'So great a cloud of witnesses': holding the Faith in tumultuous times
Hebrews 12:1-2a
“Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses … let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” [1]
Stained glass depictions of great saints and those who have gone before us in the Faith are a common feature of parish churches. Here in our parish church, their depictions surround us as we gather for worship.
A peaceful, quiet spirit often shines through such stained glass. And yet few - if any - of these great saints, of those who have gone before us in the Faith - lived in peaceful, quiet times.
From where I stand in this pulpit, I can view Saint Patrick, apostle to this Island. Patrick lived in turbulent times. His homeland, the place the Romans called Britannia, was subject to pagan raids and invasions as the Roman Empire collapsed. He, of course, was captured during one of those raids, becoming a slave on this Island.
When he returned as a bishop, carrying the Good News of Jesus Christ, he faced pagan opposition and brutal warlords.
Saint Patrick did not live in peaceful, quiet times.
In the nave of our church, on the right side at the back, there is a window commemorating a son of the parish, a young Sub-Lieutenant serving in the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean in December 1918.
The Great War had ended only a few weeks before on 11th November. His parents would have been grateful that their son had survived the war. Three weeks after the Armistice, however, on 6th December, he died on active service, probably of illness. He is buried in a British military cemetery in Greece.
His parents, parishioners of this church, installed a window in his memory, depicting Christ stilling the stormy waves, with Our Lord’s words, “Be not afraid”.
This young man and his parents did not live in peaceful, quiet times.
One last stained glass window. It is of Jeremy Taylor, bishop of this diocese 1661-67, and a great theologian of our tradition [2]. Taylor lived through the 1640s and 50s, years of bloody religious wars in these Islands. He described it as “this great storm” [3]. He was a chaplain in the royalist armies, became a prisoner of war, and was a marked man because of his support for a seemingly defeated cause. He referred to his “participation in those dangers and miseries which threatened the Kingdom … the miseries of war” [4].
Jeremy Taylor did not live in peaceful, quiet times.
These stained glass windows tell of Christian Faith in difficult, contentious, divisive times. In times of crisis and of war; in times of loss and sacrifice; in times of profound challenge and grave uncertainty.
In the very midst of those troubled times, the witness of Patrick, of a young naval office and his parents, of Jeremy Taylor shines through, encouraging us in our Christian Faith.
In our first reading, from the Letter to the Hebrews, the writer recollects heroes of the Faith from the Scriptures of the Old Testament - “Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the Prophets”. He then continues by telling of their times:
“who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight .... Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment”.
These heroes of the Faith from the Scriptures of the Old Testament did not live in peaceful, quiet times.
They were, however, defined and sustained by their Faith in the very midst of those times. They did not see the promises of the Old Testament come to pass in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but they lived by Faith that God’s promises would come to pass in Christ. [5]
We do know that those promises have been fulfilled in Our Lord Jesus Christ. But, like those heroes of the Faith from the Old Testament, we know what it is to live in turbulent times; and while we know that God’s promises in the prophets of the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus Christ, we have not seen that for which we pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”.
And like those great heroes of the Old Testament, and like those commemorated in stained glass around us, we, in these early decades of the early 21st century, live in deeply uncertain, tumultuous times. We have lived through a global financial crisis, a pandemic, and wars and rumours of wars. As for what the years to come will bring, most commentators agree that ours will be an age of uncertainty and instability.
Christianity is built for such times because it is the religion of the Cross and Resurrection: of sacrificial, redeeming love in the midst of bitter death, of Resurrection life bursting forth from the dark, cold Tomb. Turbulent, tumultuous times are never greater than God’s redeeming purposes in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This is what we see in the witness of Patrick, of a young Sub-Lieutenant and his parents, of Jeremy Taylor; they and numberless others are “so great a cloud of witnesses” who surround us, their example encouraging us in holding the Faith in turbulent, tumultuous times.
This is not only the case when it comes to the news headlines. It is also so when we know challenging times as individuals and families. The older form of Holy Communion in the Prayer Book, in the Prayer for the Church Militant, prays for those “who in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity”. [6]
It is a phrase which encapsulates the difficult, challenging experiences of our mortal life. As we think of our own lives, the lives of those whom we love, the lives of our fellow-parishioners, it is a recognition that we all know or will know “trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity”.
And, through all this, “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” - the heroes of the Old Testament, the apostles and martyrs of the New Testament, the great saints of the Church, those of this parish who have gone before us in the Faith - encouraging us to hold on to God’s promises in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to heed the words of Our Lord, “be not afraid”, to know that God’s faithful, loving purposes in Jesus Christ never abandon us.
The times in which we live - as with so many times in the past - are neither peaceful nor quiet. Our mortal lives, like every mortal life, will know frailty, sorrow, sickness, and death.
In the midst of all this, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews encourages us through that great cloud of witnesses, some of whom are commemorated in stained glass around us, “to run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” - to be a people defined by and rooted in our Faith in Jesus Christ, knowing that He is our "sure and steadfast anchor of the soul" [7] in tumultuous times, for in Him we are forever held by the grace, mercy, and love of God.
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