Hebrews 11:29-12:2 and Excerpt from For Longing by John O’Donohue
August 17, 2025
By Nicole M. Lamarche
Thank you for showing up today with whatever you are bringing or holding, you are shifting things in love by just being here!
As you are moved join me in a spirit of prayer. God, thank you for the gift of being alive, for the gift of this day, this place, this people, gathered in faith and love. Help us all be open to whatever we need to take in today. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
He had been driving along the Pacific Coast for weeks, towing a large fiberglass salmon when he called me. Along with his colleague Joseph, he was working for an organization called Save the Wild Salmon, an extremely diverse coalition of northwest and national conservation organizations, that include an interesting mix of collaborators: recreational and commercial fishing associations, clean energy and whale advocates, business owners, and individuals all committed to protecting and restoring fishable populations, really for the benefit of all creation.
And so in the summer of 2007, my now husband Jeremy drove this fiberglass salmon named Fin to gatherings to educate people and speak at press events, giving out materials while people went inside the fish. And one time when it was parked, he came out to find that kids had broken into Fin to smoke inside only to celebrate the sight of Fin smoking. It was a way
to bring into the public this problem, aiming to bring attention to the plight of the nation’s fish populations. The people who stopped by to see this gigantic fish created by a small group of San Francisco artists in the 1980’s, could sign a petition and/or send a postcard to urge elected officials in the federal government to take responsibility for restoring the fish
populations, including by taking action to remove the dams.
Many would honk or wave joyfully as they passed the large fish going only as fast as Fin would allow. But not everyone was excited about Fin. Jeremy, Joseph, and Fin went out about their work anyway, finding that some would see their request as too radical. Dams are essential they would say. There’s no other way. They cannot be taken down. That’s too complicated. Too expensive. Too difficult.
You might already know that this area was once the home of the most prolific salmon landscape on planet Earth—where wild salmon and steelhead exceeding 16 million fish would return annually. But today primarily due to the construction of large dams created on the Columbia and Snake Rivers, over parts of the last century, the populations have dramatically declined. In fact, thirteen of the populations are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
From most angles, this work is basically hopeless. There’s no way to restore this to what it once was. The fact is that anyone who was and is working on this is really doing it out of a commitment to something beyond anything they could see in their lifetime. Because it’s giving time and heart and hope to something others perceive as kind of useless, unworthy of investing in, it won’t move the dial, tip the scales, change the world… why bother?
It’s one of those situations, where dare I say it, it requires a thing called: faith. But what is faith? Because of my vocation, I find that often when I meet people, when they learn what I do for the first time, they tend to make assumptions about what I believe. As if my faith is in a God that is like Santa. Or as if my faith is about being anti-science, believing that the world
was created in 7 days. But to me, in a nutshell faith is basically this: fidelity to love in all circumstances, fidelity to love through whatever comes. It’s living from a belief in our call to be love. To find a way to do good in all circumstances, grow toward love, to embody it, to be moved by it, when the odds are stacked against us, when it seems impossible, when the
naysayers are loud, when the way isn’t clear. And we have seen through the stories of our tradition, in the lives our ancestors what can happen when one or two or more people are present as love in the world, even when it appears futile.
Like these stories referred to in the letter to the Hebrews. Addressing the newly forming communities around Jesus’ teachings, the writer says, this all happened by faith, all of this throughout history happened by faith: these stories of the path when wild, unimaginable things unfolded: Remember the Red Sea when the Egyptians crossed in safety and remember the walls of Jericho coming down after 7 days and on the letter goes listing the ways they have experienced God showing up in their stories. This all happened by faith. And it means that being faithful to love, being devoted to our call to be love and do good in all circumstances.
Because you might remember in these stories that when the people do something, even when the odds are stacked against them and the Empire is strong, something changes, it’s after the action. God shows up after the people take an action, make movement, do something! After tons of effort and loud prayers and the work of Moses’ very own hand, God drives the sea back enough that the waters are divided. In the story of Jericho in the book of Joshua, they had done all of these rituals, the priests marching around with intention being loud with trumpets and rams’ horns, going in circles 7 times, making long loud blasts, go read Joshua 6:2-17, it’s a perfect example of the use of public vigils and marches. It looks like a protest march. After all of this, then the walls fall! In both situations it seemed hopeless, but some still did what they could…and God met them. In the face of something that was ridiculous, hopeless, a lost cause. They took an action.
And you know I read these stories right now and in this time of rising authoritarianism makes so much more sense. We might be waiting and waiting and waiting for a Higher Power, we might be thinking there is a right way to fight this or to do this, we might be waiting for God to part the seas, searching for the way to interrupt this rising hate, but maybe in some circumstances we need to just need to do something and God will meet us? Even if it seems like something as ridiculous as gathering to sing our hymns and tambourines, circling a building demanding that injustice be torn down. Or maybe we are thinking that there is a way to overcome this without losing anything. I don’t think that’s possible.
I do wonder if the energy that is God is magnified, amplified, somehow with our action, when we act in love toward what is not yet. What if God really does meet us when we give our time and heart and hope to something others see as useless, or ridiculous even?
As one commentator wrote of this passage in Hebrews, “The writers have introduced the idea that faith is the courage to endure…” The writers of Hebrews also wants us to understand faith in terms of the larger story of the promise that reaches all the way back in time and also reaches toward the future, toward what is not yet…”
What if there is a power that comes from our collective action? From our commitment to doing good, following the Divine Urgency rooted in what is right, letting go of what we see right now?
Like the Snake River Basin, those in tribal communities who grew up along the Klamath River were accustomed to hearing stories of the days long ago, before the white settlers arrived when the waters were packed with salmon. In the words of John Branch, among those he interviewed “stories of ancestors who could walk across the Klamath on the backs of so many
salmon. Today, everyone was more likely to get dinner from a local convenience store than from the river.”
But midday just this last spring, in the headwaters of the Klamath River not far from Crater Lake National Park a group of indigenous youth in kayaks were the first to make their way on the river in over 100 years. Because the Klamath River is running free again. 4 big, old dams were taken down. And when those dams were removed, the river was wild again, finding its old self, its old own path. The elders believe the water has a memory.. And when the river was freed, some made sure that a group of indigenous youth were the first to travel down it. They had to be trained to use kayaks because their worlds, that kind of recreation was a luxury. But they prepared. And they practiced. And they gathered in the waters to sing sacred songs before they went down through the rapids. There is renewed hope that the river can be full of life again. It can remember. And that matters to their grandkids will have this, will know this, because of them. Those who worked on this project on the Klamath River were told that it wouldn’t matter. That those dams would never come down. But they did. Because of their faith.
I want to remind you that our call right now is to be faithful to love, to be infused with courage. There is a lot in this current moment that invites us to root ourselves in faith, to do, to show up, to pray, to be somewhere out of love, knowing it might seem useless right now. But it’s not. By faith we will get there.
Communal Reflection
What do you need to act in faith, even when it feels impossible? How can we support one another in moving forward faithfully in this hard time?
Beloved of God, in all of the places where you look ridiculous doing something you believe in, bless you. In all of the areas where you are working on something that others say is impossible, bless you. In all of the parts of your life where you are acting from love toward something that is not yet, bless you. Keep going. By faith we will get there. May it be so.
Amen.