Sermon: UMW Sunday April 2005

I. Introduction
a. 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.

Sermon: UMW Sunday April 2004

I. (Thank you to UMW)
A. Good morning. Before I begin, I want to say what an honor it is to speak to all of you today.
1. First, I am just honored to have this opportunity to talk to this church, which I love with all my heart. I hope I will say something that is of value to at least one of you here today and, in some small way, start to repay you for all you have done for me in my years of membership here.
2. Second, I am honored to be here representing United Methodist Women. I can’t say enough about how wonderful it is to be part of UMW. I love the fellowship I share with so many different women who I wouldn’t know as I do without UMW. I hope all of the women who are here today who are not a part of one of our Circles will consider visiting them and finding a home in one of them. It is well worth your time.
II. (Reflection on Easter)
A. When Kittye asked me if I would consider speaking to you today, I was very excited about the chance…especially since it is still the Easter season.
B. See, this Easter was very special for me.
1. The last year has been a real spiritual journey for me. Easter was the culmination of a year of reflection and rebirth in faith. It meant more to me than any Easter I can remember. I am so thankful to Bee, who helped me find this new life in Christ by sharing a wonderful Bible study with our Sunday School class, and to others in the church that have helped me grow in this new life, my mother-in-law, my husband, our ministers, the Faith Circle, and the FAITH Sunday School Class.
III. (Thoughts on the Book of Hebrews/Anthem)
A. The message I chose to bring to you today was inspired by the anthem the UMW choir just sang.
1. The anthem was about the final Atonement Day that was Good Friday. The sacrifice of the ultimate Passover Lamb. The glory and wonder of having our sins washed away by our Lord.
B. Under Mosaic law,
1. once a year, there was an Atonement Day. This was a day where sacrifices were made by the priests to redeem the people for all of their sins since the last Atonement Day.
2. But, please note that this had to occur every single year. No one sacrifice was able to take away all sin for all time.
3. An even more important annual event was Passover.
a) During Passover, an unblemished lamb was offered as part of a ritual of remembrance of the first Passover…when God’s wrath came upon the Egyptians in the form of a plague which took the lives of all firstborn men and animals. The Jewish people who obeyed God’s commands for that first Passover were spared, and subsequently freed from slavery. The event was remembered each subsequent year in a series of ceremonies that grew in length and meaning as time went by.
b) This very Jewish feast of Passover was the one that Jesus was celebrating with his disciples in what was the Lord’s Supper. Today we celebrate the sacrifice of Jesus as that final Passover Lamb every time we break bread and drink the wine of Holy Communion.
C. The author of the book of Hebrews was trying to demonstrate to the Jews of his day just that fact…that Jesus was the final Passover Lamb and not just the new administrator of Jewish law, some sort of successor to Moses (HALLEY’S). The author goes into great detail describing how Jesus is superior to all of the Old Testament prophets and leaders, sacrifices and rituals.
1. How Christ was the perfect sacrifice. He was the pure, unblemished Passover Lamb who took all of the sin of the world on His shoulders, suffered and died, and conquered sin for all time.
2. After His sacrifice, there is no need for any other. It is finished. In fact, Christ said so himself from the cross. “It is finished.” It is paid for. Forever.
IV. Now, I know that we all know that sacrifices are not necessary anymore. But, surely that is not the end of the story. We know we can’t earn the gift that God granted us through the sacrifice of His son, but we know we need to do something as believers to at least try to earn it.
A. (Repent and sin no more)
1. Even in the Old Testament days, merely sacrificing animals and possessions was not enough to receive God’s forgiveness.
a) Repentance was a necessary companion to sacrifice.
b) For example, Leviticus, after a lengthy list of sins that it was possible for the people to be guilty of, states “When anyone is guilty in any of these ways, he must confess in what way he has sinned AND, as a penalty for the sin, he must bring to the Lord a female lamb…..” so on and so forth. (Lev 5:5-6a)
c) There is no reason to believe that this requirement to repent of our sins went away when Jesus died for us.
d) We need to repent and not just in generalities. We shouldn’t just ask God to forgive our sins as a blanket request. We need to be very specific about what we have done that we desire forgiveness for.
e) Why? If you can’t be specific about where you have sinned, you run the risk of not being aware of it! If you don’t know what sins you have committed in order to ask specifically for their forgiveness, you need to pray for your eyes to be opened to them.
f) It is also necessary to be specific about your sins because, in this way, you are creating an open and honest relationship with God. If you are too ashamed of what you did to confide in God, why should He forgive you? He wants us to be honest with Him and in this honesty is the blessing of a wonderful relationship with our Lord.
