Running The Race

INTRODUCTION

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews wrote: ‘Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.’ The writer imagined the Christian life as a race – a race that requires endurance.

We’re presently in a series in which we’re looking at items in the news. In some of the previous talks I’ve looked at ‘hard news’, for example, news about the environment or Israel. But I decided that today I’d look at an item of soft news.

This item of soft news concerns a 40-year-old British man, Paul Holborn. On 6th February, Paul Holborn ran across a finish line in Miami. He had just completed the seventh and last marathon in an event called the ‘World Marathon Challenge’. The challenge is to complete seven marathons on seven continents in seven days! The first marathon was in Antarctica. Then the runners went on to Cape Town, Perth, Dubai, Madrid, Fortaleza in Brazil and they finished in Miami. Paul Holborn was the first British person to win this event.

[There’s an account of Paul Holborn’s run on youtube.com/watch?v=IEsLm203x7o.]

We may think that soft news items like this aren’t very important. But Paul Holborn’s running lines up with a theme that comes up surprisingly often in the New Testament. Running! Did you know that God is a runner?! In the parable of the prodigal son, the son returns and the father – who represents God – runs to greet him! You may not be convinced by that! We never read of Jesus running, and he never mentioned sport. But Paul did. In the areas where Paul worked there was a Greek culture and sport was an important part of it. The Greeks had the Olympic Games, the Pythian Games, the Nemean Games and the Isthmian Games.

Sport, and I think, running especially, is a great metaphor for the Christian life. People generally understand sport even if they aren’t sporty themselves. So, it isn’t surprising that Paul talks about sport, and running especially.

What I want to do in today’s talk is to look at how running is a helpful metaphor for what the Christian life is like. Most of us know what running is about, so we should be able to relate to it.

I’m going to hang this talk on three hooks: strive, improve and stay the course.

STRIVE

If there is one idea that I think Paul wants us to get when he talks about running, it is that in the Christian race we need to STRIVE.

A serious runner aims to win. That’s the attitude Paul wants us to bring to the Christian life. We should give it one hundred percent. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: ‘Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So RUN that you may obtain it’ [1 Corinthians 9:24].

There are people who go for Parkrun and their goal is just to jog round. There are other people who go to Parkrun and their aim is to win. Parkrun isn’t actually all that important. But the Christian life is. Paul is telling us to approach the Christian life as though it’s a race – and our goal is to win.

Paul wrote a letter to Timothy. He told him, ‘Train yourself for godliness’ [1 Timothy 4:7]. He then continued, ‘for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way.’ A few verses further on, Paul told Timothy, ‘to this end we toil and strive’ [1 Timothy 4:10]. The word for strive is the Greek word ‘agónizomai’. It’s the word from which we get the word agony. It suggests to me putting in so much effort that it hurts. I have one book about marathon running. In it, the author says that if you don’t feel like giving up about three times in a marathon, you’re not trying hard enough.

We’re supposed to give the Christian race maximum effort. If runners can push themselves so hard that it hurts just to get a medal, then we should do much more for the rewards we have coming to us.

Is the Christian race really like a marathon? Yes, it is. Some people give up. Paul asked the Galatians: ‘You were RUNNING well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?’ [Galatians 2:2]. The Galatians had lost their momentum. I suspect they were close to giving up.

Almost at the end of his life, Paul wrote to Timothy: ‘I have fought the good fight, I HAVE FINISHED THE RACE, I have kept the faith’ [2 Timothy 4:7]. What’s Paul’s tone? Has he found the Christian race easy? It doesn’t seem like it. He’s had battles to fight. He says, ‘I have finished the race’ as though that was an achievement. But he has kept going to the end. The Christian race is much longer than a marathon. Keeping going to the end ISN’T easy.