H. Stephen Shoemaker
Myers Park Baptist Church
Charlotte, North Carolina
November 4, 2001
BY FAITH. . . .
Texts: Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16, 23-25, 31-38;
Hebrews 12:1-3, 12-13
By faith this church began its journey with the clouds of war hanging heavy over the
land. It was the fall of 1942 and twelve families began dreaming a dream of a new kind of
church. Now, fifty nine years later, with the clouds of war hanging heavy over our land
once again, we are being called to a new chapter of our journey together.
The key ingredient is faith: Living by what is not seen, living by what you yearn for
-- if what you yearn for is what God yearns for.
The text for today from Hebrews is written to the Jewish/Christian community in Rome
thirty to sixty years after Jesus. The community is now a second-generation community: The
children and grandchildren of the founding members and new converts who never knew the
apostles. The founding vision has faded; persecution of Christians is mounting. What you
feel between the lines is uncertainty, unsteadiness, fear.
The writer calls the church to a renewed vision and offers a roll call of faith. Faith,
he intones: "The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not
seen." A steadiness of soul is asked for, and a goodly portion of endurance and
perseverance. Not so easy for our age of instant gratification and fast-food for the soul.
Spiritual McNuggets.
I
The roll call of faith begins with creation itself: What is seen is created by what is
not seen. Creation is the first witness to the Creator, a text that tells us something
about the Author of all life.
Then comes Abel, Enoch, and Noah -- who began building an ark in his backyard when
there was no drop of rain in sight, much less a flood. By faith.
Then came Abraham and Sarah. By faith Abraham set off for a land he knew not of. By
faith. Abraham and Sarah lived in tents -- as did this church for a while -- looking for a
city whose builder and maker is God.
By faith Sarah conceived a child though she was past the age and Abraham was as good as
dead, procreationally speaking, because they considered God faithful who had promised. As
Robin would say to Batman: "Holy Viagra, Batman!"
"Because they considered God faithful who had promised." There is a
faithfulness at the heart of things. Faith at its most basic is not a set of beliefs but
trust in Another. "I know whom I have believed," scripture says, which is
prior to "I know what I have believed." Faith stakes its life not on its
own faithfulness but on the faithfulness of God.
The roll call continues: By faith Moses as a baby was hid from Pharaoh, that is, by the
faith of his parents, who were not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith Moses chose the
plight of his own people rather than the fleeting pleasures of Egypt’s palace. By faith
Moses led the Hebrew people out of slavery, kept the first Passover, crossed the Red Sea.
By faith Rahab the prostitute survived because she offered hospitality to Hebrew spies.
And what more can I say, writes the author, though time fails me, to tell of Gideon,
Barak, Samson, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms,
administered justice, shut lions’ mouths, quenched burning flames, escaped the sword,
turned weakness into strength. And what about those who did not fare so well; those
tortured, imprisoned, stoned, sawed in two, killed by the sword. The world was not worthy
of them. These did not receive what was promised, the text says, but having seen it
greeted it from afar. God rewarded them by providing for them a true homeland -- that land
"fairer than day," as the old hymn puts it, or in Thomas Wolfe’s words, a land
"more large than earth, more kind than home."
And whom might we add this day? Though time be short and dinner in the oven? The
Apostle Paul, who endured beatings and imprisonment in his call to share the gospel with
the Gentiles and who died for his faith. And Lydia, wealthy businesswoman who provided her
home as the house-church in Philippi.
By faith, Patrick returned to Ireland, where he had been a captive of pirates as a boy,
so he could spread Christianity all across the island.
By faith, Francis of Assisi left his wealthy father’s house and took on holy poverty
and holier joy so to share the gospel throughout the land. By faith he paid a visit during
the Crusades to the Sultan who was head of Muslim armies. He went not to kill but to try
to convert him. When he got to the Sultan’s throne room there was a carpet between them
embroidered with crosses. Would Francis walk on these emblems of his faith? He strode
across them and said, "As you see I have walked on these crosses. They are the
crosses of the bad thief [on the cross]. You can keep them if you wish. We keep our own
which is the true cross." This deft response won the admiration of the Sultan and the
Sultan’s nephew. The nephew invited Francis to pray in the mosque. Would he? Francis
went saying, "God is everywhere."
By faith Julian of Norwich received her "sightings" from God, revealing God
as mother as well as father, and glimpsing this future for us all:
All shall be well
And all shall be well
All manner of things shall
be well.1
Time fails me. And Martin Luther, who preached salvation by grace through faith and
delivered the Bible in German to the German people. And John Wesley, whose "heart
strangely warmed" challenged faith gone cold. And Roger Williams, banished from the
Puritan establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who founded a colony of religious
tolerance in Rhode Island and the first Baptist Church in America. And Sojourner Truth,
black slave freed and called to be a prophet of emancipation for blacks and women.
And Dorothy Day, former socialist, whose ministry with the poor in New York City
challenged the church to care. And Martin Luther King, Jr., who led a nonviolent
revolution in America called the Civil Rights Movement and who learned his methodology
from Gandhi, a Hindu who admired the teachings of Jesus and said he might become a
Christian if it weren’t for the Christians. And Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who served
the destitute of India and who once said: "I love all religions, but I am in love
with my own." By faith.
