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The reading of the morning is taken from portions of the 11th and 12th chapters of the letter to the Hebrews. Beginning at chapter 11, verse 1, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

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For by it the men of old received divine approval." Again picking up the narrative at the 32nd verse, "And what more shall 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, enforced justice, received promises,

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stopped 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, some were tortured, refusing to accept release that they might rise again to a better life.

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Others suffered mocking and scourging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with a sword, they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering over deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth.

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And all these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay

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aside every weight and sin which 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 joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

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And may the same Spirit whose grace inspired these words illumine our hearts to their understanding. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Early this last summer, thirty-six members of the Church and myself went down to see the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, which was part of the excellent Civic Light Opera series. We were seen in that rock opera, depicting Palm Sunday, on which Jesus is passing by

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and those in the crowd sing a song that goes like this, "Christ, you know I love you. Did you see I waved? I believe in you and God, so tell me that I'm saved." Jesus makes no response to the song.

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And it's not hard to understand why. Our Lord is not looking for those who just stand by and wait. He's not looking for curbstone Christianity. He is looking instead for those who will get up and become a part of the parade, who will

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stride shoulder to shoulder with him into the vicissitudes of life. Not long ago, the trustees of the American Bible Society were trying to decide how to bind a new issue of the Bible they were putting out. It was a question of whether it should be a paper binding or a cloth binding or perhaps

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one made of Persian Morocco leather. But one of the trustees stopped the discussion when he got up and said, "Let's bind this version of the Bible in shoe leather. Let's see that it's taken right into the highways and the byways where we are walking and living."

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That is what is to be happening to the Christian faith. It is to be paraded throughout the course of our days. We're not to be like that TV comic who was asked not long ago what his religious persuasion was and he replied, "I'm a Jehovah's Bystander.

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I don't want to get involved." Our own Christianity, you see, is of very little value. We're to be out there with those who are marching. And what a parade the Christian faith is.

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Here in the 11th and 12th chapters of Hebrews, a roll call of some of those who march in that parade is presented. Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Gideon, Barak, Rahab, David, the prophets.

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It's a magnificent list and it concludes with the words, "of whom the world was not worthy." Now who were these people? They were people who decided to enlist in the armies of God to become part of the march. Great things happen, you see, when people move from the curbstone to the center of the

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thoroughfare. A few years ago, Dr. William Gruber, a noted psychiatrist, was addressing an international psychiatry convention in Paris. Now Dr. Gruber's special area of study was the psychology of those individuals who protested

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our American involvement in the Vietnam War. And as he studied these people who marched and demonstrated, and you know the other things that they did, he discovered that they were not all of the same background, they were not all of the same age, they were not all of the same political parties, they were not

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all of the same economic and political philosophies. As a matter of fact, they differed in all of these things and there was only one sense in which they were the same. They were people who took a look at the situation and who decided to become involved.

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Now you may agree or disagree with the position that they took, but you cannot deny the fact that they had a tremendous impact simply because they moved from the curbstone to the thoroughfare. That's what happens when you join the parade. Rollo May, one of our great American psychologists, has pointed out that we all like something

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on which to stand. The adolescent, for example, rejoices in a steady boyfriend or girlfriend because that is a permanent relationship. Many people today, he points out, are getting locked into foolishness like astrology because

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they see in it some kind of eternal cosmic connection. Bruce was popular in American television because many people were led by it to begin to get in touch with their own families, their own ancestral chains, and there was a certain fundamental dependableness about that.

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Well, all of these dependabilities are exceeded by the parade of the Christian faith. That parade is now 4,000 years long and includes names like those cataloged here in Hebrews 11 and 12. It is a noble company.

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I remember once coming down in the elevator in the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California, and on the elevator before me was Don Sutton, the famous pitcher for the Los Angeles baseball team. Now, I'd never met Don Sutton, but I knew that he was a Christian.

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So I introduced myself and then I said, "We are brothers in Christ." And he looked at me and immediately responded with these words, "His is the only team to be on." And my heart jumped up at that.

