So Great A Cloud

One day a man and his five-year-old son were walking through a beautiful church. The church was filled with bright light from its many colorful stained-glass windows. As the boy looked at the windows, he asked: “Who are all the people in the windows, Daddy?” “They are saints,” his father answered. “What are ‘saints’?” his son asked. The father was stuck. How was he going to explain who or what a saint was to a five-year-old boy? As the boy kept looking up at the windows and the father was still wondering how he could explain what a saint was, the young boy suddenly shouted out: “I know what a saint is, Daddy! They are the people that the light shines through!”

We normally think of saints as people who have led holy and exemplary lives ... Mother Teresa ... Augustine … Francis of Assisi … the apostles Peter and Paul. We may think of Stephen, the first martyr, and other committed Christians whose faith in God did not spare them from the perils of history.

And yet, the Apostle Paul addressed many of his letters to the “saints” … “to the saints at Ephesus” … “to the saints at Philippi.” Who were these “saints”? They were people like you and me … saints by virtue of our baptism into Christ by the Holy Spirit. We are not saints because we are without sin. Only one human being was without sin … Jesus. Martin Luther said that we are “simul justus et peccator” … “simultaneously saint and sinner.” Or, as the Apostle Paul explained it: “ … with my mind I am a slave to the Law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin” (Romans 7:25b).

We are pronounced “holy” by God because Jesus has taken away our sins by nailing them to His cross. Hebrews 10:14 explains how this was done: “By one sacrifice” … Jesus … “[God] has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” Being “made holy” … a wonderful sermon for another time.

Saints can be great people like Mother Teresa or Francis of Assisi … but saints can be ordinary people. People like you and me. People who have given their hearts to Jesus. People that the light of God … the light of the Holy Spirit … shines through. The celebration of All Saints Day is an opportunity for us to reflect upon the “grace in which we stand” and to remember the saints in our lives who have given witness to the resurrection of Jesus in a fallen world.

[Read Hebrews 12:1-3]

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a could of witnesses” (v.1). Who makes up this “cloud of witnesses”? Chapter 11 tells us. It describes the cloud of witnesses as those who did marvelous works for the glory of God. It reminds us of the faith and faithfulness of heroes like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. The writer of Hebrews reminds us of the heroes of the past … named and un-named … to prepare the heroes of the present and the heroes of the future to consider Jesus. He endured such hostility against himself from sinners so that you may not grow weary or lose heart (v. 3).

Hebrews was written to a group of Christians who were about to face great hostility and persecution. “In your struggle against sin,” he writes in verse 4, “you have not resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” Yikes! Resisting to the pointy of shedding MY blood … YOUR blood!

We tend to think of “martyrs” … people who have shed their blood. as “saints” … and rightly so, but the real meaning … the original meaning … of the word “martyr” is “witness.” The shedding of one’s blood or the giving of one’s life was and is a powerful witness to one’s faith in Jesus Christ … amen? Many Christians at the time that Hebrews was written would testify to their faith in Jesus Christ by shedding their blood and giving up their lives. Many more over the centuries and many around the world today are witnessing to their faith by the shedding of their blood and the sacrifice of their lives. The cloud of witnesses that Hebrews speaks about is huge and growing every day.

When the writer of Hebrews speaks of “so great a cloud of witnesses” (v. 1), here’s the picture he is trying to paint. Imagine that we are standing in the arena of a Roman stadium … not in the bleachers or the stands … we are not the spectators but the spectacle. We stand together in the arena and we await our fate. We have no idea what’s going to come through those gates. Gladiators? Wild animals? Chariots?