Performing the faith - Hebrews 11:29-12:2 - Living by the Word - Column

Christian Century, August 2, 1995 by Ralph Wood

A BUMPER STICKER gave me a clue to the meaning of the eschatological faith announced in Hebrews 11 and through much of scripture. The slogan declared the creed of the present age: "Enjoy Life! This is not a rehearsal." This plea confronts us at every turn. In advertising and entertainment, in business and medicine, in education and government, we are told not to look beyond this world, not to depend upon any other savior than ourselves. We are enjoined to celebrate only our own existence. We are not to think of our lives as being a preparation for any supposed life to come, but to regard this world as sufficient unto itself.

God indeed wants his people to enjoy life, because it is not a rehearsal. The Book of Hebrews declares that our lives have a point and direction because they are not rehearsals so much as performances. We are actors in a great cosmic drama whose director and critic is God. The Bible declares that we have played havoc with God's script, turning it into a story of misery and woe. But chiefly it declares that in Jesus Christ God has become the protagonist in the human tragedy, turning it into a divine comedy. Whereas the bumper sticker show ends in death and defeat, God's grand drama of redemption issues in eternal victory and life everlasting.

Many Christians fear that if we live with such eschatological concentration, we will become oblivious to both the ills and wonders of God's good creation. We are put off by the otherworldliness of Dwight L. Moody, who once likened Christian social action to polishing brass on a sinking ship. Hebrews 11 should be a corrective to any fear that eschatology courts irresponsibility. It proclaims the glad counternews that when we are rightly focused on the world to come, we are truly able to live in the present age.

Chapter 11's roll call of faithful heroes might be better described as a rogues' gallery of the redeemed. As is generally true of scripture, the saints prove not to be very saintly. Rahab's harlotry is the most notable example of immorality redeemed by faith. Yet her evils can hardly be compared with David's sins of adultery and murder, Abraham's passing off his wife as his sister in order to save his own skin, Jacob's gulling of Esau, Samson's unmanning by Delilah, or Jephthah's rash vow to God that led to the sacrifice of his only child.

On and on runs the list of those who, despite their moral failings, performed their faith before God. Their lives had ultimate significance because they enacted their role in the divine drama, living for a promise whose fulfillment they never experienced.

When one of my students asked me to give my main objection to atheism, I replied instinctively: "It is so bloody boring." Hebrews 11 reveals that Christian faith, though never easy or comfortable, is also never drab and colorless. The saints are sawn asunder, impaled on swords, scourged and mocked, chained and imprisoned, but never bored. Civilized society declares them unfit for membership, when in fact it is utterly unworthy of them. No wonder that in The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O'Connor describes the education of a rebellious boy-prophet named Francis Marion Tarwater in the dramatis personae of scripture:

While other children his age were herded together in a room to cut out paper pumpkins ... [young Tarwater] was left free for the pursuit of wisdom, the companions of his spirit Abel and Enoch and Noah and Job, Abraham and Moses, King David and Solomon, and all of the prophets, from Elijah who escaped death, to John whose severed head struck terror from a dish.

Dorothy L. Sayers confessed that her own faith was saved from secular tedium once she read G. K. Chesterton and learned about the thrill and challenge of the divine drama. He showed her that Christian faith is "one whirling adventure ... [wherein] the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostate, the wild truth reeling but erect." The real drama of the gospel lies in its eschatological character. By refusing to enclose human existence within the confines of space and time, the gospel gives our lives ultimate, absolute, eternal interest.

According to Hebrews, the Christian life is performed not only in the presence of God but also before the great audience of the faithful dead who have made their witness. We look to them for encouragement, for they persevered to the end of the race, even when their finish meant martyrdom. Catholic apologist Hilaire Belloc clarifies the nature of the Christian struggle:

We are of so glorious a company that we receive support, and have communion. The Mother of God is ours. Our dead are with us. Even in these earthly miseries we always hear the distant something of an eternal music, and smell a native air. There is a standard set for us whereto our whole selves respond, which is that of an inherited and endless life, quite full, in our own country.

The great race in which we are engaged is no sham exercise, nor even a dress rehearsal. It requires an athlete's discipline in prayer and fasting. It is a performance whose reward is the applause and enjoyment of God himself. Its pioneer--the trailblazer and pathfinder--is the Lord who precedes us everywhere, making possible even the faith of the Old Testament saints. Its perfecter is the Savior who completed the course for us when he cried joyfully from the shameful cross, "It is finished."