Sunday sermon on the Epistle reading from Hebrews 11:24-26, 32-12:2 (March 9, 2025)
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.
Through faithfulness, Saint Paul says, the great people of the Old Testament were able to persevere through various struggles and in most cases come out on top. According to Saint John Chrysostom, faithfulness has two wonderful qualities: it both accomplishes great things and suffers great things, treating suffering as if it were nothing.
Moses could have had a pleasant and easy life as Pharaoh’s adopted grandson. But he chose to share in the ill-treatment of the Israelites, his people. There were also Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets, who through faithfulness accomplished great things, such as conquering kingdoms, administering justice, obtaining promises, shutting the mouths of lions, quenching raging fire, escaping the edge of the sword, becoming strong in weakness, growing mighty in war, and putting foreign armies to flight.
And they also suffered great things through faithfulness, such as tortures, mocking, flogging, chains and imprisonment; they wandered in deserts and mountains, wearing skins of sheep and goats, being destitute, persecuted, and tormented. They were stoned to death, cut in two, and killed by the sword.
And not everyone mentioned by Saint Paul was, what we would call today, a saint. Some people had an episode or two in their life of doing great things or suffering greatly through faithfulness, but the rest of their life was not very holy. Yet they are still an example of how to do great things as the people of God.
Even through their great accomplishments and sufferings, they “did not receive what was promised…so that they would not be made perfect apart from us.” Whatever glory the saints of the Old and the New Testament enjoy, it is not yet the full glory. Saint John Chrysostom also says that God has appointed one time of crowning for all.
The time to receive what was promised is yet to come; everyone will receive their rewards together; and that time is the Great Judgment. It does not mean that the saints and all the righteous have received nothing; we are praying to them for their intercessions, after all. But the full rewards will be granted to everyone together at a certain time.
As Saint Paul says, we all will be made perfect at that time. This word perfect appears numerous times in the Bible, and it does not necessarily mean what we mean by it today. It does not mean to be without a flaw.
When a pitcher throws a perfect game, he achieves his purpose of getting every single batter out, he brings the game to its intended goal. When we talk about us being perfect in terms of our faithfulness, we mean something very similar – that we achieved our purpose as Christians.
And what may be that purpose? Faithfully follow Christ, accomplishing and suffering great things. Right now we are working on being perfect, on bringing our life to its intended goal of uniting our life with God, of aligning our will with God’s will, of becoming as much as we can like God.
In other words, working out our salvation. The Lord’s joy is the salvation of human beings; He Himself endured suffering for it. Salvation is our perfection. For this reason Saint Paul calls Jesus the Perfecter of our faithfulness.
Yes, we faithfully persevere, but it is Jesus Who perfects us. This is called synergism – where the salvation is a result of God’s and our effort. We can’t save ourselves any more than we can actually pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. And God will not save just because He can. We need to want it, to desire salvation.
And so we conclude the first week of Lent with the people of the Old Testament, none of them perfect (at least not yet), but who each strove faithfully to accomplish and suffer great things, “looking ahead to the reward.” And the reward is the promised perfection, when our life will come to its intended goal of living in the Presence of the Lord.
In the words of Saint Paul, “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faithfulness.”
Amen.
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Intro and outro melody:
Rule of Life
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