I love the image of this congregation as one
leg of a relay race that began with God’s covenant with Abraham about 2000-1500
BCE. The next legs of the race were run by Abraham’s descendants, Isaac, Jacob,
Joseph and his brothers. The race continued with Moses leading the Israelites
out of Egypt about1300 BCE and Joshua leading the Israelites into the Promised
Land, the time of the judges (The writer of Hebrews mentions Gideon, Barak,
Samson and Jephthah. I would add Deborah. The time is now 1200-about 1000 BCE)
and the time of the kings (Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon (1020 – 930 BCE). There
were many subsequent kings until the fall of the northern kingdom in 722 BCE
and of the southern kingdom of Judah in 587 BCE. But the race continued as the people kept the faith alive through the exile (587-538 BCE), the return to
Judah (538 BCE-332 BCE), the occupation of Palestine by the Greeks and
Romans, and the persecution of the early Christians.
Today’s Scripture list of models of faith
begins with the period of judges and the early monarchy, highlighting the
accomplishments of faith. Despite these achievements, the emphasis on suffering
is strong. The biblical story is a long story of those with persevering faith
who look beyond the present with hope. Then as now the reality is that much
remains to be fulfilled. It is in this context of the struggles and sufferings
of persevering faith, that the writer tells us what Jesus did. Instead of the
joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at
the right hand of the throne of God. The writer is encouraging us to pick up
our cross and carry it through our leg of the face of faith.
Think about that image. This congregation
is one leg of a relay race that has been run for almost 4000 years. We are
surrounded by a cloud of faithful Christians from down through the centuries
cheering us on as we run our leg. Loyalty to the reign of God connects us with
generations of prophets and martyrs who suffered for God’s covenant. This is
not just a list of historical persons. All these women and men are truly alive
and gathered around us like the crowd in a stadium. They are our fans, on the
edge of their seats cheering us on now that our turn has come in the relay race
of faith. Therefore, since we are
surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, . . . let us run with perseverance
the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of
our faith . . . (Hebrews 12:1-2)
That sense of history is both inspiring
and encouraging. It gives us a sense of a larger purpose which we all need to
rise to meet the challenges of our time. It places our struggles in the context
of a long, long struggle toward a vision of a world reigned by God, a world of peace
and justice, a world of abundant life, of healing, hope and love.
The thing about a relay race is each leg has to be run well. No matter
how good the runners of the first and last legs are, if the runners of the
middle legs don’t also perform well, there’s no chance of winning the race. This
is not one of the glorious times in the history of the Christian church. We are
not like the disciples converting thousands in one afternoon. We are not ending the crusades like St.
Francis, or saving England like John Wesley. We are just running one of the
thousands of the middle legs of the race.
Yet, it is our responsibility to
run our leg well.
When I think about running a race, I
immediately think about training. No one
runs a marathon without many weeks, even months, of training. As Christians, we
are to be in training. We’re not just to
live our daily lives following the Great Commandment to love God with all our heart and all our soul and all our strength and
all our might and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are to adopt a
training regiment to make God our first priority throughout each and every day.
I believe this requires the disciple of prayer, prayer to begin our day, prayer
to end our day and prayer throughout our day.
It is so easy for us to become so focused on our problems that we forget
God is always speaking to us—to our hearts, to our minds, to our spirits. We just have to be willing to stop long enough
to center ourselves on God and to listen. To center our lives on God is to
learn to sense God’s presence with us throughout each day, to be strengthened,
encouraged and guided by that presence. To recognize that we are in training as
a congregation to run our leg of the race well, is to recognize our need for
discipline.
I also find that loving God and loving
others is so intertwined that when we stop to listen to God, we become more
aware of the needs of others. Somehow listening to God always ends up with
awareness of things we need to do to help others.
A second important aspect of running any
race is pacing. You can’t start out
running full tilt or you’ll never have the strength to finish the race. Somehow we have to keep our lives focused on
God over the long haul through all the important and minor changes in our lives.
This is where perseverance and endurance come in. We train and we run not just
when the weather is good, not just when we feel like it or it feels good. Not just when we are aware of the presence of
the Holy Spirit. We pray regardless of how we feel. We are helped to persevere when we hang on to
the moments of peace and joy we have experienced in the past, through any
moments of doubt and despair.
A marathon racer doesn’t just cross the
finish line and walk off and sit down. Usually they have to slow down gradually
to recover from the effort. We all need times
of recovery, re-creation. That’s why it’s important to remember that it’s the
congregation that’s running the race, we need to help each other pace our
lives.
One can't help but be inspired by today’s
reading from Hebrews. Seeing ourselves in the context of 4000 years of faithful
devotion to God motivates us to persevere. We are not the first ones to run the
race of faith. Faithful saints before us have run the same race, fought
fatigue, battled discouragement and, even occasionally, have won! But winning
is not the most important criteria. The most important criteria is
faithfulness. The struggle continues.
We are not required to succeed, only to be faithful.
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