"Running to Finish"
A Sermon by the Reverend Matthew B. Reeves
Parkville Presbyterian Church, Parkville, Missouri
The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 24, 2004
Texts: 2 Timothy 4:6-18
"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, to Timothy, my loyal child in the faith..."
So begins the first letter to Timothy, a young pastor of a burgeoning Ephesian church, from Paul, a seasoned pastor still captivated by God’s grace for Jews and Gentiles alike. For a sixth and final week we are blessed to be copied on Paul’s messages to his loyal child in the faith. In the first chapter of the first letter we’re told the reason Paul sends instructions: "so that by following them, [Timothy] may fight the good fight, having faith and a good conscience."
But when the second letter comes, things are different. It’s enough to compare the greetings in the two letters to know times have changed. Paul’s "loyal child in the faith" is now "my beloved child." The same Paul once beholden to "the command of God" now views his apostleship as being "for the sake of the promise of life." An arrest. Time in a prison. Desertion by friends as he stood trial in Rome. There is a good fight that is fought, but it’s not commended to Timothy. The fight belongs to Paul. The instructions and exhortations found so often at the end of Paul’s letters are conspicuously absent in 2 Timothy. Instead, Paul offers moving testimony: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." Paul’s life gathered into three clauses. One sentence. A one-verse life witness.
Of course, Paul is no stranger to testimony. It’s a hallmark of Paul’s letters that he can’t speak of God’s grace of Jesus Christ without bearing witness to his experience of it:
1 Timothy 1:16 "The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost."
Galatians 2:20 "The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and give himself for me."
Phillipians 3:8-9 "I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him."
Paul considered himself a walking sermon illustration of the grace and power of God. It wasn’t unusual that for him to point to his own life as an example of what it meant to live in Christ—something most of us would shudder to do. Now he writes to Timothy from prison and he offers his life last time, a life "already being poured out as a libation"—poured out as a sacrifice to God—for the time of has departure has come.
The testimony of a life. The story our life speaks when it comes to a close. It’s not something we consider very often, all of us who can feel our lives are poured out in too many places and over too many cares. Whether you’ve got 15 years or 80 behind you, when you gather up those years, what’s the one-verse story it tells? Except when we sense our time is running out, except when we’ve been jolted awake to our mortality by a loved one’s untimely death, our consciousness of life can be little more than the class project due next week or who to pick up on the carpool route or how I’m going to get all the leaves collected before brush pickup. But it doesn’t take many semesters or oil changes or seasons before you’ve got a life that bears witness—that says something about who you are and what’s important to you and where want to go. The question is, do you know what your life is saying, and is that what you want it to say?
***
Some of you know I’m a runner. It’s a blessing that for people like me who are too impatient to play golf, too skinny to get buff, and too shy to find a tennis partner, there’s always running. Someone once commented to me that she doesn’t know why anyone runs, since every runner she sees appears to be in agony with every step. But I love it. I’m not super fast and I don’t run super far, but I truly enjoy running. Recently I bought a book on running, thinking I’d find ways to improve by learning from runners better than me. Like most books on running, the one I purchased includes a number of training programs that suggest different workouts and distances to run in preparation for a race. In my book these plans are organized by the runner’s goal race time. Do you want to run a 5K in 17 minutes or 30? Pick your plan. A 10K in 40 minutes or 70? You decide how fast you think you can run or the time you want to beat and choose a program to help you do it.
Now each of the races also has a plan called, "Race to Finish." Like it sounds, the "Race to Finish" plan isn’t designed to do anything more than prepare the runner simply to finish the race. The workouts aren’t as hard, the training distances aren’t as long. No one who follows this program has any hope or desire to win the race. The goal is merely to train so as to get from the starting line to the finish line without collapsing. As reasonable as this sounds, I’d like to know how many runners have actually followed this "Race to Finish" plan. After all, the whole point of racing isn’t just to finish, but to finish as fast as you can, as far in the front as you can. Are there really people who enter a race just for the sake of finishing?
