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Sermon for November 6, 2011
(Following a week of storm-related power outages)
First Church of Christ, UCC, Middletown, CT
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Dr. Brenda M. Pelc-Faszcza, Interim Minister
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction
of things not seen….by faith, our ancestors received blessing…
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of
let us lay aside every weight….looking to Jesus, the pioneer
and perfecter of our faith.” (from Hebrews 11)
“Cloud of Witnesses”
It’s ironic that for Communion this morning
we will be using some of this church’s 18th century Communion pieces,
since most of us have felt this past week
like we were in the 18th century ourselves –
back to the time when heat and light came from fire,
and nothing at all worked by flipping a switch or pushing a button.
Involuntarily, we have had a little taste of how our ancestors lived,
and have thus been reminded of elemental needs:
shelter, warmth, food, water, human contact, neighborly help.
For the long human history before us,
before our moment, late in time,
these needs got provided for in far less easy ways
that what we are used to now –
hauling water, chopping wood,
building fires and huddling around them to stay warm.
Our First Church forebears who melted down silver coins
to make the Communion cups we will use this morning
knew a far different world than we do.
As trying as it has been for us this past week,
it is not a bad thing for us to make contact every now and then
with the world of our ancestors,
to appreciate what they have left us,
and what they had to do, to leave us what they’ve left us.
Spiritually speaking, our contact with our ancestors in the faith
should be regular, not once in a great while.
In the Letter to the Hebrews, they are called “a cloud of witnesses,”
all the ones before us who had trials of their own,
bold, courageous journeys to take, witnesses to make,
who trusted in God and told the stories, or became the stories,
that have been passed to us, about learning to trust in God --
especially when that trust feels like a risk,
which is probably most of the time.
Chapter 11 in Hebrews is one of the great texts in the Scriptures,
with that long litany of names, like a Who’s Who of the Bible:
Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, David, Samuel, the prophets…
all the way up to “Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”
This is our family album, we are the latest generation
in this cloud of witnesses.
Knowing that we stand in a long line of faithful, courageous people,
who had all the same human challenges we have,
except in less easy times,
is a form of assurance, a source of perspective.
It should help us make contact with “the conviction of things not seen,”
as the text puts it –
trusting what you cannot see with your eyes, or hold in your hand,
or make happen by the flip of a switch --
a kind of elemental grounding
that our forebears had, long before you and I got here.
In the history of the church,
it has been considered so important to remember the ancestral cloud of witnesses,
that there is a day on the Christian calendar every year, marked,
to be sure we do it: November 1st, All Saints’ Day.
“The communion of saints” is the way we name and remember
the faithful ones before us,
including both our Biblical parents and our actual parents,
including noted “saints” and our own close and loved ones
who have departed this life;
a time for remembering
that we are part of a long, living community of faith
that goes backwards and forwards in time.
I have often thought that those of us who have grown up in the church,
or are part of one now,
get the gift of that perspective on our own place
in the stream of things,
that I find myself wishing everybody had.
There is no substitute for knowing
that you belong to a great history,
not just the history of your own family, or even of your own country,
but a much bigger, longer, older history than that.
I am pretty sure that when I was a child in church,
I did not understand the words “the communion of saints,”
or what a “cloud of witnesses” would be.
I did, however, know
that in the pew right in front of where my family sat every Sunday,
there always sat two elderly sisters, Marion and Louisa,
who appeared to me to be at least a hundred years old (each);
and that in other pews sat families with little babies,
at the very opposite end of life from Marion and Louisa.
And there were all the ages in between.
I could see with my own eyes
that there was every generation in church,
that a congregation went both backwards and forwards in time.
And when I heard stories from the Bible,
about Moses and Abraham and Sarah and David,
and Mary and the other Mary and Jesus and Paul,
I knew that this community I belonged to
somehow went way, way back.
That seemed to be one of the most important things about it,
although no one could say exactly how everybody was connected
through all those centuries.
The communion of saints,
the cloud of witnesses and its reach forward in time,
just was –
one of those assurances of things not seen.
You did not have to know how to explain it,
you just needed to know you were shaped by it….
this mysterious aspect of the universe
that defies the bounds of time and space,
whereby the departed remain present,
the separated remain connected,
and our reality always contains there who were here before us.
This idea, of course, is not new to Christians,
who believe that Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
once departed this life just like everybody else,
yet has continued to be present with us ever since,
in some way that does not depend upon his physical body being here.
We are even so bold as to say
that we have become his body now, the Body of Christ in the world,
we who believe we meet him not only at the Table,
but out there in the world,
where we are learning to “perservere,” in the language of Hebrews,
to be his disciples,
trusting that he is present here, now, always, everywhere.
When we take Communion in a little while
from cups made by people here 300 years before us,
there is a sense in which we will be not only using their things,
but partaking of their faith too,
feeding on it.
Whenever we gather, the cloud of witnesses is always here,
even on days when we do not stop to remember or say so.
They may be the faithful ones of old whom we know only in story.
They may be our own mothers, fathers, grandparents,
sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, partners, children,
whom we may remember on this day and other days.
There is a saying that “there are no giants in this world,
we all are standing on the shoulders of others.”
Whatever we do, whatever we have,
is because somebody else took once a risk, made a path,
believed in something enough to build it for the generations to follow
(that would be us).
To think of them now, to remember them ever,
is to awaken to the truth that we are with each other still,
through time and beyond time,
even though we could not say exactly how –
only that we strive to take care of what they have left us,
to honor and continue what they have built,
to be good and faithful stewards of our own place
in a long and great cloud of witnesses.
May it be so with us. Amen.
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