Straining for the Finish Line

Scriptures: Isaiah 43:16-21, Philippians 3:4b-14

We’re breaking our pattern here at the end of Lent.  Having worked with the gospel of Luke for the past four weeks, the lectionary now jump-shifts us to the gospel of John and the story of Jesus being anointed with expensive perfume – which sets Judas off when he thinks about this extravagance, even though the gospel writer points to Judas’ hypocrisy in suggesting the oil be sold and the money given to the poor.  So, I’ve decided to abandon the gospels all together for this last Sunday in Lent and instead focus on the new thing that both Isaiah and Paul see coming in the companion lectionary texts.  We’ll see if that was a good decision by the end.

In a sense the title of this sermon is misleading.  The end of Lent is not really like a finish line – not a goal toward which we strive and then the race is over and done with.  All those skiers and skaters and bobsledders that you saw crossing a finish line a couple of weeks ago, looking up to see if their score beat everyone else, and then collapsing with joy and relief like Lindsey Vohn did at the end of her gold medal run – these are not our models.  But the act of straining for that finish line – as so many of the Olympians did in order to shave off those last few hundredths of a second – just might be a metaphor for what we have been doing during Lent.

We have been talking these past five weeks about walking in the steps of Jesus.  Now, we are running with him (or skating or skiing – choose whatever image you like best for yourself) as he comes near to Jerusalem and looks toward that entry into the city that we will celebrate next week on Palm Sunday.  Is it really a triumphal entry?  Or does it turn out that Jesus isn’t even a bronze medal winner?  We’ll discuss that more next week.

The passage from the Hebrew Scriptures that we read is from a prophet who is usually known as Second Isaiah, because while he uses Isaiah’s name and identity he is actually writing from a later period than the prophet who wrote chapters 1-39 in the book we now have in our Bible as “Isaiah”.  In fact he was writing during the time when the Hebrew people were in exile in Babylon, longing for deliverance.  Second Isaiah in this passage dramatically announces that God is about to use Cyrus and his Persian forces to defeat Babylon and release captive Israel, allowing them to return to their homeland.  This is a return from exile – a new Exodus – a new crossing of the wilderness.  It is a break with the past – a wholly new thing.  The key is for the people to see it:  “do you not perceive it?”, the prophet asks.  This beautifully flowering desert is a physical symbol for this radical human newness that is about to occur.

(As a bit of a side-bar, as Mark Throntveit notes, there is an important ecological aspect to this new thing:  the Lord’s deliverance is not limited to bringing the exiles home.  “Before the oracle closes with Yahweh’s reason for deliverance:  ‘that they might declare my praise’, Second Isaiah cannot help but reprise his profound hope for a ‘greener’ world in which even the jackal and ostrich will honor the ecological transformation wrought by God’s watering of the desert.”)

Sounds like a great thing, right?  God is bringing the people home and giving them a transformed desert.  But we know it is not as simple as that.  The people have been in Babylon for 40 years (there’s that number again:  40 years of wilderness wandering; 40 days of temptation), and they’ve become rather entrenched.  How do you get a group of people to move who are comfortably settled, whose children have been born in this new country, who (despite the image of a flowering desert) are looking at moving back to a rocky and barren landscape, where there were no immediate opportunities for making a living?  Complacency and fear of the future are the enemies of celebrating this new thing that the Lord is doing.

And so it is necessary to trust that God knows what God is doing in leading us into a new thing.  Anna Grant-Henderson says, “Isaiah 43 is a tremendous call to trust in God in all of life’s journeys and new decisions.  Indeed, some decisions are like the Israelites needing to leave the comfort and familiar to work or be in very different situations to that which we are used to. This text is one which I have held onto in especially difficult times.”

Second Isaiah is not offering the people a vision of what life will be like when they arrive.  He is offering them a vision of what it means to walk with trust in God through the wilderness.  He is offering them bread and water for the journey, not Gatorade for after the finish line.  As Craig Barnes puts it, “The point of walking with God is not to arrive, but to walk with God.  As we walk along, we discover that God is making a way by providing water in the desert.”

Our Lenten journey includes walking with God in the wilderness toward a new home, as in Second Isaiah.  It also includes running the race toward a finish line we can but dimly see with Jesus.  Paul, especially here in this letter to the Philippians, is particularly fond of the metaphor of running a race.

As in Second Isaiah, Paul here is describing the new thing that has arrived with the coming of the Christ.  At first he is boastful about how confident he is “in the flesh” – a way of saying how good he’s had it as a successful man, as a Jew, as someone who counts himself blameless “as to righteousness under the law”.  We do love our pedigrees, don’t we?  Our family ties.  Our racial ancestry.  Our heritages – going back to the Mayflower or the Amistad or the Viking ships…or wherever our genealogical research takes us.  Our position in the world as Americans.  All of these things – and more – give us our sense of identity.  For Paul it was because of who he had been “under the law”.

But now the importance of all that comes crashing down with that one sentence:  “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.”  Paul is breaking with his past and encouraging us to follow along with him.  He is pressing on – not to reach the goal but solely and simply “because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”  That fact is worth so much more than the legalistic way of living a religious life, as Paul had done up until that time.

