Sports in Scripture: Running

I.

Perseverance. Today, we end our brief series on sports in scripture, and we end on the subject of running as sport. Perseverance. The images of and references to running in scripture have nothing to do with exercise or health improvement otherwise. Perseverance. It’s all about finishing the race. Some who run the race of life will be winners--nothing wrong with being a winner. The predominant goal, however, is finishing. To finish is to win in life, even if you happen to be last crossing the finish line. Everyone who finishes gets a tee shirt. Perseverance.

Life is like a race, and some of us live at such a pace that we feel exactly like we’re running through life--rushing, hurrying, every day a new part of the course to run, to speed through, until we drop exhausted at the end of the day and get up the next morning to sprint through that day too. Those wise ones who have encouraged us to run the race of life well were not encouraging us literally to jet through life at such a pace that everything around us is a blur; they were encouraging us to persevere and finish the particular course that is ours to run. Once we stop pressing on, we give our destiny over to forces that from that point on say how life will go for us; we lose, thereafter, the ability to influence what we want to get out of life and what kind of mark we want to make in this world.

I’m not suggesting that we have control over every aspect of our lives; we certainly don’t. Let’s say you’re running your course, making progress, doing well, and a tsunami hits. You survive, thankfully, but you aren’t sure you’ll ever have the energy to run life’s race again; grief and loss now weigh you down, and the course you were running--the only one you knew to run--has been destroyed. If you’re going to run ever again, you’ll have to look for a new track since the tsunami destroyed nearly everything that influenced how you’d been able to live your life up to the point of that natural disaster. If you don’t keep on running or start running again, what will life be to you then?

A challenging health diagnosis can stop many of us in our tracks, and what could be more understandable than yet? There are some amazing people who though at a slower pace keep running the race of life with a whole stack of health complications. Many of you have inspired me with your courage to fight through significant health challenges, still making or keeping life meaningful. Perseverance.

I heard Elizabeth Edwards in an interview that was originally done, as best I could tell, shortly after her second cancer diagnosis--though I didn’t hear it until after her death. She was someone whom I admired greatly because she kept her head held high through all sorts of would-be-debilitating circumstances. She said in the interview something to the effect, “I had no idea how to live after either cancer diagnosis other than the way I’d been living the day before I got it. The very next day, I kept my appointments and did what I’d planned to do and what I’d committed to do.”

Her philosophy in that regard is fully inspired and filled with common sense. The day after the worst day in our lives, we have to wake up, get up, and do something with ourselves. You know that I don’t mean to ignore the crisis or the tragedy or the feelings that go with them, but we can’t let those circumstances or events rob us of any more life than they already have or will.

The key to wringing as much positive life as we can out of ours is to run the race of life with perseverance, and that word, “perseverance,” will be our key word today. I will use it as an acrostic to come up with twelve key words that describe the successful runner in the race of life. Remember, there’s nothing wrong with going for the gold or being in it to win it, but the most important thing is that we finish the course, that we don’t give up on ourselves or on life. Sadly, we’ve all known probably several people who stopped living long before they were biologically dead. That’s what we don’t want, what we work against. Thus, “...let us run with perseverance the race that has been set before us.”

The “race that has been set before us,” is a biblical phrase that you’ll hear more about as we move along, but it isn’t a way of saying that whatever you come across as you run life’s race was put there by God, for your pleasure or your pain. Never believe that God does anything to cause you or any one pain.

The letter “p” in “perseverance” stands for the adjective “poised”; all twelve of these words will be adjectives describing an effective runner in the race of life. An effective runner is poised. In the sense we use it here, “poised” means self-collected and self-contained. In addition, her or his movements are not erratic or clumsy--though even the most gifted and trained runners can misstep or lose balance. There is a gracefulness to proper running that has to do with well-practiced pacing and posture. Tough race, tough track, the better runners remain poised.

Canadian Bill Crothers is now retired from running. He was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame. Before he hung up his running shoes, however, he was one of the fastest male runners in the world, and he was widely known for his graceful, fluid style of running.

How one carries oneself on the track has to do with her or his physical poise or lack of it, but poise for a runner is an inner quality also as evidenced in the definition I chose for this word “poised” that has several meanings: self-collected and self-contained. There is a kind of inner calm about the person even moments before an important race, during the race itself of course, and then after the race, winner or not.

The people who tend to inspire us most when we look at them as runners in the race of life are those who are able to remain cool, calm, and collected come what may. They live with dignity and grace, and when the time comes to leave this world for the next realm, they die with dignity and grace.

One of my congregants in Baltimore, Ann King, died while I was pastor there. I visited her at the Stella Maris Hospice that was a wing or floor of the downtown Mercy Hospital. I said, “Ann, I don’t have any good words to offer; all I can tell you is that I’m an eternal optimist.”

She said, “Well, I’ll do the talking, and this is what I want you to know. I’m not at all afraid of death. The only thing I’m afraid of is how I die. What matters to me now is my dignity. I want to leave this world with the same dignity I have tried to maintain while living in it.”

The first “e” in “perseverance” reminds us that an effective runner is enthusiastic. Did you ever see someone win a race who wasn’t enthusiastic about being in the race? If a runner enters a race with a “ho hum” attitude, a bland, don’t care one way or another perspective, it’s almost impossible for that runner to do well in the race, much less win it.

A runner named “Kara,” no last name given, wrote online about her experience running in the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco. With Nike involved, there were some great prizes for winners and some not too shabby prizes for simply finishing the race. This is what Kara journaled: “We started out strong; its hard not to when you’re being swept along with 20,000 very enthusiastic runners.” How infectious it would be to be in the presence of 20,000 enthusiastic people. I guess those of you who are devoted to a sports team know what this feels like when you go to a game. It’s electric. It’s exciting. It’s empowering. It’s delovely!

At first, we think of excitement as always a good thing except for the frustrations about being around the chronically excited--those seem to be excited about anything and everything. Yet, some mental health professionals warn against excessive excitement even for those who aren’t heart patients.

Good exercise, like running if you are physically capable of that, benefits us emotionally because of the production of endorphins. These endorphins make us feel good, strong, happy, excited, capable, and competent. When the endorphins fade so do those great feelings. We want them back, and we can become addicted to them so some people become addicted to exercise so they can always live on an endorphin high. This can be bad.

Nutritionists working with mental health professionals have found that happy people tend to make healthier food choices than unhappy people, but endorphin crazed people who end up feeling indestructible are likely, for that reason, to make poor food choices. “Nothing can get me down; noting can hurt me,” they think, and they are as wrong as can be. Excitement in moderation, please.

II.

The first “r” in “perseverance” stands for the word “resolved.” To be resolved is to be single-minded, resolute. I don’t mean to suggest that you can or should avoid thinking about several things at once as you monitor your body’s wellbeing and your surroundings and the terrain, but I mean single-minded in the sense that there’s no question in your mind whatsoever that you want to be running in this race.

In the book, The Lore of Running, author Dr. Tim Noakes notes that Australian Herb Elliott may have been the greatest distance runner in history. Elliott had a low point, though. In about 1957, the great runner had a foot injury that might have ended his career. Noakes says that after the injury, Elliott stopped training consistently, even after the injury had presumably healed. Instead of easing back into proper, consistent training, Elliott “spent most of his evenings in a coffee-bar with another half-hearted athlete, inventing excuses as to why they should not train.”

