Sermon - Hebrews 12 "What is the Cloud?"

            For those of you that have an iphone, you may or may not know anything about the Cloud.  I honestly don’t know anything about it other than it exists.  I didn’t sign up for it, I don’t know how to put things there, but one day, on my iphone, a notice popped up that my cloud was full.  Really?  How did that happen.  I do know that pictures and my calendar seem to appear on both my ipad and my iphone without me doing anything to make it happen, so it seems the Cloud is definitely at work linking my items together.  And if my cloud is full, maybe there are things there that I don’t need.  So, what exactly is this cloud?  How does it work? 

            I decided to do a little investigating.  I mean, if the cloud is there, and I am using it, perhaps I should know a little more about it.  The icloud safely stores photos, videos, files, contacts, documents, calendars, and music, to name just a few items.  Just this last week, I had to replace my phone, and thankfully because of the Cloud’s existence, I was able to restore to the new phone all of my contacts, apps, and other items I needed.  For some reason my pictures did not restore, but perhaps that is because of the notice previously received that my Cloud was full.  I guess those pictures are just lost.

            One sight states the following:  Think of iCloud Drive as any other remote volume, external hard disk, network drive, or storage service. You can create new folders, drag and drop stuff into your iCloud Drive from your Mac or elsewhere, and you have the option to save files and data from apps into your iCloud Drive. This isn't rocket science, folks. It's a hard drive in the sky that you can access from all your devices.

            What exactly is the Cloud?  It is something out there, something that I cannot see or touch but I know it exists.  It seems to be all around me, since I can access it at just about any time.  It holds valuable information, or at least valuable information for me.  My cloud and your cloud are part of the same system, but are still somehow separate from each other. 

            What exactly is the Cloud?  On this All Saints Day Sunday, we hear a passage about being surrounded by a great Cloud of witnesses.  All of the people, lives, souls that have come before us are not gone, they are a part of a Cloud of witnesses.  Just like the icloud, they are all around us, invisible, untouchable, and yet accessible.  Present with us in particular moments of our lives when we remember them, celebrate them, miss them, grieve for them, continue learning from them.  When we pick up an item given to us by them, perhaps an image or voice, or smell returns to us.  Just a few weeks ago, I grabbed a towel out of the cabinet and when I smelled it I was instantaneously transported back to my grandmother’s house in Iowa.  Just like that, from the smell of a towel, there I was standing in her bathroom, remembering her.  The Great Cloud of Witnesses, we remember them on this All Saint’s day, we remember that just like our modern technology, their presence is here. 

            Sometimes it takes spending a little bit of time to learn about something.   Today, we spend a little bit of time learning more about the Great Cloud of Witnesses all around us.  In a sense, we can down load and store items there, through our prayers, through our memories of our loved ones, through the love that has been shared over a lifetime. 

            Just sitting here in this sanctuary, we are surrounded by the Great Cloud of Witnesses that came before us.  Through their stewardship, their love for God, their love for the community of faith, their calling to be in ministry here in this region of NJ, this church was built, cared for, and sustained throughout the generations providing us a place to gather.  If only these walls could talk, can you even begin to imagine the number of prayers said, baptisms and weddings celebrated, tears shed as funerals were given.

            The passage in Hebrews does the same thing, it names all of those faithful people that came before, and how through faith, they trusted in God and built an amazing foundation upon which both Judaism and Christianity are built.   

            Returning to the source I mentioned earlier:  Think of iCloud Drive as any other remote volume, external hard disk, network drive, or storage service. Think of the Great Cloud of Witnesses as a remote, external, network or storage service of God’s faithful people that came before us, paved the way, built a foundation of ministry for us to continue upon. 

You can create new folders, drag and drop stuff into your iCloud Drive from your Mac or elsewhere, and you have the option to save files and data from apps into your iCloud Drive.   We can create new ministries, continue faith traditions of the past, remember our story as a continuation of past, present, and future, as we pull from sources all around us.

This isn't rocket science, folks. It's a hard drive in the sky that you can access from all your devices.  This isn’t rocket science folks, it’s God’s love in the sky that we can access from all of our devices. 

            I kind of like it, this notion of the Cloud.  If apple can create it, why surely can’t God?  Why can’t we be surrounded by our loved ones, the faithful, the courageous?  If apple can create it, why can’t we believe that God already has?  When we stop and think about how our own lives have been so truly blessed by those that have come before us in the faith, and how we too, are blessing the lives coming along beside us and behind us, blessings, blessings all around us, through us, to us and from us. 

            One pastor shares this:  One can't help but be inspired by this text.  It is a clarion call for the church to continue to fight the good fight of the gospel.  The winning witness of our heroes stirs us to persevere.  Their stories remind us that we are not the first ones to run the race of faith.  Faithful saints before us have run the same race, fought fatigue, battled discouragement and won!  This text reaches out like a postcard from heaven and dares us to run the race to win.

They say, nothing can really ever be deleted from the internet.  Once it’s out there, it is out there.  Well, the same can be said about people’s lives that have lived the race of faith.  We can go outside and walk through the cemetery, and some of those gravestones can no longer be read.  But the lives lived are still a postcard from heaven, still a message of God’s love, still people that lived and shared their faith and their love that traveled from one generation to the next.  The great web of being that connects to another and to another, the ripple effect that generates outwards and never stops.  Can you even begin to imagine how your life just might influence someone else 200 years from now?  It will, it will be taken by this generation and passed along to the next, the name may be forgotten, washed away by time, but the examples of faith, the commitment to the church, living out faithful stewardship to God, will all become a part of the Great Cloud and will be present to the future as God’s presence of love, hope, determination, and perseverance.