The Agony of the Race
Pastor Mathew Magera – 8/14/16 – Sermon 180
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Have you been watching the
Olympics? I love it. It might be a little stretch to say that I watch more TV
during the two weeks of the Olympics than I watch any other time. Regardless if
that math adds up, I truly enjoy watching. I can get into sports I normally
don’t watch and others that you wouldn’t ordinarily see on TV. While what I
think I love about the Olympics most of all is just the vast amount of culture
and world unity, I am always amazed at the ability of these athletes to surpass
various world records and the distances they are able to go. I think it was one
of the first days last weekend that I happened to be watching a road bike race
that had lasted over 6 hours and over 150 miles. I could not believe it. The
fact that these athletes could race on this course going up and down, left and
right for six hours just about made me exhausted and all I was doing was
folding laundry.
It’s not uncommon for the
New Testament to describe our lives in term of a race as it does in our reading
from Hebrews and I want to talk about that race today as it relates to our
faith. But, before we get to the race itself, I want to touch on everything
that comes before it. Hebrews 11, the great faith chapter. We started it last
week and we finish it this week. Hebrews 11 starts with the poster child for
faith in verse one "Faith is the confidence in what we hope for, the
assurance of what is not seen." If you remember last week, after that
verse, all it begins to do is chronicle the lives of various biblical figures
who by faith did this or by faith did that. Today, this list continues. It
takes up the entire chapter. But, these are amazing people of faith, some of
whom we know much about, others who might escape our thoughts. Abel, Enoch,
Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Moses’ parents, the
Israelites, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the
prophets, others who were tortured on account of their faith and killed. This
is a long list. A very long list and a very good list but the clincher at the
end of it all is when the Bible says, "These were all commended for their
faith, yet none of them received what had been promised." You hear that?
None of them received what had been promised. There are a number of athletes
that go to the Olympics and never receive a medal or even make it to a final
round. They work hard, make sacrifices all for the pursuit of that gold but before they are able to reach it,
they are taken out of the race by not qualifying a fast enough time to reach
it. On one of my flights home yesterday I watched Eddie the Eagle, the recent
movie about a British ski jumper going to the Olympics. Without giving away the
story if you don’t know it, Eddie fit into a category where he made a great
achievement but it wasn’t Olympic gold.
So, these heroes of faith,
as we might call them, in the Bible, have done many great things but they have
not received what they have been promised. They have not received that gold
they were seeking through faith. We feel their lack of reward. We are promised
that Olympic gold. We are promised healing, we are promised peace, we are
promised life and here we are sitting in the midst of death and disease, war
and violence, broken families, bad politics, poverty across the street and
across the world, homelessness, drunkenness, immorality, gossipers, bullies,
persecutors, terrorists, and the list goes on. We are in pain. We are scared.
We are overprotective. We look over our shoulder not for our friends but for
our enemies. We wait. We wait for Jesus to come again. We have not received
what we have been promised. Where is this world of peace, heaven on earth? Out
those doors is no heaven, folks, and we know it too.
So, then what do we do?
There's little place to turn and when we see it this way we do the worst
possible thing. We look for fulfillment somewhere else. We do. We may not even
realize it. Like an Olympic athlete whose gold medal eludes them in
competition, we might seek to compete somewhere else where we can succeed.
If we lose that sense of
fulfillment, we look for fulfillment in projects around the house, home repair.
We look for fulfillment in sports. Even if your team doesn't win, you can spend
the rest of the day talking about what went wrong and make projections for
their next game so that you can feel good about yourself by the day's end. We
might find fulfillment in our doctors. I mean, we might get sick, go to the
doctor, get an antibiotic and in a few days are back to normal. We know that if
we go to the doctor when we get sick that we can get fulfillment in knowing
that the doctor will help us feel better. We rely on that. We honestly might
have more faith in our doctors than we do in God. Have you ever thought about
that? We may find fulfillment in travel, in our jobs, anywhere but church. And
we get it. We receive that fulfillment. But we just don't seem to get it here.
I'm not waiting for Jesus anymore because I can find hope elsewhere. And so,
Hebrews 11 lets us down and the pews become emptier and emptier.
But, then comes Hebrews 12. Listen
to this. It says, "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." We’re back to that race idea again. That's where I want to stop. The
word, race, here in Greek is the word Agona. It is the same word that we use to
get our word agony. As if it says and let us run with perseverance the agony
marked out for us. We really need to just pause and think about that for a
minute. Let us run with perseverance the agony marked out for us. Does that
feel more real to you? That has a different tone to it, doesn't it? The agony.
It's not easy to run the race. Well, yeah, we know that already. It's not easy
to run the race. It's not easy to be in agony. What a strong word. But, that's
where we are. We're suffering in agony as a planet, as a nation, as a family.
The mere fulfillment that we can find in many places of our lives still leaves
us with holes that can't be filled. The agony really begins to show.
So, this word for race, this
agona, this agony gives us a completely different view of what we're going
through and might show us that God really understands exactly what this race is
like for us. Hebrews 11 and 12 shows us all of these heroes of the faith and
sets us forth on our race but perhaps not solely because of the successes that
these people had but because of the race, the agony, they had to run and endure.
