Hebrews 12:1-3 * Midweek Lent 4, 2010 * Pastor Steven Stern

We Preach Christ Crucified

If We Would Finish the Race…

I’m not sure at what point it hit home. It might have been somewhere in the middle of Nebraska. It might have been as the wagon was climbing the foothills of the mountains. It might have been as summer was coming to an end and Oregon was still a long ways off. Somewhere in one of those places the pioneer sitting in his wagon, traveling on the Oregon trail, thought to himself, “ I wonder if I can finish this journey. I wonder if I have the strength to make it. I wonder if my horses can last. I wonder if I should try to lighten the load to increase my chances of making it. I wonder if I did the right thing in making the decision to take this road.”

Do some of you feel like you are on the Oregon trail right now? Are you dealing with a teenager that makes every day of your life a battle ground? You fight to get him out of bed in the morning. You fight to get him to school on time. You fight to make sure the homework is done. You fight over curfew and picking friends and going to church and clothes he is going to wear. Sometimes you are so tired you don’t know if you can do this for one more day. Sometimes you are so frustrated you forget how much you loved this kid when he was a baby. Sometimes you can’t imagine this will ever get any better.

Or maybe your trail right now is a trail of pain. You wake up in the morning and you struggle to get out of bed. You feel the pain all day as you move around. You wake up with pain in the middle of the night. You see no relief on the horizon. You wonder how you are going to be able to take many more years of this kind of life.

Or maybe you know you are nearing the end of the trail and it seems to be getting steeper and tougher to keep going. Your spouse and your old friends are all gone. You can’t find any one who wants to talk about the things that you know and like. You don’t recognize the world you live in. You don’t like any of the things you see going on. You don’t know how to use a cell phone let alone how to text any one. You see nothing on the horizon but more loneliness, more loss, more deterioration, and you don’t see any one who will be there for you when the end comes. For all of us who are dealing with stress and pressure, those of us who are swimming against the stream of popular opinion, we know the fatigue that this kind of life can bring and the doubts if we can stay the course and finish our race.

For those of us who are wondering if we can finish the race we are running in this life, for those of us who have loved ones who are struggling to finish the race that is set before them, is there any comfort for us in watching our Savior walk the way of sorrows? Does the message of Christ Crucified speak to those of us who walk our own way of sorrows? The text that we have from the letter to the Hebrews tells us that our suffering and the suffering of Christ are connected. Let us ponder these words as we consider what we have to do if we would finish the race that lies before us. If we would finish our race let us look first of all at what do we have to let go of. And secondly let us look at what we have to hang onto.

In the first century when the letter to the Hebrews was written the Olympic Games was the biggest game in town. Every one knew about them. Every one followed them. Every one knew who the biggest winners were and attended the games if they could possibly make it. So the write uses the imagery of an Olympic race to make his point because he knew his readers would understand what he was saying. As the writer talks about finishing the race of life he first of all points out what we have to let go of so we increase our chances of reaching the finish line. He begins by telling us that we have to let go of the things that hinder us. The image here is of extra weight that would slow us down. Think of trying to run a race with a backpack of rocks on your back and engineer boots on your feet. For these first century Jewish Christians that weight was public approval and acceptance. They had already gone through persecution for being Christians. Some of them had been arrested. Some of them had been discriminated against. Some of them had been tortured, sacrificed in public arenas for sport, and even crucified.

While they had remained steadfast they were beginning to waver. Some were thinking maybe it’s not worth the cost. This persecution is costing me my job. I can’t find a job or get a decent paying job because of my beliefs. It is also costing me socially. I am not being accepted by my community. No one wants to be friends with me. No one wants to be seen with me. On every level my life is hard and miserable and lonely. “Lay this aside,” the writer tells his readers. You don’t need public acceptance and approval. As Jesus said in the tenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, “Fear not those who can kill the body but rather fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in Hell.” To do what the Father calls us to do. To do what is right and not what is popular. To do what is hard and not what is easy removes a heavy weight from the shoulders of the person who is trying to measure up to the world’s standards. It saves a person a lot of time and effort not to have to chase after this approval.

Don’t those words still ring true to us in our world today? Aren’t we still weighed down by our desire to be accepted and approved of by our society? I see this so often when I observe how parents deal with their children. Parents seem to find it more and more difficult to say no to their children. They seem to feel they have to let their kids do things they aren’t comfortable with. They have to give them things they can’t really afford.

