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FINISHING A RACE DIFFERENT THAN THE ONE YOU
STARTED
What an honor
and privilege it is to be invited back to my old home. The New Wilmington Missionary Conference and Westminster College
– not to mention Lawrence
County is really my true
home. I was born 10 miles south of here
in New Castle …
I grew up coming to this conference.
After we moved to Michigan
I kept coming back to this conference in high school. I was awakened to a relationship with Jesus
Christ here at this conference. I can
still remember sermons delivered from this very pulpit from the likes of Bruce
Thielman, Bill Jackson, Joanna Adams, Bob Kelly, Keith
Brown, Ed Fairman, Don Patchel … the list goes on. I loved this conference so much I decided to
go to college here. I met my wife Amanda
here – and we’ll be married 25 years in a few months. I met professors here who changed and shaped
my life. I was given the chance to grow
in my faith. I was called to the
ministry while on this campus. The
ground upon which you walk this week … the sawdust that crumbles between your
toes … this is holy ground for me … and I hope in some way through what happens
this weeks … and what is already happening – I hope that this ground becomes
holy ground for you too.
I come from
Liberty Corner, New Jersey. Now I would be willing to bet that very few
of you have ever been to … or even heard of Liberty Corner, New Jersey.
Liberty Corner is a pretty small town.
It is so small that the church – and there is only one church in Liberty
Corner – the church has more members than the town has residents. And yet Liberty Corner is famous for many
things. It is the home of the world famous
Quienanst quintuplets – born back in 1970.
It is the home of the United States Golf Association – visited by all
the famous golfers. Liberty Corner
served as a scene in a Jimmy Stewart movie and a prize goes to the person who
can come up with which Jimmy Stewart movie has a Liberty Corner scene in
it. And finally, Liberty Corner is home
to the nation’s oldest nudist colony. I’ve
applied to be the chaplain three times … but have gotten turned down each
time.
When Don
Dawson emailed me and asked me to come back and speak here at what we used to
call the Institute Hour … I was very excited.
And then he told me that I would have to follow the weekend speaker …and
that the weekend speaker was going to be Tony Campolo. Now following Tony Campolo as a speaker is
what they call oratorical suicide.
Following Tony Campolo is like following Abraham Lincoln after the Gettysburg Address or
Martin Luther King after the I Have a Dream speech. Tony’s one of my heroes … so I am humbled
just to follow him. So we will do the
best we can.
It’s hard not
to do well though when you have such a wonderful theme verse to work with –
this great verse from Habakkuk 1:5 (Habakkuk … that’s quite a name … don’t hear
too many people these days naming their children Habakkuk) – but he has some
pretty incredible things to say including this verse: “Look at the nations and watch – and be
utterly amazed. For I am going to do
something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” Now these words are about 2500 years old …
and they are addressed to a very different group of people … but God’s word is
an amazing word … because it speaks just as much today as it spoke back
then. “I am going to do something
amazing in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” We are going to talk this week about what God
might be up to in your days … and in your life.
God didn’t stop working in people’s lives 2500 years ago – he’s working
in people’s lives today. That’s what
this week is about really … you are going to hear about what God is doing
throughout all the nations … and you are going to see how God is working in
amazing ways … in your days. And not
just in your days … but in your life.
God is working in your life right now.
It’s why you’re here. It’s why I
came here a long time ago …it’s why I am back … because God is working in my
life and he is working in your life. God
is up to something.
So we’ve got
some scriptures we want to look at today – the first from Matthew chapter 5,
the second from Luke 19 and the third from Hebrews 12.
Mark Trotter tells the story of a
Georgene Johnson who lived outside of Cleveland,
Ohio. Georgene had turned 42 years old and wasn’t
happy about it. So she decided she
didn’t want to look like a 42 year old and got it into her mind to take up
running. So she started running; first a
little bit and then a little bit more.
She got up to 2 miles a day and then 3 miles and then 4 miles. And she started feeling better about herself
and less and less like a 42 year old.
