Hebrews 11.29-12.2; Luke 12.49-56
In the window above the altar, we see in images what today’s reading from Hebrews gives us in words. “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” Here before us is the community of God’s people from generation to generation—the saints.
The people counted among the great cloud of witnesses are more than names on a page or two-dimensional images in a window. They know life in all its dimensions, the joys and sorrows, hopes and fears that come from being human. Through them, the word of God took on life; in them, the light of God was seen. They are living testimonies to God’s continuing grace; and they point us to Jesus himself at the center and pinnacle of life. “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus.”
Before exploring today’s reading from Hebrews, let’s look at some of the people in the window. St Peter is ranked as first among the twelve apostles, so let’s start with him. You’ll find Peter near the very top, to your right, and just below Jesus. There, in a small triangle-shaped window, Peter is pictured with a symbol traditionally associated with him: two crossed keys. This illustrates Jesus’ word to Peter in the gospels when he establishes Peter as a key leader in the church, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”
Next to Peter, to the right, is St Philip. Philip was present when Jesus fed a crowd of thousands with five loaves and two fish; there were baskets full of leftovers; one of those baskets is next to Philip to identify him.
On the left side of the window, opposite Peter and Philip, are two more triangle-shapes. Closest to Jesus, you see someone holding a chalice with a green serpent. That is St John, the gospel writer. Tradition tells us that John was offered a glass of wine that had been poisoned; but before drinking it, he blessed the wine, and the poison came out in the form of a small green snake—faith in Christ is stronger than death. John
To the left of John, and taking up two vertical panels, is St Matthew. Matthew’s head is in one window, and in the next panel down he holds a shield with three money bags, a symbol of his life before he was a disciple, a tax collector. So the great cloud of witnesses that you witness each week includes apostles Peter and Philip, and gospel-writers Matthew and John.
Today’s reading from Hebrews names other members of our family in faiths and starts with a similar list of people and their accomplishments by faith. Moses led Israelites through the Red Sea, out of slavery in Egypt to freedom and new life. Joshua and his troops brought down the walls of Jericho.
Today’s list also includes Rahab. Remember her? Her particular line of work, and the discretion it required, gave her access to powerful men and their secrets. Her conniving and courage were used by God, essential to the well-being of God’s people. The New Testament letter of James says of her, “Was not Rahab the prostitute justified by her action in welcoming the messengers into her house and sending them away by a different route?” Later in the Bible, Rahab’s honor increases even more. The family tree of both King David and Jesus depends on her being there. Who knew this is a way God works?
Hebrews lists remarkable things accomplished by people through faith: conquering kingdoms, administering justice, obtaining promises, and welcoming back to those who had died. It’s a list of stunning success. And isn’t that a common notion about faith, what it is and what it might do for us? That faith guarantees success, a good life. Who hasn’t heard someone say, ‘If you have faith things will turn out all right?’
But the saints know life in all its dimensions. And in Hebrews, what starts as a surging, energizing list of conquering heroes soon takes a turn for the worse. Things don’t go right but go very wrong. God’s own people find themselves on the cruel edges of the world with no obvious successes to get them through to the other side. Instead of protection in faith, there is violence and suffering because of faith. “Others were tortured…others suffered mocking…they went about destitute, persecuted, tormented.”
John Paul II once said, “Life with Christ is a wonderful adventure.” Only don’t take that in a superficial, two-dimensional sense. From his experience as a teenager in Poland during Nazi occupation, to the nationalism and its challenges to human dignity and freedom, he knew oppression and tyranny through much of his life, to say nothing of his health later in life. The ‘adventure’ of life in Christ didn’t guarantee success for him, but looked much like what Jesus warns his followers about in the gospel with its discord and division. “I came to bring fire to the earth.”
The window above the altar tells this part of the story, too. Look again at the right side of the window where Peter is depicted. Jesus may have entrusted Peter with the keys to the kingdom, but you also know that Peter’s faith faltered; he denied Jesus; at the end, he was martyred for his faith—crucified upside down. Things go wrong even for people of faith.
