The readings for this Wednesday in Holy Week include a beloved passage for many children of God: Hebrews 12:1-3.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
3Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart.
Most tend to gravitate towards the cloud or racing imageries, but there’s something about that last verse. There’s something about Jesus not only enduring tragedy and sadness, but out-right hostility. Granted, amidst the pleas for love and compassion and mercy, there were some not-so-subtle social justice overtones about ensuring better treatment of those in impoverished conditions or the 1st century equivalent of no access to health care and driving home the outrageous idea that Samaritans and Syrophoenicians and other foreigners and immigrants and exiles shouldn’t just be included in some future paradise of God, but to be placed in the insider circle of God’s beloved community right then and there.
So, yes, it’s more than understandable there would be the full fathom of hostility against this leader of a world-altering movement (even though God had been trying to push alterations along long before the carpenter’s son came along). But it’s not understandable for us that he didn’t fight back. It’s not understandable for us that in a fit of rage and anger, that he doesn’t unleash the divine fury upon the “sinners” more enthralled with kingdom order than hope and wholeness tranquility for all. For some reason, he just went along with enduring it with a mercy for crucifiers and all humanity: as if to show once for all that nothing our humanity could do could halt the eternal love from reigning victorious.
But then there’s that other part to that verse, which is one of seemingly countless Scripture phrases that almost demands Bibles with small print notes or group Bible studies or separate commentaries or devotionals. Because we don’t want faith learners to be under the impression that God insists we “not grow weary or lose heart” at all. God knows it’s going to happen. It will even happen this week for seemingly countless people in hospitals and nursing homes and detention centers and homeless shelters, not to mention at seemingly countless other workplaces and homes and schools and everywhere else in between. Weariness and losing heart are part of our normal human order, of sorts.
But what happens is the reason why there is such a “great cloud of witnesses” and why there’s this relentless desire to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” What happens is a joy over all humanity in spite of our fair share of sinner-moments, to say the least. What happens is the joy to ensure that weariness will not last forever. What happens is the Promise that even if we lose heart, even if we don’t have any love or compassion or mercy left to give even this upcoming weekend, Christ will not lose heart over us. Because, somewhere, somehow, there is that same Divine joy deep within all of us: the joy that not even death can take away. What happens next is the holiest reminder that it’s already happened. It’s already taken care of: you don’t have to pioneer the faith. We don’t have to perfect it. Someone, the one, took care of it all for all of us then, now, and forevermore. Thanks be to God, indeed!
In Christ,
Pastor Brad