February 13, 2000
The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
That's the rather impudent query that sprouted on tee-shirts after Duke's back-to-back basketball national championships. Talk is cheap, but can you do what it takes to get in the game? Richard Hays, in his commentary on Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians says that sums up today's epistle, First Corinthians 9:24-27. One of you once congratulated me, during one of Duke's winning seasons for "never once mentioning basketball in a sermon." I can see your point. At this time of year, around here, the greatest competitor of the cross is a rubber sphere about the size of a….basketball.
One Sunday a few years ago, just about this time of year, I was reaching a crescendo in my sermon, bringing everything together with great emotion, when (unknown to me) the local radio station carrying the service, broke in on the broadcast with, "Now we take you live to Cameron stadium for the pre-game show with Coach Mike Krzyzewski."
The next week I received a letter from an incensed listener saying how outrageous it was to break in the middle of a divine, Sunday service for an interview with a basketball coach. It was nothing short of blasphemy.
I wrote her back, agreeing, saying I could not figure out why Coach K was more popular here than I.
I sent a copy of her letter, plus my reply to Coach K. A few days later I received the letters back with a message scrawled across the bottom from Coach saying, "You are a sore looser."
So though it would suit me to keep athletics out of church, here comes St. Paul with his, "Run in such a way that you may win…. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified. ( 1 Cor. 9:24b-27).
Elsewhere in his letters Paul refers to running (Gal. 2:2), boxing (1 Cor. 9:26), wrestling (Eph. 6:12), gladiatorial contests (1 Cor. 4:9) and (probably) chariot races (Phil. 3:13).
Paul writes these words ("Run in such a way that you may win….") to the Corinthians, those who lived in the town where the Isthmian Games, rival to the Olympics, where held every two years. The Greeks were criticized by the Romans for being infatuated with games and sports of this sort. But Paul grabs hold of this as a metaphor for what it's like to be a disciple of Jesus.
Only one can win this race, says Paul, compete to win. The competition here is not with other Christians, but with oneself, somewhat like golf. What does it take successfully to compete? Paul uses a word popular among the Stoics, but not among us -- "self-control," egkrateia (v. 25).
In his athletic analogy Paul does not mention the fun of vigorous competition, the glory of the prizes, the possibility of lucrative shoe contracts. The thing that Paul points to as analogous to discipleship is the need for rigorous training and self-control, egkrateia.
When a glorious lay up is successfully completed, or a high flying slam-dunk, why do we cheer? In great part because such feats make us glad to be alive, glad to have, though in much less exalted form, a body. When, toward the end of a particularly grueling Bulls game, Michael Jordan grabbed the ball, dunked it, then recovered it from the opponent, ran to the other end and dunked it again, even poor, dull Frank Gifford was able to turn to his fellow announcer and exclaim, "Isn't the human body amazing?"
Each of us knows that behind such corporeal marvels lie hour upon hour of self-denial and rigorous training. The hours spent in dull, unfulfilling drills and repetition all for the sake of one blessed moment in the last three seconds of the big game, all this lies behind our love of athletics.
There are those of you who would judge me harshly for driving to Charlotte to sit in the cold at a Carolina Panthers game, accusing me of being there for the bruising and battering, or the unwholesome competition, or an all-too-American lust for blood. But I'm also there because it is wonderful (on those all-too-rare moments when the Panthers are actually doing well), when a gaggle of fellow human beings (rather large and beefy fellow human beings) get it all together, blend their individual talents and bend their wills into one, executing their plays with perfection.
I had much the same feeling about the performance of the Raleigh ballet.
In a world of rampant permissiveness -- where we are accustomed to accepting sloppy work, as long as people mean well by it, where things are slapped together without much effort or expenditure of self - there is something close to sacred in seeing a group of people united in one mind, giving their last full measure of sweat and determination to move a small piece of pigskin three more feet.
I believe Paul would back me up on this.
When Dr. Arcus finished one of his brilliant concerts here last year, a person said to me on the way out, "One can barely imagine the hours, the sacrifice, the determination it took to bring us this beauty." Some of us go to a football game and to the ballet for the same reasons.
