“A Strong Finish”
Hebrews 12:1-3
August 19, 2007
Rev. John Fleming
If you are planning on running in next year’s Little Rock
Marathon (the sixth annual event) then you had better get started with your
training. I visited the marathon’s
website the other afternoon. There are
all kinds of things listed there, but one of the links leads you to what is
called a build up schedule. I guess it is the first step towards
preparing for the big race. According to
the schedule, I am two weeks behind.
Last Monday I should have run a mile and a half. Last Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I
should have run two miles each day. Last
Friday I should have run a mile and a half and last Saturday, I should have
bumped it up to three miles. All of this
is in preparation for the 26.2 miles to be run on March 2, 2008. Some of you already know about this. Some of you are already in training to run or
walk either the half or full marathon.
All I can say is that I am glad the marathon happens on a Sunday. I have to work on Sundays.
Tom
Wright has written a great set of commentaries that take a practical look at
biblical lessons. In the one he wrote on
Hebrews, he tells that when he was growing up, his high school had a ten mile
cross-country race every year. The
school was in
Tom
writes that there were as many as eighty or a hundred runners who would run the
race every year. He ran it one
year. There were serious minded runners
who trained long and hard whose goal was to win the race. Tom admits that he was in the group who just
wanted to finish the race in a reasonable amount of time. I would be in that group!
The
year that Tom ran this race, he finished a respectable
thirty-fifth out of a hundred. And what
he remembers the most about his finish was the final stretch, the last half
mile or so. He and his friends had
trained for the race. They had run the
course. He was used to the closing
stages of it. So he knew that the race
was about to be over. He knew there
would be a bottle of cold water and eventually a long shower. He knew there would be spectators lining the
course. What he did not know is that
there would be so many of them. There
were hundreds of folks lining the route.
There were parents and siblings of the runners. There were friends. There were people from the town who turned
out just to watch the weary and grimy runners finish the race.
Tom
Wright writes, “They were cheering, all of them, and waving flags. They were clapping and shouting out words of
encouragement and congratulations.” Tom says that it went on for what seemed like
forever. The crowd got larger the closer
he came to the finish line. He and his
running partner rounded the bend and came down to the finish line. He said, “All these people! Where had they come from? And such noise! It felt like I was a celebrity, if only for a
couple of minutes.”
That
is the image that is also our scripture lesson for this morning, taken from the
first three verses of Hebrews 12. The
author of these words, the preacher of them says that the Christian life is
like running a long distance race, maybe even a marathon.
As
I said to you last week there is some question about who wrote these
words. My personal opinion is that it
was the apostle, Paul. Paul was an
athlete. If Paul didn’t write these
words then surely an athlete did. Maybe
he was a former athlete. He uses track
and field language to make his point. He
must know that there is more persecution coming for the Roman Christians. He now knows that the triumphant return of
Christ isn’t going to happen as quickly as he hoped. He is worried about the possibility of
Christians drifting away from the faith.
So he uses track and field language to give these Christians a
challenge. I’ll tell you, it’s a great
challenge. In my opinion, it’s
unheralded in all of Christian literature.
I love this passage. I’m excited
to be preaching it today. The challenge
is so inspiring and so moving and you might as well call it advice for long
distance runners.
So
let’s look today at these inspiring words that will help all of us stay in the
race. Paul first says, “Therefore, since
we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…” Up there in the grandstands and near the
finish line are those people who are cheering us on. They are surrounding us with encouragement,
helping us to do what they did, finish the race. You might say that it was a strong finish.
There
is a difference, I guess, in finishing a race when you are competing against
time or against other runners. When you
run that race, you want to have the upper hand.
You want to have the better time.
You want to be even a hundred of a second better than they were. That is the goal in a race, but it’s not the
aim in the race I’m talking about today.
The goal in today’s race is for everyone to finish.
Now
I don’t know how it was for you when you played sports or were in some kind of
a performance, but for me I always wanted to do a little better, I wanted to be
a little better when I knew there was someone important to me sitting in the
bleachers, watching.
So
I need to ask you. Who is there in the
stands and along the route cheering you on?
Look around. Everyone in the
stands is someone you know. For me, my sister, Emily, is there. I never dreamed she’d be up there now. I thought we would run the race together,
side by side, for more years than we did.
