I. Introductiona. I started running at the end of February. It’s not something I have ever done before nor something I ever envisioned myself doing. But there I was, on the last Friday morning in February, walking in the predawn hours and throwing in an occasional run. The next day I signed up for my first 5K. Over the next few weeks I continued to work on building up my running time and decreasing my walking time. I participated in that first race and ran more of it than I would have dreamed possible. On my birthday, while we were away at the church retreat, I got up and took my first 30-minute non-stop run. Last weekend, I participated in my second 5K and this one I ran the whole way through a very hilly course in Alabaster. I’m signed up for another one in May and I hope to try a 10K by the end of the year.
b. All this to say, after Kittye asked me if I would speak to you today, it took me about five seconds to know what scripture I would speak to you about because my mind has been so focused on this new endeavor of mine. The scripture Cathy just read from Hebrews uses running a race as an analogy for living our time out here on earth. This is an analogy that I can now relate to better than I could a year ago when I first became familiar with this scripture as it was used in a sermon series presented at a church a coworker of mine attends in Birmingham.
II. Building Endurance
a. In Hebrews 12, the author tells the reader to run with perseverance, to throw off all hindrances and run!
b. When I started running, there were all sorts of hindrances. First of all, I had never run before. “Isn’t running bad for you?” I thought. Can’t you easily get hurt? Second, when was I going to run? I have so much on my plate already. When was I going to find time for something like running? I quickly figured out that the only time I would be able to run was at 5 in the morning. I thought, “Well, I can’t run in the dark! I’ll have to wait until it’s lighter in the morning.” That, I eventually realized, was just another excuse. It’s never light at 5 a.m.! What would I wear? What kind of shoes would I need? Finally, I just decided that no excuse or even the entire gaggle of excuses that I had come up with was enough to keep me from giving it a try…just once. Just one morning.
c. That is what we are to do in our spiritual race. We have to just decide that in spite of all the excuses we have for not living the right sort of life, the sort of life Jesus would want us to, we just have to do it. Just do it, as the Nike ad says. If we are spending time with people who will look down on us if we behave too much like a Christian, well, we just have to get away from those people. That may hurt. Very much. But it is something we may have to do. If we find ourselves in circumstances over and over again that make it hard for us to resist temptation and sin, we have to find the way to rearrange our lives to stay out of those circumstances. We have to decide, daily, that we are going to participate in the race set out before us as Christians. Sometimes we have to do this in spite of ourselves. Sometimes we have to decide to run forward when we feel like the day before was such a lost cause that there is no point in starting out again today because surely we will fail again. We have to KNOW that we are equipped for the race even if our past seems to argue the opposite.
d. So, there I was. I was going to start running. That first morning I went out and I ran some. OK, I ran very little. I just didn’t have the endurance to run more than about a minute without having to slow down to walk for five minutes. It would have been so easy to just quit at that point. But, I didn’t. I had read books about how your body would adapt and you could become a runner. I knew that I had to see what I could do. I learned a lot about myself, and I am still learning.
e. This process of building endurance is no different in our spiritual race. I doubt any of us just started out of the gate as a spiritual warrior. Even Peter had a lot of sputtering starts in his race. He was bold enough to step out on the water to walk to Jesus, but when the winds came up, he sank. He claimed he would die for Jesus, but then denied him three times. Nonetheless, this man later died for his beliefs on a cross like His savior. That’s how it is with all of us. I talked earlier about how running the faith race may require us to change our relationships and our surroundings. This is not an easy thing and it is not something that you can accomplish overnight. When you do decide to make changes like these, it’s easy to backslide into old behaviors…especially at first. But eventually, with God’s help, we will find a way to run past our demons. Slowly, these things that were such struggles at first to overcome will seem so trivial you might end up wondering how it was ever a hurdle you couldn’t sail over. Don’t worry. There are plenty more hurdles as we continue along the course.
III. Importance of Racing
a. Running can be a very solitary sport. It is certainly not a team effort. 95% of the time, I am running all alone. Remember I run so early in the morning, I not only am running alone…no one is even out to see me. Well, except for the newspaper guy. If you ever see me with newsprint on the side of my face you will know what happened that morning on my run. As a working mom, let me tell you I really enjoy this time to myself. However, it is important to actually participate in races. Races keep runners honest, it keeps us from being self-delusional. Racing reminds you that no matter how far you have come in your own personal training, no matter how many personal records you have set during your solo runs, you still are part of a bigger world of people who run. And many of them run better and faster than you do.
b. Many, many days I think I could be a perfect Christian if I could just be by myself. From the time I get up in the morning to the time I close my eyes at night, people and situations challenge me. As I was writing this very sermon, my children were fighting with each other and I was extremely tempted to behave in a way that was completely contradictory to everything I am talking about today. Do you want to know what one of the most challenging times of the week is for our family? Sunday mornings. It is rare that we get out of the house, on time, without someone yelling or screaming or crying. It’s really bad when Steve cries. But, anyway…that’s the way it is. We have to live our lives with other people. Coworkers, family, friends, people who are not our friends. It keeps us honest. It keeps us from being self-delusional. It reminds us that we need every bit of the grace that God has extended to us because we certainly aren’t going to be setting any personal records worth bragging about on most days of our lives.