Directly below Peter is St Bartholomew, dressed in green. He is holding a book. And although it looks like he might also be holding a quill for writing in that book, that’s a knife representing how Bartholomew died—also a martyr.
Below Bartholomew is St Andrew, a fisherman and one of Jesus’ first followers. Andrew is holding a shield with an X-shape on it. After preaching the gospel in Greece and encountering resistance because of it, Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” Hebrews says in another place. Hoped for, not always seen. The martyrs knew that; so do we, who walk by faith.
On the same side there are two vertical panels depicting women. The top includes Sts Anne, Elizabeth, and Mary Magdalene. Anne is holding the yellow flowers; Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist is holding him as an infant; and Mary, from whom Jesus cast seven demons, is holding a jar of oil for anointing Jesus’ feet.
Below them is the Virgin Mary. Through faith, she said Yes to God’s call in her life, conceived and gave birth to Jesus. Remarkable. But even for the mother of the Son of God, a life of faith included challenge, suffering, things not seen. When Jesus was an infant, Mary was told that he had been sent for the rise and fall of many people and that a sword would pierce her soul, too; this points to Jesus’ death when she stood at the foot of the cross and wept.
And it is this honesty of the stories of the great cloud of witnesses—how they faced challenges and heartbreak, knew struggle and doubts, and yet were strengthened by God and instruments of God—that matters most to me. If their stories were only about successes and things going right, they wouldn’t seem all that relatable or relevant.
I need to hear stories from people who found themselves at the cruel edges of the world where things were going wrong and yet how they were able to live out the New Testament call to “always be ready to bear witness to the hope that is within you, and do it with gentleness and reverence.” I need to hear how Paul, in his weakness, found God’s strength sufficient. Adam hiding from God, Jonah’s anger, the reluctance of Isaiah and Jeremiah—I wonder if this is true for you, too? Struggle, failure, apparent defeat and yet the steadfast love of God through it all. That is what matters. In the great cloud of witness, we see the enduring love of God in the realities of human life in all its dimensions from faithfulness to fallibility to failing. The saints are a living testimony not of human heroics—though they did achieve much—but a living testimony of God’s enduring grace, a grace we all need each day.
At their best, the great cloud of witnesses—the people in the images of the window and the words of today’s reading from Hebrews—point us to Christ. Notice how none of the saints depicted before us are looking out at us; all of them are looking to Christ. None of them are drawing attention to themselves; all their attention is on Christ. Here they show us what faith truly is. Faith is not about us trying harder in our life. Rather, faith means transferring trust away from ourselves and turning it toward Christ. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”
And as we join the saints in looking to Jesus Christ, we find our own place in this window. On the outer margins, outside and bottom edges, notice how the images change. People are dressed in contemporary clothes to reflect contemporary vocations. They are us; or we, at least, are meant to find our place among them. The great community of believers looking to Christ includes us. With them, we are meant to look to Christ for our way of living; look to Christ to know what peace and justice look like; then seek that justice and strive a more humane and holy world as we run the race set before us.
Look to Christ, Hebrews says. Look to Christ who both began and finished this race we are now in. He leads you to God and God to you. And because of God’s faithfulness, you can find strength in your difficulty, not because you have strength in yourself but because, like the saints of God in their successes and struggles, God is at work through your ordinary life in all its dimensions. There are, to be sure, challenges to our faith as much as there are affirmations, things going wrong as often as they go right, things that fall apart as often as they fall in place. Yet you are not alone. Today, you are invited to see that what sustained the saints is freely given in Jesus Christ to sustain you. In them, God takes frail human flesh and blood and makes something of it for divine purpose.
What God has done for them and through them, God can and will do for, and through, you. And as we learn who God is, and how God works, we can discover once more who we might be. “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”
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