The opposite of half-hearted kinda sorta is single-minded--interesting juxtaposition. I suppose that the reference to the heart leans a bit toward one’s emotional self, and the reference to the mind leans to the rational self; but they both refer to that something within us that gives us or robs us of what we call down in Halls Crossroads “gumption.”

Anything I’m going to do well I have to be determined to do. If I’m ambivalent about it, doing well would be just a fluke, an accident of nature. I must resolve to achieve if I want to achieve; if I am not a resolved participant, whatever the endeavor, I will likely have a mediocre or poor showing.

Most of the courses I teach at the University and at the Seminary are required classes. Graduate students usually, not always, have a better grasp of the larger picture and can see how a required course, though not first on their list of preferences, will benefit them as intended. Most of them are resolved to do well anyway. In contrast is the younger half-hearted beginning speech student who has to learn the hard way that the only effective speakers have somewhere along the way resolved to be.

Next, the “s,” reminds us that the effective runner is a steady runner. The most famous runners in world history may well have been the tortoise and the hare. They appear, as you know, in Aesop’s collected fables. He was born about 550 years before Jesus was born, and he was born a slave in ancient Greece. Evidently, he won his freedom somehow and became a highly regarded writer of fables. A fable is a short tale intended to teach a moral lesson, and in the fables animals and sometimes inanimate objects are given human characteristics. There was a reason for that beyond demonstrating a writer’s cleverness. The idea was that a moral issue could be addressed in a much less accusatory way by telling a story where the lesson is learned by an animal or a tree rather than by a human being, though fictional.

The fable of the tortoise and the hare, then, reminds people who know they’re better than someone else at some task or feat that they may, because of their arrogance, perform poorly next to someone of lesser abilities by taking their undisputed skill for granted and letting it persuade them not to take a contest or a job assignment as seriously as the less gifted person. You know the story. The rabbit runs and leaves the tortoise in the dust but is so sure he can’t lose that he goes off course and naps; all the while the tortoise is steadily, though slowly, moving forward toward the finish line. In the end, the tortoise wins because he was the steady competitor--not because he was the most gifted runner.

The moral of the moral story was always or almost always stated in Aesop’s day, and in the case of this fable, Aesop had the hare himself state the painful lesson he’d learned in a rhyme no less: “After that, Hare always reminded himself, ‘Don't brag about your lightning pace, for Slow and Steady won the race!’” Slow and steady won the race.

The truth is that slow won’t win many races, but steady will. The steady runner may not be overall the fastest, but the steady runner may well win because she or he is well-paced. In the race of life, the steady runners nearly always enjoy life, relish it more than those who somehow have come to believe that the only effective way to live is on the run.

The effective runner is mentally and emotionally “engaged” in the race. This quality is related to “resolved,” but moves it to a different level. My mind has to be on this race if I’m going to get to the finish line; if my mind is in a hundred other places, I don’t have a shot at finishing. We uphold multitasking skills in our culture as signs of higher-level intelligence or good ole common sense. Multitasking serves us well on the job and at home at times, but we can easily get to the place where we have so many things on our minds that we end up doing poorly at everything on the list because of brain drain. Most of us can only do well with one primary task at a time; yes, the back burner works for most of us, but we can’t have five items on the front burner at once.

A pal in seminary once told me that his wife went to sleep while they were making love. There’s no such thing as one-sided loving making; since she feel asleep, making love was downgraded to one-sided sex. He was having sex with her and was so into it that he didn’t realize for a while that she was asleep; when he did, can you imagine the ego boost he experienced?

She did a pretty good job of trying to save the moment by telling him that the ecstasy she was feeling overwhelmed her and she mildly fainted. The snoring sounds he heard, which prompted him to find that she was sleeping, she said were figments of his imagination, and what he was hearing were his own wild animal sounds that he wasn’t usually aware of; but she heard them always, and they turned her on.

Poor guy, he fell for all of that malarkey. After that, he thought he was the hottest seminarian ever to cross the Josephus Bowl as Southern Seminary. I don’t know what became of them. I hope she became a fiction writer; if so, they’re rich, and he probably gave up preaching to go around and tell that story to someone every day of his life.

We don’t usually do well in life being stuck in places or situations where we don’t really want to be. We can’t be engaged there. Our minds are elsewhere. Same with trying to have our minds in too many places at once. Something will inevitably get neglected.

An effective runner is a vigorous runner. The “v” gets us to “vigorous”. Now, “vigorous” is a relative term. Vigorous for a 21 year old usually means something different from vigorous for an 81 year old. That’s why in many racing events there are lower and upper age limitations. It is better for competition, fairer usually, if we compete against those in our general age group.

My ex-wife had an uncle and aunt whom I dearly loved. I hated losing them in the divorce, and I suppose I didn’t have to; but I just couldn’t figure out how to relate to her family after the divorce. Some people do that well. My ex-wife for a long time would drop my mother a note now and then, and it pleased Mom because they really had been close.

Anyway, Lindon’s Uncle James, married to Aunt Bertha, were cream of the crop human beings in every way. He had gone deaf as his retirement years had approached, and Aunt Bertha went with him to American Sign Language classes so that she could communicate with him better at home and so that she could sign the Sunday sermon to him at church. Smart cookies, those two, they picked up the language quickly and effectively.

Another thing Uncle James did in retirement was to become a runner. I believe he began racing against men his age when he was exactly 65 years old and retired as the accountant for the Ford Dealership over near Asheville, North Carolina. He had always taken care of himself physically, but this boosted his physical health and his mental health; and in a way it helped compensate for the hearing loss. He excelled as a senior runner and kept at it until well into his 80’s. He won some noted race in his early 80’s, and he sent me a copy of the newspaper clipping. I was delighted.

Uncle James outlived Aunt Bertha, and when he became a widower he did the only thing a Baptist missionary kid could do in old age--move into a Baptist retirement home. He had many wonderful years there and was the favored male dinner companion for the single ladies because he was a virile running stud, and his sex appeal alone made them, most of them Baptist too, blush in delight. Vigor on the track, and vigor in the race of life. Uncle James had it.

An effective runner is an earnest runner, “e” for “earnest.” One thing’s for sure, if you don’t want to be a runner, you will not be a runner--not in a free country anyway. I suppose there have been dictators, ancient and modern, who decided who would be a competitive runner and who would not. In a free country, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him run.

My high school physical education teacher, good guy at heart, not the most sensitive soul ever to be born, didn’t like me at school both because I hated his classes and because as the head basketball coach he had no ability to comprehend how anyone with height could choose not to play basketball. I played church league basketball as I’ve told you and was crummy on offense there, so why would I want to be even more crummy in front of all the people with whom I went to school? At worst, the church team would pray for my improvement, but at school I could suffer serious humiliation.

Though very nice to me at church, in front of my parents, Coach Jones, I always believed, took his frustration out on me every fall when we had our running/jogging unit in phys ed. He ended up only aggravating himself as I mastered the 10 minute mile, and I wasn’t ever the very last to cross the finish line. At least I tortoised every step of the course unlike some of my classmates--the slower ones and the faster ones--who cut through the woods to get a better time.

Earnestness refers to a deep sincerity or seriousness about a relationship or a task or a goal. I did not wish to be a runner, and his screaming at me for being one of the slower kids all four years in high school surprisingly didn’t motivate me to want to change.

