HEROES
A sermon based on Hebrews 11:1-12:2
by Rev. Dr. David Rogne

In the Olympic Games a few years ago, a runner on one of the relay teams dropped the baton and thereby dashed the hopes of his teammates.  He lay down on the track and wept.  So much had gone into their preparation that the sense of responsibility and loss was enormous.

The author of the Book of Hebrews must have had in mind a similar situation when he set out to describe the way the faith has come down to us, from one quaking hand to the next.  He conceives of many of the characters of the Old Testament as participants in this race which has relayed the faith to us.  In the course of constructing his argument, he says some interesting things about faith and about our responsibility for passing it on.  Many of the people he uses for examples of faith have become known as heroes of the faith, even though many of them were not very heroic.  Let's consider some of the heroes of our faith so that we might be guided by whatever their lives have to say to us.

The first thing the author has us do is to look at the team.  It is apparent that there are some weaknesses among the team members.  For example, some lack the purity which we might expect of examples of faith.  He speaks of Rahab the prostitute.  She was the woman who lived in Jericho when some Israelite spies came to spy out the defenses of the city before Joshua led the people against it on their way to settle in Palestine.  She hid the spies in her brothel when they were being sought by Jericho's officers, and she lied in their behalf.  Later, she attached herself to the Israelites and became wife to one of them.  But she doesn't seem like a noteworthy example of faith.  The author also mentions Jephthah.  He was the illegitimate son of a prostitute, an outlaw chieftain, who fought successfully against one of Israel's enemies, the Ammonites.  Flushed with victory, he foolishly vowed to sacrifice the first thing that he saw when he arrived home.  It turned out to be his own daughter.  Not quite what you'd expect as an example of faith.

Not only were some lacking in purity, some of the heroes were not too intelligent.  There was big, burly Samson--a physical wonder, but an intellectual midget.  He fought against the Philistines, but he was repeatedly deceived by wily women, until he lost his sight and his strength.  He made one big comeback, but for the purpose of revenge, and in the process killed himself.  Not too exemplary.

Then too, not all of these heroes were courageous.  There was a day, we are reminded, when a man couldn't be found to lead Israel against her enemies, so a woman, Deborah, took the responsibility.  Through shame, she caused a man by the name of Barak to take command of Israel's forces.  He did, and was victorious, but as Deborah said, it would be a woman who would be responsible for the victory.  Yet that man, Barak, is lifted up as an example of faith.

Of course, some of the team members did have spectacular victories.  The author speaks of those who stopped the mouths of lions; no doubt a reference to Daniel, whom the lions did not eat when he was thrown into their den for refusing to worship an idol.  He mentions David, Israel's most illustrious King, who started out as a shepherd boy and made good.  He speaks of those made strong in weakness, perhaps a reference to Judith, a lovely young widow in Israel who made her way to the enemy camp, beguiled the enemy general and killed him.  He speaks of women who received their dead by resurrection--an incident which happened in the life of Elijah, the prophet, when he restored to life a young boy who apparently was dead.  And he speaks of those who put foreign armies to flight, perhaps a reference to the Maccabees, who led the Israelites to rebel against the Syrian oppressors and brought in a period of independence.  Those kinds of heroes we can understand.  Whether they seem to be heroes of faith or not, at least it seems plausible that God was with them.

There is one thing that all of those whom we have mentioned have in common:  they are all a part of the past.  We know what their performance was.  What is still uncertain is the performance of the present and future members of the team--and that involves us.

A second thing we might look at is the track on which the race takes place.  In the past, there have been some really rough spots as participants have run their course.  Some people have been mocked.  Among them, our author mentions Noah--that fellow who built a boat on dry ground in preparation for the big rain.  His neighbors mocked and taunted him all the while he was building.  Some people have been imprisoned--like Jeremiah.  He was thrown into an unused well and kept there, up to his armpits in mud for days, because he told the truth as he saw it.  Some were forced to wander in the desert, living in caves and wearing animal skins.  These were wandering bands of prophets who were persecuted for their faith, and had to flee from place to place.  Some were stoned to death, the author says.  Zechariah, the priest, was caught by an angry mob in the temple courtyard and stoned for calling the people to give an accounting for their faithlessness.  And Steven, the first martyr of the Christian Church, was stoned for declaring his faith in Jesus Christ.  And some were even sawn in two.  There is a tradition that the prophet Isaiah was placed inside a hollow tree by order of cruel King Manassah, who then had the tree cut in two, because the prophet would not approve of the King's idolatry or take part in it.  It is not difficult, then, to acknowledge that there have been many rough spots along the course on which our faith has been transmitted.

It is apparent that not everyone responded to the course in the same way.  Abel, the son of Adam, presented a sacrifice in devotion to God, and it was accepted.  Abraham moved from Mesopotamia to Palestine, in search of a place to raise his family.  Moses, raised as an Egyptian prince by Pharaoh's daughter, renounced his opportunities and chose instead to share the ill treatment of the people of Israel.  All of these people were responding in faith--but they responded differently as their circumstances dictated.  Our circumstances, in turn, are vastly different from theirs, so that were we to respond in faith, it would not mean that we would do any of the things that they did.  But there is a common thread running through their actions which it would be helpful for us to note.  The common thread is that each person ran the race in his or her own style, but everyone passed on the baton.