V. Let’s get back to our scripture reading today. The author of Hebrews offers suggestions to his readers as to what it is they should be doing since the old ways had been made obsolete through Jesus’ death. These are all things we, too, should heed today. First, he says,
A. “Let us draw near to God”. In what ways can we do that?
1. (Prayer)
a) Think about this: When you truly love someone, how does this manifest itself in your life? Think about when you first met the person that you ended up marrying. Or when you first met someone who became a very good friend. What did you do? You spent enormous amounts of time with them! How else to you form relationships with others?
b) This is what prayer and meditation are all about. If we truly love God (and we know He loves us), we should want to spend all the time we have with Him. And, the beauty of this relationship is that we never have the excuse that He is not nearby!
c) “May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice” Psalm 141:2
2. (Study of His word)
a) Another glorious thing about this relationship is that we have His word to study. This is another way to draw near to God.
b) Who can ever say that they know all that there is to know from the Bible? The Bible may be an old book, but it is not a dead book. It is as alive as it was when the words contained in it were first put on paper. And, it is a way to make your relationship with Christ alive.
c) How many of you have opened the Bible and seen just the words you needed to hear, as if coming from your closest friend in your hour of need? Do you think that the authors of the Bible thought that the words they were writing would be used 2000 years later to encourage people who were suffering from things they never could have imagined then? The human authors couldn’t have….but the One Author above surely did.
3. We should specifically use the study of the word of God to take His Son as a role model.
a) There is a wealth of life giving, life saving truth to be found by studying the teachings and ministries of Jesus. It was surely Jesus’ purpose to become a model for all who would follow identifying themselves in relationship to Him as Christians.
b) Don’t think that you are 2000 years too late to be a disciple of Jesus. We may have missed the chance to walk in His footsteps physically, but we CAN walk with Him spirtually. We should strive to do that every day, every moment.
4. (Worship)
a) “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise-the fruit of lips that confess his name,” the author of Hebrews writes in Chapter 13.
b) A sacrifice of praise…worship.
c) In The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren lays out five purposes for all of our lives as Christians. The first is that we are here to please God through worship.
d) And, worship should be a part of our every movement. We should honor Him in our work, in our caring for our families, in our fellowship with our friends, and in our worshipping at church, not just in the latter.
e) Worship is not about us and what we get out of it…it is about pleasing God. Thanking Him for His many blessings. Honoring Him. Drawing near to Him.
B. After advising to draw near to God, the author of Hebrews goes on to say, “Hold on to the hope that you profess”
1. The hope that we profess. This one takes a minute to think about and let it sink in, I think.
2. I just talked about how we are to draw near to God through things such as worship. Worship and praise. Praise which proclaims His greatness….His wonderful acts. The things He has done for us to give us the hope that we will have eternal life with Him. The hope that all of this STUFF that we endure on earth will pass and we will rise above it through God’s grace and mercy.
3. Therefore, in commanding us to hold on to the hope that we profess, the author is exhorting us to hold on tightly to this faith that we proclaim. Two things come to mind when analyzing this further:
a) One, there is a risk that we could lose this faith…and that it is a valuable thing we should grasp hold of firmly to keep from losing it.
(1) Faith is a tricky thing, largely because of the very nature of it. One of the definitions of faith in Merriam Webster’s dictionary is “firm belief in something for which there is no proof”. I’m not getting into an argument about the proof question, but I do want to make a point about how faith can feel at those vulnerable moments in your life.
(2) You lose a family member and you feel more alone than you have ever felt in your life. The faith you have that you are never alone can leave you.
(3) You find out a dear Christian friend has a terminal illness. The faith you have that God is good and loving starts to fade.
(4) You try to start your own family while everyone around you is having one, two, three children. The faith you have that God has a plan for your life to prosper you and give you joy begins to waiver.
(5) Yes, faith in God can start to look downright crazy when you are hurting and want comforting that comes from everything being made instantly OK…but this is when we need to take care to hold especially tight to our beliefs and those things that we KNOW in our hearts to be true.
b) In addition to the fact that faith is something we need to hold tightly to lest we lose it, the advice to hold on tightly to the hope we profess reminds me that we should not be holding onto it so tightly that we are not sharing it with others by witnessing.
