Stephen Baldwin
OT: Isaiah 5.1-7
NT: Hebrews 11.29-12.2
Finish the Race
Have you been watching the Olympics
this week? What has been your favorite
sport to watch?
No matter if you like table tennis
or swimming or basketball, boy oh boy it’s fun to watch, isn’t it? Those athletes have such visible gifts from
God, and it’s a thrill to see them do what they do so well. Makes all us mere mortals feel pretty lame,
but it’s still a joy to watch.
It reminded me of the story of John
Stephen Akhwari. John was a long
distance runner from the African nation of Tanzania in the 1968 Olympics in
Mexico City. He didn’t win a gold
medal. In fact, he didn’t even
medal. He came in last place, but his
legend lives on. Let me tell you his
story.
Halfway through the
marathon, he was doing well, running in the middle of the pack. Mexico City was at a much higher altitude
than his village in Africa, so he started cramping. Runners were jockeying for position, trying
to get in front of one another and be in the proper position. In the midst of a cramp, John’s foot got
tangled up with someone else’s, and he fell.
He dislocated his knee and also fell directly on his shoulder. Halfway through a marathon. In the Olympics. At that point, I would have called for the
golf cart and gone home. Happy to have
made it that far. How many of you are
with me?
But John got up and
started running again. He still had 13
miles to go. When he finally made it to
the stadium, night had almost fallen.
Only a few people were still in the stands. The winner had finished well over an hour
before. But John refused to quit, and he
kept running his race. He crossed the
finish line, and a reporter asked him why he kept going. He said, “My country didn’t send me 5,000
miles to start the race; they sent me 5,000 miles to finish the race.”
Hebrews teaches us
the value of finishing the race. None of
us are perfect. We’d all like to be in
better shape. Over the years, we’ve lost
a step. We replay in our minds certain
parts of the race over and over, wishing we had done things differently. But Hebrews reminds us that we have to run
our race now.
The whole idea hinges
on what Hebrews means when it talks about two seemingly small but important
words—faith and perfect.
In Hebrews, faith
does not mean belief in God or blind allegiance or hoping we get what we
want. Rather, faith means trusting in
God’s promises. Commit that to
memory. That’s important. Faith means trusting in God’s promises.
Now to our other
important concept—perfection. In
Hebrews, perfect does not mean sinless or just right or wonderful. God doesn’t expect us to be that kind of perfect. If we forget that, watching the Olympics
every four years reminds us. Rather,
perfect means complete. Comes to an
ending point. Complete.
So let’s put those
two ideas together. For Hebrews, running
the race of life is about being faithful—trusting in God’s promises—until we’ve
finished the race.
Everybody here is
running a race. The people sitting to
your right and your left are fighting battles you wouldn’t believe if they told
you. And because none of us are Olympic athletes,
we get tired. We yearn for God’s
promises. We need to know that we won’t be left alone or abandoned. We need to know that God is saving a place
for us. We need to know that we are
loved and supported by God no matter how fast or how slow, how up or how down,
how good or how bad, how difficult to how easy, how rocky or how smooth our
race is.
Running the race of
life is about being faithful, trusting in God’s promises, until we’ve come to
the finish line. Amen.
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