Weekly Sermon

Spiritual Discipline - March 9, 2003

The Reverend Anne Benefield

Hebrews 12: 1 -14 Corinthians 9: 24 - 27

Paul is describing how he approaches ministry: Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified. Prayer: Prepare us to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. In this passage, Paul uses an athlete as the illustration to describe how to be a good Christian. It worked then and it works now. Human beings just seem to love sports and sports illustrations. God surely created us to treasure our bodies and find ways to exercise and strengthen them. There is one big difference between an athlete and a Christian. The athlete trains for passing glory. The Christian trains for eternity. As I was studying this passage, one thought made me stop short. I wondered what would happen if each of us approached our faith with the same discipline that an athlete approaches sports. Imagine it: what if we set up a regime of prayer, Bible study, and stewardship. For a minute, I'd like you to envision a personal plan for being an athlete in Christ…How much time should you assign to prayer, where you sit with your coach and talk over the game plan for your life and your daily play? How much time should you spend studying the playbook-the Bible? How much time should you spend in practice and exercise-time spent doing good for the Lord? It takes my breath away to think about what we might achieve as Christians if we approached our faith as a committed athlete approaches sports. Paul makes some excellent points about being a Christian. First, he says it takes discipline. And we know what he is talking about. It sure takes discipline to come out to church on another rainy Sunday morning. Mrs. Robert A. Taft is supposed to have said that the only statistic she could remember was that if all the people who go to sleep in church were laid end to end, they would be a lot more comfortable. That's true! I just appreciate that you got out of warm, comfortable beds to be here. The only way to grow in faith is to be disciplined about it. Faith grows in direct proportion to how much of our lives we open to faith. Sometimes faith is just a Sunday thing. Sometimes faith is just a family thing. With discipline, faith can grow beyond the church and the home to encompass our work and the world. I read an interesting thing about sharks the other day. Exotic fish stores report that sharks have become a popular aquarium fish. If sharks are caught and confined when small, they grow only to a size proportionate to the aquarium. The limited environment determines their growth. Sharks can be six inches long and still be fully matured. Only when set free in the ocean do they grow to their normal length of eight feet. For our faith to grow, we must allow it to be set free in all the areas of our lives. It takes discipline to think of every work situation in terms of faith, but the joy we find in living to the glory of God is amazing. [Charles Simpson, Leadership: A Practical Journal for Church Leaders 7, (Winter 1986), 40.] The second thing that Paul emphasizes is keeping our eye on the goal. We can get confused about what is important, but in these troubled times perhaps we see more clearly than in more complaisant times. A few weeks ago, I was talking with Jacque Flynn, the director of the Geneva Day School. She was showing me her letter to the parents about the plans of the school in the case of an emergency. She made a point to assure everyone that the children would be safe and protected as much as humanly possible. She made another point that the public schools don't seem to understand. She assured the parents that no parents would be kept from their children. Its interesting to me that the public schools have told parents they can't come for their children in case of an emergency. I understand why the schools would prefer to handle any emergency internally, but they have to know that most parents are going to come for their children. That is because for most parents the goal of life is protecting their children. Meeting the goal to take care of the people we love is founded upon another goal: faith in the Lord that is vibrant and gives meaning to our lives. Our goal is to spend eternity with God and with the people we love. It reminds me of something my mother always said: Wear clean underwear. "Believing in God is a lot like wearing clean underwear. You never know when you're going to be in an accident, but you'd better be prepared just in case!" [Eddie Ifft, "Laugh at these jokes or we'll shoot the receptionist," GQ, (June 1999), 250.] It's easy to get caught off guard and forget the real goal. I read a wonderful story about an ice cream vendor who got caught in a monumental traffic jam on a hot, humid afternoon. He finally got out of his truck, went to the back and got himself a cold ice cream bar. As he munched, he realized that in the car idling behind him four young children were watching his every bite. On an impulse he once more opened the back of his delivery truck and got out ice cream for those children. Of course, in moments a crowd of youngsters surrounded him, as refugees from the other vehicles mobbed him. By the time traffic began to move again, the ice cream man had given away four boxes of ice cream bars, which he had already decided to pay for himself. When