Today we hear this Psalm of praise and claim its promise as our own. The Psalm for this morning is an invitation to gratitude and praise. It is a promise to praise God, to trust God, to rely on God as the source of our salvation and hope.

So today we thank and praise God for the church, and for this congregation. We thank and praise God for every bit of encouragement we have received to hold on and hang in and work hard and worship with joy and thanksgiving. We thank and praise God for every opportunity we have had for ministry and service here. We thank God for faith in Jesus Christ and for all of those who taught us the faith and all the people who have shaped us and mentored us, and those who helped us claim the faith for ourselves, especially when it is not so easy to do.

As you read through the letter to the Hebrews, you will sense in its cadence and in its imagery, a sermon given to encourage a people under persecution to keep the faith. In fact this chapter begins with a definition of faith, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." The New International Version says, "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11.1). Faith is believing into sight and then seeing our way into doing what seems impossible. Faith is acknowledging our fear and anxiety about a thing, and then doing the thing anyway. It is looking into an empty field and seeing a home and a yard, or a church, or a school, and then working hard to make it so. It is standing "before God and these witnesses", to declare your undying love for another, and then trusting that the future will bring you all that you need to stay true to your vows.

Faith is seeing a small congregation and dreaming and acting so that the dream of a church – faithful, life-changing, soul inspiring, growing in every way, active, committed to evangelism, Christian based learning, and faithful, joy-filled stewardship will emerge. To encourage them, the Hebrews preacher takes the people back to biblical personalities of sainted memory to tell them the story of what it means to live by faith. We can imagine the scene.

"With his working definition of faith still ringing in the air, he now starts leafing through the Old Testament, stopping here and there to tell the story of faith’s heroes. Face after face, name after name passes before the congregation – Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Rahab, the list goes on. At first it seems that the Preacher is simply moving chronologically through the Bible, picking out names almost at random. But if we stand back from the list, we see something else. We see that these people reflect the faithful virtues that come to perfection in Jesus. These ancestors in faith were righteous, journeyed obediently in faith, and they were tested by suffering" (Interpretation series. Hebrews. Thomas Long. Louisville. John Knox Press, 1997, p.115).

They were obedient as they followed what God has called them to do. And they were tested by suffering. Many were martyred, giving up their lives for the sake of their faith. They were tortured and brutalized. They faced humiliation and death, and for all that they endured, many of our heroes did not receive the fulfillment of all of the promises of God because had something better for them.

Our biblical heroes reached beyond themselves, and they raised their expectations of themselves. They trusted God, and they are part of our sacred memory because they model for us how to live with faith. They teach us how to live in righteousness, how to be obedient to Christ, and how to be tested by suffering. All of them rest with God, their faith was rewarded into eternity, their legacy is you and me and any who decides to follow the way of these biblical saints we remember.

We stand on the shoulders of strong women and men of faith. They lead us on the path toward Jesus and as we remember them, we join our story to theirs. Think of a relay race in which one member of the team passes the baton to another team member, while they are still running. They have passed along the baton to us. Thomas Long says:

"The trail has already been blazed; the path of the race has already been forged by Jesus. He is the lead runner, and he shows us where to go, since he is the ‘pioneer,’ the one who sets the course. He also shows us how to run, since he is the one who runs the race with flawless form, the ‘perfector of our faith.’ Indeed, it is Christ who makes it possible for us to run at all.

"Moreover, he teaches us how to handle the long hills, how to get a second wind when the going gets hard: to keep our eyes on the prize, never lose sight of the Sabbath rest that awaits those who endure. Jesus himself kept his eye on the prize, ‘the joy that was set before him.’

"For the sake of this joy, then, he endured the disgrace and pain of the cross, ‘disregarding its shame’. The shame of the cross was a twofold shame. First, the cross was a cruel instrument of capital punishment. Jesus did not die of natural causes or in a boating accident; he was executed as a criminal, as a menace to human society. It was, by worldly standards, the kind of death that defines shame.

"Second, shame is an experience, a human emotion, connected to public exposure; (we have seen in recent days a pastor exposed; his circumstance is no reason to gloat; few of us could stand up to the scrutiny of a reporter calling us up and saying, ‘guess what I found out about you’). When Jesus hung on the cross, he was exposed to the pitying, judging, reviling gaze of others. Passerby wagged their heads and mocked him. Religious leaders derided him and laughed at his weakness. Common criminals taunted him.

"But Jesus disregarded the shame for the sake of the joy set before him. Human beings stood at the foot of the cross and shamed him, but for the sake of saving humanity he endured the shame. Sin coiled around the human heart and struck at Jesus, but he disregarded the shame so that he might provide an atonement for sin. People loyal to the government and to religion schemed to put Jesus to a shameful death, but he disregarded the shame so that he might rule with mercy as Lord of all and open the door of welcome in the true sanctuary.

"When we see the disciplined, loving, strong, merciful, and faithful way that Jesus ran the race, we are motivated to lace up our running shoes, to grasp the baton, and to sprint for the finish line" (Long, p. 128-129).

How shall we run? We can travel light; the journey can be hard and we carry enough baggage now, we don’t need to carry any extra baggage. We can run with patience, the journey is long. We can run with vision, keeping Jesus and his love and his mercy for us ever before us. And we can do this; we can make sure that every thing we do is a reflection of the values we hold. I was at the "Voting our Values" event Thursday evening. The primary speaker for the night was Jim Wallis, the founder of the Sojourners magazine and the author of God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong, and the Left Doesn’t Get It (Harper’s). He reminded us that what will we do Tuesday as we vote, and I want to encourage all of you who are eligible and able to vote, will not bring in the kingdom of God, but it can be an opportunity for us to bring our faith to serving the common good.

So while you stand in front of those machines considering which people to vote for, and considering how you feel about those propositions dealing with raising the minimum wage, funding college educations from the proceeds of electronic slot machines, what, if any limits there should be on smoking in public, and other initiatives, as you do all of that, remember this.

Remember to put your trust in your values and your faith as you make your decisions, and thank God for the right and privilege of voting. Remember today’s Psalm, praise God, and do not put your trust in princes, presidents, senators, representatives, or the ridiculously negative and insulting ads we have seen in recent months. Even as you vote, know that our ultimate allegiance belongs to God.

There is one other thing Jim Wallis said. He said that we hear politicians every day who like to put their fingers in their mouth, and then stick their finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. Our charge as citizens, and as people of faith is not to change the politicians, indeed politicians come and go. Our charge is to change the wind.

We praise God for every person in our lives who taught us to change the wind, speak the truth in love, to worship and work in the name of the living God, to trust the Spirit, to run the race as Jesus leads us. We are grateful for the cloud of witnesses who stand around us, who are of sacred memory to us, who look down from heaven cheering us on, helping us to be faithful, obedient, and persistent.

With praise and gratitude to God, and with thanksgiving for those we hold in sacred memory, remembering the saints of the Bible, let us now remember those saints of our lives who have passed from this life, to life eternal.