Community Church Sermons
October 28, 2007
Pentecost
22
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Listen to this Sermon!
What an amazing statement to be able to make about yourself as a Christian! To stand there in the final stages of your life on earth - looking back over your journey of faith and being able to honestly say, “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”
Amazing!
I wonder if I will be able to say something like that about my own life and ministry when sunset comes? I wonder if you will be able to say such a thing about yourself?
“I have fought the good fight.
I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”
I wonder if Jake will be able to say that!
Jake, of course, is Rhonda and Terry’s son (who we are dedicating at today’s 10:30 service) who we have dedicated to the Lord today. Jake’s a little young right now to be thinking about fighting fights, running races and keeping faith. He’s much more interested in getting diapers changed, sucking on his bottle, and being spoiled by his grandparents who are here this weekend.
But like all of us, Jake will grow up. He will learn to talk and to walk and to read and to write. He’ll learn about love, and about loss, about joy and sorrow. Through Terry and Rhonda and all of us, Jake will get to know Jesus, and we pray the day will come when he comes to the altar again, not in his parents’ arms, but on his own two feet, to profess his faith and to be baptized, and to begin the journey as a follower of Jesus.
And one day – many, many years from now – I pray that Jake will be able to look back over his life in Christ and honestly say:
“I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”
Those are powerful words, aren’t they? Just speaking them stirs my soul. And they give us a deeper glimpse into what it means for us – and for Jake - to be followers of Jesus.
First of all, following Jesus is a fight. It is not a hymn sing, a prayer time, or a heady debate on the meaning of the Trinity. Following Jesus is a fight! Have you ever heard it described that way before?
In Ephesians 6, Paul talks about the fight of faith. He describes following Jesus as being engaged in daily hand-to-hand combat with the powers of evil. The struggle, Paul says, is not with human beings, but with powers and principalities, and the evil one himself.
For Paul, this is not a struggle like it is often portrayed today, as a conflict between people – good people on the one hand, and bad people on the other. No, this is a fight against the temptation to fall for that trick! This is a fight against giving in to evil’s persuasive argument that the world must be divided into good people and bad people. This is a fight against evil’s desire to destroy the human family by dividing it against itself. Evil knows that what Jesus said is true, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” And so evil’s plan for winning the war against God and God’s goodness is by dividing the children of God into camps of right and wrong, good and evil, faithful and infidel, and using the divisions to encourage us to destroy each other.
That’s the fight Paul was talking about. It is the daily fight against all of evil’s devices that demean, devalue and divide people. It is a fight against things like Hate, Greed, Selfishness, Exclusion.
When I was a little boy growing up in the church, I experienced that fight firsthand. Our Pastor rented out an apartment he owned to a black family. All hell broke loose. Neighbors wanted that family out of there. Property values will go down, they said. Blacks are dirty and will bring sickness. Blacks steal, and drink too much, and drive purple cars.
This is how evil works, you see. It takes good people like those neighbors – people God created in his own image – and turns them against other good people like the new neighbors – people God also created in his own image. And evil uses our differences in race, nationality, economic status, gender, moral values, religion to drive a wedge between us. And evil whispers into our hearts millions of times a day reasons why we should see others as less than ourselves, and that it is okay to exclude, marginalize and hurt them. Blacks. Illegal immigrants. Muslims. Gay people. Steve Spurrier. Republicans…or Democrats!
Evil endeavors to divide and conquer. And so it seeks to destroy the human family by making us see the speck in our brother’s eye while ignoring the log in our own. And in seeing people for what we think is wrong with them, we can then rationalize why it is okay to inflict all manner of evil against them, and call it righteousness and service to God. And it IS service to god…but it’s the wrong god we’re serving!
This was the fight Paul fought every day – the fight against the things that tear God’s family apart. All around him were Jews who thought Gentiles ought to be excluded and Gentiles who wanted nothing to do with Jews; rich people who looked down on poor people and poor people who despised the rich, men who thought women should have no value or standing, and women who felt God created Eve because he messed up when he created Adam – which is probably true.
For Paul, the fight of faith was to bring people together in the face of a world that drives people apart. And he did it by pinning his hope on three things: first, the belief that Jesus is the Savior of the WORLD whose mission is to unite all things in heaven and on earth; second, the belief that the highest practice of faith is LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOR; and third, that the job of the Christian is to get up every morning and go out there and practice that love - fighting for unity with all, and justice for all, and to bring the inclusive love of Jesus Christ to everyone we meet.
