Run With Perseverance

July 19, 2015

In this summer of “the people’s lectionary,” our readings come from a variety of sources. This morning listen for a word from God from the New Testament book of Hebrews: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” 

The word of the Lord.

We have a lot of runners in this congregation, and runners know a little bit about perseverance on a focused and particular scale. Runners know their own land-based version of Dorrie’s mantra from Finding Nemo: just keep swimming, just keep swimming. Just keep running. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

If you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, pretty soon you will have gone so much further than you ever imagined.

To be sure, there are limits. At some point, our bodies break down, but most of us never get close to finding those limits. We don’t know what we can accomplish if we just keep running … or swimming … or whatever it is that marks and defines the race that is set before you.

We don’t know what we can accomplish because we are so easily entangled. I like that translation because it puts me in mind of getting my shoelaces tangled or tripping on a vine during a trail run or even of getting caught in the mass of runners in the first mile of a race. I know what it feels like to be easily entangled when I’m trying to run the race that is before me.

Of course, the author of Hebrews also suggests other entanglements: “let us throw of everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.”

Which begs several questions:

·      What hinders you?

·      What is sin?

·      What entangles you along the way?

I’m going to start with the most obviously theological of those questions – what is sin – because it may be the question that most confuses us.

Too often, we define sin simply in moral or ethical terms, that is to say, in behavioral terms. To sin is to behave badly, for example, to cheat or steal or lie, to covet, dishonor or disobey in more Biblical terms.

In Biblical terms, however, the word we translate as sin – the Greek harmartia – is richer and more complicated than that. Though is did carry much the same sense of our word sin, it more literally meant to miss the mark. It was a term from archery, and indicated the measure separating your arrow from the bull’s-eye. We are just full of sportsing metaphors this morning!

By that definition, perhaps a richer understanding of sin is the measure of what separates us from God. Thus it is not merely about a single act but rather about the way we live, the way we run the race that is set before us.

So, if I am intentional about running the race in a manner that draws me close to God, close, that is, to the way of Jesus, what hinders me along the way? I’m reminded of one of my favorite songs from the Civil Rights Movement:

I’m on my way, to freedom land …

One verse has always struck me:

If you can’t go, don’t hinder me …

Sometimes, what hinders us along the way, are destructive relationships. Sometimes, often times, tragically, those are family relationships and those can be particularly entangling, incredibly difficult to repair, and all but impossible to disentangle.

There are no quick fixes nor easy answers to such challenges in relationships, and this is worship not therapy so we’re not going to explore them in depth or detail. In this context, all we can offer is the simple yet incredibly hard challenge to do all things in love.

Other relationships can equally hinder us, and while disentangling can be challenging some of the other relationships can be less therapeutic, as it were. I’m thinking, in particular, of our relationships to what the late Marcus Borg called the three great idols of contemporary American culture: appearance, affluence, and achievement. Another, less alliterative way of naming these idols might be looks, money, and status.

We all have relationships with these idols. We all care, to some extent or another, about how we look. If we didn’t we would pay way less attention to haircuts and the cut of our clothing. We all care, to some extent, about money, and we all care about our achievements and our status on the job, in school, in our neighborhoods.

The question – and here is where that definition of sin as a measure can be helpful – the question is not do we care about these things, but rather, at what point does our relationship with these idols of American culture become idolatrous.

Remember that the great sin in scripture was never disbelief in God, but rather it was always about worshipping the wrong gods. In other words, it was always idolatry. We get entangled with idols and they hinder us all along the way, drawing us further and further away from the way of Christ.

So, what’s the good news in this? The good news comes in the first phrase of the passage from Hebrews: “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.”

In other words, we are not alone. We do not run the race in isolation. There are others with us all along our way. As one who has run a lot, I can say from experience that having folks along the side of the road cheering you on helps immeasurably in running the race with perseverance. I find it so much easier to cut short a planned training run when I’m by myself than I do if I’m running with a friend, and all the more so a road race when there are spectators lining the street cheering even for the middle-aged, middle-of-the-pack runners like me.

Obviously, the author of Hebrews was not talking about running events, but, rather, about our lives – about the several callings to which we are called. Our callings are many, and though they may include our jobs, they are not reducible to them. We are called in every single stage of our journeys: we are called to explore, to learn, to form relationships as young children; we are called to lasting friendships, to good work, to neighborliness, to doing justice and making peace, as adults; we are called to families of origin or of choice to be moms, dads, aunts, uncles, siblings at every stage of our lives; finally, we are called to death and to dying.

All along the way, we belong to God, and are called by God to run each stage of the race as it comes. Moreover, all along the way, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses – the saints of the church militant and of the church triumphant – that is to say, those living along with us as mentors and friends, and those who have completed their races but leave with us sacred memory and inspiration – the breath of lives well lived that still blows through our lives.

Because of this – because we belong to God and we are surrounded and upheld by so many others – we can throw off those entangling hindrances and we can, indeed, do so much more than we imagine. Just keep running. Just keep running. Amen.

So, two questions, again, for our conversation:

·      Who have been your witnesses in the great cloud of witnesses?

·      And, for whom have you been a witness?