Yes, they did great things for their faith but many of them, if not all of
them, suffered greatly. Some even died, as the Bible says. These examples of
exemplary faith are given for us to see what can be accomplished by this faith
but also as an example to show us that this life is indeed a struggle, it feels
like agony sometimes. And with everything that these heroes struggled through,
the Bible says they did not receive what they were promised and isn't that how
we feel too? We feel lost, forgotten, rejected, set aside and thrown away. But,
we have to remember one thing that we now have that these heroes of the faith
did not have. They didn't have Jesus. Their faith rested in a promise that
hadn't even been actualized yet, a race that had not been completed. They were
pursuing a gold medal that was yet to be won and they were not going to win it.
They didn't have the resurrection. They didn't have Christmas. They didn't have
Easter. They didn't have the Sermon on the Mount. They didn't have the
parables. They didn't have the breaking of the bread. They didn't have the
cross. They didn't have the empty tomb where the body of our Lord and Savior
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. We have a great advantage
in our faith that we have live post-cross. The heroes of faith had to persevere
having never known a savior that would die on a cross to save their very lives.
We have that. We have Jesus who ran the race, suffered the agony but won the
gold medal for us, our forgiveness, our reward, our prize. He won it for us and
he has etched our name in it without ever deserving it nor ever being capable
of winning it ourselves. The old heroes of the faith had nothing to fix their
eyes on. We have that focus.
So, the Bible tells us to do
exactly that. Throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily
entangles and run the race focused on Jesus. The reason we don't want to run
through the agony of the race is because it hurts. It downright hurts. These
burdens weigh us down and we can barely move. The sin takes hold of us and
slows us down. The writer of Hebrews is telling us to cast those burdens away,
put them on Christ who takes them willingly for us, to throw away that sin that
Christ willingly takes upon himself on the cross and to run. Run! Run through
the agony. But, not just run. Run with purpose. Run with vision. We aren't just
running to cross the finish line. We aren't just running to get away from sin
because sin can keep up with us. No, we are to run with our eyes fixed on
Jesus. The Bible says he is the pioneer and perfector of our faith. He is the
advantage we need. We cast our burdens at his feet and he takes them. We cast
our sin into his hands and his feet and he willingly dies for us. He's ready
for us. He wants our eyes so that he can carry those burdens for us. So that
when we look to those heroes of the faith we can say to ourselves and one
another, they struggled, I struggle but I have the hope of life in Christ
because he died for me. Nobody had died to give Noah any hope. Nobody had died
to promise life for poor Abel. Jesus hadn't come yet, but now he has and now we
have that good news that just seeps into our hearts. And our focus is to be on
him and him alone because only he can keep the promises that he makes. Nothing
else in which we might seek fulfillment will hold up the bargain. Only Jesus
will. Only Jesus does. Jesus wins us the medal and he wants to give it to you. It's
good stuff isn’t it?
The way we can get through
the agony of the race is just what Hebrews says, to keep our eyes focused on
Christ. When I was in Anaheim this past week, I had a morning off and decided
to walk a mile or two down to the old Crystal Cathedral. I had no idea what
this place was but it was suggested to me, so I took the walk. I arrived to
this campus. That's what it is. A church, but it's on a campus. It's about 5
buildings that has the iconic cathedral, made of all glass, the old chapel, a
museum and a school. I walked into the museum and asked for a tour and this man
named Barry took me through the exhibit. This place had recently been purchased
by the Roman Catholic Church and while there is a long story on how it got
there the main point conveyed during the tour is that they are remodeling the
cathedral itself because it originally did not have many of the Roman Catholic
elements to make it a sanctuary for them. Of the many things I was shown that
were being updated, one of the most intriguing was that the inside of the
cathedral, the sanctuary itself, had to be modified because the current set up
had the congregation sitting in such a way that the pipe organ in the room, the
fourth largest pipe organ in the world, took the majority of the focus in the
space. It would take people’s eyes and focus it on those gorgeous pipes. The
Roman Catholic Church said, no no, this can't be. The only right focus for the
Roman Catholic Church is the altar on which the sacrifice of Christ in the
Eucharist takes place. They want everyone's focus to be on the sacrifice of
Christ on the cross for the sin of the world. They were willing to renovate one
of the most beautiful worship spaces in order to make that the focus. The
Catholics also renamed it from the Crystal Cathedral to the Christ Cathedral.
They shifted the focus from its beauty to Christ’s beauty. We, therefore,
should also look to the sacrifice of Christ because his death means our birth.
His blood means we are washed and his resurrection seals the deal. He’s won the
gold medal and he’s waiting at the finish line to give it to you, he’s waiting
to take your hand and pull you up onto that podium to bring you out of that
agony of the race and into the glory of victory.
Now, if you watch the
Olympics this week, remember what it is that these athletes go through, the
sacrifices they make and the training they go through and the pain they endure
and think about what it means for them to win the gold and what it means for
them to be sent home without ever making it out of their first heat. The
Olympics will be awarding hundreds of medals this month but they can never give
out the medal of salvation, of peace, of healing. Only God can award that medal
and it was only Jesus who could win it. So, as we look at faith and wonder
about the agony of the race, remember that Christ also suffered in agony so
that our burden would be taken from us and we can be sure that this exchange
has taken place because of the resurrection. We cannot fail because Christ did
not fail. We may be suffering the agony now but the race has already been won
and on behalf of Christ, we are going to receive the gold right along with him.
Therefore we keep our eyes focused on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our
faith. We look to him who is waiting for us with that gold medal, waiting for
us so that he can place it around our neck. And with the victory of Jesus as
our vision, we, too, can endure and thrive in the agony of the race. To God be
the glory, now and always. Amen.