Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
A Story of Perseverance
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, August 18, 2019, the tenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text: Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Some of you will know that earlier this year I began a new workout regimen. It’s a pretty intense group “circuit training” workout and I try to go three times a week. Each workout is a little different, but they have a certain focus: endurance, strength, power, or “ESP”—a mix of all three. My very least favorite? Endurance! In junior high, I ran short relay races—quick bursts of energy with a handoff of the baton to the next runner—that’s my kind of race. I am not a fan of long-distance runs. Endurance day pushes me to maintain my pace on the treadmill for the long haul and to row, row, row on the rowing machine until my limbs go numb. Ugh. The monotony, the constancy, the exhaustion without recovery… ugh.
And this is the metaphor we are given in our scripture today—“run with perseverance the race that is set before us…” Ugh. The course we’ve been given to travel is long. It stretches all the way back to the beginning and stretches out far into an unknown future. We know that all along the way there have been beautiful vistas and tender moments and horrible outbreaks of human foolishness, violence, and destruction. The race course is an obstacle course. And an endurance course.
Our reading picks up shortly after where we left off last Sunday. As a reminder, the folks who originally received these words were weary of waiting for the fulfillment of the promised return of Jesus and God’s Kin-dom to come on earth as in heaven. They were suffering persecution and didn’t understand why relief was so long in coming. The message they receive in the letter to the Hebrews is a reminder not only of the faith embodied by Christ, but the faith, perseverance, and sacrifice of those who came before. Chapter 11 presents a long litany of the matriarchs and patriarchs from Abel to Noah to Sarah to Moses to Rahab. The author writes, “And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets”—and then that description of the great things accomplished by the faithful and also the great persecution and suffering many experienced—beatings, mocking, imprisonment, torture, and death. (11:32-39) The names and stories are lifted up to encourage and inspire the suffering and weary community—and also, perhaps, to put their experience in perspective. //
On this day when we celebrate the contributions of women composers, I want to add to the scriptural litany of our forebears in the faith and share a bit about one of the most well known hymn-writers in American Christianity. Fanny Crosby, a life-long Methodist, lived from 1820-1915 and during her lifetime she wrote more than 8,000 hymns. “She wrote so many that she was forced to use pen names lest the hymnals be filled with her name above all others.” Incidentally, Fanny Crosby was also blind.
She was born into a poor family near Brewster, New York. Within a few weeks, she came down with a bad cold and inflamed eyes that a quack physician treated with hot mustard poultices. The cold went away, but her eyes were blinded. A few months after that, her father died and her mother went to work as a maid, leaving Fanny and her siblings to be raised by her grandmother.//
Her love of poetry began early—her first verse, written at age 8, echoed her lifelong refusal to feel sorry for herself:
Oh, what a happy soul I am,
although I cannot see!
I am resolved that in this world
Contented I will be.
How many blessings I enjoy
That other people don't,
To weep and sigh because I’m blind
I cannot, and I won’t!
Crosby went on to study and then teach at the New York Institute for the Blind. While we know her as a hymn writer, in her day she earned great fame and appreciation as a public speaker, for her mission work, her advocacy for the needs of the blind, and for her charitable work in inner cities, especially when she nursed the sick during New York’s terrible cholera epidemic in the late 1840s. Thousands fled the city, but Fanny stayed behind, contracting the disease herself but later recovering. She probably holds the record for having met more US presidents than any other American, living or dead — an astounding 21. She met every single one (in some cases after they served in the White House) from John Quincy Adams to Woodrow Wilson. She was also the very first woman to address the US Congress.[i] // Fanny Crosby belongs in the long litany of our forebears who serve as powerful examples of a life of faith, a life of perseverance.
And while I haven’t seen any accounts of Methodist circuit riders being “sawn in two” as recounted of some martyrs, we know that other matriarchs and patriarchs of our Methodist family tree also belong in the litany. Many did marvelous, brave things and were persecuted, rejected, mocked, looked down upon, excluded, and silenced. From John Wesley to Francis Asbury to Harry Hosier to Jarena Lee to Frances Willard, even up until our own time—Beth Stroud and Frank Schaefer and David Meredith and Karen Oliveto and Anna Blaedel—these and all our Methodist forebears have preached and lived the gospel in love and service even as they endured hardships and persecution.
“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, looking 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.” The next line reads, “Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart.”
On endurance day it is tempting to lose heart and to grow weary—and some of us may feel like every day is endurance day. I don’t know what you’re facing as you run your race that makes it difficult to endure, to persevere. It might be an illness in your body or the body of a loved one; it might be a relationship that is strained or broken; it might be trauma that is held deep in the cells and synapses of your being; it might be fear, oppression, poverty, loneliness, or simply a sense of meaninglessness in your life. We all have real challenges that make it difficult to persevere, things that can lead us to look for security and help in unhelpful places, throw us off course so that we get lost or isolated, or cut others off along the way as we push forward.
What is it that keeps us going? Why persevere when things are difficult and painful? It seems to me we persevere because at some level we believe it matters—whatever “it” is. Think of those in your life who have persevered through difficulties…what was it that kept them going? Why did they do it?
The great cloud of witnesses in scripture and in our spiritual tradition persevere out of faith that they participate in something bigger than themselves, that their lives are meaningful, that they are precious to God and are part of what God is doing in the world. Jesus, who experienced everything we experience—the sufferings and temptations—all the way to the point of death, persevered out of love. He had faith in God’s love for him and gave himself fully to the world out of love.
As we wake up day by day, facing whatever we face, we are encouraged to have faith—faith that we are loved, that we matter, that our care, love, mercy, and justice are part of God’s mending of the world, faith that God will help us. We are encouraged to remember that Jesus, who has pioneered and cleared the path for us, knows firsthand the challenges we face and so is merciful and compassionate with us even as we struggle—and maybe complain—to go on.
I wish the journey was a short relay race—push as hard as you can and then hand off the baton and bask in your short burst of brilliance. That would be awesome. But we are given an endurance course, a perseverance course. It is a trail blazed by many who have gone before and, thanks be to God, you and I are never left to travel it alone.
[i] https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/poets/fanny-crosby.html
http://mentalfloss.com/article/77751/retrobituaries-fanny-crosby-americas-greatest-hymn-writer
https://fee.org/articles/blind-but-not-disabled/
https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-blessed-assurance
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