August 19, 2007 - Welcome to the Conversation - Elizabeth Gibbs Zehnder

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Stand up, take a look around – do a 360 – take it all in , the stained glass, the dark wood, the velvet seats, the tile work, the ceiling beams…imagine it under construction, the tile workers laying the tile, the painters stenciling the ceiling, Imagine the first service, everything crisp and brand new. The church was dedicated in 1928 – that was before my time, that was before my mother’s time, my grandmother would have been 14 years old that day, and you should know, the sanctuary wasn’t even built in a contemporary style, sure it had modern elements for its day, but the style was based on the French gothic cathedrals of Europe – churches from my grandmother’s grandmothers time!

This sanctuary itself reminds that as people of faith, when we come to worship, we are joining a conversation that has been going on a long time. And that conversation is likely to continue long after our grandmothers are gone, long after we are gone, long after our grandchildren are gone. When I take in that realization, I start to feel very small, rather insignificant, as though it might not matter if I show up at all.

But this eternal aspect of the conversation isn’t the only side to the story- another very important side is the truth of God’s particular love for each one of us. The truth that God has knit each of us together in our mother’s womb, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. The truth that God has been with each breath that we have taken, accompanied us in each loss, mourned each sorrow, danced with us in each joy. The truth that God has equipped each of us to participate in God’s ministry, called each of us to live out of the grace and love of Jesus Christ.

So both are true – here’s the universe, and we are each a little speck on of humanity in the grand scheme of God’s Salvation History and here’s us with the universe orbiting around us. Our scripture today holds these two truths in tension.

To really get inside God’s word to us, we need to remember that the Bible – Genesis all the way Revelation – didn’t just fall out of the sky – the English NRSV- into our hands one day. The Bible is a collection of writings gathered over centuries by God’s people. The book that our reading comes from today – Hebrews, is actually a letter (a fairly long letter) that was written some time before 70 AD to Jewish people who had converted to Christianity. It turns out we don’t know for sure the authors name – some scholars think it was Apollos, others favor Barnabas, but its unclear. As we read the Book of Hebrews, we see that the focus of the letter is on Jesus Christ as the revealer and mediator of God’s grace. The author of Hebrews is practical in encouraging readers to go forward in their commitment to Christ and God and not revert to their former ways.

In the passage we read this morning, the metaphor of a race is invoked.

I am not super athletic – I’ve dabbled in sports a bit, my peak experience was running a 15K race. Let me just say, the training for this race was excruciating. I felt forever out of breath and plagued by side cramps and knee injuries. I was never able to run more than 10 kilometers in training. I felt solitary and weak. But on race day – the energy of the crowd and the other runners carried me. I ran the whole race. If only I had known to invoke the presence of the crowd and the other runners in my training runs, maybe their presence would have changed my experience and my capacity then too.

Hebrews is telling us that our faith journey works the same way. The base reality is that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses – and this cloud is not an assembly of couch potatoes and arm chair quarterbacks – this cloud of witnesses have walked the walk – they have struggled with doubt and been crushed by grief, they have felt God’s absence and known God’s presence and they are there encouraging us and cheering us on.

So, as we look around this sanctuary, we can imagine some of the cloud of witnesses that sat in this very space, maybe in the balcony over there. Through the years since the 1920’s, some struggles of faith that they faced were certainly different than ours, but some things were certainly the same. I wonder about how they struggled with discerning who God had called into church membership – wondering if God meant for people with different colors of skin to worship together in the same sanctuary. I wonder if they found it terrifying to depart from what their parents had discerned about that Sunday in 1978 when they received Aurelia Daigeau into membership …

How did they wrestle with understanding God’s calling church leaders – wondering if God was pleased with women exercising their gifts of ministry beyond the Parish Hall kitchen. Were they unsure about what they had unleashed during that congregational meeting back in 1972 when they called Marilyn Moores as elder? The cloud of witnesses, they prayed, they discussed, they talked after the meeting in the parking lot and they sorted out what they could of God’s call on their lives. And here they are surrounding us as we take on our challenges of discerning who God calls into church leadership, of learning our role in the interplay of political boundaries and the kingdom of God. There they are as we wonder if we are invoking God’s joy or God’s wrath.
Its easy to loose our way in these debates and dilemmas, Don’t run around in circles, the Book of Hebrews tells us – run toward the goal, run with purpose and perseverance the race that is set before you and if you get lost look to Jesus.

So, the question to us this morning is what is our race? And how do we run it?