Then she decided to give herself a little challenge and enter herself
into a race. She thought she might begin
with a 10K , a 10-kilometer race, which is about 6 miles. The race was being held somewhere in Cleveland so she got
there on the morning of the race. Lots
of folks were milling around. She heard
on the speaker the announcement for the runners to assemble at the starting
line. Georgene took her place at the
starting line. The gun went off and
Georgene, with this mass of runners, was off and running her first race.
She had seen
the outline of the course before the race and knew that it was one of the
courses that basically had the runners go out about 3 miles and then come back
the remaining 3 miles. But Georgene
noticed when they got to mile 4 they had not yet turned back and it didn’t
appear that they were going to. They
were running a different course than what she thought. But
when they got to mile 7 Georgene knew that something was up. So she moved over close to another runner and
asked, huffing and puffing, what happened to the finish line? “What finish line?” the fellow runner
responded, “you’re in the Cleveland Marathon!
You’ve got 19 more miles to go!” (Turns
out her 10K race was scheduled a half hour after the start of the
marathon.)
So Georgene
Johnson asked herself, “Should I stop or should I go on? No harm in going on I suppose. Let’s just see how far I can go. It’s not the race I trained for. It’s not the race I entered. But it is the race I’m in.” So she continued to run. And she ran.
And she ran. And she ran. And she finished. “How could you finish this race for which you
did not train?” the newspapers
asked. Georgene said she started by
taking it one mile at a time and then a
half-mile at a time and then a
quarter-mile at a time and then a few
yards at a time and then by the end …
one step at a time.
She finished a race different than
the one she started. This morning I want
to talk with you about finishing a race different, maybe, than the one you
started.
I don’t know where you are right
now in your life. Each of us has been on
the track for a certain amount of time.
Some of us got started a good while ago … and have been around the track
maybe more than we care to admit. Others
have been on the track for a while … and you feel like you’ve got a good bit more
to go. And there are some of you who got
put on the track not so long ago … and you feel like you are just getting
started. But wherever you are in your
life … you probably have it in your mind that you are in a certain race … you
have a certain way to go.
You know the world will tell you
that once you’ve been entered into a race … you don’t have a whole lot of
choice of joining another race. Geneticists
will tell you that you got programmed a long time ago … you’re DNA got set and
you are who you are and there is not much you can do about it. Psychologists will tell you that you are
largely a collection of your experiences and your family rearing and that each
of us carries around with us a certain amount of “baggage”. Sociologists will tell you that you are the
product of your environment and that you can take the person out of the
neighborhood or the community … but you can’t take the neighborhood or the
community out of the person. Parents
will tell you that you are in a certain type of race … they may already have
mapped out for you where you are going … what college you’re going to … what
profession you will take up. Others will
tell you that because of your age you are likely set in your ways. That there is no changing you now. Now that you are X amount of years old … why
there is just no teaching an old dog new tricks.
You see the world wants to peg
you. The world wants to get you to fit
into some type of mold. The world wants
to enter you into a certain race … and then tell you that the race you started
is the race you have to finish.
I was teaching confirmation class a
few years ago and one of my students asked if he could come and see me which he
did. And he told me that he was thinking
about becoming a pastor and that he would like to learn more. So we talked.
He went home. A couple days later
I got a call from his mother. “We’ll
have none of that,” she said. “None of
what?” I asked. “I would very much
appreciate you not talking to our boy about being a pastor.” She made it sound like I was asking him to
become an axe murderer. “I don’t
understand,” I said. “You’re right,” she
said, “you don’t understand. You see,
his father and I already know what he’s going to be … he’s going to be an
engineer. So don’t go messing up his
mind.” He was in the race … and there was no other
race for him to run.
So I want to know something … no
matter where you are … not matter what race you’re in … is it still possible
for you to finish a race different than the one you started?
You see one of the things I love
about the Bible is that the Bible is filled with story after story about people
who start one race and finish a different race.
People whose lives have a before and an after. Sometimes lots of befores and lots of afters. People who thought life had to be one thing …
but then they find out through the voice and calling of God that life really
can be another thing. Abraham started
one race and finished another. Moses
started one race and finished another.
Ruth started one race and finished another. Esther started one race and finished
another. Paul started one race and
finished another. God always has another
chapter for you up his sleeve.
So alongside the Sea of Galilee
walks this rabbi named Jesus – now he’s got no business walking alongside the Sea of Galilee – because he is living in a world where
everybody is pegged. You were who you
were. You were Roman or non-Roman. You were Jew or you were Gentile. You were religious or you were
non-religious. You were a Pharisee or
you were a Sadducee. You followed the
law or you didn’t follow the law. You
got put into a race … and the world was pretty much committed to keeping you in
that race. So Jesus is supposed to be
back at the synagogue … staying religious … but he’s out there alongside the Sea
and he bumps into some fishermen. And they’ve
been pegged too. They are lower class
fishermen who are not religious. They
are just trying to make a living. They
are just trying to finish the race that they started a long time ago. But Jesus walks up to them and says, “Follow
me, and I’ll make you fish for people.
Follow me and I’ll have you finish a race different than the one you
started.”
“No, no, Jesus … we’re fishermen …
we’re non-religious … we don’t keep the law … we don’t race with your type … we
smell … we’ve been pegged.” “Oh,” Jesus
says, “you’ve been pegged. Well let me
unpeg you. Let me invite you to finish a
race different than the one you started.
Let me invite you to fish not for fish … but to fish for people.” Now when Jesus talks about fishing for people
… that’s just his code word for love. “Let
me invite you into a life where your mission is to get people loved. To get people loved.”
Jesus walks through Jericho and he sees
Zacchaeus up in a sycamore tree. And he
tells Zacchaeus to come down from the tree … and he invites himself over to
Zacchaeus’ house … because, you see, Zacchaeus has been pegged. He’s a tax collector and there were no more
pegged people than tax collectors.
Everybody hated tax collectors … they took your money. But Jesus invites himself over to Zacchaeus’
house and he says … Zacchaeus … I want to invite you to finish a race different
than the one you started. You’ve been
cheating people out of their money. You’ve
been taking more than what is due. And
they got you pegged, Zacchaeus. Now’s
the time to come unpegged. Now’s the
time to start giving people money not taking it. Now’s the time to get people loved. So Zacchaeus starts giving his money
away. He starts running a different
race.
You see God always has another
chapter for you up his sleeve. There is
no peg from which you cannot be unpegged.
There is no point in your life from which you cannot turn and start
over.
Did you ever
hear of Gordon Wilson? Gordon Wilson was
pegged. He was Irish and he was a Methodist
and he lived in Belfast. And that meant he was pegged. He was pegged a Protestant and that made him
an enemy of Catholics. So like a good
pegged Protestant Gordon took his 20 year old daughter Marie to a Protestant
celebration outside of Belfast
to honor the war dead on Veteran’s Day.
In the middle of that celebration the IRA set off a bomb that buried
Gordon and his daughter under five feet of broken concrete. The two of them survived the initial blast
and could hear and see each other under the rubble. Marie grabbed her daddy’s hand and said,
“Daddy, I love you very much.” They were
her last words. She slipped into
unconsciousness and died in the hospital a few hours later.
When they
pulled the sheet over his precious daughter’s face this good Methodist father had
to decide something. He had to decide whether
he was going to stay a pegged Protestant.
Was he going to just finish the race that he started? And in that moment that Jewish rabbi Jesus
came and invited himself into that hospital room and asked him if he wouldn’t
finish a race different than the one he started.
So when he
stepped out of the hospital and in front of the microphones -- when the world
expected to hear anger and insults and names -- Gordon Wilson said, “I have
lost my daughter, but I bear no grudge.
Bitter talk is not going to bring Marie Wilson back to life. I shall pray, tonight and every night, that
God will forgive those who killed her.” The
spirit of Christ, Gordon would tell you, had unpegged him.
It was from
this point that Gordon Wilson began running a different race. Because it was on that day that this grieving
dad began leading a crusade for Protestant-Catholic reconciliation. He wrote a book about his daughter, spoke out
against violence, and constantly repeated the phrase, “Love is the bottom
line.” He met with the IRA, forgave them
for what they did, and asked them to lay down their arms. The Republic of Ireland
made him a senator. When he died
suddenly in 1995 of a heart attack the Irish
Republic, Northern
Ireland and Great Britain honored this man who
finished a race different than the one he had started.
So our theme
verse says that “I am going to do something in your days that you would not
believe … even if you were told.” Is
that possible? Did you come here to this
conference with it all figured out? If
God were calling you to a different race than the one you started … would it
matter? Would you listen?
I love that
cartoon where one guy is talking to the other guy and he says, “I think I
missed my calling in life.” “What’s your
calling?” asked the other. “I have no
idea,” he says .. “I just hate to think I was born to do what I’m doing
now.” Were you born to do what you are
doing now? Maybe you are … but than
again maybe not.
1968 Olympics
in Mexico City
– the Olympic marathon. The gold
medalist, silver medalist, bronze medalist all pass the finish line … and then
all the rest of the runners over the next few minutes. The crowd got up to leave. Little did they know that there was still one
more runner out there running the marathon who had yet to enter the stadium. Ten minutes goes by. Twenty … thirty .. forty … fifty … finally an
hour goes by and the last place finisher, John Stephen Akhwari from Tanzania
enters the stadium and runs his final lap … to the applause of just a few. Afterward a reporter asks Akhwari why when he
was so far behind didn’t he just retire from the race. The runner seemed confused by the question
and then finally said, “My country did not send me to Mexico City to just start the race. They sent me to finish.”
You know God
didn’t just send you into this world to start the race … he sent you into the
world to finish the race … and not just to finish … but to finish the race he’s
got for you. “For we are,” writes the
Hebrews writer, “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses … let us
run with perseverance the race that is set before us …”
George
Ritchie, a psychiatrist, who wrote the book Return
from Tomorrow, tells of interviewing survivors of Nazi concentration camps
not long after their liberation and how he came across a former inmate known as
“Wild Bill”. He appeared strong and
healthy and full of life, so Ritchie assumed that this was a man who had been
in the camp only a month or so before its liberation. But then he learned that “Wild Bill” had been
in the camp for six years. Not only that,
he had been put on the most difficult of all the work details. He averaged 15 hours of work a day, seven
days a week. All this on the same
starvation diet as the rest of them. How
did he survive so well, Ritchie asked.
“Wild Bill” told his story:
“We lived,”
said he, “in the Jewish section of Warsaw,
my wife, our two daughters, and our three little boys. When the Germans reached our street they
lined everyone up against a wall and opened up with machine guns. I begged to be allowed to die with my family,
but because I spoke German they put me in a work group.
“I had to
decide right there and then,” he continued, “whether to let myself hate the
soldiers who had done this. It was an
easy decision, really. I was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen what hate could do
to people’s minds and bodies. Hate had
just killed the six people who mattered most to me in the world. I decided then that I would spend the rest
of my life – whether it was a few days or many years – loving every person I
came in contact with.”
It’s called
finishing a different race than the one you started.
I don’t know
what’s going on in your life right now.
I don’t know how many times you’ve been around the track. I don’t know what race you’re running. I don’t know what pegs you’ve been pegged
with. But friends, life is not about the
race you’ve started … it’s about the race you’ve finished. And this week the rabbi named Jesus has
invited himself into your life and he wants to know is it possible that he
could put you on another track? Is it
possible that you’re being called not to fish for fish … but to fish for
people? Is it possible for you to be
the instrument by which other people will get loved?
“For I am
going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were
told.”