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This is the fellowship of those of whom the world itself is not worthy. We are a part of a parade, and what a team to be on. Now, notice also that all of those who are part of this parade have their eyes fixed upon Jesus.

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It says that in the second verse of the twelfth chapter. That is, we are all as part of the parade to be looking at him and seeking to make him known in the world. Some years ago, a team of Arctic explorers were trying to move toward the North Pole,

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and they noticed that no matter how hard they worked during the day, they seemed not to be getting anywhere. And then they discovered that in fact, they were marching ahead on a tremendously large ice flow, which was caught in a polar current and was being carried away from the North

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Pole. So they would walk all day long, but they were walking on a piece of land which was moving the wrong direction. In order to get to their goal, they had to get on solid ground.

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Well, when you become a part of the parade, you move onto the solid ground of the eternal purposes of God. God's intention is that the whole world know about his son. That's the reason those in the parade have their eyes fixed upon him and rejoice in telling

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about him. I like to run through my mind from time to time and think of those who are part of this parade in our day, who have their eyes fixed upon Jesus and in different ways are speaking of him.

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I think of a pediatrician in Southern California who had a marvelous practice, but who laid it aside in order to take up relief work amongst children in the southern half of California, carrying out ministering services to those children in the name of Jesus Christ. I think of a man who was a former member of the United States Senate, who has laid aside

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his political aspirations and gives himself now to dealing with national and international business and political leaders, seeking to bring them to faith. Not long ago, he was conducting a prayer group for a fellowship in the United Nations, and someone had brought a member of a communist delegation who really didn't want to come,

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but came for diplomatic purposes. And wonder of wonders, in the course of the meeting, the man was converted, so that he said at the end of a prayer circle, "I've just met Jesus. Tell me more and more about him."

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I think of a young man who's a teacher in a school district which adjoins our Pittsburgh school district. This young man hasn't been out of college very long, but he's doing an excellent job as a teacher, so good in fact that the system in which he is a part is laying off some teachers

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in sufficient number of students, but they're keeping him because of his excellence. A fine teacher, but also he's organized a Christian athletes group amongst the students, and he is also involved in student Bible study groups and a faculty Bible study group. I think of people who are part of our fellowship here.

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A young executive with the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, who lays aside his job to take up the leadership of our Christian camp. I think of a fine doctor who worships with us here regularly, who knew about our helping to rebuild a hospital in the Cameroon, and so took his vacation this last summer to go

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to the Cameroon to heal in the name of Jesus. I think of a computer operator for the Bell Telephone Company, who gives up every Sunday afternoon and sometimes Saturday afternoons to come here to put the names of our visitors on our computer so that we can get in touch with these people and seek to introduce them

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to our fellowship and to Jesus Christ. I think of twin sisters in our congregation, who across years and years of service have labored on behalf of the women of Pittsburgh, introducing them to Jesus Christ. And I could tell of others, and so could you.

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These are people who have come to know Jesus Christ, have been forgiven by him, and who are anxious to bring others into that thrill. It's important that you understand what forgiveness means to these people. Think of it like this.

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Suppose a man was unfaithful to his wife, and then later he confessed his sin. And suppose further that she forgave him. And suppose more so that each day she reminded him that she forgave him, met him at the door every night, "Dear, I forgive you," fixed his favorite foods for dinner, always had

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the television set tuned to his programs, waited for him at the foot of the steps with his pipe in one hand and his slippers in the other. Do you think the man would feel forgiven? Not at all.

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Such abnormal circumstances would remind him every day of what he had done. Now, when this man would really begin to be forgiven is when there wouldn't be anything special like that. Sometimes his show, sometimes hers.

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When he'd really think things were back to normal was when she said to him, "Hey, buster, it's your turn to dry." That would be the restoration of relationships. Forgiveness, you see, is not to make guilty people feel better about the past.

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Forgiveness is to give the guilty person a future, to open up to them all the possibilities of beginning again. That's the reason it says here in Hebrews that these people lay aside every weight and have their eyes fixed upon Jesus, moving into the future with him, compassed about by a

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crowd of witnesses. They are part of the plan of God. They're not sitting on a curved stone saying, "Hey, Jesus, did you see me wave?" They're in the march.