Wouldn’t you hate to get an anesthesiologist on the operating room rotation who was not earnest about being an anesthesiologist? What about reporting a crime and having an officer of the law show up to help you deal with it who wasn’t earnest about solving crimes or encouraging victims? And what if someone actually went to Washington as an elected official who wasn’t earnest about making the nation a better place to be? Like that could ever happen!

III.

A great runner is resourceful, second “r,” “resourceful.” I don’t know much about the great American races, much less about great races around the world. Evidently, though, an important international race is a part of the Commonwealth Games sponsored by the Commonwealth of Nations every fourth year. Last held in Delhi, India, last year, they will be held again in Scotland in 2014.

Speaking of resourceful runners, Sapolai Yao represented Papua New Guinea in the steeplechase event at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2010. This event is an obstacle race in which the athletes have to clear 28 barriers and 7 water jumps over a distance of 3000 meters. Sapolai Yao is a resourceful, diminutive athlete who stands 4′10″, and the hurdles were too high for him. No one thought of that, and it seems that he hadn’t taken a practice run around the course before the big event was held. During the race, he came to one more hurdle structured for men a foot taller than he, and he was exasperated by the disparity. At this particular hurdle, Mr. Yao spotted a large potted plant near the hurdle, and he decided to make use of it. He used it as a step to climb on top of the hurdle from which he jumped down and continued the race. The judges sadly disqualified him instead of applauding his spunk and his resourcefulness.

Well, these are the kinds of details to bring up before a race begins, not during the race. Mr. Yao could have learned that India had raised the bar, so to speak, before agreeing to run in that event. Even so, his resourcefulness should have been rewarded or recognized. He shouldn’t have been disqualified.

In the race of life, resourcefulness for some people is all that gets them through. There are so many surprises along the way, so many unexpected twists that someone who lacks adaptability and the skill to redirect on a moment’s notice may very well fall off the course and disqualify herself or himself. A person who lacks resourcefulness, through no fault of her or his own, may not know how to get over a life challenge; experience and education have failed them. At hurdles too tall, I’ve seen a shocking number of people say, “I can’t take it,” and check out of life’s race.

The “a” stands for “alert.” The effective runner, the successful runner, is alert.

Running isn’t a robotic sport. You can’t just wind the runners up and press the “run” button causing them to run the course no matter what happens; I suppose that could be commonplace someday. Human runners, though, have to be prepared for the unexpected on the track. Gusts of wind that weren’t anticipated. No one saw any clouds, but suddenly there’s a cloud burst. On an indoor track, something goes wrong with the electricity for a flash, and in that couple of seconds there is complete darkness. Another runner, accidentally or on purpose, keeps edging into your lane. This slows you down, and it could trip you.

A good runner is also alert to her or his own body. If some body part starts feeling odd or painful, the runner should stop rather than risk ripping something or breaking something, which could result in a life long injury. Better to stop and make sure everything’s OK than to keep running only to injure yourself.

The race of life requires alertness too. There are no convenient times for crises or tragedies. Even though we may be more alert than the next person, things can pop up to knock the breath out of us.

Another reason to be alert is to be ever watchful for the opportune moment. There may be one chance and only one chance to take the lead if that’s what we aim to do. If the opportunity presents itself, we should take it. If we hesitate, we may lose out for good; there may never again be such an opportunity.

Evidently, Egyptians who did not feel free under the rule of Mubarak saw what they took to be the right moment to revolt. Many of the protesters are younger Egyptians, the majority well educated, who are sick of dealing with high unemployment and lack of opportunity to move ahead. People who feel oppressed, and this has been true throughout history, look for ways to gain their freedom even at great risk to themselves. Were that not the case, there would be no United States, and if high unemployment especially among educated youth can incite protests and a demand change, even a democracy had better take note.

“N,” “nimble.” A good runner is nimble, agile; not stiff or rigid. There are so many people in our nation and in our world, in our state, who have been brought up to believe that there is only one right way to do practically everything. Many of them will fight, literally or figuratively, for the right to keep on trying to do whatever it is their own way even when it clearly doesn’t work any longer; maybe it never worked. Many wars have been fought for this very reason--many marriages failed, many churches split. The old saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” doesn’t mean to keep trying what you already learned didn’t work. The square peg isn’t going to fit into the round hole last time, this time, or next time.

Rewarding huge financial entities with sick-making amounts of money even though they cheat the government and their constituents doesn’t work. No wait. It does work here in the United States. The people who control the largest amounts of money don’t want to be regulated or scrutinized so we throw a couple of offenders into jail, and let the others go right on as usual--God-awful bonuses for doing nothing that benefits the nation as a whole or the vast majority of its citizens.

For the most part, though, we have to live in readiness to make a new move. We have to be willing to use muscles we haven’t used before. We have to remember a little lesson or a little trick of the trade someone taught us long ago, and we’ve almost forgotten it because we’ve never had to use it. The track coach said once, “If this happens, your only real alternative is that.” But this never happened until just a minute ago so you’re not sure about that--if you can do it at all and if you can how quickly you can.

Life is so dynamic and ever-changing that a really big part of being educated and informed is living with the reality that we may well need a Plan B or a Plan C to deal with what just now came our way. Running the same old way isn’t going to work. Old dogs and new dogs have to react differently than they have in the past, and with ease. Jack be nimble; Jack be quick. Jack jump over the challenge that you never really thought would come to you.

Effective runners are “centered,” and the “c” in “perseverance” calls that to our attention. Being centered is considerably different than being single-minded; being centered means that I’m drawing from wells of strength deep within me both to understand who I am as a runner and to find the fortitude to stay the course. A centered runner understands whether she or he is running this particular race just for the heck of it or to attempt self-improvement or to learn some new lesson heretofore ignored. A centered runner is clear on whether she or he should try to win the race and perform in top form or if simply finishing is success enough. A centered runner understands limits and limitations at practice and and in the heat of competition.

Archaeologists and anthropologists now know that the ancient Greeks who loved, loved sports had the technology to measure a runner’s times and distance achievements, but they seem rarely to have used them except for training. Records were not kept. Of course, it was an honor to win, but winning was kept in perspective; the prize, if you remember my reference to the ancient Greeks in a earlier sermon in this series, was a little crown of sorts, likely made out of celery leaves. Unless kept cool, celery leaves are going to wilt in a few hours. The crown could be worn for a few hours only; then, it was gone.

The Greek athletes were centered. Their real opponents were themselves. They weren’t preoccupied with winning; they were preoccupied with the race itself and what happened to them as they ran and as a result of their racing.

I’d say, if you make it to the end of the course, wherever you may finish in comparison to others, and you still value yourself and the race called life, the life-force being God, you’ve hit the jackpot. Those who are crying because they didn’t win the celery leaves and therefore feel that they achieved nothing and left no positive mark on the world are wasting their energies. Those who have run the race only caught up with what they see with their eyes as they run the race of life and who never look deep inside to see who they are becoming because of the race and how they are running it are missing the point of the race.

The final “e” in “perseverance” suggests to us that perhaps the most effective runners are those have been or are being cheered on as they practice and as they run the real thing. Certainly there are those runners who have no choice other than to go it all alone and some who choose to make the run an entirely personal, private undertaking; they don’t want anyone to know that they’re running or where or when. Still, chances are, the greater number of effective runners press on and strengthen their belief in themselves because they have been and are being “encouraged” by those who care about them.

