Untitled Sermon
THE REALITY OF OUR FAITH
Hebrews 11:13–16
All these died without obtaining possession of the promises. They only saw them from far away and greeted them from afar, and they admitted that they were strangers and sojourners upon the earth. Now, people who speak like that make it quite clear that they are searching for a fatherland. If they were thinking of the land from which they had come out, they would have had time to return. In point of fact, they were reaching out after something better, I mean, the heavenly country. It was because of that that God was not ashamed to be called their God, for he had prepared a city for them.
NONE of the patriarchs entered into the full possession of the promises that God had made to Abraham. To the end of their days they were nomads, never living a settled life in a settled land. They had to be constantly moving on. Certain great permanent truths emerge from them.
(1) They lived as permanent strangers. The writer to the Hebrews uses three vivid Greek words about them.
(a) In 11:13, he calls them xenoi. Xenos is the word for a stranger and a foreigner. In the ancient world, the fate of strangers was hard. They were regarded with hatred and suspicion and contempt. In Sparta, xenos was the equivalent of barbaros, barbarian. One man writes complaining that he was despised ‘because I am a xenos’. Another writes that, however poor a home is, it is better to live at home than epi xenēs, in a foreign country. When clubs had their common meal, those who sat down to it were divided into members and xenoi. Xenos can even mean a refugee. All their lives, the patriarchs were foreigners in a land that was never their own.
(b) In 11:9, he uses the word paroikein, to stay for a time, of Abraham. A paroikos was a resident alien. The word is used of the Jews when they were captives in Babylon and in Egypt. Anyone called paroikos was not considered much above a slave in the social scale and had to pay an alien tax. Such people were always outsiders and only became members of the community as a result of payment.
(c) In 11:13, he uses the word parepidēmos. A parepidēmos was a person who was staying there temporarily and who had a permanent home somewhere else. Sometimes, the stay was strictly limited. A parepidēmos was someone in lodgings, someone without a home in a particular place at a particular time. All their lives, the patriarchs were men who had no settled place that they could call home. It is to be noted that, in the ancient world, to dwell in a foreign land was considered humiliating; a certain stigma was attached to the foreigner in any country. In the Letter of Aristeas, the writer says: ‘It is a fine thing to live and to die in one’s native land; a foreign land brings contempt to poor men and shame to rich men, for there is the lurking suspicion that they have been exiled for the evil they have done.’ In Ecclesiasticus (29:22–8), there is a wistful passage:
Better is the life of the poor under their own crude roof
than sumptuous food in the house of others.
Be content with little or much,
and you will hear no reproach for being a guest.
It is a miserable life to go from house to house;
as a guest you should not open your mouth;
you will play the host and provide drink without being thanked
and besides this you will hear rude words like these:
‘Come here, stranger, prepare the table;
let me eat what you have there.’
‘Be off, stranger, for an honoured guest is here;
my brother has come for a visit, and I need the guest room.’
It is hard for a sensible person to bear
scolding about lodging and the insults of the moneylender.
At any time, it is an unhappy thing to be a stranger in a foreign land; but, in the ancient world, to this natural unhappiness there was added the bitterness of humiliation.
All their days, the patriarchs were strangers in a strange land. That image became a picture of the Christian life and is found in the works of the early Church fathers. Tertullian said of the Christian: ‘He knows that on earth he has a pilgrimage but that his dignity is in heaven.’ Clement of Alexandria said: ‘We have no fatherland on earth.’ Augustine said: ‘We are sojourners exiled from our fatherland.’ It was not that the Christians were foolishly other-worldly, detaching themselves from the life and work of this world; but they always remembered that they were people on the way. There is an unwritten saying of Jesus: ‘The world is a bridge. The wise will pass over it but will not build a house upon it.’ Christians regard themselves as the pilgrims of eternity.
(2) In spite of everything, these men never lost their vision and their hope. However long that hope might be in coming true, its light always shone in their eyes. However long the way might be, they never stopped tramping along it. Robert Louis Stevenson said: ‘It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.’ They never wearily gave up the journey; they lived in hope and died in expectation.
(3) In spite of everything, they never wanted to go back. Their descendants, when they were in the desert, often expressed a wish to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt. But not the patriarchs. They had begun, and it never struck them to turn back. In flying, there is what is called the point of no return. When the aircraft has reached that point, it cannot go back. Its fuel supply has reached such a level that there is no option but to go on. One of the tragedies of life is the number of people who turn back just a little too soon. One further effort, a little more waiting, a little more hoping, would make the dream come true. Immediately a Christian has set out on some enterprise sent by God, he or she should feel that the point of no return has already been passed.
(4) These men were able to go on because they were haunted by the things beyond. People with the urge to travel are lured on by the thought of the countries they have not yet seen. Great artists or composers are driven by the thought of the performance they have not yet given and the wonder they have not yet produced. Robert Louis Stevenson tells of an old farmworker who spent all his days amid the muck of the cowshed. Someone asked him if he never got tired of it all. He answered: ‘He that has something ayont [beyond] need never weary.’ These men had the something beyond—and so may we.
(5) Because these men were what they were, God was not ashamed to be called their God. Above all things, he is the God of the brave adventurer. He loves the person who is ready to venture for his name. The prudent, comfort-loving individual is the very opposite of God. The one who goes out into the unknown and keeps going on will in the end arrive at God.
