A Large Crowd of Witnesses

Faith helps us be all we can be.
Faith helps us endure all we must endure.
And faith reminds us that we do not live our lives alone.
There is One who is with us. 

Such a large crowd of witnesses is all around us - cheering for us.
We can make it through all kinds of times of trouble.

Hebrews 12:1-2a

For anyone paying attention, you may realize that this is one of my all time favorite Biblical texts.

Such a large crowd of witnesses is all around us!
What a great thing to be reminded of – anytime, but especially on this day – 
homecoming Sunday –
when some will remember a time when . . . .
Or a certain somebody –
or somebodies . . . .

There is such a large crowd of witnesses is all around us:

All the folks that ever have attended this church throughout its 85 year history –
as well as all the saints from all the ages.
All assembled in the gallery cheering and rooting for you – and for me – and for all of us. 

Not only do you and I have a race to run,
but we need to make arrangements to continue the tradition for the others needing encouragement to run the race that are coming up after us –
like all those who went before us here in this church did.

Just before these words from our scripture, the 11th chapter of Hebrews gives many dynamic examples of Old Testament men and women who did great works for God by faith.
“By faith Noah . . . built an ark . . .
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going . . .”

Then the 12th chapter begins with these words that give us our text for today: “THEREFORE, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and entangles us, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."

It’s a vivid picture.
In the grandstand of our lives there are cheerleaders: Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Rahab, and other Old Testament heroes,
as well as Paul, Peter, and leaders of the New Testament church.
And there are our loved ones, family and friends, who have gone before us.
The message is, the reality is,
We are not alone in our faith journey.
No matter how discouraging the events of our lives are,
we can make it through with the encouragement of those who have gone before.
Such a large crowd of witnesses is all around us!

This is not a text for a cynic, for the cold of heart or spirit.
This is a text for believers.
It is very much like that text that says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me . . .” (Philippians 4:13)
Those words are precious to the believer.
To the world, they mean nothing at all.

Some of you know that Suzanne and I adopted a dog a few years ago. 
This dog was about 4 and half years old when he came to our house having been rescued off the streets of Albany, New York.
The dog obviously has been abused and is very fearful of any and all people.
Except us. 
He knows who feeds him.
He knows who keeps him warm in the winter and
provides him with a place to sleep and companionship and a safe environment.
Now, he thinks it is his job to protect us from all intruders and suspected terrorists –
a list which includes any and all who have the nerve to drive down the cul-de-sac in front of our house, 
or walk within a hundred feet of our house,
or ride a bike near our house,
or even slow their car or truck down as they go by our house on the highway. 

Now, the thing is, he has a very keen sense of hearing. 
That dog hears things long before I do –
and sometimes he hears things I don’t.
A while back, I happened upon a television show about dogs and what research tells us about how they do what they do.
 
It had a segment there on what and how dogs see – and showed the viewers a screen that let us in on just what a dog can and cannot see. 
Apparently, dogs don’t see in all the colors that we do,
and dogs don’t see all the fine detail that we do,
but dogs have a more panoramic view than we do,
they have a much wider field of vision –
dogs can see about two times what we can see without moving our eye. 
But, the real unusual part of how a dog sees, is that although they cannot see the fine detail, they can detect very slight movement – anywhere in their field of vision. 
So, they see a rabbit and they are off after the rabbit.
Fact is, they don’t know it’s a rabbit.
What they see is that there was a movement over there and they can pin-point where it was with great accuracy.

Likewise what and how a dog hears was of great interest to me. 
Dogs can hear sound four times the distance that we can.
And, they can hear sounds that we are not even capable of hearing – they can hear sounds that are three times higher in frequency than we can.
This ability means that a dog is flooded with sounds at any given time.
And the miracle is that they have an ability of discernment. 
Not only can they selectively discern what noises they react to,
but, they can pick out specific sounds that make up a whole.

You and I hear a vrooom of car going by.
But a dog can discern individual sounds that make up that whoosh sound you and I hear.
They can hear that the car is missing on cylinders 2 and 4,
has a loose wheel cover on the right front tire,
and a slight rattle of the radio antenna slipping in the wind,
and a hundred other individual sounds that make up the vroooom you and I hear as the car goes by.

Not only do they hear these individual sounds, they can discern which sounds are associated with their owners car –
the sounds of the neighbor’s cars,
and the UPS truck,
and all kinds of other vehicles that pass by.
My dog hears sounds I simply do not hear.  