The writer of the book of Hebrews came up with the powerful image of those who have already finished the race and passed into the next realm being in the stands of the great arena as we run the race of life, and they are among those who encourage us to keep going. There may be something more than just wonderful memories to the thought that someone in the next realm encourages us when we feel weak and prone to fall. Maybe something more is going on when Dad suddenly comes into my consciousness while I’m feeling confused and discouraged. Maybe something more is going on when I walk up the back walkway and through our Memorial Garden on the way in to my office, and I see a name on a plaque or glance over in the general direction where ashes were buried and am strengthened by the warm smile I see on the face that appears in my consciousness. Bob Mahood and Dick Holmes have jokes for me. Bob Gibson is delighted that the finances of the church are improving dramatically. Bev Linn is overjoyed that the members are caring so well for one another. Charlie Wiswall is smirking as if to say, “I told you if stayed with it for ten years you’d see this church more like it was supposed to be all along.”

The book of Hebrews:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith... who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart.

Amen.

I.

Have you ever known anyone, and please don’t speak out loud if you have, who couldn’t enjoy anything unless everything about something was perfect in every way? I’m talking about people who can only enjoy an event or an art piece or a concert or a book or an anthem or a sermon or a play or a relationship or a job IF everything about whatever it is, is flawless. I asked you not to speak out loud in answer to my rhetorical question, and I’ll have to ask you not to point either.

Well, I have known some people like that--not in this church or this city--but in other churches I’ve served and in other cities in which I’ve lived. Some of them are young idealists; some of them are disillusioned older skeptics. Usually, the younger ones aren’t unhappy yet because they still believe they will be able to find their utopias; the older ones, though, having been so often disappointed, are generally rather unhappy if not bitter, and when the younger ones are older, they will join the ranks of the sadly dissatisfied.

It’s unrealistic to expect that any human being or human institution will be or can be perfect since, as far as I know, human beings are by nature imperfect. I didn’t say “by nature immoral”; that is absolutely untrue. I said “imperfect.” Nearly all of us make mistakes, and I do use the plural here intentionally. I don’t know of any mistakes I’ve made so far today, but chances are, by the end of the day, I will have made some kind of mistake. Hopefully, it will not be the kind of mistake that offends someone or, worse, actually hurts someone. Before the day is out, though, I could make a wrong turn. I could remember incorrectly and, thus, state as fact what isn’t fact at all. I could make the wrong food choice at a meal. I could mis-trim my beard causing it or my whole face to look a little lopsided or to look to a beard-trimming perfectionist like I’m careless and unkempt.

I would hope that those who love me will still love me at the end of the day, even if I’ve made several mistakes before I crawl into bed. I know, though, that there are some people out there who would not find me suitable company if I made any or all of these mistakes before nightfall.

When I announced my impending divorce to my congregation in Baltimore, I was, for the most part, supported and encouraged. The deacons met and voted unanimously that they wanted me to stay, that I was still of value as a person and had not lost the competencies necessary to perform pastoral duties. I was asked to attend the meeting but directed to leave the room by the Deacon Chair, Doris Heaver, when the vote was taken. Then she called me back into the parlor where we met, and she said, “I want you to see this.” It was a much larger congregation, and we had twelve or fifteen active deacons at any given time. She said to them, “For David’s benefit, I want him to see how many of you believe that his divorce will not impair his ministry and, thus, that we want him to remain as our pastor.” Every hand in the room went up, and I couldn’t keep the tears from streaming down my cheeks.

I did not know until much later that Doris, who had been an Army MASH nurse during World War II and was the toughest cookie to be found anywhere, had told the Deacons after I’d left the room that they could get home in an hour, at midnight, or just in time for breakfast the next morning. It was their choice, she said, but she would not adjourn the meeting until every deacon was willing to vote in the affirmative.

Actually, I don’t know if that story is true or not; I heard it after Doris died, after I was already here at Silverside. What I suspect happened was that her comment to the deacons before the vote was not as direct as in the legendary version of the story that evolved over some years. I suspect that Doris said whatever she said laughingly as if joking a bit, but all the deacons knew that she wasn’t playing at all. I think had any one of them actually been disinclined to endorse me, she or he would certainly not have been pressured to vote against conscience, and they were wonderfully supportive. It was a highly affirming moment.

In contrast, an attorney in the church, a little younger than I, whom I thought was my best friend in the congregation wrote me I believe the nastiest note I’ve ever received from a church member. He said I now repulsed him, and because I was unfit to serve a role model for his children he was leaving the church. I won’t tell you what I knew about his personal or professional antics, but I will say that he had much more reason to be concerned about the life he was living before his children than with where I should be listed on the role model for children scale. At the moment, I can’t recall any act by a congregant that hurt me more than that letter, and--sad to say--it’s a pretty long list.

I am not a perfect person, and I am not a perfect pastor. I did not portray myself as perfect personally or professionally to the pastor search committee of University Baptist Church or the pastor search committee of Silverside Church. If you’re looking for perfection every day and in every way, then I’m not your guy. If you think of me as imperfect, and I know some of you do because I’ve kept your emails, but functional and maybe even lovable despite my imperfections then I’m your guy. That’s how I think of you. Imperfect, but still of great value as human beings and as members or friends of Silverside Church. I hope those of you who think you’re perfect aren’t put off that I see you as imperfect, and I certainly hope I’m not the first ever to break that news to you. I still love you and am proud to claim you as one of my congregants.

Here’s the way it has to work in this world. Imperfection does not signal the absence of worth all together. I made many mistakes as a parent; if you don’t believe me, just ask my sons, which, of course, will have to be somewhere other than church for obvious reasons. They remember some of my mistakes with greater clarity and in greater detail than I remember them. I believe they would also tell you that, overall, I was a good dad; I hope so because nothing in my life has been more important to me than that. Imperfect, but still loving and available and encouraging. The mistakes that I made as a father did not invalidate me as a good dad.

The line that the actor stumbled over did not ruin the whole play or mean that the actor is worthless and should be banned from show business.

Bill Clinton’s affair did not make him an ineffective president.

The one ride at the theme park lacking the thrills the ads promised doesn’t make the whole theme park a worthless recreational site.

The one bad meal at a restaurant doesn’t mean all food served there is garbage.

The one irritating habit, however nerve-wracking or irritating, does not make him a bad husband or her a bad wife. If he never learns to lift up the seat, he can still be an excellent partner and husband. If she never learns to make meatloaf like your mother or balance the books like your father did, she can still be the best partner and wife for you in this world. Snoring should not be grounds for divorce; neither should telling you where to turn even after you’ve made the trip fifty times. The inability to make a decent cup of coffee should not be grounds for divorce; neither should obsessive-compulsive cleaning.

One editorial oversight doesn’t make an otherwise outstanding novel a bad read; not does it mean the editor at fault has seen her or his better days and should be put out to pasture.

The person who doesn’t agree with your politics isn’t thereby proven to be an idiot when it comes to politics or to life in general.

I don’t believe any kind of singular isolated error on an academic paper automatically throws that paper out of “A” range, but I had a high school English teacher--my senior year I think--who said that one misspelled word on a paper--and this was long, long before word processing software, friends--instantly got a grade of “F,” no questions asked.

One picture slightly mis-hung doesn’t mean that the homeowner who did her own decorating is inept at interior decorating.

And one bad apple does NOT spoil the whole barrel if the person who bought a whole barrel at one time takes the bad one out of the barrel before it affects the other apples. If a whole barrel of apples goes bad, my dear friends, that is not the fault of the apples.