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They're aware of the fact that they have a part to play in the plan of God. That's one of the most interesting aspects of this passage. Listen to what the writer of Hebrews says. These all gained approval of God by their faith, though none of them received what God

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had promised. For God had resolved upon something still better for us, that they might not reach the fulfillment of their hopes except with us. Now, what's being said here?

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Simply this, the parade is not over. The parade is not at an end. It is unfinished. These people who are mentioned in Scripture, there was a time when their banners were snapping

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in the wind, but the parade still goes on. The grave that they got was an eye, incomplete. This is not because their work was inadequate, and it's not because God is dillying and dallying with history.

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It's so that we could be a part of the parade. God has extended it that we might be a part of the fellowship. We can be in on the finale. We can play our drum, or blow our bugle, or fly our flag, or twirl our baton, or blow

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our whistle, or put on our clown suit, or blow up our balloons. We can be a part of the ongoing parade. The sad thing is most people don't recognize what their part in the parade is. You ask a lot of people what their gift from God is, and, well, it would be easier to nail

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jello to a tree trunk than to get an answer from them. There was a father who wrote to his son in college, played on the college football team, and he asked his son how the last game had come out, and his boy replied, "Dad, we got beat.

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They kept going through a hole in our line, and I was the hole." Well, a lot of people feel like that when it comes to playing their part in the parade. They don't know what they are to be doing. In Romans chapter 12 it says that we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice,

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holy and acceptable unto God, and when we do this we will know His good and acceptable and perfect will for us. And these people don't yet know what the good and acceptable and perfect will for God is for them.

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It's different for all of us, of course. Just as a man and woman who have four children find those children are quite different from one another, one with one set of gifts and another with another set of gifts, so in the family of God we all have different gifts and different talents.

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But the Scriptures teach quite plainly in 1 Corinthians 12 that we all do have some gifts. There are some things we can contribute to the kingdom effort, and it's a sad thing to be ignorant of what you have to offer.

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One of the things that's sad about it is that it creates so much guilt. There are a lot of people, you know, who are quite generous in their stewardship. They give of their treasure to the work of the church. But they realize that they're also called to get up off that curbstone and start marching,

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and they don't know how to march, and they feel an unrest about that, an inner stress about that, a spiritual inadequacy because of that. I know people who don't like to read Christian biographies because every time they read the biography of some great Christian they feel so altogether inadequate within their own

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lives. They feel as if they're falling so far short. How then do you discover what your gifts are and what your talents are? Well the first thing that you do is to decide that you're going to get up off the curb and

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you pray for God's guidance. The second thing you do is to begin to explore. You read what the Bible has to say about gifts. You see what ministries your church has to offer in which you might become involved.

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You begin to read books on Christian discipleship. And you talk with other Christians. You see, other people oft times will know more about your gifts than you do. There's a modesty in you which leads you to back off, but they see the shining talents

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which are yours and in open conversation will share the information with you. And then when you've gathered this you begin to experiment. You begin to try out your acts of service. You begin to analyze what kind of service makes you feel good.

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That's an important part of this, you know, to feel good about it. God doesn't call us to do things that don't lead us to feel good. He's a loving Father. He wants us to get a great happiness and joy out of our service of Him.

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And so you begin to try out areas of service, experiment with them to find that one that gives you that eureka, I have found it, feeling this is the place that I know that I can do the job that needs to be done. And when you've experienced that, and believe me you inevitably and invariably will if you

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honestly are looking, then you confirm that with other Christians. Am I right in reading this in the way I'm reading it? Am I really doing this as well as I think I'm doing it? And you get that confirmation and then there is a new dimension to your stewardship and

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service that cannot be measured in any other way. My friends, the fastest growing churches in America are churches in which the people have discovered their gifts and are diligently at work in advancing them. You know, we have a phrase which we think is rather original in our time, "to do your

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own thing." That's really not an original phrase at all. It was first written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1841 in his essay entitled "Self-Reliance." He writes, "Do your own thing and I shall know you."