And so, I am thinking that just because we cannot hear a sound does not mean that it does not exist, right?

The fact that we cannot hear it says more about our limitations than it does about the sound.

So it is with things of the spirit.
There are realities that are perceived only by those in tune with God’s Spirit.

One of these is that great cloud of witnesses surrounding us,
providing us with encouragement and strength.

Benjamin Weir was a Presbyterian missionary in Beirut, Lebanon.
Some of you will remember when he was kidnapped by Muslim extremists and held hostage for sixteen months.
During that time he was locked in a barren room and unable to see another human being.
His hands were tied.
He was blindfolded most of the time.

Even when the blindfold was taken off he had no view from his tiny cell.
But this did not defeat him.

An electric light cord dangled from the ceiling.
The bulb had been stripped off, leaving three fragile filament wires exposed.
For Benjamin Weir, these wires became a symbol of hope.
They reminded him of the life-giving fingers of God reaching down to Adam in the Sistine Chapel.
“Here God was reaching toward me,” he would write later, “reminding me, saying, ‘You’re alive.
You are mine;
I’ve made you and [I’ve] called you into being for a divine purpose.’”

And he could see the horizontal slats of the shutters on the French doors.
There were 120 of them.
What could those horizontal pieces of wood stand for?
He decided these represented that great cloud of witnesses we are reading about this day, champions of our faith past and present,
who through times of trial have observed the faithfulness of God.

Finally his eyes lighted on two white circles near the ceiling, one on the right hand wall, the other on the left.
In reality, these were plastic covers for electrical connections, but in Benjamin Weir’s imagination they were something else.
They were ears – the ears of God.
“The Lord hears the groaning of the saints,” Benjamin Weir remembered.

As he reminded himself of all the blessings of our faith, he was greatly encouraged and spiritually strengthened.
By the end of the day, he said, he was humming, “Count your many blessings, name them one by one.”

You see when the guards came in, they could only see a broken light bulb,
a French door with slats
and two plastic covers on the walls,
but this Presbyterian missionary could see much, much more.
He could see the hand of God at work in his life, even in these dismal circumstances.
And so Ben Weir came out of his hostage experience stronger than he went in.
That’s faith.
I wonder if I could do that.

In my research file, I have an article that was published in the magazine RUNNER’S WORLD. The article was about a unique phenomenon which they called, “The Bislet Effect.”

The Bislet Effect is named for Bislett Stadium in Oslo, Norway.
More than 50 track and field records have been broken over the years at Bislett.
No other stadium can boast of this kind of record setting.
And it’s not because of the frigid weather in Norway.
Runners do not run faster in the cold.
And it’s not the altitude.

The secret seems to be the track itself.
As tracks go, it is narrow. It has six lanes, and the stands that surround it are very close to the track itself and they are very steep.
According to RUNNER’S WORLD, when 21,000 fans all scream, “Go, go!” in this kind of up close and personal setting, you run faster.
The crowd forces you to keep your rhythm and push harder for one more stretch, for one more turn –
and the runners respond.

It’s like being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. 
Such faith helps us be all that we can be.

Such a large crowd of witnesses is all around us! cheering for us.
We can make it through all kinds of times of trouble: 
whether it is trouble with our health,
trouble within our family,
trouble in our economy,
trouble on the job – 
whatever it might be.

Friends this is the Gospel.
We can go on.
We follow in a long line of people who have persevered and been victorious.

In 1953 the first people to climb to the top of Mt. Everest were Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa guide.

Some 45 years later, Tenzing Norgay’s son, Jamling Norgay, climbed Mt. Everest.
Jamling Norgay describes what it felt like standing on the world’s tallest peak:
“I looked down on the ruins of the Rongbuk monastery,” he writes, “where my father chased yaks as a very young boy.
Then I turned back and I saw him – my father.
He was right there behind me, off to the side where a patch of rock meets the snow.
His face was shining, beaming.”

Jamling Norgay had a witness to his climb – 
his father who had been there 45 years before him.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, so have we.
Faith helps us be all we can be.
Faith helps us endure all we must endure.
And faith reminds us that we do not live our lives alone.
There is One who is with us.

And there is such a large crowd of witnesses all around us!

That’s what this church is about.
That’s what our faith is about.
That’s what we have here –
a connecting place, really:
where we can connect with others,
where we can connect with the world around us,
where we can connect with God,
where we can connect with the large crowd of witnesses that have gone before us.

Amen.



The congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, experienced this sermon during a worship service on Homecoming Sunday, October 21, 2012.