II.

One of the huge debates in the history of the Christian Church has been over the nature of humanity--specifically, is humanity naturally depraved or is humanity naturally inclined to do good? I hate to have to be the one to tell you this if you don’t know, but depravity won out; and I sense that more Christians today still believe that human beings are fundamentally flawed morally speaking than that human beings are born with an inclination toward good or at least are born neutral in that area. There are many hymns in our current hymnal that we don’t sing precisely because the hymn writer has a clear bias toward human depravity, and most of us at Silverside, as far as I know, don’t share that view. At least Melissa and I don’t share it so we skip those hymns.

We rightly think of the Moravian Church as a loving group identified with and defined by their beautiful and moving “Love Feast.” Their founder, however, was preoccupied with the notion of human depravity, and this obsession comes out in many of the 2000 hymns he wrote. Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf was a good guy, but he just couldn’t get the human tendency to do evil out of his consciousness. The most famous of his hymns translated into English is “Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness.”

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
’Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.

Bold shall I stand in Thy great day;
For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully absolved through these I am
From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.

Lord, I believe Thy precious blood,
Which, at the mercy seat of God,
Forever doth for sinners plead,
For me, e’en for my soul, was shed.

Lord, I believe were sinners more
Than sands upon the ocean shore,
Thou hast for all a ransom paid,
For all a full atonement made.

Oh, but he wasn’t the only one by any means.

Here’s another one. This one was written by Julia Johnston.

Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,

Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt!

Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured,

There where the blood of the Lamb was spilt

Sin and despair, like the sea waves cold,

Threaten the soul with infinite loss;

Grace that is greater, yes, grace untold,

Points to the refuge, the mighty cross.

Dark is the stain that we cannot hide.

What can we do to wash it away?

Look! There is flowing a crimson tide,

Brighter than snow you may be today.

John Calvin, who picked up Martin Luther’s Reformation energy and spread it through the French-speaking part of Switzerland and into France itself, loved the doctrine of human depravity. Luther and Calvin certainly didn’t agree on all points of theology, and Calvin probably had the lowest view of humanity of any of the most renowned historic theologians of the Church. Influenced by St. Augustine of Hippo, Calvin believed the humans are so immersed in sin that the only explanation for it has to be that they are born with sin in them; this perspective came to be called the doctrine of original sin. Here is one of Calvin’s comments on his favorite doctrine: “Original sin, therefore, appears to be a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused through all the parts of the soul, rendering us obnoxious to the divine wrath and producing in us those works which the scripture calls ‘works of.’” It seems as if the quote is incomplete, but he undoubtedly has in mind scriptural references to works of darkness such as what Paul wrote to the Church in Ephesus: “Have nothing to do with works of darkness. Instead, expose them for what they are” (Eph 5:11, paraphrase).

Here is a scathing criticism of the Church by E. Haldeman-Julius. You need to brace yourself to hear him through:

As a moral influence, the church has been notoriously lacking and indeed marred with definite viciousness and error. It has supported all the social evils (monarchy, slavery, intolerance, the oppression of women, and the like) that shame the record of man--and some of these evils the church has not merely supported but has inaugurated: the appalling slaughter and vileness of bigotry and the punishment of heretics must, as a red-splashed feature, be laid at the door of the church. The moral notions of the church have been at once brash and puerile. Ethics, in the view and preachment of the church, have been subordinated to theology. No institution has done less good and more harm in the moral sphere than has the church. The student of history cannot avoid the conclusion that, had it not been for the distorting influence of the church, mankind would today be immeasurably farther advanced along the Path of a progressive, humane, intelligent code of behavior. The church's pronouncements on morality have always been corrupted (that is to say, weakened and broken and rendered futile) by its refusal to understand that morality is solely a consideration of human, social adjustments and is, from first to last, a worldly concern. The church's preoccupation with "sin" has disabled it from approaching moral questions sensibly.

Jesus was much more critical of those who stood back in judgment of others whom they called sinners than he was of those whom the critics criticized. The “religious right” of Jesus’ day, the scribes and the Pharisees, believed that they kept all the religious laws that Judaism had established. There were a few hundred of these laws, and the scribes and Pharisees probably bragged truthfully; from all indications, they did keep all the rules. In their minds, that meant they were sinless. Jesus criticized them for holding those views and trying to palm them off on others; essentially, for the scribes and Pharisees, anyone who failed to keep all the laws they kept were thereby proven to be sinners, excluded by their own actions from God’s love and care. Jesus made them irate when he told them that they could keep all the rules and more and still be sinners. As I usually say when summarizing the teachings of Jesus, Jesus didn’t believe in religion as rules; he believed in religion as relationship with God. A connection to God will lead us to do acts of love, but not as rules.

A scribe or a Pharisee would say, “Eww, I stay away from and have nothing to do with sinners and other unclean types.”

Jesus would say, “If you have a connection with God, you don’t need a book of rules; it will make sense to you, you will naturally find yourself, being kind to and doing what you can do for the sick, the poor, and the imprisoned.”

The scribes and Pharisees would come back at Jesus with, “Eww, those kinds of people are immoral or unclean or both. We’re going no where near them, but we will keep the rules. We don’t work on the sabbath. We honor our parents, and we give exactly a tenth of our money and/or our livestock and/or our crops as offerings to God. We stay away from sinners too.”

Jesus would say again exactly what he’d already said, “If you have a connection with God, you don’t need a book of rules; it will make sense to you, you will naturally find yourself, being kind to and doing what you can do for the sick, the poor, and the imprisoned. You won’t be able to keep yourself away from strugglers, as a matter of fact.”

The Church corporately became consumed with criticizing what it called individual sin and lost sight altogether of its own institutional sin. Even so, the Church hammered and hammered into people’s heads the idea that they were horrid sinners deserving of death and hellfire until many of them, most of them believed it.

A mistake is not a sin. Sin is an intentional act, a conscious act of rebellion against God. Even though that is not something to be proud of, it doesn’t make someone who commits a sin a low down, worthless, dirty dog. The consequences of committing a sin are not God’s judgments or punishments; they are the inherent results of doing a bad deed. If you make a monogamous commitment to your spouse and then break that bond, you may lose your marriage and access to your children. God didn’t plan that for you; the legal system did.

What I’m trying to get around to saying is much of the Church’s preoccupation with sin came from the Pharisees and their descendants who said and who are still saying, “One little flaw, and you become suddenly a worthless pile of humanity. Good for nothing and deserving of God’s wrath and eternal punishment.”

Fortunately, God doesn’t have or share human emotions like hatred and anger and the desire to see people who offend us punished. More fortunately, God doesn’t take note of our single flaw or our several flaws and use those to try to diminish our worth as human beings. God lovingly says, instead, “There’s a flaw; let’s get that repaired before it gets worse.”

III.

One of the fascinating aspects of Koine or “common” Greek is that most key words at their roots have a picture to project. The word for “baptize,” for example, pictures something submerged in water--not permanently. The word we translate as “parable,” pictures throwing one object along side another, which is exactly what Jesus did with his parables; he threw one alongside a slice of life to help people, through comparison, get a perspective or a new perspective on some spiritual truth.