“I have fought the good fight!” Paul said. Can you say the same thing of yourself?
Then Paul said, “I have finished the race.”
Do you remember Rosie Ruiz?
On April 21st, 1980, Rosie Ruiz won the Boston Marathon with the third-fastest women’s time ever. Trouble is, Rosie was remarkably fresh and even sweat-free after the 26-mile, 365 yerd race, and nobody seemed to remember seeing her among the runners. Photographs of the various checkpoints showed no evidence of her even being in the race. And as time went on, spectators came forward to say they had seen Rosie jump into the race during its final half-mile, and sprint to the finish. It was later learned she had taken a bus. She was disqualified, of course, and stripped of the title. And as the story of Rosie Ruiz unfolded, it was determined that she had also cheated in the New York marathon where she achieved her qualifying time for Boston by jumping on a subway and riding it to near the finish line.
Rosie Ruiz ran part of the race and then took a bus or subway the rest of the way. The apostle Paul, on the other hand, said, “I have finished the race.”
Are you a Rosie Ruiz, or a St. Paul?
I learned that not all Christians are committed to finishing the race of faith early on in my tenure at the first church I served. There were growing numbers of young families with children and infants, and we were in need of Sunday School teachers and nursery volunteers. When we asked for people to step forward and help however, here’s what some of them said, “Been there. Done that. Got the tee-shirt.” “ I taught Sunday School when my kids were that age, now its somebody else’s turn.” “When my kids were babies, I stayed home with then and didn’t go to church until they were old enough. I don’t see why these new parents need a nursery. Tell them to just stay home.”
Followers of Christ buy up a lot of subway tokens with the mistaken idea that following Jesus means only so far, only so long, and only if it has to do with serving my own needs. And I’m going to say something that may upset you, but its true – the older you get, the more you like to take bus trips.
On the other hand, Chris was a young man who shortened the race in another way. Chris got saved at a youth group retreat. He sprinted forward at the altar call and gave his life to Christ. Then Chris got saved again - at another youth group retreat where he ran to the altar and admitted he hadn’t really been saved the first time around. And it happened over and over again, Every time there was a retreat, Chris got saved. Youth group leaders would come into my office and say, “Well, the retreat was great, and Christ got born again…again.” I think Chris holds the record for being born again the and again and again and again. He surely holds the title for the fastest time in the 10-yard dash to the altar!
Finally, one day, I met with Chris and said, “Chris, you need to stop getting saved so much.!” I felt guilty for saying something so counter-intuitive, but it was true. Chris needed to move past the baby steps of faith and get on to the rest of the race. He needed to leave the altar and go into the world and serve God among God’s people. Imagine if Mother Theresa had been a Chris? Imagine if Paul had been a Chris?
Paul was adamant that practicing the art of love among our neighbors is the ultimate expression of faith. A quick run to the altar that does not result in a lifetime marathon of bringing God’s love to the world means nothing.
Rosie Ruiz could not say she completed the race. Nor could Chris. How about you?
“I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”
The most remarkable thing about this faith of ours is that God has given it to us for safekeeping. We are to use it to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom to the prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, and release to the oppressed, and to declare God’s love for the world. And when we have fought that good fight, and when we have finished that race, we are to place that faith into the hands of those who come after us.
One of the beautiful realities of our church is that some of us are as old as dirt. Let me correct that. MOST of us are as old as dirt although some of us wear it better than others. The beginning of our great fight of faith is a distant memory now, and the bell is ringing calling us out to the later rounds. The “bang” of the starter’s pistol, sending us off on the great race, was heard long ago, and now the Finish Line looms ahead with the saints of God cheering us on.
But we have one more thing to do.
We have to take the baton of faith – entrusted to us long, long ago – and pass it on now – to Jake.
And to all those who will come after us.
For the apostle Paul, there was a deep awareness that the true measure of faith is not how deeply we hold it in our hearts, but how well we pass it on.
That’s a powerful idea as our church considers the future.
And it is powerful calling to each person here today. Leave this place this morning, and fight the good fight, run the race fully to completion, and keep your faith as a legacy to your life that will be passed on to Jake…and all those who come after you.
May we as a church be able to say, “We have fought the good fight. We have finished the race. We have kept the faith!”
Amen.