On the individual level, only you can answer that question for yourself. In the same way, you are probably the only person who knows what you really put in the tip jar at Starbucks, or how tidy you leave the airport bathroom stall - You alone know the unseen places where the Holy Spirit is prompting you to focus your attention on that relationship that is rife with tension or poisoned with resentment. In the race that is set before each one of us, only you can say whether God is inviting you to rest and let go or to engage your life with more discipline.

Even though those are truths are held in our individual hearts and known only to God, we live out those struggles – we run those races - in the context of community. Together we become the face of that cloud of witnesses for each other. As the cloud of witnesses we can choose to be a source of grace or judgment. We chose to be a sanctuary of nourishment or poison for the person who is running their race of faith.

I visited Lupe Alvarado in the hospital this week. She’s recovering from her second surgery of the summer – she now has a pin in the femur of both of her legs. Lupe was explaining to me how she couldn’t start working on building strength in her legs until she was fitted for a back support. She’ll have this plastic vest that velcro’s around her waist in such a way that her spine is strategically supported as she works to recover the strength in the bones and muscles of her legs. She needs the support in order to begin the healing that is ahead of her.

We, the cloud of witnesses, are called to be that back support device for each other. We are to be the encourager, the supporter to each member of this community as they run the race that God has set before them.

Now, it almost goes without saying that our contemporary North American culture places a high value on individualism, however, when we come to the this letter to the Hebrews, for them individualism was not as central. In that society, the community - the collective - was given more prominence. In light of that, it’s fair game for us to look at this text in terms of what it means for us as a faith community to run our race.

I think of the challenges facing Immanuel and our efforts to respond out of our relationship with Jesus.

We are challenged when our members struggle to live in the same home as their children - The challenges of immigration and our country’s immigration policies and Immanuel’s response of the New Sanctuary Movement.

We are challenged when our members pay their rent and wonder how they will buy food for dinner that night - The challenges of affordable housing and food security and Immanuel’s response of the Food Pantry and One LA’s housing advocacy.

We are challenged when our members carry the depression and pain of trauma that robs them of emotional resources as they to raise their children - The challenges of violence and stress of urban living and Immanuel’s response of health ministry, pastoral counseling, the El Camino Counseling center.

Not to mention the challenges when our member’s battle cancer, family members in jail, children struggle with addiction, spouses having affairs, and our response as a congregation with nurturing Sunday worship, Sunday school and small group ministries, and All Church Retreats. Of course we have pastoral staff – but we also have elders and deacons and members who are the bread and butter of these ministries.

As we take a look at the community aspect of Hebrews, much athlete running a race metaphor translates….

The capacity for running a race comes from preparation and training – the small details of our behavior add up to our ability to run the race that God has set before us – in every phone call that is made, in every conversation with a first time visitor, in every meeting, in every gathering - are we looking to Jesus to guide our response – are we running the race that has been set before us?

Its easy for us to slip into that little grain of sand mentality – to feel as though we are such small players on such a large stage that our efforts are invisible and insignificant – we drift into thinking that it is only what happens in the sanctuary on Sunday mornings that really matters in the life of this church. Hebrews tells us NO! – the race of faith is run step by step, it happens in the most unlikely of places- conversation by conversation, prayer by prayer, a cup of coffee shared, a casserole brought over to the house, crying together when the grief is to great to bear alone, laughing together when the task is too impossible, meeting someone’s eyes and seeing Jesus lurking in there, realizing that we long for Jesus to guide our words and our hearts as we walk out into the parking lot and into the rest of our lives.

Hebrews advice to us is practical – run the race! You might remember when the LA Marathon route came right past the church steps on Wilshire. It was always such an exhilarating Sunday (well, once you waded through the traffic to get here). We would pop out to the sidewalk in between services and cheer the runners on – I remember both Sara Erickson and David Valdez have run that marathon.

Its not like David showed up early for church on marathon Sunday and decided to duck under the police tape and start running. He chose it, he trained, he surrounded himself with a community of other runners. He made a myriad of choices that added up to him running the race.

In the same way the passage today calls us to choose the race of faith. This 2000 year old conversation has been carried on - it has continued to unfold because women and men of God have moved beyond good intentions to action. Individuals whose names we no longer know – who maybe used to sit in the same pew that you are sitting in this morning - people who might have felt as insignificant as a grain of sand on Santa Monica beach – these individuals took seriously the Holy Spirit’s compelling love and they did what God set before them. And now they are part of the cloud of witnesses encouraging us on in our race. So Immanuel. On the days when we feel like what we are doing doesn’t matter. And on the days when everything else feels more important. And on the days when we feel tripped up and shut down at every turn. Let us be carried by the faithful people who have run this race before us. Let us be carried by faithful people who are running along side us. And let us press in this race that God has set before us. Amen.