My mother was able to stand against this kind of pressure. I remember when I would ask my mother if I could do something and she would say, “No.” Then I would pull out my trump card. I would say, “Well, Bill’s mom is going to let him go.” As I was congratulating myself on my cleverness at putting pressure on my mother she would say, “I don’t care what Bill’s mom is letting Bill do. I’m your mother and I’m saying no.” I thought she was the meanest mother in the world. I thought she had a heart of stone. I didn’t know at the time that it cost my mother to say those words. She didn’t want to disappoint me. She didn’t want to have the reputation of being an old fashioned mother. She knew some would call her one of those strict Christians. But she laid aside public approval because she believed that teaching me discipline and restraint was more important than indulging my every whim.

To you parents who are so tired of hassling with your children and the ceaseless ways they bombard you with demands and requests I encourage you to remain strong. Lay aside the weight of public approval. So what if your children accuse you of being too mean and strict. So what if other parents look at you as if you are from some Amish sect. God has called you to use your life experience and maturity and wisdom to guide your child. Your child doesn’t have the wisdom and vision to look down the road to see what it takes to turn out to be a person of integrity and responsibility, a person whose heart wants to serve Jesus and others. You have to instill and enforce the discipline and the sacrifice until that child develops the maturity to do it on his own.

And connected to laying aside this weight is to also lay down the sin that so easily entangles us. Again the runner can’t run with clothing that hangs down to his ankles and that would get wrapped around his legs and trip him up. Sack races are for fun not for real running. Public approval opens the door to so many other things. Approval can help you to advancement in your field and all the money that comes along with that. And that brings the good life. It brings the fulfillment of the American dream. It brings the beautiful home, the cars, the in home theater and every electronic device that money can buy.

That is also where the entanglement comes into play. While we’re not paying attention the things we acquire become our masters and we become their servants. They demand our attention. They require our unceasing care and devotion. They become the tail that wags the dog and we no longer are running to eternity. We are running to make the next payment. We are running to check the next text message. We are running to buy the latest update. Entangled by our things we stumble and fall because we have come to believe that our hearts will be full if we have an abundance of things. Jesus said, “A man’s life does not consist of the abundance of the things he possesses.”

Let go of public approval. Let go of the things that entangle. And hang on to the things that help us to look up and ahead to the finish line. The writer tells us one thing we want to hang onto and look at is that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us.

Imagine that you are in a stadium. You are on the track and in the stands around that track are all the heroes of faith. Abel and Noah and Abraham and David and Isaiah and down in the front row as I run my race I see my mom and dad. I remember my last conversation with my mother before she died of cancer. I wanted her to stay but I knew I had to let her go. She loved me. She loved my children. She loved my sisters and my brother. But her eyes were looking beyond me. She could see the promised land. She didn’t know exactly where it was. But like Abraham she knew she was going toward it. Now she cheers me on. Now she encourages me to remember here we have no continuing city but we seek one to come.

And beyond the saints and heroes of faith the writer encourages us to hang onto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Author and perfecter means the beginning and the end. He is there at the start and He is there at the end and that means he is also there for all the moments in between. As our author He joined with us at our baptism. He watched us take our first tottering steps. As our perfecter He will watch us take our last tottering steps as we complete the circle of life.

What is different between Jesus and the heroes of faith who are cheering us on from the stands is that He is not in the stands. He is on the track. He is running the race that you and I are running. He is beside us. First He ran His own race. For the joy that was set before Him, knowing His death would give us forgiveness and life, He endured the cross and despised the shame. He sat down at the right hand of God. And yet He told us, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.”

In this way He is our companion as we run our own race of suffering. Whatever pain we experience, whatever fatigue we feel, whatever anguish we experience mentally and emotionally, we look at Him as we go through these things and we see His blood stained hands, the anguish on His face, the thorns on His head and we know He knows where we are. He knows what we are feeling. He understands. When our suffering scares every one else off. When people can’t bear to see our suffering, don’t know what to do or say, avoid us and abandon us, Jesus stays and runs beside us.

Think of that image of the suffering Christ suffering with us and contrast that with an old hero of mine from the days of comic books who was called “Superman”! Superman wore a blue and red uniform with a cape. He could fly. He could stop bullets. He could see through buildings with his x-ray vision. He never broke a sweat. He never had a wrinkle on his uniform. He flew in and rescued you at the last minute and then he disappeared to catch some more crooks somewhere else. How I longed to see Superman fly into my life just one time to take care of the people who made my life miserable.

At this point in my life I can’t tell you how glad I am that I have Jesus instead of Superman. We don’t need some one who is above the fray. We need some one who will enter into the fray. We don’t need some one who has never had a setback or an ache or a pain, we need some one who has been tested in all things that are testing us. And that is why we treasure, we draw strength from, we preach, we follow Christ crucified.

Remember our race is not about speed. We don’t need to be a rabbit. It’s all right to be a tortoise. If we have to limp, if we have to stumble, if we have to crawl, we can finish our race if we see Christ crucified is beside us. Amen.