The Greek word that’s important for us today is an archery term, amartia, or in earlier times when a rough breathing mark was worked into the pronunciation, hamartia. We read and spoke about it in the Response of the People a few minutes ago so you know that even though it is translated as “sin,” a word which now has more baggage than the lost luggage area at the New Orleans airport, the picture behind the word is of an archer who misses the mark. She or he might miss the bullseye, or as some linguists have thought the picture might be of an archer who misses the target completely. The arrow goes over or under or to one side of the target. In either case, the arrow is aimed, and the bow sends it speeding toward the target. The arrow ends up somewhere the archer hadn’t intended--either to the left or the right of the bullseye or over in a field somewhere because it missed the target all together.

Now, in its earliest usage, in pre-Christian times, there was no horrible humanity associated with the word “sin”; it was the Greek world to describe an act that fell short of what it was intended or should have been intended to accomplish. I meant to give alms to the poor, but in my haste to get home to my family I didn’t do that. I’m not a reprobate, but I missed the mark. I can try again tomorrow to make the matter right, but today I missed the mark; I sinned. I had a little money to share that might have made the difference in whether or not someone got to eat, but I didn’t share it.

I heard some people at work criticizing another coworker who happens to be a pal of mine--a little nerdy, a little goofy, but a really good guy; somebody who’d come to my aid in a flash if I needed help. I heard the office gossips giving him down the road, making fun of him behind his back, and having a big laugh at his expense even though he didn’t know it. I didn’t join in, but neither did I say, “You don’t have any right to be making fun of Joe. He gets his job done on time. He’s steady and dependable, and besides, he’s my friend so if you’re lame enough to think putting people down to make yourselves feel better about you, have your gossip fests where I can’t see you or hear you. Stay off Joe’s back.” I could have said that. I should have said that. I envisioned myself saying it, but I didn’t say it. I sinned; I missed the mark. I’m not an ax murderer or a politician; I’m not a discredit to humanity, but I had it in me today to do better; and I didn’t. I wasn’t a friend to Joe today.

Instead of being a word used to confirm over and over again that I’m filled with and attached to evil like all other human beings, it’s a word that means I’m a regular guy with the natural capacity to do good even though I don’t always make the right choices. I miss the mark, and keep on missing the mark. Sometimes I do better than at other times, but I keep choosing not to do the best thing. It’s not insignificant, but it’s a far cry from evil.

Lord Chesterfield said: “Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.”

The target is before me. I see it clearly. I have a good strong bow, and some nicely shaped and sharpened arrows. I aim for the target, kinda sorta, but I lose my focus or my lack of practice catches up with me. I’m caught. The arrow skims the top of the target and is lost in the woods. I missed the mark. A little more practice, a little more focus, I could have hit that target. I know I could have! I’m a human being, though, and I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. I don’t have to, but I do. Joseph Addison made this observation: “It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.”

The world would be a better place if I didn’t miss the mark, and I want to keep trying not to. I can’t give up on me, and I can’t give up on the world. Knowing all that, there are still likely to be times when I’m going to miss the mark. Perfection isn’t going to overtake me, and my flaws aren’t going to make me a worthless human being. I’m going to hit the target sometimes, and sometimes I’m going to miss the mark. I’m not proud of that or OK with it; I want to improve both my skill and my motivation. If it takes longer than I’d planned; I have some friends willing to help me. While seeking to improve, though, nothing is accomplished by putting myself down and being talked into thinking of myself as so imperfect that I’m evil.

If you have come up in a religious environment where directly or indirectly you’ve been told that regardless of what you do, at your core as a human you are morally depraved--alienated from God and in need of deliverance from your depravity, I want you to know that if well-intentioned people told you that, hoping you’d “get saved” from the evil that motivates you from your core, they were wrong about you. God the Creator didn’t create you as an evil entity so that every act you do is naturally evil; instead, God created you with the capacity to do good. You don’t always use that gift to do the good thing or the right thing; sometimes you half try, and you miss the mark. You could have done better, but missing the mark doesn’t make you evil; and that is baggage that has to be dropped and left behind for good.

In a seeker’s community we encourage good deeds of ourselves and others. We take the needs of others, especially strugglers, very seriously, but if we miss the mark we do not think we have fallen out of favor with God; and we do not think we, thereby, have joined forces with evil. We will do better next try.

Amen.

Sports in Scripture: Boxing

I.

Boxing is a violent sport, and I can’t get into it at all; I may be in the minority, though. When the big name boxers fight, it is not uncommon for all seats in the arena to be sold out, and the Pay Per View reservations lines are jammed. People pay large sums of money to see a boxing match on their televisions.

Boxing has been around much longer than historians and archaeologists have thought. For quite a while, the oldest record of fighting with fists for sport was on a Sumerian relief card in the third millennium before the birth of Jesus and in an Egyptian relief around the second millennium before the birth of Jesus. A “relief” is a sculpture or carving technique in which figures are more prominent than the background on which they are created. A “low relief” raises the figures just barely from the background while “high relief” causes the figures in the art piece to be raised considerably from the background. All sorts of backgrounds have been used to create reliefs: strips of clay, wood, ivory, stone, and some gem stones such as jade.

Just last century, not so long ago, archaeologists digging around in Baghdad came upon tablets showing boxers in Baghdad that were about 7,000 years old--the tablets, not the boxers. Turns out boxing was an extremely popular sport in Rome and throughout the Roman Empire. Many of the nations over which Rome ruled as it expanded were introduced to boxing; thus, the popularity of the sport grew. When the Roman Empire fell so also did many of its historic records and artistic treasures. Not until last century did archaeologists begin finding evidence of boxing while the mighty Roman Empire was THE world power with which to contend. Ample records of boxing during the twelfth through the seventeenth centuries on THIS side of the birth of Jesus have been in hand for hundreds of years.

The earliest boxers were, from all indications, gloveless. They fought bare-fisted. The first boxers to fight with gloves as archaeologists put the story of boxing together were the Minoans. The Minoan culture was the first great civilization to develop in what, today, we call Crete. The name of the people was developed from the name of their legendary king, Minos.

The earliest boxing “gloves” weren’t designed to protect a boxer’s hand bones or to soften the blow to an opponent with padding. From the looks of things, these earliest hand coverings were bands wrapped strategically around a boxer’s hands and wrists to cause more damage to an opponent that modern boxing gloves allow--though they allow plenty. The first boxing gloves had metal studs embedded in them to inflict damage and cause pain through softening the blow overall.

A sculpture of a boxer from the century immediately before Jesus was born shows in detail the damage that boxing, even with gloves, could cause. This bronze boxer somehow got the name “Terme Boxer.” He is also called the “Boxer of Quirinal,” and the injuries to his face and head are impossible to miss. He has a broken nose. He has a cauliflower ear, maybe two, revealing that one or both of his ears, at least once, had been beaten to a pulp. Specialists believe that the sculpture is of a specific boxer and not a generalized representation of a composite boxer that took shape in the sculptor’s imagination.

Some early boxers also wore helmets and whole arm guards; this is especially interesting since they didn’t wear boxing trunks. As with many athletic games in the ancient world, the athletes ran or threw or boxed in the nude. If that practice were reinstated today, larger arenas would have to be rented out for boxing matches, and Comcast would double its income from Pay Per View at home viewers. We’ll leave that for another sermon too.

The Mycenaeans eventually overtook the Minoans as the dominant power people in the area Crete, and art from their era of dominance leads us to believe that the boxing match went on until one of the boxers held up one finger indicating that he was taking the loss. There is no evidence early on of an absolute knockout being permitted.