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And what he's saying, you see, is this, that as we do our own thing, our real identity, our giftedness is revealed. And in this we find our wholeness and our joy. So there's just one other thing that I should say to you this morning, and that is this,

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when you're thinking about the parade, recognize that parading does take perseverance. And this is spelled out in the 11th chapter of Hebrew. Notice the verbs that are used to describe what happens to the people in the parade. There are victory moments, but there are also words like these, tortured, mocked, whipped,

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chained, jailed, stoned, sawn in half, killed, pursued, mistreated. This is what happens to the company of whom the world is not worthy. You see, when you get into the parade, you're no longer escaping life, which is what curb stone Christianity is.

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You are plunging into the very midst of it. You're not just waving. Now you're on the march. This is the only way, of course, that the world is going to be saved.

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It will not be saved by learning, and it will not be saved by marching armies, and it will not be saved by all the preachers preaching, and it will not be saved by psychology, no matter how subtle or sophisticated it might be. The world will only be saved by Christians doing the deeds of Christians.

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The Holy Spirit might, in great grace, use the words that I am uttering this morning to touch your heart. I hope and pray that he does. But if he does, and you do not act upon the words, then the words have been utterly wasted

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and are of no effect. It is the deed, you see, that makes the difference. It was when Vincent de Paul sold himself into slavery in order that he might win slaves to Christ that something happened.

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It was when Father Damien worked with lepers until he became a leper that his ministry took fire. It was when Don McClure not only offered his life, but all of his service and his death to Christ in Ethiopia.

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It was when Chester Bitterman went off to Columbia and said, "I have already died to myself. If I die for Christ in serving there, then so be it." And it was.

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It's this kind of living that makes the difference. You know, Einstein said just shortly before the beginning of the Second World War, when the Jews were being persecuted in Germany and only the church was seeking to help the Jews, Einstein said, "I can resist the church's words, but I cannot resist its courageous

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love." When someone stands up for Christ in an office where Christ is regularly dishonored, when someone goes into an unemployment office and helps those without employment to find employment in the name of Jesus, when someone visits the dying or the sick and there offers to

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them tender, caring service that helps them in their difficult hours, when someone comes here and ministers to the street people that so often crowd this church and do what they do simply out of the love of Jesus and the love of others, these people are doing what Paul says.

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They are completing the sufferings of Christ. These are the soldiers of the cross. And in the end, it is only what is done in the pursuit of Christ and his cross that will last.

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Our money will not last. Our academic accomplishments and degrees will pass away. All of our social and business accomplishments, significant and worthwhile and important as they are, in the end will disappear.

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Only what we do in the name and for the sake of Jesus will endure forever. So we must dedicate ourselves, discover ourselves, develop ourselves and discipline ourselves to be a part of the parade. Whenever I go to Europe, I always visit Switzerland.

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Whenever I go to Switzerland, I always visit Zermatt, because there is the great Matterhorn, one of the most impressive peaks in all the world. At the foot of the Matterhorn is a small cemetery in which are buried only those who have lost their lives in trying to climb that great mountain.

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The tombstones are fascinating to read. One is before my mind this morning. Three young men from Oxford University who died on the Matterhorn in 1934. Their parents had them buried together, and above their common grave a stone, and on that

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stone these words, "They scorned the lesser peak." In the name of Jesus, I call you to that today. To scorn the lesser peak, to give yourself to those Matterhorns of the spirit, to that parade of the faithful, which in the end is the world's only hope.

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Let us pray. O God, our Father, as we offer ourselves to thee this day, grant to us grace sufficient to seek out our gifts, and courage sufficient to begin the use of them, and then joy overwhelming to know that we are part of the parade, and that we can help to make a difference in this

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world. And if in thy providence there are those who will hear these words, who know nothing of the Savior, lead us to such ones, and grant that our witness might be so pure and clear and consistent that they will see, and believe, and be saved.

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We pray our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. [MUSIC PLAYING] [Music]

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