Remember Your Leaders Series

Wow! We’ve been reading and making our way through Hebrews for a long time. It was way back in January that we started. Now it seems almost as though that is shrouded in the mists of history. And I want to express my gratitude to Pastor Marvin, who has steadfastly and faithfully been leading us through this rich book of the Bible all that time—in spite of a car accident resulting in a serious concussion and later falling victim to covid. Now here we are part way through the last chapter, and in my Bible I’m into the final column of this profound and challenging message to the church.

It seems to me, as I read through it, that this concluding chapter is something of a catch-all. It may be that our anonymous author is running out of parchment to write on. I can imagine his hand (or the hand of his scribe) might be aching after all this writing. So now he is packing as much as he can into his concluding words. It is almost as though he were saying, “Oh, and by the way, before I put down my pen…”—with the result that he pours forth with a whole jumble of wise and timeless counsel, things that he feels need to be said.

Remember

The first thing he calls upon us to do in these verses is to remember. “Remember your leaders,” he says, “those who spoke to you the word of God.” So I want to let you take the next couple of moments to pause and think back to the people who have had an impact on you, men and women whom the Holy Spirit brought into your life as an influence for the good. Who were the individuals who helped you to come into a living relationship with Christ? Who were those who drew you back onto the path when you were going astray? Who were the individuals who stood by you and held out a light for you in the darkness? Who were those who prayed for you? Who were those who had the thoughtfulness to encourage you or the boldness to caution or to scold you?

What a wonderful thing it is that the Lord does not call us to walk the path of discipleship alone! As the author has already reminded us in the previous chapters, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. And, as he has made clear in that long catalogue of God’s faithful servants in chapter 11, that cloud is not limited to the present.

In addition to that list, we owe a huge debt to our Christian forebears who have come since that time: for their steadfast commitment to the truths of the gospel, even in some cases, to the point of death; for their willingness to journey hundreds, even thousands, of miles to share their faith; for their deep insights into the mysteries of God.

Last Sunday at the end of the service we did something slightly out of the ordinary here at First Congregational… We sang a song that was penned nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. That hymn was written by a young woman named Frances Ridley Havergal. And one of its verses began like this:

Take my silver and my gold,

Not a mite would I withhold…

I had to laugh to myself a little as we sang it because, in the hymn book that we used in the church where I served before I retired, that verse had been omitted by its editors! Yet behind it there lies a marvellous story and one that I find quite moving. It comes in a quote from a letter that its author sent to a friend. Here is what she wrote:

‘Take my silver and my gold’ now means shipping off all my ornaments—including a jewel cabinet which is really fit for a countess—to the Church Missionary Society where they will be accepted and disposed of for me. I retain only a brooch for daily wear… I don’t think I need tell you I never packed a box with such pleasure.

How much we have to learn from an example like that! And Frances Ridley Havergal is just one of thousands, no millions, who have paved the way for my faith and yours today.

We live in a generation that tends more and more to focus on the immediate. Our lives are governed by catchy headlines and sound bites, on tweets and social media posts. And I don’t for one minute debate that we need to keep up with the present. Yet we can’t allow our obsession with the now to happen at the expense of plumbing the deep riches of the past, to learn and to benefit from the lives of women and men of faith who have gone before us.