February 16, 2003
A sermon by Rev. Dr. John K. Luoma
This is one of the greatest truths of life: “Life is difficult.” Now, we can accept this truth or we can deny it. If we accept it, we will rise above it because we learn that every difficulty we face can be a means of growth. People who accept that life is difficult and face their problems become better people. Of course, many people don’t accept this truth. They deny this truth and see themselves as victims and are overcome by their problems or blame their problems on someone else.
These are the words of M. Scott Pech, the well known Christian psychiatrist, from his book The Road Less Traveled, one of the best and most helpful books that I have ever read.
In 1 Corinthians, the 9th chapter, the apostle Paul makes a similar assertion. He compares life to a rigorous athletic contest, contending that it takes every ounce of energy and dedication we have if we are going to win out. On the level of real life, Paul seems to have seen many athletic contests as had the people to whom he is writing. Some of the greatest athletic events in Greece took place in Corinth every two years.
So, Paul is saying to the members of his congregation in Corinth: life is difficult; it is full of problems. If you want to overcome them, if you want to be the person God intends you to be, you must be as focused as the athletes are in these great athletic events. And so Paul tells them what their attitude toward life should be using some metaphors from these athletic games.
First, he talks about runners in a race. He asks them to remember that they are in competition for a prize. Of course, the prize that they are competing for isn’t perishable like an athletic trophy. The prize they are competing for is imperishable. It is the prize of eternal life. And they are not competing with a human being. Their opponent is the Devil.
An athlete has a good chance of winning if he listens to his coach or trainer. His chances are considerably diminished if he listens to his opponents or those who don’t have his best interests at heart. I guess we could put it this way: the Devil is an expert at trash talk. He is an expert at pointing out our flaws and making us doubt ourselves. He knows how to get into our head.
I remember the first time I ever ran into people who practiced trash talk while playing a game. I was playing pick up basketball at the YMCA in Hartford, Connecticut. We were playing against some young guys who really knew how to run their mouths and make you feel that there was no way you could compete with them. The truth was that they weren’t that much better than we were, but they were skilled at getting into your head and distracting you from your game. If you paid attention to them it would make you play poorly.
So, Paul says: this is a life and death contest. You can choose to listen to or get distracted by the Devil or you can listen to your coach Jesus and what he has to say about you: that he loves you and that he has endowed you with the capacity to win. But you must focus on him.
So, here we are this morning. We are people facing real problems and real difficulties of the athletic contest called life. What will we choose to listen to? Will we listen to Satan’s trash talk or the words of our coach, Jesus?
The second thing Paul says about an athletic contest is that we must exercise self control. We have to discipline ourselves to do the things that will help us and avoid the things that will hurt us. I haven’t exactly had an eminent athletic career. My experience with competitive athletics ended in high school. I was a wrestler and the coach made it clear from the beginning that we would not succeed without self-control. We had to be at practice, we had to do our strength training, and we had to watch what we ate. If we did not have the self control to do these things we would not succeed.
Likewise, Paul says followers of Jesus who want to win the prize of eternal life need to have self control. They need to discipline themselves to do the things that will maximize their potential. We know what these things are: we need to attend the practices called worship, we need to eat the food called Holy Communion, we need to read the manual that tells us how to perform called the Bible, we need to stay with the team which is called the church, we need to stay in communication with the coach which is prayer. All these things empower us to do our best and overcome the opponent called the Devil.
The third thing a good athlete does is focus. Paul says, like the runner, keep your eyes focused on the finish line. If the runner spends too much time looking sideways or backwards, he is going to veer from his path and lose precious steps. And sometimes the race is lost by just a single step.
So, do we have our eyes on the finish line? Or are we allowing ourselves to be distracted by things that in the long run simply don’t matter. You know the laundry list: things like our personal security, our status, our power, or our desire for self gratification. Keep your eyes on the finish line which is heaven.
The fourth thing an athlete does is master his own body. He must not allow the desires of his body to enslave him. He must enslave and master his body. No athlete will be successful if he cannot do this.
M. Scott Pech says that one of the biggest obstacles we face in solving our problems is procrastination. This means that we put off dealing with significant problems or tasks that we know we must do because they involve some kind of pain. Instead, we choose to do things that are more pleasurable.
Pech talks about an able young woman executive that he was counseling because her habit of procrastination was getting her into trouble and threatening advancement in her career. They were not making much headway until he asked her a rather mundane question, “How do you eat your cake?” She replied that she ate the frosting first. He replied that that was the same way she did her work: she was always doing the enjoyable things first. He suggested that she needed to tackle the most difficult things first and that would make everything that followed more enjoyable. That was the moment of break through and she was able to change.
So it is with the athlete. He has got to put aside the pleasurable things until he first does the more difficult task of training.
Then Pech raises the $64,000 dollar question: why should we be willing to delay gratification? Why shouldn’t I procrastinate rather than deal with things that are unpleasant? Why should I be willing to deal with problems and the pain that they involve? Or to use Paul’s words, why should an athlete exert self control, put off pleasure and do the hard work of training? Or to put it in the words of Jesus: why should his followers be willing to take up the cross of self-denial? The answer: because we want the glorious experience of eternal life and heaven and we want to bring with us as many people as possible.
One of the most interesting things for me over the last few years is to watch the spiritual growth of the Akron Beacon sports writer named Terry Pluto. Not that long ago the center of Pluto’s life was sports. Now, the center has changed. The change came when Pluto was confronted with the prolonged suffering and death of his father. Here was his choice: he could keep his distance from his father and focus on his enjoyment of sports or he could help his father. His willingness to embrace this difficulty rather than avoid it has changed his life and made him a better person. You can see it in his writing and in his life. He returned to the church, he is active in prison ministry, he takes the word of God seriously, he has entered into a new phase of writing: he now also writes for the religion section of the newspaper. He sums up his learning by quoting a pastor named Rick Warren. Warren says, “God is more concerned with our character than with our comfort or success.”
Yes, life is difficult. But it we embrace the difficulties in faith, trusting in and listening to Jesus who runs alongside of us, if we keep our eyes on the prize of eternal life, we become the kind of people who are of genuine service to others and who will bring others to heaven with them.
copyright 2001 by Rev. Dr. John K. Luoma