Perhaps it depends on how long the race is. Even if it takes you 10 minutes, most anyone who can walk or propel themselves in some way can finish the 100 meters. But if you’re lining up for a marathon things are very different. This past Olympics one of America’s best runners didn’t complete the course. I’ve never run a marathon, but if I do, you’d better believe my goal would be simply to finish. If you’re running 26 some odd miles, you don’t set off like a sprinter or you’ll be on your face before mile five. When you’re running a marathon, you gather your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength to be in it for the long haul.
When the baptismal waters splash your head, you’ve crossed of starting line of a race surpassing marathon length. The course of faith spans distances and terrain unknown. Those who live in the name of Jesus embrace a life journey that’s not a short, easy jaunt. More often, it’s a long, challenging trek. A spiritual marathon of extreme proportions. Save for Jesus himself, we see this no more clearly in all the Scriptures than in the life of Paul. From his encounter with the risen Lord on the Damascus road to his final letters from a Roman jail, we see a life of hardship and turmoil. Today’s text read like an autobiography. It calls to mind his church plants in Galatia and Thessalonica. It speaks to his experiences of betrayal—"Demas has deserted me…" "Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm…." "At my first defense no one came to my support, but all deserted me." As his life winds down, Paul offers Timothy words that speak to its whole:
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." Looking out from his prison cell, he views an earthly life that’s all past and not much future. Scanning it’s contours, with all the peaks and valleys, Paul can say the central fight of his life was the good one, the course he raced was the right one, the faith he held was held in earnest.
What does it take to finish life’s race with an affirmation like that? Of the people I know, I get the impression that most aren’t interested in dying rich or famous or wildly successful, so-called "winners" in the game of life. They just want to cross life’s finish looking back and saying, "I lived well, and the life I lived I’d live again." What does it take to claim that?
***
There’s a saying not much used anymore that the job of a pastor is to teach people how to die. The first time I heard this was in seminary and I thought there could hardly be a grimmer job description. It’s not surprising this saying has gone by the wayside, but it is a shame. It’s one of the great mysteries of the faith that God has chosen to work in such a way that the life we truly seek first requires our death. Throughout his life, Paul proclaimed the secret to living is found in dying—not only at the end but all along the way. So he wrote to the Romans, "consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God." Paul said to the Colossians, "Set your minds on things that are above, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." He proclaimed to the Corinthians Christ’s triumph over the grave and exclaimed, "Why are we putting ourselves in danger every hour? I die every day!"
The reason why is Paul came to know what truly constitutes life. He commended to Timothy and it’s commendable to us: "Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead. That is my gospel for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal."
"Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead." Christ suffered death; Christ was raised to life. This was Paul’s testimony in word and life. It’s our testimony too. From font to casket to glory, Christ raised from the dead is our life story. If life in Jesus is like a race, there is a way in which it’s baptismal start already contains the heavenly finish. The same waters that seal us with Christ’s saving death give assurance of glorious resurrection. From the sound of the gun, we’ve already got one foot over the finish line.
That’s way Paul is the runner who, beneath the strained face of life’s troubles, has a heart that’s leaping for joy because he knows the crown reserved for him. He’s come to learn that Christ is more than enough not only in the life to come, but in this life as well. He’s found the greatest lesson in life is a lesson in dying—giving up the struggle to make our own way and being found in Christ’s way. Paul offers up a life that tells the grace of Christ is enough for us, that the race of life isn’t ours to finish by grit or gumption because our strong Christ lives to carry us through.
A life testimony. A life lived in one direction, in one holy name day after day after day. Running the race of faith doesn’t take apostolic heroism. Keeping life-long faith is mostly about rising morning by morning and retiring evening by evening, on bad days and good, with the remembrance that Jesus is raised from the dead, that our life is bound to his, that there is nothing greater in heaven or on earth than knowing Jesus Christ our Lord. You put enough of those days together, and it isn’t long before you have a life that really says something—a life that one day will proclaim,
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
Amen.
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