Erika Helgen and Chloë Starr discuss faith heroes through history, triumphant faith, and the role of sin in Hebrews 11:29-12:2. The text is appointed for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15, in Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Great Numbers of Heroes (Tenth Sunday after Pentecost)
Voiceover Voice:
We’re not supposed to be discouraged by the passage; we’re actually supposed to be uplifted by it.
Helena Martin:
This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. Join us every week as two Yale Divinity School professors look at an upcoming text from the Revised Common Lectionary.
This episode we have Erika Helgen, Associate Professor of Latin American and Latinx Christianity, and Chloë Starr, Professor of Asian Christianity and Theology.
They’re discussing Hebrews 11:29–12:2, which is appointed for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15, in Year C. The text is read for you by student Tommy Watson.
Tommy Watson:
Hebrews 11:29-12:2.
By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.
And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets– who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented– of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
Chloë Starr:
So we’re still in the chapter of faith accounts here. We’ve had Abraham and Isaac and Moses and we’re now heading into those great numbers of heroes.
Erika Helgen:
Yeah. Now we’re having, you know this is kind of talking about letting us think about heroes and what makes a hero and what do they have to endure, overcome in order to receive what they had been promised, right? From God.
Chloë Starr:
Yeah, it’s interesting. Isn’t it? That there’s this sort of jump. There’s nothing after crossing the Red Sea until the entry into Canaan. And I think it’s good. You know, we skip the bad stuff, that disobedience, and I think it’s important how we craft the lives of people. And what we tell about their good things. There’s such a tendency these days to highlight everyone’s faults and everyone’s negative parts. And yet, you know, sometimes we do need to celebrate those good things.
I was reminded at the funeral of Prince Phillip about this, because, you know, I’d always thought of him as some dodgery oh so-and-so, you know, consort of the queen and all that kind of thing. And all you’ve heard of is the terribly negative or occasionally, you know, crude or racist remarks he’d made to the many hundreds of people he’d met. And yet, when he died, suddenly all these eulogies came out. All these ordinary people all over the place who had great things to say about him. And, you know, it was a totally different version of this person than we’d heard from the media. And, I think the sort of media tendency now is to play up everyone’s negatives, whether they’re a politician or an actor or whoever, and not speak out the good points. And yet here we have the opposite. We have the heroes being valorized for their heroic qualities and the bad bit being left out for change.
Erika Helgen:
And yet, when we’re thinking about valorizing the heroes, a lot of the history that’s being told here is a quite violent history full of suffering and death, and what is being celebrated is, to a certain extent, the triumph over these hardships. But, we’re talking about torture. We’re talking about facing jeers and flogging and even chains and imprisonment and being put to death by stoning. Sawed in two. And, so, we are bringing forth the heroes and, in many cases, the martyrs. But we’re also highlighting this history of violence and persecution that they endured in order to become heroic and to show the endurance of their faith.
Chloë Starr:
Yeah. And, as you say, it’s the faith that’s the central point. These aren’t, you know, random heroes. It’s through faith or by faith or, after verse thirty two, you know, the shift between by faith to through faith as to how, how they, you know, why we’re noting them and remembering them. And personally, I find it difficult that, you know, the Gideon, the Barak, the Samson, the Jephthahs, those are all military heroes you know, against the Midianites or Cicero or Philistines or the Ammonites, you know. So, death, destruction as being, you know, central to the notion of what a hero is, I think, had its moment. And thankfully it isn’t now. My own heroes are very different types of Christian heroes.
Erika Helgen:
But, I also think the prostitute Rahab, right? Welcoming those who many thought should not be welcomed. Right?
Chloë Starr:
True. But the only woman making it into the list as being the prostitute, Rahab, is also problematic.
Erika Helgen:
Oh, of course, of course. But we are seeing, at least, a little bit of a different…model for who can be a hero and what can be heroic.
Chloë Starr:
I suppose I like the “and what more should I say?” I don’t really have time, the sermon is nearly at the end. You know, you get the gist, you get my point. I’ll just skip over everyone else.
Erika Helgen:
Exactly. And what more shall I say? I like that.
Chloë Starr:
So who are your faith heroes?
Erika Helgen:
Well, I mean really when reading this passage, it does make me think of, you know, I am a historian of Latin America and liberation theology, and the heroes of not just the liberation theology movement, but the movement for human rights and against the military dictatorships in Latin America. And so I think of Saint Oscar Romero who knew that he would perhaps suffer death and he was risking torture and he essentially understood all of these dangers that came with his witness. But it was his faith that both compelled him to do that, but also enabled his witness to be so strong and to have his acts be heroic and eventually, in the case of the Catholic church, he became a martyr and a Saint.
