Sermon: The Great Cloud

The Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)
August  19, 2007

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

The Great Cloud

Hebrews 11:29 - 12:2

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds here together be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

The writer of Hebrews lists some weighty heroes of the Old Testament as he preaches here in today's text. Abraham was in Jen's text last week, and chapter 11 continues this week with mentions of Moses, Joshua, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, Daniel, David, and Samuel and the prophets, even though not by name, Mesach, Shadrach and Abednego - remember them? Three good and faithful Jews were thrown into the fiery furnace by a tyrannical king when they refused to worship that nation's stone-hearted, patriotic idols. We have a lot of courage to live up to. The writer of Hebrews was reminding his people of their past, and the tenderness of their God - who delivered them as beloved children from their bondage under Pharoah. And in doing so, he was no doubt hoping (like all preachers) to connect those old stories to their present, and also to their future. He was calling them to join the great cloud of witnesses, to enter into the glorious communion of the saints. What an appealing invitation, right? You'd think so. You'd think every church on the planet would be full every Sunday. But no.

Sure, this passage from Hebrews begins with great biblical heroes who "escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness … put foreign armies to flight, and received their dead by resurrection." But right after that comes a list of other all-too-familiar rewards for bearing public witness to faith, rewards that were frequently being received by the members of the congregation that would be hearing the Letter to the Hebrews read aloud in the persecuted early church. Beginning in verse 35 we read, "Others were tortured, refusing to accept release … 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 …" You see what we preachers are up against? You see now?

Some invitation this is - who in their right mind would sign up for a religion like that? I recently heard a broadcast of a preacher at a huge megachurch who was promising God would make everyone a "success." No wonder that church was full. But that's not a biblically based Gospel. The writer of Hebrews instead promises a tough race, like the one Jesus took to the cross. Who would sign up to suffer public ridicule, possible bankruptcy, persecution, torture, imprisonment, even death? This is the very daunting and weighty burden I felt as hands were laid upon me the day of my ordination - as we sang of "the rush of angels' wings," we knew what it was to be surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. But the saints of the past are demanding witnesses - they dare us to accept God's call to faithful obedience - to find courage to meet the challenges of this world.

Since my ordination did not come until a full decade into my career as a Youth Minister, I had already been leading or helping to lead confirmation classes for 10 years. So it might be the heavy memory of my own ordination, or it might be the weighty knowledge of what past classes of Confirmands had been suffering in their young adulthood - but ever since that day, I cannot help but shed tears during the laying on of hands for the Confirmation prayer. Our choice to be church members, like the choice to be set aside for leadership in ordained ministry, involves both the joy and cost of discipleship, as our United Church of Christ Statement of Faith proclaims. It calls us to accept "the cost and joy of discipleship."

You see, Confirmation is not only an opportunity for our youth to confirm the beliefs their parents chose for them at their baptism. Another, perhaps more important, meaning comes from the literal translation of the Latin "con firm" - with strength. Confirmation is a communal act whereby mature Christians step forward in an act of blessing to firm up - to strengthen -- the faith of those new Christians whom we know will struggle and suffer in years to come. "Jesus loves you," we remind our kids, as we glow with our own love for them, and our pride at the young men and women they've become. But what might actually lie ahead for them is what makes me pray most earnestly our Confirmation prayer for protection, and I suspect it's what makes us all tear up if we sing the verse of that song where God promises, "I'll be there if you should wander off to find where demons dwell."

When I sing that, I remember the one who left his baccalaureate at our church to go off to serve in the First Gulf War. I remember the one who went off to college only to suffer a violent and humiliating assault at her first frat party. I remember the one who would have a mental breakdown and actually drop out of college to live on the streets with schizophrenia. It was Christ's church that pulled them through all those experiences. It is Christ's church that stands ready to pull us all through, whatever the future may hold. I think I may have told you before that the one who returned from the Gulf War said the only thing that got him through his worst nights was his memory of our youth group singing Dona Nobis Pacem for him around the campfire at his last spring retreat. The one who'd been raped knew enough to come home to cry in the arms of her old youth leaders. The one in the psychiatric hospital got some pastoral visits while there, but his mom also found tremendous support from that Berkeley church, which has an important ministry with the mentally ill homeless.

