My grandfather had an unforgettable smile.  Sometimes he could hold his smile in his hand.  At a young age, my grandpa had a mouth full of pearly whites that didn’t belong to him.  They were dentures.  When I was younger, he knew I was fascinated with how those teeth came in and out of his mouth.  And though it was a rare occasion, when no one else was looking but me, he’d pop them out and smile at me, and with a wink, he’d pop them back in.  We had a special relationship for as long as I can remember.

 

He was the youngest of eleven children in his family.  He grew up on a farm where he developed a strong work discipline.  He loved his family dearly even though his father was an abusive alcoholic.  Grandpa carried guilt as he was the only one of his brothers that was declined the opportunity to serve our country in WWII…a health issue kept him from serving.  His brother, my great uncle Harold, went down on the USS Indianapolis which didn’t help his feelings of guilt.  Grandpa would marry a wonderful young school teacher and they would have three children, my father born between his sister and brother. 

 

Grandpa felt a call to ministry in his thirties and began the eight year college and seminary track that he needed to serve in the church as an ordained pastor.  He served a church in a small, Iowa town during his seminary days and would often bring home his Jamaican roommate, Ambrose, with him on the weekends to stay with my family.  During the turbulent racial issues of the 60’s, Ambrose and my Grandpa brought some understanding of equality to a small town that had only seen someone of color on television.  Grandpa later united two churches in that town and served them for many years as their pastor. 

 

My grandparents were my biggest supporters in my life and were so excited to be a part of my upcoming ordination… but such was not possible.  My grandmother passed first.  She encouraged all of us through the end.  Grandpa was brokenhearted and didn’t make it much longer.  Before he passed, I remember kneeling beside him as he lay on the couch in their home.  He smiled at me and his eyes were forming cloudy puddles of tears as he knew he too would not make it to my ordination.  He pulled me in close to him as he often did and whispered, “Your grandmother and I are so proud of you.  Go be who God needs you to be.  We’ll be with you.” 

 

I’ve held on to those words.  Sometimes they scare me a little.  Who does God need me to be?  Am I being that person?  There is so much to do and our days are numbered.  There is considerable challenge and grace in that fact; challenge to work with God to accomplish all that is before us in faith and the grace knowing that some things will go unfinished, some promise lands will only be visions in our imagination, some ordination services will remain in our dreams.

 

This is why the author of Hebrews says to a weary people what my grandfather was whispering to me:  “You are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.”  Who are these clouds of witnesses?  Imagine this writer standing outside with this people and looking to the sky.  It’s like when you were a child and you lay in the grass and picked out clouds that were shaped like your dog, an elephant, or an ice cream cone.  This writer says look over at that cloud… that’s Moses, he didn’t think he was a leader but look where he took our ancestors.  And over there, that’s Joshua, he rose to the challenge and carried on the people Israel once Moe could go no mo’.  And see that cloud, that’s Rahab, she was as hospitable as they come.  There’s Gideon and Sampson and David.  Through faith they conquered kingdoms, fought for equal rights, found the silver lining in the dimmest of times, accomplished much when others counted them out. 

 

They also paid a price for their quest.  They were mocked, flogged, imprisoned, tortured, stoned to death, even sawn in two. Their lives were a tough race.  Their feet were blistered.  Their hearts were pounding.  Their arms were so heavy they could hardly lift them from their sides.  Their part of the race is now over.  They make up this cloud of witnesses.  And though their faith and their lives are commendable, their quest to bring about the Realm of God to earth is unfinished.  It is incomplete.  And without us to carry on the baton, the quest is dead.

 

This cloud of witnesses is cheering us on now.  And that is uncomfortable for some of us.  We maybe feel we aren’t running a very good race.  We certainly aren’t training enough or even trying to enter the race so we’d prefer not to think about those who have sweat blood cheering us on in the quest to breathe God to life in our world today.  Then there are others of us who try to be the hero too quickly, many times in a noble manner, but without enough stamina to go the full distance.

 

I love to recall a story with my brother about a time we shared in high school.  He was running on the track team and at one particular meet, he was running the last leg of an 800 meter relay.  Matt watched as the first three legs of the race found his team drifting farther and farther behind until they were dead last by the time he began the familiar pacing steps to receive the baton from his teammate.  My brother was stoked and determined to pick up his team and bring home a seemingly impossible victory.  He had a brilliant start, it seemed.  One by one, he was picking off the runners in front of him.  By the close of the first 400 meters he had caught the runner at the head of the pack, the place was going crazy!  It was the best 400 meters of his life.  Unfortunately, it was an 800 meter relay.  By turn two of his second lap he slowed a great deal and we knew this was not good.  His legs finally gave out on him, literally, and he tumbled off the side of the track.  He and his team were finished.

 

Sometimes we don’t pace ourselves for the long haul either and in the end we burn out.  We go and go and go and while we may do some great things for a while, we burn out to the point where we are unable to help the team any more whatsoever.  In my brother’s case, it didn’t help that we Brileys are not really track people…we were football players, baseball and basketball players, not runners.  He hadn’t trained properly and he wasn’t ready for the long haul of that race.  When it comes to serving in the name of Christ, bring your gifts to the table, things you enjoy doing. At the church, the old statistics often hold true, 20% of the people do 80% of the work.  So many end up doing things they are not really gifted or interested in doing just because someone needs to do it and burnout can be the result.  We have a very gifted congregation and the gifts of each person are needed to endure the difficulties of the race.  How are you using your gifts?