Chloë Starr:
It’s interesting how martyrs are so prominent in our thinking about this. I was thinking about, you know, my own heroes and when I was a teenager, I remember being very struck by the life of Richard Wurmbrand who was a Romanian pastor under Ceaușescu and spent fourteen years in prison and three of those were completely solitary. And he wrote two books that are one on “Tortured for Christ” and the other was “In God’s Underground.” And he talks about how he went mad, essentially. And, you know, how he convinced himself he could easily renounce his faith and sort of these inner discussions of the psychological torture he was undergoing. You know, his story made a lot of sense to me in terms of, you know, that the desperation and the huge, how endurance works, what it means, really to endure, or what it can mean.
Or the martyrs of Japan that I think about in work, and we read about it in Endō’s “Silence,” or in Scorsese film of the same name, you know, that terribly slow death of torture and the cruelty of humans that bring torture on other people. And that leads into all sorts of thinking about the religious persecution going on today around the world, in different places. But we are still living in an era of the creation of martyrs.
But, I guess as I’ve got older, my heroes might be much quieter ones. Somebody like Father Tony, who was here at YDS, who, you know, knelt in chapel for 20 minutes before the service every single day on his 70 year old knees. And that witness or someone like [7:14] Agnes Young and, you know, in Ming Dynasty, China, who gave money to build chapels and to build up the Church. And so that some of those positive heroes as well, who lived lives of faith in both quiet ways and, and in their own community, sometimes even, you know, in separate communities.
Erika Helgen:
Yeah. And one thing that stood out to me, you know, was the fact that some of these heroes, we have named heroes, right? But we also have unnamed heroes. And, so, even though they might be referring to specific people, to me, it also represents all the different, unnamed heroes that we might, you know, that might not have the fame and reach of martyrs and, you know, dramatic sacrifices for faith. But this idea of endurance, right? Those who are enduring and that their faith is both helping them endure, but also, the, you know, driver of the endurance itself.
Chloë Starr:
Yeah. I dedicated my last book on Chinese theology to [8:31] Jang Bodah and Jada Chun. And they embody that. So Jang Bodah and Jada Chun was a Roman Catholic, who was martyred in prison in the 1950s. He died in prison and Jada Chun didn’t. You know, he lost his job and possibly he was, you know, had his priesthood taken away from him. And he may or may not have lost his faith, you know, into the 1970s, by the time he died.
And yet there are those, there are two types of enduring martyrdom, aren’t there? There’s, you know, the sort of heroic, haloed saints. And then there’s those who carry on and live in very difficult circumstances.
You know, we think about living lives of faith, but not being about, oh, us trying to be heroes. You know, the text is about, “let us run with perseverance, the race that is set before us.” And we, none of us know what our future will be. We have to live our own lives.
I’ve been thinking again during COVID times about how the pandemic has exposed our weaknesses and our selfishness. I always thought I’d be one of those heroes that, you know, goes out and lives completely for others. And yet the real heroes are the store workers and medical orderlies and taxi drivers and people who, in their daily job, you know, encounter risk. Whereas many of us, especially academics have been able to hide ourself away. And it’s difficult, you know, wanting to think of yourself as a, as a hero. And you’re actually that, you know, might not be who we are.
Erika Helgen:
Well, it’s also this idea that everyone has a race, right? But that path is laid out for you. And it’s how you respond to it and how you endure. And so, you know, I agree.
I think the pandemic has laid bare not just who is a hero and who is not a hero. But this idea of the heroes in the endurance of the every day and that this is actually heroic. I mean, you know, our grocery store workers, our postal workers, that endurance is heroic. And we can see that with the pandemic. But it’s part of this race that we are given to run.
Chloë Starr:
Yeah. And the passage is clear that faith may involve an untimely death. But also, it may be a non-heroic life and we don’t know. Faith isn’t based on the output or the consequences. There’s no evaluation in that sense. In terms of action or outcome of faithfulness is only known to God. And, you know, at the end of the passage where we’re pointed to Christ as the epitome of, and the perfecter, as it says, the first and the last of our faith, the pioneer and the perfecter of it.