I have to interject here that when my husband read through this sermon, he said, "Do you really want to tell them about how miserable life was for everybody who went through your youth programs? Don't you need to share a few successes so they don't think you were the worst youth minister ever?" And I must admit, I got a little defensive, and I said, "But these were successes, don't you see? The ones who went on to Oxford and Stanford didn't need Jesus to save them right then. What's the point of doing ministry if everyone's OK all the time? Why would they need a Savior?" "Oh," he said. "You should tell them that." Oh. OK. I just did.

This is why it's so hard to preach about suffering - not because we don't suffer, but because we cover it up so well. You see, we pastors are in this privileged position of knowing a lot more than the rest of you do about how much our people are going through, how many burdens each of you is carrying. When you come and sit in the pews every Sunday, it's not so obvious. In fact, it might just look to you like everybody else around you is completely and perfectly happy - that it's just you who's miserable. Because we don't go to one of those churches where people shout and raise their arms in prayer - we don't hear tearful testimonies of salvation in worship. Unlike the great Old Testament tales that the writer of Hebrews tells, and unlike the few I've been able to share with you from my recent past, the stories of most of the struggles of today's saints go unspoken and unsung. I did go to one evangelical church in California on vacation where the preacher started telling all about - all the intimate details - of her marital problems from the pulpit, and how Jesus was pulling them through. And I thought, "Wow, I don't think that I'll ever be doing that in a Connecticut Congregational Church!" (Always there's something to be thankful for, right?) But most of the time, though, our secrecy is really a shame.

There was one young woman who had grown up in one of my California churches - both of which had excellent youth programs, but she hadn't really taken advantage of all they had to offer. Every time I saw her at church, she was impeccably groomed and was always bright and sunny and cheerful. Then came a day when she began going through some terrible hard times, and when I visited her to talk more about it, she said she felt those problems made her unfit for church. We had a small group that could have supported her, but she wouldn't come. She said she felt her inability to be always cheerful about her troubles disqualified her for worship.

Fortunately I could refer her to a Christian counselor I knew who could help her see that the church might have some help and answers, although it was not the Christianity she had absorbed as a kid. You see she had come out of a Sunday school where she had been led to believe it was all about popsicle stick crafts, Sunday dresses and Sunday faces, and saying to everyone who asked, "I'm fine." Once she found the courage to tell her story to a few close and trusted church friends, and later to a larger small group that met for study and prayer, she was quite visibly released from the demons of depression that had laid claim to her soul - depression that had burdened her even before the smile left and she disappeared from church. Those of us who knew and loved her could see a woman literally born again by doing exactly what the writer of Hebrews suggested - she "lay aside every weight" and ran with perseverance the race that was set before her.

In her own way she was no longing trying to be perfect but was instead "looking to Jesus" as "the pioneer and perfecter of … faith." What that meant for her was to look to the church, as the living body of the risen Christ, to share her burdens finally in prayer and community. She had found a home in that promised "great cloud of witnesses." What's more, she devoted herself to making sure the Sunday school her children attended made room to teach a true gospel of salvation through Christ's love - where each was invited to bring both sorrows and joys to a beloved community.

I think her story illustrates why supportive and confidential small groups are so valuable in church community - groups like our youth groups, Men's Fellowship and two women's studies and our Wednesday Faith Forum, where we meet to share our burdens and pray and discern God's will for us together. It's fine to be private people, but we need to hear the stories of the lives of the saints and surround ourselves with that great cloud of witnesses, especially ones that are alive and running the race set before us today.

This is what I think the writer of Hebrews means at the end of chapter 11 when he says that though these great biblical heroes should be "commended for their faith" that they "would not, apart from us, be made perfect." It is only as we allow ourselves to become a part of the great cloud of witnesses that make up the living body of Christ that we are made whole. We all suffer, but in Christ's church, no one has to go it alone. There is no pain in life that the Body of Christ has not suffered before us, and there is no challenge so great that the Power that defeated the grave cannot meet it.

Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.