Hebrews 11:29-12:2
from Loves Braided Dance by Norman Wirzba, p. 150
Hope is born when people come together and commit to the nurture of each other and their shared places. Hope lives in the diverse forms of “love’s braided dance covering the world.” The braiding of lives in the joining of hands is the fundamental need of our existence. Hands reaching out, hands cradling another, hands clasping hands, hands offering comfort and support, hands protecting and building, hands nudging and releasing, hands cheering another on - gestures like these demonstrate our shared vulnerability and self-insufficiency, but also our fidelity to and our desire to live for each other. When we intentionally join together, we communicate, however inchoately, our conviction that the future is worth working toward together. Hope is the power that propels people to give themselves to the care and celebration of life with fellow creatures.
Today’s passage from Hebrews is a long list of heroes and sheroes from ancient times up to the moment it was written. It’s a catalogue of the important people who made up the history of Israel plus some recent (at that time) martyrs who stood up for the faith. Because this was a violent thousand years in history, it’s a bloody and violent list. But it’s also a hopeful list – these people stood up to the tyrants of their day and prevailed. It’s a list meant to encourage folks living in tough times that they can make it through.
The Bible as we know it was gathered from the stories people were telling about the heroes of their past and written down when the times were especially hard…after the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE, after the southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians in 587 BCE, after the Greeks conquered the new Israel in 333 BCE. Whenever the nation was in danger of extinction, scholars and priests gathered their history so people could remember who they were – God’s people. Telling stories of the past help a people remember their values and their identity. During the sometimes violent opposition to Christianity in the first and second centuries, authors like those who wrote the book of Hebrews reminded people of their heritage as a way of helping them claim their faith and their commitment to the new way of living taught by Jesus.
It's important for us in this moment in time to remember that this heritage is also our heritage, as well as the many stories of our nation’s founding and evolving into a nation of values today. We need to keep telling those stories so that we can hold strong to our values, and so we can acknowledge mistakes and build a better future. We remember the founding fathers and the women who were their partners; those who fought to end slavery; those who fought against aggression in the 20th century; Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks and John Lewis and so many more who were the freedom fighters of the civil rights movement; those who settled the prairies; those who struggled to maintain Native culture in the face of settlement; those who speak out against climate change; those who resist authoritarianism in our moment. Some are trying to erase that history in an effort to redefine greatness by values different from equality or opportunity for all. They are trying to erase the mistakes we made so that we can no longer learn from them. We can’t let that happen.
So it’s important that we name folks who are our mentors and our heroes, whether they are famous or whether they’re just folks around our family tables. Who would you name who inspires you by the story of their courage and persistence?...
Remembering our ancestors and their courage is a part of our faith heritage. It’s worth insisting on our right to do that. Norm Wirzba reminds us that one of the keys of our past is when people stood up for one another. When people called out injustice or acted with compassion toward one another. Jesus was all about forming communities where people practiced living by the rule of love. That practice is just as important today as it’s ever been. We are living our faith when we insist that love be our guiding principle. It’s love that helps us stick together and say, “times are hard but we have each other.” It’s love that calls out mass deportation or unequal incarceration or the ending of health care or whatever as wrong. It’s love that prays for those who are ill or struggling and makes spaghetti sauce (like Victoria did for me in the middle of my 3-day garage sale marathon).
Here are two strands that braided together make us stronger:
Remembering our history and that folks have made it through hard times before, even becoming better for it.
Hanging on to each other with compassion and support no matter what each day brings.
We do both of these things because they work and they remind us that God is with us through whatever our moment brings us. People have believed that for 3000 years, and we can believe it now. And then we can live in that confidence and that hope one day at a time.