Here’s a readers’ theatre setting of Hebrews 11:
1-3, 8-16, the suggested epistle reading for Proper 14, Year C. It is set for two voices.
Readers’
Theatre
(Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16)
Faith
is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen;
it
gives us assurance about things we cannot see.
Through their faith,
the people in days of old earned a good reputation.
By
faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command,
that
what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.
It was by faith that
Abraham obeyed
when God called him
to leave home and go to another land
that God would give
him as his inheritance.
He went without
knowing where he was going.
And
even when he reached the land God promised him,
he
lived there by faith—for he was like a foreigner, living in tents.
And so did Isaac and
Jacob, who inherited the same promise.
Abraham
was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations,
a
city designed and built by God.
It was by faith that
even Sarah was able to have a child,
though she was barren
and was too old.
She
believed that God would keep his promise.
And so a whole nation
came from this one man who was as good as dead—
a nation with so many
people that,
like the stars in the
sky and the sand on the seashore,
there is no way to
count them.
All
these people died still believing what God had promised them.
They
did not receive what was promised,
but
they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it.
They agreed that they
were foreigners and nomads here on earth.
Obviously
people who say such things are looking forward
to
a country they can call their own.
If they had longed
for the country they came from,
they could have gone
back.
But they were looking
for a better place, a heavenly homeland.
That
is why God is not ashamed to be called their God,
for
he has prepared a city for them.