Paul knew a great deal about boxing and made reference to boxing on more than one occasion. In fact, we have every reason to believe that he had done some boxing along the way. As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Paul referred to the pointlessness and the waste of energy caused by a boxer’s attempted punch that hits nothing but the air. When you box, he insisted, you have to make every punch count; every blow, therefore, has to hit the opponent and stun or weaken him in some way. (Just to be clear, I’m not being sexist here. It’s just that there is no evidence that women boxed in the ancient world as some do today.)

Not everyone likes or approves of boxing. Joyce Carol Oates is a bestselling author who has been called our country’s foremost woman of letters. She has some very critical comments about boxing. I want to call three of her ideas about boxing to your attention:

1. “Boxing has become America’s tragic theater.”
2. “Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.”
3. “Boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning.”

Boxer Joe Frazier summed up his sport this way: “Boxing is the only sport [where] you can get your brain shook, your money took and your name in the undertaker book.”

Another boxer, Sugar Ray Leonard, looking back on his boxing career said, “Boxing was not something I truly enjoyed. Like a lot of things in life, though, when you put the gloves on, it’s better to give than to receive.”

Gifted contemporary musician Alicia Keys who plays the keyboard and protects her hands and fingers with great care says, “I love kick boxing. It’s a lot of fun. It gives you a lot of confidence when you can kick somebody in the head.” OK then. I guess it would.

I was introduced to boxing by the notoriety of Muhammad Ali, called Cassius Clay before his conversation to Islam. His unparalleled bragging and self-aggrandizement along with his ongoing stinging repartee with sportscaster, Howard Cosell, who had a self-understanding very similar to Ali’s, was tremendous entertainment regardless of what happened in the ring.

Ali used to make statements like, “I am the greatest,” all the time. Once he admitted to someone, “I used to say, ‘I am the greatest,’ even before I knew I was.” Another one: “I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.” Here’s one of the humdingers of his self praise: “I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I’m in a world of my own.”

By the way, regardless of what you think of boxing or Ali, the film about his life starring Will Smith is a superior film. There are some powerful religious and moral themes in the film.

So, as he aged, Ali became quite the thoughtful philosopher, struggling with the disease that took his strength and his ability to be mobile. Wisdom showed itself nonetheless:

1. “Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.”
2. “A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”
3. “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”

II.

Paul saw life as a series of personal battles or fights against forces of evil--one after another, with some resilient opponents returning for another match. Paul certainly believed in a spiritual reality or force, unseen, behind everything that comes into our lives. The good comes from God and has God in it or behind it, and conversely the bad or the evil have demonic spiritual forces in or behind them. Though unseen, these spiritual forces are just as powerful, if not moreso, than what we can see. Indeed, it is much easier to fight what we can see than what is invisible to us, and it is much more encouraging or consoling to see with our own eyes who or what is on our side trying to hold us up and/or protect us from attack.

Paul said, in the end, there is only one way to protect oneself from invisible enemies, from unseen evil relentlessly at work in the world, and that is to wear at all times a spiritually protective armor. This is all entirely metaphorical, as should be evident to any reader; yet, the truths are insightful and to be taken with seriousness.

Paul is creating these protective images for the benefit of the Christians at Ephesus as he closes his rather lengthly correspondence to them:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of divine power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints (Eph 6:10-18 NRSV).

Somewhat reflective of the armor a Roman soldier would have worn in Paul’s day, we get these rich spiritual images of what collectively fights evil even when we are rest, even when we have to let our guard down for a small period of rest and renewal. Paul says if his suggestion is going to work, the people of faith are going to have to put on the whole armor of God, not parts; not bits and pieces. Without putting on every piece of the armor, we leave ourselves exposed to the creeping, persistent effects of evil at work to do us in.

Paul doesn’t live under the illusion that even if every person of faith could get on the same page and uniformly unite our energies, we could defeat evil once and for all. The most we can hope for is to defeat parts of evil here and there, and one of the reasons for this, which would have to be taken up in another sermon or over a tall thermos of coffee, is that people of faith and followers of Jesus can’t even agree on what is evil. Not all of those who claim to live according to the teachings of Jesus would agree, for example, that racism is evil. But we have to leave that thought for now.

So, this “whole armor of God,” what are the various pieces into which we must fit ourselves? I doubt that Paul’s order is random. First things first, in other words.

Fasten the belt of truth around your waist. Truth is the single most important weapon against evil other than a recognition that evil, from whatever source or sources, is a reality that negatively affects individuals and the whole of humanity. Not being able to get all of humanity on board, however, we will often be fighting some of these battles, most of them, on our own. Thankfully, some of the battles that we win individually may benefit others, but the battle is ours to fight; and the evil must be resisted until we are prepared for the actual fight. It begins with truth. Starting, I presume, in our skivvies, the first part of the armor we put on is the belt of truth. Only the belt of truth will tell us what is truly evil and in need of defeat, and even this is no guarantee that we will always have clear insight into everything that is unmistakably evil and everything that is truly good. Some evil is obvious; some is not. Some is hidden; some is disguised. Truth will help us know the difference between MOST forces of evil and MOST forces of good.

Next, we put on a breastplate of righteousness. Truth will be the foundation of righteousness. “Righteousness” is one of those words once overused in Christian churches to such a degree that it lost clarity of meaning altogether, and in many churches today you don’t even hear the word at all, in this church for example. In Hebrew scripture, righteousness is the chief attribute or one of the chief attributes of God Godself; it has to do with conduct that is purely ethical from every angle. It has much more to do with action than with abstraction. If God is a righteous God, then God’s people should make every effort to be righteous as well. So over or atop the belt of truth, put the breastplate of righteousness. Truth will help us know what is right and wrong, good and evil; and righteousness will help us or cause us to act consistently for what is good and right and will protect us from attacks to that part of ourselves needed to act for the right, stand for the right, fight for the right.

Jesus once said that unless people who sought a connection with God demonstrating righteousness greater than the so called righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, who kept the letter of all religious laws to a tee, they could not be citizens in the Empire of God. So, there’s something more to righteousness than just keeping the rules; our ethical conduct has to be done with the proper motivation, for the right reasons, as acts of spiritual expression. In the Qur'an we find pivotal teachings on righteousness such as this one: “We will give the home of the Hereafter to those who do not want arrogance or mischief on earth; and the end is best for the righteous.”

We get to choose our own combat boots in this battle garb; the one stipulation Paul gives is that they have to be boots that will have us proclaiming or making peace--not with evil, but with others who oppose evil, and in ways that have made the most sense to us so far along our journey. Decked out for battle, the only fighting we do is against evil.

Three pieces complete the whole armor of God: the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit of God. The shield of faith is our best defensive weapon. Faith keeps us focused on God when it would be so much easier to give in to evil and join evil’s forces. After all, it looks like evil wins more often than good. Why not join the winning team?

The helmet of salvation is that part of the armor that keeps us in touch with the reason the battle is worthwhile in the first place, liberation from the effects of evil in this world and the next. That is what salvation is all about.

Finally, the most important, and actually the only, offensive weapon making up the whole armor of God: the sword of the Spirit of God, which is no blade, but which is the power of God’s word as Jesus interpreted it and made it known. This is clearly connected to the belt of truth, but it is something more. The belt is what we know within, and the sword is what we use to attack evil in an outward, sometimes overt, manner. When we unsheathe our swords we are protesting injustice; we are joining hands and locking arms with the oppressed; we are writing letters to lawmakers calling their votes and their public rhetoric that incites violence exactly what is it: EVIL.

