The Unshakeable Kingdom

Preached by Michael Cheuk
August 26, 2007, Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Hebrews 12:18-29

Less than two months ago, a fascinating book by science journalist Alan Weisman was released to the public. Called The World Without Us, the book asks us to envision a world without human beings. According to Weisman, if all people disappeared from Earth tomorrow, the pumps that keep underground Manhattan dry would stop and rivers would run under the streets and erode the city’s foundations. In various northern cities, corrosion would begin toppling skyscrapers within a decade, and cockroaches, a tropical species, wouldn’t last the first winter there without heated buildings. Dogs would die off rapidly as predators roam into the neighborhoods we left behind. In the American Southwest, giraffes and lions might flourish after their initial escape from the region’s game preserves. Cows would disappear from every continent, though, and wheat wouldn’t stand a chance. In 100,000 years, even the world’s carbon dioxide levels would return to pre-human levels.[1] The world without us is a very different world indeed.

As I read reviews of the book, I am reminded that we human beings live a very shaky existence. From the perspective of all recorded time, human civilization is a mere blip in the saga of history, and human lives are mere vapors in the wind. And even in our short lifetimes, we have experienced events that have shaken us to the very core of our being. December 7, 1941 is a date which will live in infamy as the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. September 11, 2001 shook our nation to its very foundations, and we are still reeling and reacting against that terrorist attack. April 16, 2007 shocked our nation and the world as 33 people were killed and 25 wounded in the massacre at Virginia Tech. During the past several months, bridges have collapsed in California and Minnesota. And this week, in the upper Midwest, the worst flooding in almost a century forced hundreds of people from their homes, and in Utah, no signs of life were found for six miners buried in a collapsed mine that also claimed the lives of three rescuers. We live a very shaky existence.

As we continue our sermon series in the book of Hebrews, we see that the writer of Hebrews also understood that we live a very shaky existence.

Marathon of Faith

Preached by Michael Cheuk
August 19, 2007, Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost
Hebrews 11:29-12:2

I’ve got a question for you this morning. How many of you do long distance running? How long a distance? Is it always enjoyable? While you’re running, do you have any thoughts about just quitting? In today’s scripture lesson, the writer invokes the image of a long distance race to illustrate the nature of faith. As you might remember, I said last Sunday that Hebrews was a letter written to encourage first-generation Christians to remain true in the faith in the face of persecution. We read in Hebrews 10:33-36 that those Christians were publicly exposed to insult and persecution, and they had their property confiscated. I believe this happened to them not just once, but again and again, and because of that, some of them were ready to quit the faith. To these Christians, the writer of Hebrews said in verse 36: “You need to persevere, so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.” Now in chapter 12, the writer of Hebrews says again: “let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Now, another word for “perseverance” is “endurance,” and here, we see an image of a long-endurance race, a marathon of faith that Christians are called to run. For followers of Jesus, trusting in Christ is not a wind sprint, a 40-yard dash, something we do for a short period of time with high intensity, and then take a long break. Trusting in Christ is more like a marathon, run at a steady pace, with endurance, for the long haul. Trusting in Christ is something we do for a whole lifetime, in good times and bad, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. That sounds good, but in our culture of “get-rich-quick” schemes, and “getting out while the getting is good” attitude, how do we run our marathon of faith with endurance? How can we avoid quitting in the middle of the race? Well, this morning, I would like to highlight three things that this text suggests to help us endure as we run our marathon of faith.

Eyes of Faith

Preached by Michael Cheuk
August 12, 2007, Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

This Sunday, I begin a series of three sermons taken from the book of Hebrews. Hebrews was a letter written to Jewish Christians who were experiencing sustained suffering because of their faith. They were ostracized by the Jews, who saw them as traitors, and they were persecuted by the Gentiles because they didn’t worship the emperor. They were publicly abused, put into prison and their property was confiscated.

It was in the midst of all this that the writer of Hebrews was encouraging these early Jesus followers to remain true to the faith. He tells them: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” I did a word study on the word “being sure of” and that word gives us a picture of faith as a sure and firm foundation.[1] We don’t see the foundation, but we are certain that it is there and we can put our faith or trust in it when we build a house or a building on top of it. It’s like the man in Jesus’ parable who built his house upon the rock and not on sand. And when the storms comes, we have hope that the house won’t collapse, but that “hope” is not a “cross-my-finger” wishful-thinking kind of hope, but a trusting confidence that the foundation will hold and the house will stand.

This understanding of faith as a firm and trusted foundation from which we can anchor everything else is very different from a modern understanding of faith.

True Wealth

Preached by Michael Cheuk
August 5, 2007, Tenth Sunday After Pentecost
Luke 12:13-21

Today’s Gospel Lesson has often been called the Parable of the Rich Fool.  The passage begins with a man who comes to Jesus to ask him to settle an inheritance squabble. Now we know that there are numerous reasons why siblings fight over their inheritance, and no matter what the reason, those kinds of fights can rip a family apart. Jesus was smart enough to not get into the fray by being an arbiter. However, he issued a word of warning to the crowd: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

To explain this statement, Jesus told this parable about a rich man fortunate enough to be the recipient of a bumper crop. Now, a bumper crop is a good thing. But he had problem. He was out of space in his barns to store the crops. So he thought to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.” Then he said, “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’”

As I hear these words, I can’t help but think that this vision of the good life is alive and well in our culture today. Compared to the rest of the world, we are all rich. According to the website globalrichlist.com, a person earning $25,000 a year is richer than 90% of the people in the world. A person making $37,000 a year is richer than 96% of the people in the world.[1] And with our money, we accumulate a lot of goods and possessions. The comedian George Carlin once said, “The essence of life is trying to find a place to put all your stuff.”[2]