But she’s up there now, cheering me on, offering me words of
encouragement, telling me I can do it. I
feel her presence deep in my soul! Emily
is up there. I am sure that Aunt Julia
Lee is up there, too. Susie and I named
Julie for her. Aunt Julie finished the
race almost four years ago. I’m
sure she’s up there cheering me on.
After all that’s what she did when she was alive. Louis Moore is up there, my grandfather. I only knew him for twelve years. There was a quiet strength about him that
made me love him. These are some of the
ones I can see as I huff towards the finish line. Who can you see? So we are surrounded by the clouds
of witnesses.
Paul says something else, too. Listen, “….let us also lay aside every weight
and the sin that clings so closely.” The
New International Version of the Bible puts the verse this way, “….let us also
lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us.” The problem is that entanglement doesn’t
really get to the heart of the matter.
What Paul wonders about are the things that get in the way of our
running this race.
I
am told that some runners will train with weights on their backs to build up
their strength, but when it comes time to run, the race will seem a lot
lighter. What are those things that you
are carrying around that you shouldn’t be?
In
his book Traveling Light, Max Lucado tells of
the afternoon he went jogging. The sun
was out but the wind was kind of chilly.
The sky was clear, but the experts had mentioned rain in the
forecast. So he had to decide whether to
take a jacket or a sweatshirt. He
decided to take both. He grabbed his
walkman (today I guess it would be an ipod, but that
detail would ruin this story), but he couldn’t decide what tape to bring, one
with music on it or the latest sermon from a prominent preacher he had a
subscription to hear. He couldn’t
decide, so he took both. He wanted to
stay in touch with his family while he was away, so he took his cell phone. He also took a couple of bottles of water
with him just in case he needed that.
And he started out. Within half a
mile he had peeled off the sweatshirt and hid it in a neighbor’s bushes. Max admitted that all of the things he was
carrying with him while jogging were weighing him down.
Hum. I guess the same can be said of the race we
are running in. Let me just ask you,
“What are you carrying around that you ought to let go?” Maybe you’ve got too many irons in the fire,
too much going on. Maybe you’re working
as hard as you can work at your job, serving in a lot of ministries here at the
church and running the shuttle service for your family to all of the places all your
kids want to go. It’s too much. Maybe it is your temper. My temper gets me in trouble sometimes. One of the most important questions a
Christian can ask in regard to a habit or a practice is this one, “Does it help
me or does it hinder me in my run with Jesus?”
We’re supposed to run light.
Paul
also writes, “….we are to run with perseverance the
race that is set before us.” Another
word for perseverance is resolve. Still
another one is urgency. Are you doing
that? The race is a long haul. It is not a short sprint. Unfortunately there are a lot of runners who
stop way before the finish line.
Some of us have been running for years, for as long
as we can remember. That’s my
story. Others of us have just started
the race. Hopefully there are many miles
ahead for us. Giving up is not an
option. I will run towards Jesus. But for some the obstacles get in the
way. And we stop running. Sometimes we just stay there and never run
again.
My family and I watched again the movie The Little Giants the other
afternoon. The movie is the story of two
brothers and a town’s football game with children. One brother, Danny, was very successful in
sports. He was a Heisman
trophy winner. Her little brother was
never picked. Now they are competing as
coaches and Danny has all the winners, the strong kids and his brother has the
weaker team.
At halftime, the Little
Giants are losing by three touchdowns.
The team is getting clobbered and they want to quit. The coach asks, “What do you want me to tell
the other team?” One of the boys
answers, “Tell them to put us on the injured list.” Their coach says, “There’s something you
should know. When I was ten years old, I
put myself on the injured list. I never
got off.” One of the players asks why
and the coach answers, “Because I didn’t get picked a few times. I started hiding under the bleachers.” Another player says, “That’s where we belong,
under the bleachers.” His coach doesn’t
agree. He thinks they deserve to be out
there on the field playing the game. I’m
not supposed to tell you how movies end, but I can tell you that we all need to
be on the field or running the race that is set before us.
And who is our model. Paul says that we are to look to Jesus. We are to look at what he went through. He went to the cross with its struggle and
its shame and now has a place of honor at the right hand of God. Jesus ran the course before we did. He blazed the trail. Jesus
kept his eye on the joy that was waiting for him.
Paul
knows the Hebrews are weary in all they’re
facing. He knows that they face this
stuff day by day, threat by threat, by folks they used to call their
friends. And so he finishes with a
strong word. Listen to it. Go home with it, “Consider him, look to him,
who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary or
lose heart.” Let us pray.