III.

Paul believed that evil was brought regularly into the world through two sources: 1) demonic spirits, maybe a devil somehow; 2) human choice. The malevolent forces of darkness were real and actively at work to tempt human beings to follow the ways of evil; however, these cannot be fully empowered unless people choose to go the way of evil. The devil and demons and the mysterious elemental spirits of the universe about which Paul taught in the books of Ephesians and Colossians may in and of themselves have some mild sway on history, but none of these has any real power in the realm of flesh and blood unless people embrace the evil that temptation presents to them and act on it.

Though there are many Christians today who believe in a personal, active Devil who is both God’s antithesis and God’s nemesis, if one personalizes God and/or the Devil. The Devil has been very useful to Christians through the ages and remains useful today; the Devil is the chief scapegoat whom Christians can blame for their own freely-chosen, irresponsible, selfish, and destructive behavior. I cannot tell you there is no Devil (uppercase or lowercase “d”). I can tell you that I do not believe in a Devil; some of you will agree with me, and others of you will disagree with me. What an odd dynamic for Silverside Church! If you have had personal conversations with the Devil, then you can tell us about those at Sermon Talk-Back.

In my mind, the Devil is the dark side that most people must claim as a part of their personality or psychological makeup in some way. The real problems arise when dark sides are pooled in the human family and passed on to subsequent generations. I don’t believe a claim that the Devil’s influence or power made a criminal do what she or he did to require that she or he now stand before judge and jury will hold up in court; though I think it would be unusual to find a jury in which no juror believed in a Devil at work in the world. What might stand up in court as a kind of justification for some horrendous act of evil, like the shootings in Arizona a few days ago, is severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, which may cause a person to believe that she or he hears (they believe) literal voices prompting acts of evil.

Paul didn’t know about mental health or psychiatry, but he did know that people did evil things; he knew that he himself had participated in evil acts on occasion before his conversation to Christianity, and he did what he did in a particularly vile manner--that is, in the name of religion, in the name of God. When Paul thought of fighting against evil, boxing with evil as it were, he believed he was pushing away the demonic forces trying to tempt people to commit acts of evil, and he was trying to keep people, himself included, from caving in to the pressures of temptation to do evil.

One of the early artistic representations of a boxing match shows a number of men gathered around the two who were fighting each other. Some art and sports historians have wondered if there was an early phase in the sport of boxing when the rules permitted tag team boxing, where one boxer when fatigued, could tag a teammate to come into the fighting area and be the boxer for their team for a while. Another possibility is that the boxing match may have begun with only two men fighting each other, but as the match progressed one more and then one more and then one more from each team came into the fighting area so that there were multiple engagements going on at once.

If so, Paul would have liked that practice, and when he compared fighting evil as a boxing match he saw whole teams, whole groups of people joining together to take on some mighty foe, some hideous expression of evil destroying individuals and large segments of the human family. Boxer that he had been, that image was a rush for him--Christian people beating the daylights out of evil spirits that most people couldn’t see.

When Paul wrote to Timothy saying, “I have fought the good fight,” he was very likely in prison in Rome awaiting his execution. His sentence had been handed down, and he was waiting in the equivalent of death row. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race [or the course], I have kept the faith. There are no more rewards for me on this earth so I await my heavenly reward.” In the Greek text, the definite article “the” is clearly present so Paul did not write to Timothy, “I have fought A good fight,” but rather, “I have fought THE good fight.” What I think Paul meant by intentionally including the definite article in what he said here is that the fight against evil is an ongoing fight; there may be several bouts and matches, but there is one big fight. This fight has been going on ever since human beings believed they could live without having any need to keep their baser capabilities in check.

Paul tried to help the people to whom he wrote get a sense of the larger picture, the larger battle, by little flaws that in and of themselves weren’t necessarily wrong at all. They would only be problems if they got out of hand, if whole communities or societies began to live by one the many flaws Paul listed, and he loved lists, as if normative and/or acceptable. Let’s take lying as one example. OK, it’s not right to lie, but many of us lie frequently if for no other reason than to keep from hurting someone’s feelings, and we probably don’t lose ground in our moral standing when we tell her or him that the garment really is slimming when worn.

If, however, lying in that context makes us think we can tell larger lies with much more at stake than in an effort to make someone we love feel good about herself or himself until Nutrisystem kicks in a bit more noticeably, then we’re moving into a dangerous direction. That is what Paul wanted to help his charges avoid.

I doubt that drunkenness itself is a moral offense, but surely much of what is done under the influence of alcohol is evil; and I don’t believe that drunkenness should be considered an excuse for letting someone off the hook who has killed a purely innocent driver or pedestrian while under the influence. The choice was made to drink too much; the choice was made to drive while intoxicated.

My parents were so strict about this, and I went along with them and didn’t do anything more than taste beer--one swig, no kidding--until I was getting ready to go teach in Switzerland, and a friend said that he was going to have to teach me the basics of wine and beer in order for me to survive in the Swiss culture. I was very glad I’d had those little lessons once I arrived in Switzerland and began to try to maneuver in the culture. Not all Swiss people drink alcohol by any means, but many do; and there are some very important social experiences celebrated with a wine toast--such as being asked to call an older, wiser colleague by her or his first name.

Still, my parents’ thinking on the subject was that if you never have any alcohol, there will be no chance of being drunk and no chance, either, of finding out that you have the genetic disposition to succumb to the illness called “alcoholism.” Their logic was right on target. If you never drive, you can’t have a car wreck. If you never fly, you can’t be in a plane crash. If you never have sex, you can’t be a part of an unwanted pregnancy. If you never go to church, you won’t ever be able to say, “The church is filled with hypocrites!” If you never lie about little things, chances are you won’t lie about big things, and telling the truth will be a characteristic by which you live even if you become a politician. There are so many lies being told at any one time in Washington, DC, that no one knows what the truth is. The absence of integrity is a huge evil in this country and the world.

Some of the big evils humans have overcome, but the fight goes on. It’s a lifelong effort. How much difference any one of us can make or how much difference any group of which we are a part can make isn’t known. Evil is a long, long way from being eradicated so what we hope to be able to say as we look back on what we’ve done with our lives is an echo of what Paul said with a boxing match in mind, “I have fought the good fight, and I have kept the faith. The evil never convinced me that it was more powerful than God or that it was unbeatable. Even if only in tiny, tiny increments, evil is pushed back or diminished, that is still better than having it gain any ground at all.”

So we will keep on fighting against insidious greed that causes way too many people in our world to be hungry and homeless, and we will keep on fighting the evil of lying leaders and politicians whose lack of basic integrity warps our nation and our world. We will fight any evil that keeps any child from enjoying the innocence of her or his childhood. We will fight evil that destroys our lush habitat and leaves pollution for our grandchildren to eat and breathe and die in, because of what we leave in the land and in the air and in the water with which they will have to live. We will fight the big evils that cause some people to believe that others are beneath them because of race or economic status or sexual orientation. And if we can fight against these and other evils, and there are plenty more, with energy and focus and determination, then when we see a new generation of fighters taking on evil, we can say with integrity what old Paul once said shortly before the Romans put him to death for boxing with evil as hard as he knew how, “I have fought THE good fight.”

Amen.