"The Race"

08-May-2011

“The Race”

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

828.328.6196 corinthtoday.org

As you run the race, you do your part and let God be God.

Hebrews 12:1-13
May 8, 2011

Mother’s Day Disappointment

I learned something yesterday about Mother’s Day that I never knew. Let me start with some rather common facts, then I’ll come back to the obscure background.

Since 1914, almost one hundred years, America has been celebrating Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of May. But its history goes further back almost a half-century. In 1858, a woman named Anna Reeves Jarvis organized a Mother’s Day to advocate for sanitation in rural West Virginia. Following the Civil War, Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, proposed “Mother’s Day for Peace” to protest all wars as the nation healed from the ravages and resentments of the Civil War.

Nothing was official, however, until the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1908, two years after Anna Reeves Jarvis died, her daughter, also named Anna, held a ceremony in her hometown of Grafton, West Virginia, to honor her mother’s contributions to social reform. By 1910, with the urging of the younger Anna Jarvis, West Virginia declared Mother’s Day, and the following year most states followed suit. This paved the way for President Wilson’s 1914 declaration nationalizing Mother’s Day.

Here’s what I didn’t know – and I bet you didn’t either. Anna Jarvis spent the rest of her life, and most of the fortune her mother left her, trying to undo what she had done. She filed a lawsuit in 1923 to stop a Mother’s Day festival. She was arrested for disturbing the peace while protesting at a war mother’s convention because of the sale of white carnations. Before she died, she regretted she had ever started Mother’s Day.

Her complaint? Mother’s Day had become too commercial. Florists and greeting card companies had joined Jarvis in lobbying for Mother’s Day, but she never saw it coming. “This is not what I intended,” she complained. “I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit!”

The Internet article where I discovered that background on Mother’s Day included a side bar ad: “Save 20% on flowers. Shop Now. Same Day Delivery Available.” Anna would not be happy.

I’m not at all sure that Anna Jarvis speaks for all mothers. Most mothers I know appreciate a touch of commercialization – a card, some flowers, a little chocolate, maybe, or a gift. But it’s also not what they appreciate most from their children. What they really want is the reward of knowing they helped their children run the race.

This brings us back to our study of the New Testament letter of Hebrews. We took a brief hiatus last week for Holy Humor Sunday, but perhaps you recall that on Easter we looked at the great Hall of Faith – Hebrews 11. “Faith is the evidence of things not seen,” the writer said, then illustrated his point with the stories of Old Testament saints who died without seeing what they hoped for.

Now he turns to his readers, likening the Christian life to a race. “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,” he urges us in 12:1. Isn’t that what mothers urge? (It’s what mothers themselves do – race relentlessly from kitchen to minivan to desk to school to laundry room.) What mothers do is prepare their children to run the race of life. They learn along the way there are some things mothers can do for their children, and some things their children must do for themselves.

That’s what captures my notice as I read Hebrews 12 about the race. The writer tells us our part and God’s part. We are wise to note the difference.

My part

I can listen. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses” (v. 1).

I’ve always thought of this passage as urging us to think of those who have gone before us as spectators. The writer of Hebrews lists them all and then motivates us to run well because the witnesses are watching us, perhaps cheering us on.

I saw the text in a new light this week. The Greek word is the root word from which we get “martyr.” A martyr is one who bears witness to what he believes is true, even at the cost of giving his life. It’s not that they are watching us. Their lives bear witness to what faith is.

Do you go through times when you hit “the wall” in the race of life? You’re the turtle and everyone else is the hare. The race feels more like a plod than a run. Maybe it’s because of your health or circumstances. Sometimes for me it’s nothing I can put my finger on. I just have less energy to do the same thing again and give it my best.

Those are the moments I need to listen to the witnesses. The same part of your brain where you still hear your mother saying, “I don’t care what everyone else is doing” or “Someday you’ll thank me for this” or “Why, because I SAID so” has some other voices you need to hear. There’s Noah saying, “Yes, we will keep building this boat.” There’s Job saying, “Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?” There’s Abraham saying, “The righteous will live by faith.” There’s Daniel saying, “My God will save me from the mouths of lions.”