 

It is good to shed the extra baggage you carry when it comes to running this race of faith.  That’s why the writer of this text says, “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…”.  Shed the extra baggage.  Every weight, every sin, every thing that keeps you from running the race. It sounds like an easy remedy to our lethargy but we know it isn’t quite that simple.  The Apostle Paul tells us this about himself.  ^*I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Romans 7:15-18)  The distractions of life are great…the temptations even greater.  It is an ongoing struggle.  One writer put these words of Paul in a more contemporary context…

 

“I’d like to have a cigarette tonight.  Just one. Ten minutes of satisfaction, of letting my guard down, of doing whatever the heck I want to do at any particular moment. A cigarette tonight, a beer right now, and maybe I won’t go jogging tomorrow. Shouldn’t be that big a crisis, right?

 

“Except I quit smoking a month ago.  For the second time in a year. And I really don’t feel like quitting smoking all over again tomorrow…And if I let myself become a smoker again, I won’t really enjoy any of the cigarettes I smoke. Very soon after that, I’ll start feeling miserable…Because doing what I want to do makes me miserable. But not doing the things I want to do takes so much effort.”[1]

The life-race that is ours does take much effort.  It is tiring and the flesh is weak.  It is a universal image—a person becomes “bone tired,” weary to the point of collapse.  Whether you are tilling the fields, selling real estate, fighting fires all day, standing at the operating table all day, or teaching thirty first grade kids in Sponge Bob T-shirts, it is fatigue all the same.  Life is demanding and the last thing we want is another hill to climb.  So when we are weary with the world, we sometimes feel there is nothing we can do to run in the life of faith.  This is why the Hebrew writer gives us the word, “persevere”.  It is not a soothing word…it is a word that wreaks of pain, heartache, sweat, and athlete’s foot.  But it is the difference between the real deal Christian and the Casual Christ Claimer. 

 

The Casual Christ Claimer has a nice feeling now and again and runs for a little while but that is not perseverance.  Nice feelings will take you a lap or two, a day or two, or maybe even a week or two but that is not perseverance. Perseverance is a radical word.  “[It] is finding a way beyond your feelings in order to do what must be done.  It is staying in the race even when it hurts, even when you do not have all the answers.”[2]  When your faith is genuine, you will face regular resistance from without and within, and that resistance can become debilitating.  I have seen this a number of times.  The best of the best…the most faithful of the most faithful… life grows so hard and even unfortunate at times that they quit the race.  The cannot endure.  But I have also seen the other side, the one who has experienced the same hardships or worse and yet keeps pushing for justice, keeps taking their faith to the depths, keeps loving their enemies, keeps hearing the cheers of the cloud of witnesses and perseveres.  It is quite remarkable. 

 

How do these saints press on?  Saints, it is said, are the sinners who go on trying.  All of the heroes listed in our text for today had their faults, their hesitations, their moments of wanting to throw in the towel.  But they pressed on because they knew the reward was great.  The Hebrew writer says there is no better way for us to press on than to follow the trail blazed by the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…the Christ who stopped at nothing to bring about the Realm of God to our world.

 

Look at Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman… forbidden by culture and tradition to speak to her due to her gender and race, and yet he offers her grace and life eternal and she runs to share with others.  With whom are we sharing grace that our culture says is unworthy of such? Look at Jesus who touches the Leper, the blind, the hemorrhaging woman whom the culture says are unclean.  Made well, they run on in faith.  What are we doing to bring about health to a culture stricken with AIDS, selfishness and disease of disinterest?  Look at Jesus who at a dinner party with the disciples pours his heart out and then is abandoned at the Cross by those closest to him.  Yet he still says, “Father, forgive them.”  Who remains on our list as unforgivable? 

 

Nick Cave, lead singer of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, is not the most quoted Christian by any means.  But he speaks well about this pioneer.  “The Christ that emerges from [the Gospels], trampling through the haphazard events of his life, had a ringing intensity about him that I could not resist. Christ spoke to me through his isolation, through the burden of his death, through his rage at the mundane, through his sorrow. Christ, it seemed to me, was the victim of humanity's lack of imagination, was hammered to the cross with the nails of creative vapidity.”[3]

 

Do we lack imagination today, satisfied with a mundane existence?  Do we lack the vision of Christ for ourselves?  Do we see the great clouds of the saints who have gone before us and see now as our time to run the race and do something amazing for the kingdom … something challenging enough to the next generation that we can demonstrate a living Christ, a living faith, and the perseverance for the journey?  We must keep running.  But we must not run alone.

 

Today’s forecast:  Partly cloudy, chance of saints.  They are there.  When you are frustrated, remember that person who calms your soul keeps moving forward.  When you feel defeated or a failure, remember the one who always believed in you and try again.  When you suffer, remember Christ and press on.  Remember your cloud of witnesses.  Today as I preach from this text, I rejoice as it was the text my father preached from at my ordination service a year and a half ago.  My dad’s sermon title was, “Surrounded” and I sense that cloud of witnesses surrounding us and cheering us on today.  And I see my grandfather offering me an encouraging smile and a familiar wink.  As any preacher would, he would allow me to share those encouraging words with you today that he offered me before he joined the cloud of saints… “Go be who God needs you to be.  We’ll be with you.”

 

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