IV. Types of Racers
a. I have a running hero. His name is John Bingham and he is an author and a columnist for Runner’s World magazine. At the age of 43, Bingham transformed himself from someone leading a life of sedentary confinement, as he called it, to the life of an avid runner and marathoner. But that is not what makes him my hero. The thing that makes him a hero to me is that he has such a lighthearted look at running, and believe me, running is not generally taken that way. He calls himself a Penguin. A Penguin because penguins waddle and that is how he says his running is best described. He is slow. He is a back of the pack runner. And, with this sort of honesty and humor, he encourages his readers to get out there and do the same. In his book The Courage to Start, he describes the four categories of runners that you will see at a race and how to spot each one of them. I have run in a grand total of two races and I can already see how on the money these descriptions are.
i. First there are the really fast runners-These are the national or even international caliber runners who have a chance at winning any race they enter. The really fast runners don’t talk to anyone before a race. Racing is all business to the really fast runners.
ii. Then there are the pretty fast runners-These are the local runners who on a good day might have a chance at an overall win. The pretty fast runners know the names of all the really fast runners and annoy them by trying to talk to them before the race. The pretty fast runners are never actually competing in the race in which they are running. They are always just training for the next race.
iii. Next are the kind of fast runners-These are the runners who have a chance at placing in their age group. They are easy to spot because they are either 1) injured right now, 2) just coming back from an injury or 3) are worried about reinjuring themselves.
iv. Then there are the runners like me: the back of the pack runners- These are the runners that might just, on a good day, not be trying desperately to stay in front of the police car that is bringing up the rear of the race. These are the runners who are worried about important things like, “will I be able to finish” and “will there be any post-race food left by the time I finish”.
b. When I read this section of Bingham’s book, I thought about how these descriptions can be pretty apt descriptions of Christians running the faith race.
i. In the scripture today, the author of Hebrews tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Jesus is THE really fast runner. The race was all business for Him and how He ran the race is the example for all of us to use in how we run our races. He kept His eye on the end reward and wasn’t hindered by anything that came along. Jesus had a job to do when He was on this earth and every step He took was one toward accomplishing His Father’s mission for Him.
ii. The pretty fast runners, according to Bingham, remember, were always trying to talk to the really fast runners. In the Christian race, to me this means these runners are always trying to communicate with Jesus. These are the superstars of our faith. These are the Christians who are always trying to talk to the really fast runner, Jesus. They are prayer warriors. They want to be like Jesus. These are people like Peter, Paul, and Mary (and I’m talking about the folk group). These are people like Martin Luther and Charles Wesley. People like Mother Teresa.
iii. The kind of fast runners are people like Ashley Smith, the woman who talked the Atlanta Courthouse shooter, Brian Nichols, into surrendering. Ashley, whose witnessing to the man who was holding her hostage, is now known around the United States for her Christian behavior on that very frightening day. But she has not always been a model for Christian behavior. Early in her life, she had been arrested for shoplifting, drunken driving, speeding and battery. She had watched her husband, the father of her daughter, die after being stabbed. She was, on that day, recovering from injuries she had suffered during her race in life. She was in the process of turning her life around, getting back on track. And, she ran a great race on that day and set an example for many to look to. She demonstrates that no matter how imperfect our past may be, no matter how many mistakes we may have made, we can still be a winner. We can still run the rest of the race with our eye on Jesus and finish in a way that would make him proud.
iv. The back of the pack runners are definitely “my people” when it comes to real life running. In my last race, I came in last in my age group. Only 5 people finished behind me and I know that at least one of those didn’t run one step in the entire race as she was walking the course. I was passed on the 5K course by a man that I saw turn around at the ½ mile mark with his children to complete the one mile fun run with them. He ran a 1-mile run and a 5K before I finished the 5K. Oh yes. I am definitely a Penguin in the running world and I think that is what I am in the spiritual race as well. Those of us in the back of the pack know where we need to have our eyes fixed, but we sometimes get distracted by more immediate earthly concerns. We run an imperfect race, a plodding race, a clearly unspectacular race, but we are at least in the race. John Bingham has a catch phrase, “The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.” (which is where his book title comes from). As back of the pack runners in the faith race, we have proven we have the courage to start the race, now we just have to continue on to the finish. We have to hope we have days where we are one of the kind of fast runners like Ashley Smith, unafraid to try when we have been hurt before and know that we might very well get hurt again. We have to dream that we can be like the pretty fast runners and set an example for others to follow as we live a life in relationship with Jesus. But most importantly, we have to keep our eyes on Jesus and try to run the race like He would.