Listen to what that great cloud of witnesses is saying. Choose to believe what you cannot see. Keep putting one foot in front of the other one.

I can travel light. “Let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles” (v. 1).

I don’t do a lot of running, but I do know this: runners don’t wear backpacks. When you run, you take everything but the essentials off – and for your equipment you want light shoes, a top with breathability, and shorts that extend your range of motion.

We throw off “everything that hinders” in this race of life, especially “the sin that so easily entangles.” A better translation is “the sin which clings so closely.” What is the baggage you’re dragging with you down the track?

Every once in a while I run across a picture from the days when I weighed about 50 pounds more than I do now. I remember that it was never obvious to me how much I was weighed down. I’m sure others saw it.

The same is true of the sin that clings so closely – anger, greed, substance abuse, resentment, prejudice, lust, pride. We think no one else notices, but they watch us slogging through life like the race is a marathon in a marsh. Some of those sins cling so closely because their roots are deep, and we might need the help of a counselor or pastor or mentor to name them, much less throw them aside.

Still, it’s one of the things we can do. Listen to the witnesses. Lay aside the sins.

I can remember God’s Word. “And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons” (v. 5).

Do you have a regular discipline of reading the Bible and the kind of good Christian literature that shapes your mind with a biblical world view? What do you read on a regular basis? I’m not suggesting you read only the Bible, but this week’s 400^th anniversary of the King James Version should remind us of the access we have to the Bible in our own language. Thousands of translators and support team members around the world are working right now to give that gift to others.

Why do we read Scripture? Not because on every page and in every situation it “speaks to us.” Sometimes people try it and find it unsatisfying, so they quit.

We read the Bible to put our own lives in God’s perspective. The writer of Hebrews chides his readers for forgetting words of encouragement in the Bible – and they certainly did not have access to Scripture like we do.

When you think about it, that list of what we can do in the race is rather short. I think it’s intentional. In the culture of the self-made man, sooner or later you will find yourself in a situation you can’t work yourself out of. That’s what had happened to these readers. Maybe your story won’t parallel theirs, but when you run out of options of what you can do, remember what you can do. All you can do is what you can do.

You can listen to the witnesses who have finished well even though they couldn’t see.

You can get rid of some baggage – those sins that drag you down.

You can read God’s Word and look for some encouragement there.

So if that’s your part, what’s God’s part?

God’s part

He marks out the race. “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (v. 1).

Wouldn’t you like to mark out your own race? You may have noticed last week on the prayer list that Marty Simmons’ great aunt and uncle died on Easter Sunday at age 89. Their causes of death were unrelated. Linda and I said that’s how we’d like to go – together. But we won’t get to decide. Who knows how our race will play out from this point – or how long either or both of us will run it?

Nobody gets to plan their obstacles in the race of life. You don’t, and your mother doesn’t. If she planned it, she’d want to keep you from injury or disease, to keep anyone from breaking your heart, to make your temptations few and weak, to give you opportunities to dance, to prosper, to love.

But Mama doesn’t mark out your race any more than you do. God does. And he says just keep putting one foot in front of the other one. Never give up.

Let’s not get into theological arguments about what God does and doesn’t cause – how much is the fault of sin or the devil or just bad luck. Just focus on this: don’t spend a lot of time wishing you had a different race to run. You don’t.

He ran on ahead. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” (v. 2).

One of the great comforts of the Christian faith is knowing that your Savior already ran the race and finished well. You say, “Well, isn’t he running here beside me?” He is, but that’s for a different sermon.

For now, just focus on the fact that he’s already hit the finish line and, as the author of Hebrews says, perfected the run. He did it right, and earned the right to sit down.

If it helps, think of him like your mother. I know there are some of you who had painful relationships with your mother. That’s a part of the race marked out for you I wish I could change.

But for most of us, the appreciation for Mom runs deeper as we get older. Our moms weren’t perfect, but they gave us irreplaceable gifts. In some cases, they’re way ahead of us in the race – in others, they’ve already finished. But they left us a model of endurance, of stamina, of completion.

That’s what Jesus did. He started us on the journey and he ran in front of us. He now stands at the finish line, saying, “I did it, and you can too.” Keep your eyes on him.

You’re going to love this last piece of “God’s part.”