Do you hear the passion that is in Paul in this passage?  As Bill Long exclaims, “Paul’s language brims with desire and longing, with the sense that the knowledge of Christ is a not a static possession but a dynamic reality, not something that is learned once and for all but is appropriated in our daily lives. This knowledge of Christ is the basis of the new value system for Christians.”

Paul is describing nothing less than a reversal of values.  The race that is being run is one to discover what new life in Christ is all about.  William Loader says it this way:  “Paul…is not abandoning scripture, let alone, abandoning God, but he is abandoning a theology based on seeking to please God by zealous protection of divine laws.  He is abandoning a theology which sees God as obsessed with God’s own laws and preoccupied with becoming angry and offended when things are not done in exactly the prescribed way.  Such a theology is a projection of human egotism.  In Christ Paul has found an understanding and embodiment of God which says that God’s being is characterized by love and generosity, which is pained and angered by human sin and harm, and which seeks to reconcile people from their estrangement and their captivity — including their captivity to religion.

“Without throwing away his own religion Paul, nevertheless, throws away a theology which had made him important and given him great status.  In its place he embraces Christ and Christ’s way.  But this is more than just a change of values.  It is also a deeply spiritual and personal change which affects Paul at the heart of his being and changes his future forever.”

All of Paul’s previous existence he now counts as “rubbish”.  That seems like a pretty strong term to use for everything that has been central to one’s previous life.  But this is a valid term because before he had considered himself “blameless under the law” – that is, his ego, his pride, his self-righteousness have all gotten in the way of knowing what is true and real:  “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ…..”

God doesn’t give us batting helmets so we can fend off what the world hands us.  God gives us God’s grace, a word of forgiveness, so that we can leave the rubbish of the past behind.  God gives us bread and water for the journey, because we’re not there yet.  But we are straining for that finish line.

Do we sometimes forget the race that we are running?  Do we think that it’s enough to call ourselves Christians and leave it at that?  Or do we realize that there is a race, a journey that we are on when we enter into this Christian life? Do we realize that becoming a Christian isn’t the finish line, rather it is the starting line?  Do we allow ourselves to move forward in our faith and in our journey to see where God will lead us next?

Paul is pressing on because that is what you do when “Christ Jesus has made me his own.”  Do you remember what it was like when you were taking a trip in a car, and the kids in the back seat were constantly saying (or maybe this is you who was saying it), “Are we there yet?”  “Are we there yet?”  Students in confirmation classes wondering if their study and preparation will ever be over. 
“Are we there yet?”  Working folk wondering if they’ll ever be able to retire.  “Are we there yet?”  Those with health issues wondering if there will ever be a cure for them.  “Are we there yet?”  The Church Council wondering if we’ve picked up all the pieces from the past and if our membership numbers will increase.  Each of us wondering if our lengthy Lenten journey will ever end.  “Are we there yet?”  And Paul says, “No.”  “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own….. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”  Our Christian faith is more of a process than a product, more of a journey than a destination.

What Paul says he is seeking to do with his journey is to become more like Christ “in his death”.  You’ll recall that last week we said that the parable of The Prodigal Son helped us to become more like God in sharing extravagant love.  Paul’s message here is helping us to become more like Christ through sharing in his suffering and knowing the power of the resurrection – this is one reason why these texts come to us two weeks before Easter.  We do that by giving all that we have and are in order to live a new life.

There’s an old story that preachers sometimes like to tell to illustrate what this is all about – you may have heard it before, or at least you can anticipate the punch line:

Once upon a time at a church meeting a wealthy member of the church rose to tell the rest of those present about his Christian faith.  “I’m a millionaire,” he said, “and I attribute my wealth to the blessings of God in my life.”  He went on to recall the turning point in his relationship with God.  As a young man, he had just earned his first dollar and he went to a church meeting that night.  The speaker at that meeting was a missionary who told about his work in the mission field.  Before the offering plate was passed around, the preacher told everyone that everything that was collected that night would be given to this missionary to help fund his work on behalf of the church.  The wealthy man wanted to give to the offering in order to support mission work, but he knew he couldn’t make change from the offering plate.  He knew he either had to give all he had or nothing at all.  At that moment, he decided to give all that he had to God.  Looking back, he said he knew that God had blessed that decision and had made him wealthy.  When he finished, there was silence in the room.  As he returned to the pew and sat down, an elderly lady seated behind him leaned forward and said, “I dare you to do it again.”

We are to do it again and again and again – not just gifts of money but the gifting of our whole selves – as we strain for a finish line that is ever before us.

Next week we will have an opportunity as a congregation to see what new things God and Christ may be calling us to do as we continue with a discernment process about our future.  Today we are bidding farewell to a sister congregation as Northwest Community Church begins next week to worship in a new setting – and I was present at their service today on your behalf to wish them well in their journeying.  As congregations it is all about the journeying and the constant new adventures that God is holding out there ahead of us.  Come next week with questions and concerns but also with hopes and insights for the directions that we may be taking as we strain for the finish line.

Amen

Dave Pomeroy