A Litany of the Faithful
A Litany of the Faithful by Rev. L. John Gable
October 31, 2021
I have always loved this chapter from the book of Hebrews, the so called “faith chapter”, and wanted us to hear it in its entirety this morning, but I also knew that it would be too much to ask of you to have me read it alone, so I am grateful to each of our readers and to Dave Streit for putting this collage together.
When I was in elementary school my mother took an interest in our family genealogy; this was pre-Ancestors.com. I have vivid memories of coming home from school to find her bent over pages and books spread out on a card table in our family room as she carefully pieced together our family tree. She wrote, and then waited weeks to receive, letters from immigration offices and courthouses up and down the east coast and throughout Europe in search of names and dates of births and marriages and deaths, all which got meticulously recorded in a large genealogy book in her own hand.
Eventually she translated much of that information to a wall in our family room which she filled with framed pictures, immigration papers and military discharge orders. I remember spending hours as a child standing and looking at that wall filled with my relatives, some seated, some standing, some couples, some with families, some smiling, most not. One day I found myself focusing in particular on a small daguerreotype picture of a couple, one of my great, greats, he standing with his hand on her shoulder, she seated holding a small velvet covered Bible, and as I looked closely at it I realized it was the very same Bible my mother had out on a coffee table in our living room, and something in me clicked. In that moment I realized that that wall of pictures and documents, and that Bible, told the story of me; that they were part of me and I was a part of them.
In his book, Families, Wyatt Cooper writes of a time when he was a boy that during a family reunion they all visited the family graveyard. He writes, “A child could stand as I stood, with his bare feet digging into the sand of their graves and know that their toil and their despair, their trials and their triumphs, were forever a part of him, just as their dust and their bones were forever a part of the land. I could see that the world did not begin with me. I could see that I was a part of all that went before, and they, those vanished thousands, are forever a part of what I am and of what I shall be. It is important for a child to know that. The world does not begin nor end with him, and in between his being born and his dying, he has a link to forge. He has a challenge, a chance and responsibility.”
And this is why I love Hebrews chapter 11 so much. Here the author recites a litany of the faithful, much like the photographs on our family room wall or the names and dates carved in to limestone grave markers, as these tell the story of us, our past, our present and our future.
Hebrews 11 is written as a word of encouragement following the challenge and admonition given at the end of chapter 10 where we read, “Do not abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward. For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. (But) we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.”
And then, in order to encourage those struggling believers to hold fast to their faith and trust in the promises of God, as though he is thumbing through his Bible, he starts telling stories, family stories, stories of the heroes and heroines, the saints and the sinners, the prophets and the persecuted of our faith, our ancestors who are a part of us: Cain, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, Moses and Rahab. Without going in to great detail on any of them, he reminds his readers, then and now, that these, the familiar and the unfamiliar and countless, nameless others, persevered in the faith, walked with God though they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, trusting in His promises though they could not see them nor would they receive them, but still they journeyed on in confident hope, and so must we as well.
As we listen to him tell these stories of our faith we can begin to feel as the cadence of his sermon quickens, almost as though he glances at his watch and doesn’t want to wear out his listeners before he gets to his final point, so he says, “And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets – who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented – they wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and in holes in the ground.” And then he seems to pause…a long pause…before he continues, “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.”
These are not simply stories lifted out of the dusty annals of history. These are not their stories alone. These are our stories. These are the stories of our faith which form and inform us, and in our hearing of them and in our telling, we are now linked to those who have gone before us. We belong to them and they to us.
Imagine for a moment the story of our faith, not as a narrative, but as a chain, anchored on one end on the promises of God and on the other end on the fulfillment of those promises in Jesus Christ. You and I are part of that chain, along with Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Rahab; on this Reformation Sunday, along with Luther and Calvin and Knox and Zwingli. We add our stories to their stories as we tell of those who have influenced our faith: authors and preachers, parents and Sunday School teachers who shared with us the wonderful promises of a faithful God and encouraged us, both in their words and their actions, to respond to Jesus’ invitation “Come, follow Me”, and then to hold fast to His promises despite the struggles, the trials and tribulations, we may encounter along the way, because the journey is a great adventure and the reward is eternal. On this All Saints day we add to this long chain the names of those who have gone before us here at Tab, those with whom we have worshiped and served: McWhirter, Pecsok, Krider, Croner, Jesseph, Beard, York, and Stokes. They too are part of our story and we of theirs.
So, standing in the family graveyard, or staring at the pictures hanging on our family room wall, or sitting in this sacred space, we know that we are “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses”! In a powerful way, the writer of Hebrews changes the metaphor, now to a runner, perhaps a marathoner, who enters the arena at the end of the race, spent and exhausted, who is welcomed and bolstered by those in the stands cheering them on! They too had run the race before and soon the baton would be passed to the next runner. So carry on! Just as the race did not begin with you, so it does not end with you. So run with faithfulness and perseverance the race that is set before you, “following Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who 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.” Carry on! For we must not let Him down, nor them down, those who have gone before us, nor those who will follow after us, we are all linked together in this great chain of faith, all running the same race together.
Friends, just as Wyatt Cooper wrote, “We are a part of all that went before us, and they, those vanished thousands, are forever a part of who we are and of what we shall be. It is important for us to be reminded that our faith did not begin nor will it end with us, and in between our living and our dying, we each have a link to forge. We each have been given a challenge, a chance and a responsibility.” The challenge to respond to the invitation of faith, the chance to follow in the way of Jesus, the responsibility to run our race to the end and then pass the baton to those who come behind us.
And all along the way, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, all those who have gone before us, cheering us on. Our stories are the continuation of their stories as together we are part of His-story. We belong to them and they to us as we forge our links to theirs, past, present and future, and our names are added to the great litany of the faithful.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN