II
Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
I’m used to thinking about this passage from II Timothy as a funeral
reading. The way it talks about having
run and having fought and having kept the faith all look back on someone’s
life; the way it speaks of the crown that is reserved speaks of the rewards of
heaven. When you think about it, though,
these words were not written about someone who had already died. They are words from someone who was expecting
to die shortly, probably by way of martyrdom, but who was still alive.
“As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the
time of my departure has come.” [I Timothy 4:6]
These are the words of someone who has already run the
marathon, but the cool-down lap is still going on.
Can
someone say such things of one’s own life?
I’ve done a good job? I’ve gotten
it right? Apparently so. Mind you, it doesn’t mean that you are saying
that you have done the best job possible nor that you have not made terrible
mistakes nor that you have always had the best judgment. What it says is that you have muddled through
and that, when you look at everything taken together, it has been worth it. I heard a TED talk by a man named Dan Ariely
who remarks,
”Think about something
like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books of people who
climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books are full of
moments of joy and happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it's all about frostbite and having
difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing -- cold, challenging
circumstances. And if people were just
trying to be happy, the moment they would get to the top, they would say,
"This was a terrible mistake. I'll never do it again."[1]
We all know that isn’t how it works. When somebody gets to that mountaintop they
look out on everything below with a sense of accomplishment and elation. They will, of course, have to climb back down. When they return, though, a bit of the
experience stays with them.
The sense of
accomplishment and achievement that they share with the rest of us provides
encouragement when we, as we all will, have moments when we wonder if it is worthwhile
to press on. For runners, it’s called “hitting
the wall”. Comments I read by people who
have experienced it say things like
“It's a different feel
for each person, but in severe cases you feel totally exhausted, you can fall
down to the ground in a limp pile of body mass and pass out... in mild
cases, you can feel tired, your body is telling to to stop and rest, and
the more you try to push it, the more it feel like gravity is pulling you down
to where you have no more energy to take another step … your body is saying ‘give
me rest PLEASE!’”[2]
What gets people through is both physical training and
mental conditioning. Without both, the
race will end right then and there.
The same is true of life
in Christ. Discipleship is more like a
marathon than a walk in the park. We may
feel like we are a cup that has had its contents poured out on the ground,
which is what a libation is. Part of the
conditioning that keeps us going in the hard times when God seems distant or
hope seems like a dream is the encouragement of knowing that others who have
run the course have declared it is worth pushing on to a finish line that we
might not see, but which we can be sure is somewhere up ahead.
We
may or may not ever know how far that line may be. It might be around the corner or it might be
another eighteen miles ahead. Only God
sees the whole course and fully understands how our lives fit into the greater
work that he is composing as he weaves them together with the lives of others
who are running ahead of us or following behind.
You
know, too, that a marathon is not like other races. In a sprint or even a 5-K event, there is one
big winner, or maybe a handful of contenders who are cheered across the finish
line when they get there. In a marathon,
though, it is such an achievement simply to finish that people stand around,
sometimes for hours, applauding anybody who gets there. So, too, with the kind of race that the Bible
describes.
“From now on there is reserved for me the crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that
day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” [II Timothy 4:8]
In two weeks we will be celebrating All Saints’ Day
and, as we do pretty much every year, we will sing, “For all the saints, who
from their labors rest…” I am getting
ahead of things, maybe, but I would point out one stanza of that hymn:
“And when the strife is
fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the
distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave
again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia! Alleluia!”
It’s
good to recall stories of people who have had it harder than we ever have, and
harder than I pray we ever will, who have been coached across the line by Jesus
himself.
The German theologian Dietrich
Bonhoeffer was implicated in an attempt to kill Hitler and taken to a prison
where he continued to act as pastor to the other prisoners. One of them recalled how, the Sunday after
Easter and just three weeks before the Allies liberated the camp, he prayed
with a group of them and spoke on the words of I Peter 1:3
“Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
Remembering
that day, he said,
“Bonhoeffer spoke to us
in a manner which reached the hearts of all, finding just the right words to
express the spirit of our imprisonment and the thoughts and resolutions which
it had brought. …He had hardly finished his last prayer when the door opened
and two evil-looking men in civilian clothes came in and said:
‘Prisoner Bonhoeffer.
Get ready to come with us.’ Those
words ‘Come with us’ – for all prisoners they had come to mean one thing only –
the scaffold.
We bade him good-bye – he drew me aside – ‘This is the
end,’ he said, ‘For me the beginning of life.’”[3]
For
anyone who finishes the race in faith, whether in prison or in bed, it is more
than a finish line. It is the beginning
of life.
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