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Grace, mercy and peace be to you …
How many of us have run track … or have been a competitive swimmer? With the exceptions of relays… running and swimming are individual competitions. And even though track and swimming are team sports they are not team competitions like basketball, volleyball or soccer.
A track team or swim team wins a competition by accumulating the scores of the individual efforts of each of its competitors.
And so… when runners or swimmers train, they do so differently than basketball or volleyball players … or position players, like in baseball.
In fact … the person a runner or swimmer competes with most is actually themselves. Let’s just take swimmers, for instance. The person swimming in the next lane is not the real competition … each swimmer’s aim is to beat their own best time. And so, the competition they’re getting from the swimmer in the next lane is seen as a help to spur them on to their own personal best.
And so for swimmers, prior to competition, there are countless hours of lap swimming, and timed sprints, and body positioning, and turn practice. Besides muscle conditioning, this is intended to develop a single-mindedness… the swimmer’s mind is to become set on the goal … the bettering of his or her best time so far.
Another thing that’s developed during practice is immunity to distractions. Distractions … like that swimmer in the next lane who’s splashing too close to the lane line … Or a disaster … like having your goggles slip off down around your neck on your starting dive. You learn whatever happens not to slack off or give up … you persist … and even try that much harder to reach your goal.
That’s what St. Paul is talking to us about today as he likens us to runners in a race as we live our Christian lives. Striving towards a goal … forgetting what is behind and pressing forward.
Now, Lutheran Christians that we are, some flags may go up for us with those words. These things St. Paul is talking about, and all this swimming we’ve been talking about, sound like a lot of hard work.
And they are. And yet … we Lutheran’s emphasize that we are not saved by our works, but by our faith … and that faith itself is a gift….
So … if the Goal is heaven, and we receive heaven as a gift through faith … not by our works … why is St. Paul talking to us about pressing onward toward a goal … if that goal is already ours??
There’s the question! Why work at it all? Why not just get baptized, go off and live our life, and then, depart in peace? Why all this work in between? Why study the Word, why go to Confirmation, why go to Bible class, why be in small groups, why …you name it … Why all that church stuff?
Here’s the short answer: To become more like Jesus. So that when people see you, they see Jesus in you. When you talk … when you act … what you say and what you do, reflects your faith … the fact that Jesus lives in you.
But, why would I want to go to all that trouble? It would be a lot easier to go with the flow. Like: I know I’m a Christian, God knows I’m a Christian … so what’s the big deal if I just blend in with the world and act like everybody else does? Who get’s hurt?
God’s kingdom does, and you do.
You cannot serve two masters, you’ll either love the one and hate the other … or vice versa. You cannot live in peace with God and blend in. You cannot make peace with the world and peace with God at the same time. There is no fence to walk … you can be on one side or the other.
That’s the power of St. Paul’s imagery for us … he likens us to a runner. A runner, like a swimmer … trains his or her body in order to run the race the best he or she is able. Likewise they train up their minds to deal with all the distractions that will try to get them off their single-minded goal.
But why does the runner run? Why does he work out, why does he work at putting away the distractions. For the prize? Perhaps … in a sense. But how many people who run a major marathon actually think they are going to win it? Maybe a dozen or so out of the 100s or even 1000s that take part. So, if most of the participants think there is no chance of them winning the race, why do they compete?
Because, as we said before, they are trying to better their own best performance, maybe take a few minutes off their prior best time. And know from that, that as a runner, they are improving … they are becoming the best runner they can be.
St. Paul is urging us Christians do the same… striving so that Jesus’ likeness in us is becoming more and more of who we are …
Why? Because, what we find is, when we live that way, it’s the best way to be fully human. It’s for that purpose that God designed us … that Jesus died and rose again for us … and that He put His Spirit in us.
Notice that St. Paul doesn’t encourage us to use Jesus as a model of Godly behavior. He doesn’t say … Go … and do your very best to be like Jesus… or try to do what you think Jesus would do in every situation.
No, the power to live a Godly life comes from the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection becoming part of who we are. We are not just trying to follow the leader … we live … with the leader living in us…
His death putting to death the old sinful part of us that would lead us to follow the world’s ways… and His resurrection giving us the ability to lift our eyes beyond the glitz and glamour of this world to catch a heavenly vision of what life in this world could be.
We are new creations … not old creations trying to learn a new dance. We are something the world has not seen before, something that it cannot copy or mimic.
It is humanly impossible to walk on water … but it’s not the physics that prevent it from happening … its how we are trying to do it. When Jesus says to us, “Come, follow me.” And we do … anything can happen … even that.
You see … faith … is MORE than just the gift that opens the door to eternal life. God did not intend faith to be something that we get as an infant, we put our back pocket and forget about until we pull it out to exercise it upon our death … like a … get-out-of-jail-free card.
Faith is something that changes us and makes us different … from the time we receive it. It is intended to start us on a life-long race. A life-long pressing on toward the goal: a life-long pursuit to exceed yesterday’s personal best.
And, as you may have gathered by now … even though God has given us His Spirit … His Spirit is not like kindly old Gepedo, pulling the strings on us as if we were puppets like Pinocchio… as if as Christians, we would just naturally live in God’s will…
Our will, our effort, is still required. First to oppose our natural human tendencies to live with our self on the throne of our hearts … and rather, for us to consciously choose to take the road less traveled when the world would urge us to stay on the interstate with everyone else.
And also … our will… our effort is required to resist the temptations that Satan and his minions continually want to throw in our path.
Life’s no fair! And you’re right; the deck is stacked against living “All for Jesus.” You’ll find nothing but opposition on one hand … and easy ways to join the world on the other. But what Faith offers is the kind of life worth … striving … for.
So … along with giving us His Spirit … God has also given us His church. His institution. His creation. With that purpose in mind. To support us in our striving toward the goal.
Honestly, think about it … if baptism was an instant get-out-of-jail-free card, then the church’s only purpose would be to baptize. Get baptized and you’d be set for life. We wouldn’t even need to worship.
Speaking of which … sometimes we get the impression that worship is about me praising God. That’s the sacrificial part of it… we do give God our sacrifices of praise.
But there is a sacramental part to worship, as well… There God meets us in His Word and in His Sacraments … to strengthen our faith. … to assist us on our journey from cradle to grave … to support us in living “All for Jesus.” … to help us press onward toward the Goal.
Interesting thing about God … we think He operates with “thou shalts” and “thou shalt not’s” … or the Law. But He’s really a Gospel God. In love, He calls us to spend time with Him, to listen to Him, to receive His gifts … why? So that life is better, fuller, richer, and a lot less anxious.
But He doesn’t force us to have that relationship with Him, to love Him in return. He knows that His way works … and it’s the best way … and He’s ready and willing to teach us accordingly and help us, by His Spirit, live in His love.
But againi, God doesn’t force us. It takes our commitment first … and our work second … to press on toward the goal.
And so, the unstated question in our text today is this: What’s yours? What is your goal? To get to heaven with as little work as possible? Or … to have a relationship with God here on earth that changes everything… even you?
It’s your call. I can’t, your elder can’t, make it for you. If you’re here, the Lord has already spoken to your heart, “Come… follow me.” Now… what’s your pleasure?
In Him,
Amen.
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