You know, Christ’s endurance, ostensibly, apparently, didn’t go anywhere. And it’s only later that we see the outcome. You know, we won’t see that outcome of our, we live in this hope of faith, believing we’re on the right path. And quite often, not knowing and quite often thinking we aren’t on the right path and being fearful of that.
And yet, having to carry on.
What do you make of the cloud of witnesses? Are these heavenly witnesses? Is this some sort of extra terrestrial surveillance by those who have lived faithful lives?
Erika Helgen:
I think, you know, surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. I mean, I do think it is this idea that those who have gone before us and showed us these heroic, either named or unnamed, can be a model for how we live our marked race, right? I mean, as you said, Chloë, it’s not, we don’t know necessarily what parts of our lives will or will not be considered heroic afterwards. But we do have this great cloud of witnesses that I think the idea is that they are pushing us along that marked race, right?
Chloë Starr:
Yeah, and I guess we’d be remiss if we didn’t note that there is something we have to do here. Namely, lay aside the weight and the sin that clings. We’ve been focusing on the heroism and forgetting that there’s our part to play in this.
Erika Helgen:
Exactly.
Chloë Starr:
So it’s interesting, isn’t it, that the thirty five verses are all about the triumphant faith and only three of those verses, 35 to 38, about the suffering and the pain. I think we’re not supposed to be discouraged by the passage. We’re actually supposed to be uplifted by it.
Helena Martin:
Thanks for listening. And thank you, Professors Helgen and Starr, for joining us again.
Check out YaleBibleStudy.org for lots more Bible study resources, and follow us on Twitter @BibleYale.
Chapter, Verse, and Season is a production of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. It’s produced by: Creator and Managing Editor, Joel Baden; Production Manager, Kelly Morrissey; Associate Producer, Aidan Stoddart; and I’m your Host and Executive Producer, Helena Martin. Caity Stuart did the transcript for this episode, and our theme music is by Calvin Linderman.
We’ll be back with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.
Book of the Bible:
Hebrews
Subjects:
Hebrews
Guests
Text
New Revised Standard Version Bible
Copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Credits
Host and Executive Producer: Helena Martin
Production Manager: Kelly Morrissey
Creator and Managing Editor: Joel Baden
Assistant Producer: Aidan Stoddart
Music: Calvin Linderman
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Jacqueline Vayntrub and Christian Wiman discuss the difference between verse and prose in Isaiah 6:1-13. The text is appointed for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Sarah Drummond and Joel Baden discuss reluctant prophets and God’s will in Jeremiah 1:4-10. The text is appointed for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Erika Helgen and Chloe Starr discuss the church universal and love as the basis for the exercise of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a. The text is appointed for the Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary
Felicity Harley-McGowan and Bruce Gordon discuss recognizing God in the midst of community and the diversity of gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:1-11. The text is appointed for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Peter Hawkins and Eric Reymond discuss the power of God in Psalm 29. The text is appointed for the First Sunday after Epiphany, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Awet Andemicael and Adam Eitel discuss the mystery, language and lyricism in John 1:1-18. The text is appointed for the Second Sunday after Christmas, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Gregory Sterling and Harold Attridge discuss the humanity of young Jesus and the role of Mary as mother in Luke 2:41-52. The text is appointed for the First Sunday after Christmas, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Sarah Drummond and Joel Baden discuss birth, kingship and signs of God’s redemption in Isaiah 9:2-7. The text is appointed for Christmas (Proper 1), December 24, Years A, B, and C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Felicity Harley-McGowan and Bruce Gordon discuss the Magnificat and our understanding of Mary through the ages in relation to Luke 1:46b-55. The text is appointed for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Advent 4), Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Joel Baden and Sarah Drummond discuss hope, apathy, and why the context of prophecy matters in Zephaniah 3:14-20. The text is appointed for the Third Sunday of Advent (Advent 3), Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Peter Hawkins and Eric Reymond discuss disaster and hope, glory, and reversal in Baruch 5:1-9. The text is appointed for the Second Sunday of Advent (Advent 2), Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Joel Baden and Tisa Wenger discuss messianic prophecy, timelessness, and historic context in Jeremiah 33:14-16. The text is appointed for the First Sunday of Advent (Advent 1), Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Chapter, Verse, and Season gives listeners the opportunity to overhear the kinds of conversations that take place in the halls of Yale Divinity School. Each week, professors from different theological disciplines chat about biblical texts from the Revised Common Lectionary. They bring their own interests to the table and hopefully spark new insights into the scripture appointed for each Sunday.