Therefore, let us look next at the baton which is passed between the runners, a baton called faith.  That faith involved action.  In some quarters it seems to be taught that faith simply means subscribing to certain beliefs, regardless of conduct.  I read about a certain man who loved to go to revivals.  He loved to get up and testify.  He made his witness over and over again, publicly admitting his past sinful life.  He had done it all--lied, cheated, stolen, pushed dope, spent time in jail, broken all the Ten Commandments and then some!  It was his custom at the end of his long recital of wrongdoing to smile and say, "I thank God through all those wicked years I never lost my religion."  Obviously, for that man, faith was simply a matter of believing something, regardless of whether it affected conduct.  All of those heroes we have talked about didn't share a common statement of faith, but what they believed influenced their actions.

The faith which they passed on was an attitude of trust in what God had already done in the past that made it possible to trust that God would also act in the future.  Abraham was promised a land and a populous nation, but the only land he owned at his death was a burial plot he had to buy, and his nation was one son.  Moses was to lead his people to a land of their own, but he did not get to enter it.  He was only able to see it in the distance.  United Methodist Bishop Woodie White tells of one of the most difficult things he has ever faced.  He was sitting home in his easy chair, watching a football game, when the phone rang.  "Woodie!  Woodie!" his sister screamed hysterically.  "You better come quick!  Something has happened to mother!"  White left at once on the long drive to his mother's house.  "What possibly could have happened?  Had she fallen?  Why was his sister so hysterical?"  He was concerned and tried to prepare himself--but nothing could have prepared him for what he found.  His seventy-three-year-old mother had been violently attacked.  Someone had broken into her home and brutally beaten her, robbed her, and physically abused her.  Her face was bruised and bloody.  Her clothes were torn.  Her eyes were swollen almost shut.  Bishop White could not believe what he was seeing; at first he stood there in a state of shock.  Then he ran to her, threw his arms around her, and began to cry.  And then something strange and special happened.  As he was holding his mother, he detected a familiar aroma.  "Mother," he said, "What is that I'm smelling?" and she answered, "It's fried chicken, son.  I thought you might be hungry after your long drive."  Woodie White could hardly believe that his mother would think about him in the face of this horrible tragedy.  He broke into tears again and hugged his mother tightly.  She looked up at him, her face aglow.  "Son," she said, "I want to tell you something, and I don't want you to ever forget it.  God is still good!  God is still good!  God is still good!"  There was one who saw eye to eye with the writer of Hebrews:  "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."  She was passing on the baton.

The final thing we might look at this morning is team spirit, and that is where we come in.  If we want to be listed among the people of faith, we have a responsibility to the past.  Apart from us, the efforts of those who have gone before us cannot come to completion.  Isaac, in his age and blindness, blessed Jacob and foretold a time of greatness.  Jacob, on his deathbed in Egypt, assembled his 12 sons and uttered blessings involving things yet to be.  Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah experienced victories, but the ultimate victory of good over evil was still future.  David expanded a kingdom, but the coming Kingdom of God was still future.  Some may have stopped the mouths of lions for a while, but there was still death to be faced at a later date.

Yet, of all of them it may be said that they never lost their vision or their hope.  "All these died in faith," says the author, "without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them,  they confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth."  Our author gives the impression that as previous runners have passed on the baton of faith, that is, hopefulness, trust in God, they have left the field and entered the stands where they now cheer us on.  Therefore, we are not involved in a lonely struggle.  We are surrounded by those witnesses who have gone before.  By the record of their lives they reassure us that endurance is possible, that hardship at its worst is limited, that the grace of God can sustain us.  And in that great cloud of witnesses may also be found our mothers and fathers, our husbands and wives, our sisters and brothers, our sons and daughters, cheering us on so that we do not drop the baton or give up too soon, for what they have invested is advanced by what we do.

If we want to be listed among the people of faith, we also have a responsibility to those who come after us.  We must pass on something to those who come after.  If we drop the baton, it affects others.  After describing Abel's acceptable sacrifice, the author says Abel died, but through his faith he is still speaking.  In 1858 a Sunday-School teacher named Mr. Kimball led a shoe clerk to give his life to Christ.  The clerk was Dwight L. Moody.  Moody became an evangelist in England, and in 1879 awakened the heart of Fredrick Meyer, then pastor of a small church.  Pastor Meyer came to America and, while preaching on a college campus, won J. Wilbur Chapman to Christ.  Wilbur Chapman became a YMCA worker and picked up a former baseball player to do evangelistic work.  That player was named Billy Sunday.  At a revival in Charlotte, North Carolina, Sunday so excited a group of local men that they engaged Mordecai Hamm to come to their town.  In the revival with Mordecai Hamm, a young man heard the gospel and yielded his life to Christ.  His name was Billy Graham.

Every one of us, when we come to our particular finish line, will pass on something, for good or ill.  God grant that what we leave behind becomes a blessing to those who come after us.

And so in us the race comes to the present moment.  Others are looking to us to carry forward toward fulfillment the vision they had.  And we discover that, given seventy, or even a hundred years, we shall not fully arrive either, but hopefully, we shall have advanced the vision of what is yet to be by putting our trust in God's ability to bring it to pass.  And then, to those who are to come after us, we say in words of John McRae, "To you, from failing hands, we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high."