"So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it,…"
says Paul. Our choir director, during the weekend of Messiah, must soak his directorial arm every spare moment between performances, just to make us the music. In this age, when self-gratification is more our game than self-control, when few of us have anything more significant to do with ourselves than ourselves, we stand I awe of a fellow human being whose every waking moment has been bent toward the production of a smooth three point shot. Our awe is well taken.I'm sorry if some of you thought that the Christian life comes naturally, that you get discipleship just by breathing the air and drinking the water and being lucky enough to be born in Des Moines. You're wrong. You know as little about the Christian faith as I know of Cricket. Jesus called "disciples," not admirers. The word "disciple" is of course derivative of the word "discipline" and therein lies this sermon.
"I don't run aimlessly," says Paul, who was never above using himself as a model. "I don't just beat the air when I box." No, I pour on the egkrateia. I have learned to be intentional, focused, in what I do. I stick to the game plan. I do what's necessary to get over the goal.
Perhaps you thought that Christianity was roughly synonymous with being a thinking and caring person, church as a sanctified form of Rotary. God's Junior League. Who needs discipline for that? Who needs to be in training to win that race?
Here's service to a game where we are told to take up our cross and follow, to deny ourselves, to forgive our enemies, to….and nobody can do that without a great deal of old fashioned egkrateia. Jesus called us, not just to sit in the stands and cheer, but to get in the game and you can't get in the game of discipleship without the disciplines of discipleship.
"I just don't get much out of the Bible," he said.
"Oh," I said, "and when was it you last did time in a Bible study group?"
"I just thought you could pick it up and read it for yourself and sort of like, get the point," he said.
"Try that with a lacrosse stick and see how far you get," I said.
One of my biggest nuisances around here are people who at twenty, reject the Christianity that they once held at twelve. They have grown in their intellect and in their bodies, taking on biochemistry and nose rings but they staid stuck in childish, immature faith. Now, surprise, that faith is no longer adequate to the demands of their adult lives.
He meant to be a faithful Christian, but when he went through a tough time in his life, it was as if his faith just fell apart. He became angry with God. He quit.
I thought it was due to the tragedies and disappointments he had suffered.
His old pastor's verdict upon him was, "Poor thing, when it was time for him to go to the well for water, he had no bucket."
Think of your presence here this morning as training. Paul's sports rap puts matters like daily prayer and devotional reading, membership in a weekly Bible study group into perspective. Don't even get in the race if you haven't done the training.
"I never needed to be part of a prayer and Bible study group until I came to college," she said. And I knew the race that made such egkrateia necessary.
Your reaction to much of Paul's "Jocks for Jesus" talk will greatly depend upon your assessment of the gospel and of the world in which we must live that gospel. If you think that Christianity is roughly synonymous with good common sense, then you don't need discipline for that. Just act naturally.
If you think that we live in a basically Christian world where being Christian is roughly the normal, natural, American thing to do, then, as we say, no sweat.
I don't meet many people who are so ill informed about the demands of Christ, or so naive about the present darkness that they believe that. In fact, one thing the young Christians on this campus have taught me is that, if you're going to get in this game, do more than talk the talk, but also walk the walk, you better prepare.
If you want to be ranked in tennis you: can't do it alone, you need to get with some master of tennis who can guide you, form you, critique you, help you to get the moves and the grooves, the habits and the heart to win at tennis. It's quite closely analogous to what you need to do to survive as a disciple of Jesus on this campus.
It's a game worth winning. Richard Hays tells us (in his First Corinthians: Interpretation, 1997, pp. 155-166) that at the Isthmian games in Cornish, the winners received wreaths of withered celery. Why I know not. Perhaps this was the "perishable wreath" (v. 25) that Paul mocked the Corinthian athletes for knocking themselves out for at the games, saying. "If these jocks push themselves to the limit for a pitiful wreath of withered vegetables, what ought to be the egkrateia necessary for those of us who run the race toward an imperishable crown of Christ?"
Get in the game. Do what you need to do to win.
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