We’ve heard these first three verses of Hebrews 12 sung, and it makes me wish we could read all of the previous chapter. But I will incorporate at least some of that in what I say here.

“Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses…”

Scripture doesn’t actually give us too many pictures of heaven. But one that is there several times is the image of the banquet, a table full of good food and drink. I imagine the table, or rather many tables, long and wide tables with many chairs, so many in fact that you can’t see where it stops. Each place is set and ready. If we have any humility at all we ought to be overwhelmed with gratitude and shock to find ourselves there. I suspect we will be surprised by who else we find there. And then again, it seems that not all will be shocking.

“Tell me the stories,” says the young girl to her father. “Tell me the stories. Please.”

“But you’ve heard them all before,” her father protested.

“No, no tell me the stories…about the people at the tables in heaven.”

The dad ponders: Who would I tell her of? Our family is large and old, as big as the skies, as old as eternity.

“Okay. The figures around the table seem hazy, but I think I can at least hear a voice.”

The girl settles in for the stories. Her dad says:

It sounds familiar. Where have I heard that voice? It’s Noah, is it? Ah, Noah.

Noah, Noah. His voice calls to us:

“Listen to God. When you hear his voice, nothing else matters. When people around you laugh at you, people who were once on your side, once your friends…stick with it. Keep following. All that matters is that you follow.”

Only Noah could tell us that, only Noah who, come hell or high water (or both) measured, hammered, nailed, caulked, painted, endured, seeing nothing but hearing everything. Only Noah can say,

“Stick with it. Keep following God.”

And a bit further down, another voice calls. Abram, Abraham, patron saint of all travelers, especially those who don’t know where they are going.

“Believe the promise,” he calls out. “Trust God.”

It seems that he would be qualified to shout to us. Trusting God enough to leave the safe and familiar, trusting enough to go to a strange land, trusting that in old age his and Sarah’s descendants might be a great nation, trusting enough to offer his son to the God who “so loved the world he would give HIS only son.” Yes, Abraham might well tell us to

“Trust God.”

The shrill, high voice from across the table must surely be Jacob, the conniver, the deceiver. He sits at the patriarchs table with a frosty mug of golden ale, his hip still aching, shaking his head and muttering.

“Don’t let bad starts discourage you. Changed my name, he did. Changed my whole person. Changed me. He’ll have his way with you, one way or another.”

Jacob, child of the promise, says,

“Doesn’t matter who you’ve been. He can change you.”

“Hah!” Moses bellows like he was still in the wilderness, just about deaf from hearing God’s thunderous voice on the mountain.

“Here’s what I say…if I only learned one thing, it is that with THIS God…you don’t need to be afraid, because he won’t leave you. If he told me once, he told me a thousand times. At Pharaoh’s fancy palace, heading out across the sea so eerie, pulled back on two sides…at the mountain, in the Tent of Meeting, carrying the tablets, having people curse me and abandon me…every time God said, “Don’t be afraid,” and the conclusion I finally came to is this: You don’t have to be afraid, because HE will never abandon you.”

Finally a feminine voice penetrates the rumble. It’s Rahab, much softer than in her wilder days in Jericho, still wearing the scarlet cord around her neck.

“There’s a lot I don’t know still,” she says, “but I do know this: I can trust Him with my life.”

“The table goes on for a long, long ways,” the dad says, “but this story can’t…you’ve got to get to bed.”

“Oh, just a few more,” the girl pleads.

“Well,” says Dad, “I guess I could mention Martin Luther King who dreamed of a day when all of God’s children would recognize each other. Or about Desmond Tutu from South Africa, who made a whole world consider a response to violence that was not vengeance. Now, off you go.”

“No, no, a couple more,” she says. “The people we know!”

Dad hesitates: Okay. No stories, just one-liners. If I look at the banquet tables towards the rear, here’s who I think I might spot:

There’s Greg, my old Young Life leader who wore colored socks with his tennis shoes and was going bald and all in all was pretty nerdy but taught me how to pray on the spot,

“Lord, what should we do?”

And there’s my old Greek professor, Dr. Story, shooting baskets at the gym with me when he was 80 years old, writing me letters when he was 85 fretting over whether he’s making a difference for the Kingdom or not and always, always encouraging me to

“Read God’s Word.”

My mom is at the same table, pretty stoic and not saying too much but when she does it’s along these lines:

“Just do what’s right.”

And Pastor Moses from China is there too, carrying a Bible in case he finds someone who needs one, ignoring the fact he spent 20 years in jail for just such behavior, was beaten and handcuffed time after time. “Pastor Moses,” I asked him, “what kept you going through all of that?”

“Jesus’ words in Matthew 10,” he said, “Those who find their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

• Stick with it.
• Keep following.
• Trust God.
• He’ll change you.
• He’ll never leave you.
• You can trust him with your life.

Lord, what should we do?

• Read the Bible.
• Do what’s right.
• Hold your life lightly.

You can add to this list. In fact, you just did in the prayer time.

All these who set out for a journey of one kind or another, following God at great personal cost. Not knowing exactly where they were going. Desiring a better country, a heavenly one. Yet as great as they are, and we could name so many more until they really were a whole cloud of witnesses to God’s goodness and still …they would not receive the promise, would not appear at the Table. They would be weighed down by sin and weight, unable to run or even turn themselves in God’s direction, paralyzed, separated except for one thing, the very thing they point us to:

Jesus. The pioneer and perfecter of our faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

The cloud of witnesses…point to Jesus, sitting at the head table. If Jesus hadn’t gone ahead, if Jesus had avoided the cross, if Jesus hadn’t gone to prepare a place, then the stories fall silent.

But they are not silent. Jesus endured the cross, and conquered death and in doing so wrote a story big enough to encompass all these other stories.

Before he sat down at the right hand of God, he invited others to sit down at his table, that he might wash away sin and fill us with the bread of life. He invites you and me to the same meal. On earth, and as it is in heaven.