(1) A story from a book that I’m reading called “If You Want to Walk on the Water, You Have to Get Out of the Boat” comes to mind here. The author of the book, John Ortberg, tells a tale of a woman whose mother dies and she discovers in the attic a beautiful set of china. Her mother had purchased the china years earlier and, because it was so valuable and special, she boxed it up and never used it lest it should get broken.
(2) Oh, how many times do we do that with things we declare in our minds are valuable. What a waste! Do you know what the woman in the book did with the china she found? She took it out and used it every day. She enjoyed its beauty daily. She shared it with others so that they, too, could enjoy it.
(3) This is what our faith should be like. If your faith truly gives you hope and peace and comfort and joy….all things of incredible value, you shouldn’t be a hog and not share that with others. There is plenty to go around and, after all, it is what Jesus told us to do in The Great Commission.
c) And, remember all of those scenarios I just talked about where people who are Christians already are starting to sag under the weight of their own sufferings and doubts? Those people could very well be the people you are sitting next to today. Don’t think for a minute that this witnessing is something just for the “outsiders” who don’t know Christ. I contend that witnessing includes fanning the embers of a fire that is starting to go out in those who do know Christ. Share your fire with others who need a little help getting spiritually ignited if you have it to share. Maybe someone will return the favor later on to you when you need it.
C. After advising us to hold tight to our hope, the author says we should “Consider how to spur one another on to acts of love and good deeds”
1. When I thought about this, I asked myself: “what is the best way to spur one another on to love others and to do good deeds?” My answer was, “By loving them first and doing good deeds for them”.
2. My kids are a great example of this sort of “spurring on”. Maury, in a blatant attempt to get attention, decides to start standing in his chair in the living room instead of sitting in it. Not to be outdone, Lizzie thinks, well, if standing in the chair is so worthy of mom and dad’s attention, what will happen if I stand in my chair, step over the arm onto the table next to it and jump off with a nice little arm flourish at the end? Maury, of course, adds a couple of extra steps, jumps and flourishes in the increasing obstacle course of attention getting and everyone ends up in time out.
3. They may be kids and this was an example of negative attention being given, but we are all pretty Pavlovian when it comes to our responses to people loving us and being nice to us.
4. Have you ever been asked by someone why you love them? Do you ever want to respond, because you love me? Silly perhaps, but isn’t it sort of a wonderful unbreakable cycle once you are in it?
5. I challenge all of you to take a look at 1 Corinthians chapter 13 this week. This is the famous “love” passage that all good weddings include. Don’t let the familiarity of the passage trick you into just skimming over the words again. Really study it. This passage is about so much more than the kind of love that you find at a wedding ceremony. This is about what God’s love for us is about and what we should strive for in our relationships with EVERYONE.
6. This is what Jesus meant by love when he said that “To love [God] with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Mark 12:33)
D. Finally, the author stresses to the readers: “Do not get out of the habit of meeting together”
1. Meeting together. Church. The body of Christ. This is where all of the prior teachings hit the road.
2. When I started today’s message, I told you that this had been an amazing year for me. Let me tell you a little bit more about that.
a) I was blessed enough to be born into a loving Christian family. We went to church and Sunday School every Sunday when we were young. Then, as a lot of young people do unfortunately, I wandered further and further away from church as I went through college and my young professional life.
b) Fortunately, Steve was also raised in a loving Christian family and had the same sort of upbringing as I had had. But, still, when we were first married we were sporadic at best about coming to church. Then Maury came along and there were even more excuses and glitches in getting ourselves to church.
c) By the time Lizzie was born we were solidly out of the church going habit. When we would come, she was pretty unhappy to be left in the nursery and that was like some sort of negative reinforcement for us to just stay home.
d) But, somehow, Steve and I both seemed to wake up to this realization on New Years Day 2003: we need to be going to church…all the time. So, we started coming every Sunday. I started going back to the FAITH Class. Lizzie persevered in the nursery. Maury was old enough for real Sunday School and he LOVED it. I started really enjoying the Bible study Bee was teaching us in the FAITH Class. Steve started attending the men’s breakfasts. I started going to Faith Circle again…every month. We both got involved in different phases of the Next Step process. Steve preached….TWICE. I started teaching Sunday School.
e) Our entire life together is changed and it wouldn’t have happened without habitually meeting together with the members of this church.
f) We are all family in Christ, if we just give of ourselves…our time, our gifts, our love…
3. Peter said in 1 Peter chapter 2 that we, “like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”. To be built into a spiritual house, we all have to be here….together….regularly. Give your church your commitment and I promise it will never let you down.