II
Let us not fail to mention this day, the twelve men who in the fall of 1942 began the
dream of this place: William Marvin Scruggs, Fred Helms, Guy Carswell -- who would later
take a young Jim Kratt to Wake Forest to enroll him -- Frank Dowd, James R. Bryant, Henry
Benoit, Lex Marsh, Rush Dickson, W. Carey Dowd, Jr., John Knott, Herbert Bridges and
Charles Upchurch.
We chose our name, Myers Park Baptist, from a list which included Trinity, Calvary, St.
Paul’s and Providence. Then on January 17, 1943, we organized, formally enrolling 267.
During the next year we added 260 more to the charter roster, including eight servicemen
serving overseas.
What other names would you call? Hundreds. Time fails us. I add thirteen more, a baker’s
dozen, mostly women to balance a bit the male list read above:
Priscilla Upchurch
Lib Dowd
Bess Durham Scott
Pop and Sue LeNeave
Bea Blankenship
Ina Short
John Wagster
Bess Benoit
Gini Osborne, who sang beautifully and did beautiful things.
Bob Bennett who sang lustily and off key from the back pew
Liz Clary
Mary Pinson
How can I quit there? "Ma" Bailey, T. J. Norman, Betty Lander, Anita Stroud,
African-American friend of our church, whose Bible studies in Fairview Homes got us
involved in local missions. On and on we should go. I invite you to help me complete this
sermon. There is a card included in your order of worship. Write the names of people on
your roll call of faith who have shaped your life. A parent, a teacher, a mentor in the
faith, some figure in your life or in history who has marked your life. Then place that
card in the offering plate or rice bowl. Then we will offer their names as part of our
Thanksgiving to God today at the Doxology.
III
There is one more part of the text and of the sermon. It begins with the word "Therefore."
It is as though the writer draws the word in giant letters across the whole width of the
scroll:
Therefore, Therefore, Therefore!
"Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses" --
those who cheer us on even now.
"Let us lay aside every weight" -- what weight hangs heavy on your life this
day? Lay it aside!
"And the sin which clings so closely" -- what sin do you need to remove this day
as some old clothes that no longer fit who you are?
"And let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us" -- the image
is of a foot race.
Looking where? Ahead: "looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith."
He is our trustworthy guide to our own true self, to life as it should be lived in the
world and into the presence of God.
He is the way, the truth, the life -- which is to say, the way, truth and life God has
given to us in this place and time, the way to wholeness, to truth, to God, who is
the faithfulness at the heart of things.
We do not worship God-in-general but the God revealed in Jesus’ own life. We look to
Jesus and through Jesus to the God he loved and followed and who is still being
revealed to us today.
He is the faithful guide who walks with us and shows us the unique path we each walk to
God. There are no cookie-cutter saints. There is no pre-marked way, no pre-fab path. We
have no Wal-Mart God. The Christ is the one who guides us each on our unique path to
personhood and to God. And in Christ we walk our paths together.
Flannery O’Connor says provocatively that "most of us come to church by a means
the church does not allow." Which is to say, that God sneaks us all in, by a grace we
do not yet understand. Our life work consists of discovering that "means" which
gets us to God.
Martin Buber was getting at the same point when he said:2
All [of us] have our access to God, but each of us has a different access. Our
great chance lies precisely in our unlikeness. God’s all-inclusiveness
manifests itself in the infinite multiplicity of the ways that lead to [God], each
of which is open to one person.
He illustrates with the story of Rabbi Zusya who said a short while before his death:
"In the world to come I shall not be asked: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ I shall be
asked, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’"
Is this not close to what Merton meant when he wrote:
For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore, the problem of sanctity and
salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and discovering my true
self. . . . But the problem is this [he adds]: Since [God] alone possesses the
secret of my destiny, [God] alone can make me who I am . . .3
So the Christ comes and says, Follow me and you will find your true self and your own
unique way to God. "Looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith."
Conclusion
I remember as a ninth or tenth grader running a 440 relay race in the Myers Park
Stadium. I was running the first leg so I took off from the starting blocks and as I
neared the first turn handed the baton off to the second runner.
My father and my little brother, Jim, who was then 5 or 6, were in the stands. When Jim
saw me slow down and stop he cried out in great disappointment to my dad: "Dad, he
quit!"
Those we honor this day, who died this year and in years past, did not quit. They, to
quote Paul, "fought the good fight, finished the race -- or their own leg of it --
kept the faith." And now God has received them into God’s own presence.
And now we have our own leg of the race to run.
Here is the way to receive the baton:
when the runner nears
start running easily in stride.
Keep your eyes fixed ahead,
extend your right arm backward,
the palm of your hand up and open.
When you feel the metal of the baton
rest in your hand, grip it,
and take off!
Last July as I was headed out of the office to go on vacation, Dona Lee Davenport
caught me and said the last words I heard her say: "I’ve been thinking about your
Sunday evening study for the fall. Call it "Dialogue with Steve," she said,
handing the baton off to me.
Amen.
1. Julian Green, God's Fool (San Francisco, Harper San Francisco, 1985),
pp. 204-5.
2. These quotations are as cited in Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk (New
York: Riverhead Books, 1966), pp. 63.
3. Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation (New York: A New Directions book,
1949), pp. 26-7.
