pennants and big foam fingers, cheering for you to keep going.  You are not alone.  None of us is.

Today, let that lift you up.  Let the presence of all those countless saints surround you.  Let their stories encourage you.  Let the assurance that they were beloved even when they blew it bring comfort to you.  Let the sound of their cheers echo in the back of your awareness all day long, so that you will find the hope and the energy to put one foot in front of the other all day long, and to spend this day living the love of Jesus.

On your mark... get set... let's go.

Gracious God, help us to hear the voices of our siblings in faith all around us, in the past and present, and to be encouraged by their support and ongoing presence with us.