Extending the Vision

Hebrews 11: 29-40

 

 

          A thousand years ago, no one lived in the Hawaiian Islands. They are believed to have been discovered and populated by natives of Marquesas Island, about 2500 miles away. Today, it takes about thirty days to sail from Marquesas Island to Hawaii using modern equipment. Can you imagine what it must have been like a thousand years ago?

          There is a bird called the Golden Plover, which migrated north out over open water every year. The islanders watched it and became curious. They tried to follow the bird migration, but couldn’t keep up in their carved wooden boats. They did try to keep track, and every year, they would start from their end point of the previous year and try to go farther. They kept going on that journey a little farther each year until they finally discovered Hawaii. It took them 400 years to find the Hawaiian Islands, but they never gave up.

          It’s hard to imagine the kind of determination and perseverance it took to stay with that goal. Many generations pursued it, and got farther into the Pacific, but never lived to see how it turned out. Imagine how many lives were probably lost on those open seas, how many tears were shed in that quest of faith for an unknown destination. They had no guarantee; just an idea based on the flight of birds. How many storms did they face? How many times were they pushed back and denied their goal? How many children set out to accomplish that which their parents had failed to do? It must have fallen to each generation to pass it forward, to extend the vision to find out where those birds were migrating to.

          Have you ever really thought about this journey we are on? Those of us who dare to call ourselves Christian spend our lives on a journey of faith. And yet, as far as I am aware, none, other than Jesus Christ, has ever returned from the other side to tell us whether our faith is justified. The Bible tells us it is. Ephesians 2: 8 tells us that by grace we are saved through faith. The book of Hebrews tells us that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  In today’s message, also from Hebrews, we are reminded that by faith we move forward toward the promises of God. But it also reminds us in no uncertain terms that all the heroes of that great hall of faith in Hebrews 11 never lived to claim those promises. Why didn’t they give up? Why didn’t they throw in the towel? What made them keep going? How do we extend our vision so far that our journey can go on without ever reaching the finish line in this life? Hebrews gives us an answer to that question, but even in the answer, it requires faith to reach its conclusion.

          Hebrews 11 is a recitation of a sort of Hall of Heroes, a list beginning with Abel, the son of Adam. It talks about lives lived out in faith and pursuit of things godly, of those who died without achieving the promise held out to them by God. And yet they could, in a manner of speaking, see them. The writer tells us that these heroes greeted those promises from afar. They died not knowing the end of the story, the completion of their work, but they died still trying to claim God’s promises. Hebrews refers to them as “strangers and exiles on the earth.” What a peculiar way to describe these great patriarchs like Abraham and Moses. Strangers and exiles. Is this our fate as Christians, as disciples?

          There is something both disconcerting and yet comforting about going back to the same task again and again and again. If it is perfection we seek, then that can be understood. If it is comprehension we want, again that is a noble pursuit. But what if it is just simply the continued pursuit of that which for us represents excellence? Will we ever find it? Will we ever grasp the promises that God has made for us?

          St. Augustine is considered by many as one of the theological fathers of the Protestant Reformation. He was a prolific writer. He wrote his commentary on Genesis fifteen times. Fifteen times! He kept plumbing the depths of that Scripture, mining new discoveries every time he read. Beethoven wrote sixteen string quartets, always coming back, always trying to improve on what he had already done. My friend Joe, a Presbyterian minister for 30 years until illness forced him to the sidelines, turned down fifteen invitations from a friend to a Young life meeting. Once he went, he credited Young Life for bringing him to a saving faith. Thank God for that sixteenth invite!

          I think the writer of Hebrews has given us a window into those kinds of journeys. It seems to me that his answer is that the journey itself is meritorious. It is not our lot to achieve the consummation of all of God’s promises on this side of heaven. We have as our template that of Moses stopping within view, but not within reach, of the Promised Land. While we may have many life changing experiences, we will not be able to fully claim God’s promises here. And yet the writer of Hebrews celebrates the journey itself, pointing to a state of being that at some point unites us with all who have come before and all who will follow.

          “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” Eugene Peterson puts it this way in The Message: God had a better plan for us, that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours.

          Can you see it now, how God through the Holy Spirit binds us, linking us down through the ages until the end of the age, each of us contributing to the body of which Jesus Christ is the head? The body of Christ, the church, transcends the ages, but it will not be complete until he returns to unite us all across the pages of history. In the meantime, we strive. We press on. We persevere. We never give up. Whether or not we obtain all God’s promises in this life, they will be ours in the end. And the journey alone is enough for now.

          You see, when you are chasing the promises of God, there is always more. You can never get to the end of the road, only to the end of your road. Yes, you come to church and Sunday school. Yes, you go to meetings and tithe and help with mission projects and visit the sick and share your wealth. You do these things over and over…and yet they are never the same. Even with the same people, each moment is unique. There is a freshness to the work of God that never gets old, never tastes quite the same. Each time we draw water from God’s well, it is fresh and new and fills us in a deeper way that is singular to that experience. Maybe that is why the Psalmist tells us that “my cup runneth over.”

          When we compare our sacrifices to those recited in Hebrews, we realize how little God has asked of us to date. But that may change and we need to be ready when called. We are tied to those saints of old as surely as they are tied to us. For me, I take comfort in the fact that I am part of a continuing body of Christ, always growing, always tied to its roots and yet able to expand.

          The vision for God’s kingdom is vast, too much for one person to see. But we can dream, like Joseph did. We can explore, like the people of Marquesas Island did. We can persist, like the teenager that kept inviting my friend Joe.

          In the very next chapter of Hebrews, the writer sums up the reason that we keep coming back. He says this: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.”

         It is for us, each of us as individuals and all of us as the body of Christ, to pass it forward, to extend the vision. If it means from time to time that we must liv as foreigners, strangers and exiles in our own land, so be it. We will be in good company. If you have eyes to see, and ears to hear, he will give you the legs for the journey.