he returned to the factory, he was called into the manager's office. But instead of being fired, the manager smiled and told him it was the best public relations they had received in years. Grateful parents had been calling in all afternoon to praise the kindness of the man who had changed a frustrating situation into a moment of delight. (Homiletics 12/27/1992) That man clearly was meant to be an ice cream vendor! He instinctively knew that his goal was to spread a little happiness and so he did. Our goal is to live to the glory of God. If we follow that goal everything else will fall into place. In the October issue of Guideposts there is an article by Coach Joe Gibbs. He talks about how he thought his goal was to provide financial security for his family. That sounds like a good goal, but he needed to pursue that goal by looking for God's will and listening to his wife's wisdom. Because he didn't, he had a series of financial disasters that put his family in peril. Finally, he turned to God and surrounded himself with Godly men who helped him to pay off his debts. He and his sons now have a family business in NASCAR racing. He makes every decision relying on prayerful attention to God's will. The final thing that the Apostle Paul points out is that we cannot be ambassadors for Christ, trying to save others, unless we are in control of ourselves. People are always watching to see if our actions match up with our words. Alec Guinness, in his autobiography Blessings in Disguise, tells how he became a Christian after spending many years as an agnostic who believed in chance and contingency, and despised the church and its clergy. The change occurred when he was playing the lead role of a Catholic priest in the filming of Father Brown, a short story written by G.K. Chesterton. After a long day of filming on location in a little village in France, Guinness walked back in the gathering darkness to where he was staying, dressed in his priestly garb. He writes: "I hadn't gone far when I heard scampering footsteps and a piping voice calling, 'Mon pere!' My hand was seized by a boy of 7 or 8, who clutched it tightly, swung it and kept up a non-stop prattle. He was full of excitement, hops, skips and jumps, but never let go of me. I didn't dare speak in case my excruciating French should scare him. Although I was a total stranger, he obviously took me for a priest and so to be trusted. Suddenly with a 'Bonsoir, mon pere,' and a hurried sideways sort of bow, he disappeared through a hole in a hedge. He had had a happy, reassuring walk home, and I was left with an odd, calm sense of elation. Continuing my walk, I reflected that a church which could inspire such confidence in a child, making its priests, even when unknown, so easily approachable could not be as scheming and creepy as so often made out." [Alec Guinness, Blessings in Disguise, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 36] Priests and pastors are no longer seen as trustworthy. It is a tragedy of our time, but one brought on by religious leaders who were not in control of themselves. There are sports figures that have also lacked control, but not all. In 1999 in the Washington Post Magazine, John Feinstein wrote an article called the Pride of the Yankees, which included this story: "On a stifling June afternoon in Philadelphia, New York Yankees Manager Joe Torre was about to step into the air-conditioned comfort of the prayers' entrance at Veterans Stadium when a middle-aged man called his name. Torre is not one of those celebrities who walk past people head down as if they didn't hear a thing. So he stopped, assuming he would be asked for an autograph. "He was wrong. 'I met you almost 30 years ago,' the man said. 'I was in high school, and I wanted to drop out. My parents asked you to talk to me one day because they thought I might listen to a ballplayers. They were right. I'm lawyer now. I just wanted to tell you thanks.' "Torre was please by the story, albeit a bit stunned. 'I had a little, tiny, vague memory when he brought it up,' he said, 'but that was it.' "Before he could take the last few steps to the players' entrance, Torre was stopped again by a younger man. 'Twenty years ago I had cancer,' he said. 'They thought I was terminal. You were with the Mets. You came to see me and gave me a pep talk. I never forgot it. When you were sick, I realized I never said thank you.' "Again, Torre was rendered almost speechless. [Later, he said] "'It makes you realize what all of us in sports can do if we put just a little effort into things. And I mean just a little. A word here, a pat on the back there, a phone call. Right or wrong, because of who we are and what we do, it can have a tremendous effect of people. It's something I wish we could all be a little bit more aware of.'" [John Feinstein, "Pride of the Yankees," The Washington Post Magazine, July 25, 1999, 7] We're not athletes, but we can have an effect, too. I believe that the people we meet in every part of our lives are searching. They are looking for a few good people that they can respect and trust. Our Christianity doesn't have to be showy-shouldn't be showy. Our Christianity must be disciplined. We must keep our eyes on the goal, that is, life eternal. And we must be in control of ourselves before we can ever expect to bring anyone else to Christ. Amen.