He lovingly disciplines. “Endure hardship as discipline” (v. 7).

Do you remember that “word of encouragement” we talked about earlier that the writer pointed out from the Bible? It’s the encouragement that the Lord disciplines those he loves (v. 6). With encouragement like that, who needs enemies?

The author of Hebrews seems to be saying what your mother used to say: “Eat your vegetables; they’re good for you.” “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.” “Someday you’ll thank me for this.”

“Endure hardship as discipline,” he says in verse 7. He doesn’t say all hardship is discipline – just that we ought to accept it with that perspective.

When he says in verse 12 to “strengthen our feeble arms and weak knees,” I think of those wonderful folks in our congregation who serve as OTs and PTs. Hardships are the Occupational and Physical Therapists of life. We have several of them in our congregation, and they all tell the same story. Patients don’t like to see them come into the room. Their job is to push beyond what the patient thinks is possible – or certainly comfortable. But PTs don’t do what they do make friends. They’re not there to coddle people. Their job is to get someone functioning as independently as possible, and toward that end they deliberately make life uncomfortable for a season.

Hardship is like that for all of us. It is pain with purpose. As verse 11 says, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” The primary purpose is to foster humility. Hardship is supposed to make us come to the end of ourselves. As Paul Miller says in A Praying Life, "Suffering is God's gift to make us aware of our contingent existence" (126).

So our part is to listen to the witnesses who have finished before us, to turn from sin, and to find our encouragement in what God has said. God’s part is to mark out the race, to stand at the finish line and be our goal, and to show us how much he loves us through allowing us to go through hardship.

The author of Hebrews has some other words of encouragement about hardship and discipline as well, but we don’t have time for all of them. Verse 4, for example, says, “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

St. John Chrysostom said in the Fourth Century that there are two ways to encourage someone who is suffering. I’m paraphrasing, but he said one way is to say, “I’m sorry you have suffered so much.” A second is to say, “Other people have it much worse.”

So the writer of Hebrews says, “I know it’s bad, but you’re not bleeding.” Think about all those who bled, and then get up and run.

God’s part is marking out the race, running it ahead of us, and lovingly providing us hardship.

A word to Anna

If that sounds like a lot of points I want you to remember, it’s not. There’s really only one. As you run the race, you do your part and let God be God.

Bottom line is that your part is to keep running this race. Don’t give up. Pretty much everything else is God’s part.

I suspect the younger Anna Jarvis went to her grave feeling that she had let her mother down. She had grown up in arguably the darkest era of American history, when prosperity had spiraled downward into poverty because union had been fractured by Civil War. But the latter part of the Nineteenth Century had seen hope rise from scarred battlefields as swords were turned into plowshares. A surge of optimism fueled by technological advance and the social gospel had mobilized a generation to stand together against child labor, for women’s rights, against the evils of alcohol, and for morality and family. A better day was dawning in America and around the world, and credit would always go to mothers who sacrificed themselves so their sons and daughters would live in peace and prosperity with their priorities in order.

Anna wanted to thank her mother and inspire other mothers. But as the years passed, she felt like a failure in the race of life. She had run her race in vain. What she hoped would be the singular accomplishment of her life had been twisted into something she despised. The hope in which the century had dawned had once again turned dark. Prosperity led to pride, which led to war and then more pride and more prosperity. Would the cycle never end?

Maybe not in this life. Maybe not until Jesus comes. It might get worse.

I would love to have had a chance to sit down with Anna Jarvis late in life, with Hebrews 12 in hand. I would have wanted to listen to her frustrations and disappointments, and then try to provide a word of encouragement.

Like every daughter, every mother, every person, there are times when we wonder if we’ve done anything worthwhile. Maybe even the one thing we thought we were put on earth to do has gone awry and ended in disappointment.

And yes, if Anna Jarvis were alive today she would be disappointed in the commercialization of Mother’s Day. But if she could get beyond that, I think she could see that because of her efforts, at least one day every year, countless mothers are remembered and honored and appreciated with special words and tokens of thoughtfulness. She did a good thing, even if it didn’t turn out like she wanted.

She ran the race as best she could. She did her part. That’s all she could do. The rest you have to let go and let God be God. Amen.