Faith: Surrounded, Held, Persevering
A weaving of portions of Hebrews 11 & 12 and contemporary scripture
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a soul like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found, was bound but now I’m free. Amen.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen
The second anniversary of our family’s car accident is coming up in about three weeks and it has gotten me thinking…
I spent twelve days on the trauma unit at Regions Hospital mostly getting surgeries and doing initial recovery. But then I moved to Episcopal Church Homes for a month of rehab. Early on in my time in rehab, I had a TLSO clam shell to support my broken back, I had an immobilizer on my right leg where they had done a muscle flap in place of my knee cap, and my left leg was taped and bandaged. I still needed help to get in and out of bed.
It was then that I started intensive physical therapy with Chan. Every day, he would come and get me out of bed and walk with me using a walker. And early on, he started me doing small steps. There is a video from that first week of me doing 10 steps up onto a very small wooden block. In it, I am sweating profusely and breathing heavily as Chan patiently and calmly counts the steps… first foot up, second foot up, first foot down, second foot down… ONE.
By the second week, he had me doing stairs, first in the rehab room and then in the stairwell.
Every day, he was there, calmly, kindly, patiently working with me. Some time at the end of the second week of rehab, about a month after the accident, I asked him what he thought my prospects for healing were. And he said, if you keep at it and do these exercises, by Christmas you will be walking unassisted.
And he was absolutely right.
Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen…
I have to tell you, one of the most powerful things about our accident and my healing process was the experience of the faith that Chan had and the ways in which his and all the other PTs, OTs, nurses, doctors, all of my caregivers’ faith in the healing process completely grounded and inspired me. I had a few moments of anxiety and fear in those first months. But by and large, I was held in faith and love and healing. And I still am processing the power of that experience.
In retrospect, I could have been scared and despairing, it would have been so easy. (In fact, I found out later that some friends who came to the house to help Maggie prepare for my coming home packed up all of my exercise clothes and put them on the top shelf of the closet because they didn’t think I would ever have use of them.)
But I wasn’t scared or despairing. That really wasn’t about me, it was about how I was held in faith. This is the first piece from our scripture this morning that is speaking to me: Faith isn’t a solitary practice. We hold each other in faith. And sometimes, when one of us can’t find the faith, we come together and sing and pray each other back to faith, to assurance, to conviction.
But, that isn’t the only part of this text that is important.
As I consider the world in which we are living… the genocide in Gaza, the starvation in Sudan, the slow dying of democracy, the disappearing of immigrants, the hatred directed at trans and non-binary people…. You know the list, you know the world we are living in… the words of the writer of Hebrews have me pausing and praying and going deeper.
How are you, how am I, how are we to live in faith… assured of things hoped for… convinced of things unseen in times like these?
I think the second piece the writer of Hebrews shares with us is about ancestors. Directly following the definition of faith, the text calls out our ancestors.
What is faith, the writer seems to be saying, well, look at Abraham and Sarah and Hagar… look at Rahab and Shifra and Puah… look at the disciples… if you are struggling with how to be faithful, remember that you are not alone, you are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.
Whew, this really resonates for me right now. When I look around and feel myself being pulled into despair and anger and a kind of existential dread, it isn’t only being held in faith by my community in the present moment, it is also this ancestral cloud that is surrounding us all, too.
And that leads to a third piece to highlight. What do we learn when we encounter the story of so many of our ancestors? One of the things we encounter is a different sense of time. Our call, and the call of our ancestors was to faithfulness, not immediate success.
Our text says, yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised… as our prayer of confession says, “we plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities… we are prophets of a future not our own.”
So much of our ancestors’ faithfulness was allowing themselves to be part of generational projects. So many of them, as our Hebrews text says, “though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised.” But they prayed and dreamed and created and worked in the knowledge of the seventh generation and the twentieth and the hundredth generation.
My partner Maggie was born in Rapid City, South Dakota. Every time we are there visiting we take the time to go to see the Crazy Horse memorial and attend the presentation by Indigenous cultural workers. And each time, Maggie comments on the generational work of the project. There is the generation who dreamed and started the work, there is the generation that is working now, and there will be the generation who will finish the project. Maggie is always most powerfully impacted by this middle generation—the one that neither dreamed the project, nor will experience its completion but works every day, nonetheless in the hope and promise of what they were given by the previous generation and what they will pass to the next generation.
Now, I don’t want to suggest that faith precludes grief and lament. Or that faith is somehow devoid of despair. The kind of faith described in Hebrews and modeled in our ancestors is one that faces squarely into all the realities of life. We are not called to hide from the violence and growing fascism in our country, nor turn away from the suffering of the world. Rather, we are invited to join our ancestors who faced squarely into the attempted crucifixions that Pharoah and Rome and Babylon and all the manifestations of Empire and oppression sought to build.
Instead, many of our ancestors turned toward, turned into, the injustice and suffering in the world in order to act with love and justice. A Greek LGBTQ poet named Dinos Christianopoulos characterized it well when he wrote, “What didn’t you do to bury me/But you forgot that I was a seed.”
Amidst so much crucifixion and intentional cruelty, we are called to a resurrection faith: a faith in healing that meets every brokenness; a faith in life that meets every death that Empire perpetrates; a faith in creativity that meets every narrow or rigid space; a faith in abundance that meets every greed-induced scarcity.
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen…
As a way to consider how we might help each other practice this kind of faith, I’d love to do two things:
Could you think about what ancestor in faith is surrounding you like a cloud of witness? And could you think about a hymn that helps remind you of what faith is and looks like in the world?
Then, could you call out the ancestors and T Michael and I will light a candle in their honor. And then we’re going to sing the first verse of 3-4 hymns that you name.
Therefore, 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
Amen.
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