Run the Race: New Year's Eve sermon

This year the world’s premier sporting event - the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics – is coming to London and the UK. London is the first city to stage the Olympics three times. There will be 26 different sports, 17,000 athletes competing representing 205 countries. 63,000 will be involved in staging the games. 9 million tickets are expected to be sold with 500,000 people spectating. 20,000 journalists will cover the games so that millions more can avidly follow every huff, puff, spill and saga of the action. 90% of the UK is expected to watch the Games on television.

The image of an athlete is used three times in the New Testament to teach important truths about the Christian life. A New Year in which we can enjoy the Olympics experience is a good time for reminding ourselves of those truths and making them part of our lives as we begin 2012.

In 1 Corinthians 9. 24-27, St Paul wrote: “You've all been to the stadium and seen the athletes race. Everyone runs; one wins. Run to win. All good athletes train hard. They do it for a gold medal that tarnishes and fades. You're after one that's gold eternally.

I don't know about you, but I'm running hard for the finish line. I'm giving it everything I've got. No sloppy living for me! I'm staying alert and in top condition. I'm not going to get caught napping, telling everyone else all about it and then missing out myself.”

All good athletes train hard, Paul writes, and so should we. What does training involve for Christians? Prayer, bible study and Christian fellowship are all key parts of understanding our faith and growing as Christians. Doing those things can help to underpin effective Christian living. But real Christian living is about significant lifestyle change; eradicating our natural selfishnessness and living more generously – loving God will everything we have and loving our neighbour as ourselves. Doing that takes practice. We have to consciously decide to speak and act differently from how we would naturally. It is only with practice that unselfishness becomes natural to us. That is the kind of training which Paul has in mind for as we seek to live for Christ and like Christ in 2012.

We train hard in order that we can run to win. Athletes run to win an individual gold medal but we run to win eternal life; not as an individual prize but eternal life as Jesus spoke it – the coming in full of God’s kingdom of love, mercy, justice and peace. That is a prize worth winning and that is what our giving, our loving and our living should be fully focussed towards.

That’s what we are encouraged to do by Philippians 3. 12 – 15. The writer of this letter says:

“I've got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward — to Jesus. I'm off and running, and I'm not turning back.

So let's keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less than total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision — you'll see it yet! Now that we're on the right track, let's stay on it.”

No distractions, no veering off track; just an absolute focus on the goal which the kingdom of God come on earth as in heaven and the life of Jesus as the pattern and example of what that kingdom looks like when it fully comes.

So we fix our eyes on Jesus, as the text for 2012 at St John's Seven Kings, Hebrews 12. 1-2, tells us, because he is our example and our goal. He has shown us how to run the race – we follow in his footsteps – and he is our goal because his life shows what the kingdom of God will look like when it comes in full.

This text for 2012 gives us one other athletics image to savour and that is of a full stadium cheering us on as we run our race:

"We are surrounded by a great crowd of witnesses – all those who have borne witness to the truth of Christ before us. All the saints, all the heroes of the Bible, all those who encouraged us in our faith but who are no longer with us; each one is there in the stadium stands yelling and cheering to encourage us to preserve, continue and complete the race that we are running.

Do you see what this means — all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running — and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed — that exhilarating finish in and with God — he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honour, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he ploughed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!”

This is what the example provided by those athletes preparing for the 2012 Olympics can teach us. This is what our text for 2012 encourages us to believe and do. To run our race well we need to get rid of all that would distract us or weigh us down, train hard, focus on the example of Jesus and on the goal of the coming kingdom of God, and be encouraged by those who have run before us to run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us.

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Mavis Staples - Eyes On The Prize.

Greenbelt diary (5)

Adrienne Chaplin had a go at defining art in her session exploring why we should bother with art. She did acknowledge the difficulties of definitions but suggested that what artists do is to make sense of the world as it appears and feels to us. So that good art teaches us to see, hear, sense and feel better; articulates the way we experience life as felt. Or, perhaps, as Richard Harries puts it in his introduction to Forms of Transcendence: The Art of Roger Wagner (a book I bought at the Festival and read in the queue for The Rising) "every work of art is a deeply felt response to life seen in a particular way."

The most interesting idea which Chaplin posited was that of the importance of touch. Touch, she suggested, is the foundation of the senses. Touch is the first and last sense for us in birth and death, sensations via our skin cannot be avoided or eradicated, and touch is the basis of many lingual metaphors such as tough, smooth, prickly, warm etc.

I saw the Cloud of Witness installation and Gethsemene data projection but wasn't impressed or moved by either. I enjoyed Meryl Doney's guided tour of the Visionaries exhibition where I caught up with Martin Wilson and heard a little about the photographic project he had worked on at this year's Festival to be shown at next years.

Martyn Joseph conversed and performed with three emerging and engaging artists in The Rising and then with poet and lyricist Stewart Henderson. Humourous and profound by turn and in tandem, this was a performance littered with lingual brilliance. At the end they took questions from the audience which led both to state why Greenbelt is so important to them. As for many who go, the combination of friendships, art, questions, and challenge make it 'church' for them (for a similar statement from a punter, click here for a post by Steve Lawson).

While waiting for Athlete I made what for me this year was a rare foray over to the Performance Cafe but was rewarded by a short but sweet set from Sister Jones. Their folk/r&b style was fused with gospel lyricism to great effect and in a seemingly effortless fashion.

Athlete played a great gig but are in need of some U2-style reinvention. The new album, Black Swan, has more light and shade than Beyond the Neighbourhood but both are locked into the anthemic template of the excellent Tourist without tapping into the originality of Vehicles and Animals. Maybe they need to take their own advice and make some magical mistakes. Despite this, they sent me home on a high with the sense that it will be alright and that hope is never light years away.

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Athlete - Black Swan Song.

One rule for you, one rule for me

Once again posts on the Anglican Mainstream site are attacking a mission and relief agency over association with people or groups that are opposed to discrimination against the homosexual community. Last year Tear Fund was attacked because Desmond Tutu was a speaker at a Tear Fund event, now CMS are criticised for being supporters of the Greenbelt Festival. In both cases, those posting quickly suggest letters of protest and threats of the withdrawal of support if their demands are not met.

To my mind there are several issues with their approach. First, people and organisations are being characterised by those who post on Anglican Mainstream's site as 'pro-gay' as though this were their defining characteristic. A festival like Greenbelt is deliberately designed to be eclectic rather than mono-cultural in order to address a wide range of issues from a variety of different perspectives, yet for those who have posted on Anglican Mainstream's site all of that diversity is viewed through one lens and one lens only i.e. that of whether or not gay Christians are invited to contribute to the Festival. This approach makes clear the single issue nature of the Anglican Mainstream agenda. Such designations can also be applied fairly indiscriminately by such posters before some form of retraction. So, for example, in its orginal form this post included headlining bands Athlete and Royksopp in their 'pro-gay' designations but reference to them has now been removed from the post. Additionally, this is laced with unnecessary invective so that, for example, Gene Robinson is described as a gay poster boy.

Second, on the basis of this single issue those posting are essentially seeking to disrupt the flow of support to key mission and relief organisations. Lisa Nolland's post regarding Tear Fund and Tutu was entitled 'Farewell to Tear Fund?' and stated that she has redirected her sponsorship of a child from Tear Fund to another organisation. In her post on CMS and Greenbelt she urges her readers to contact the Chair and General Secretary of CMS with their concerns. What she is saying then, is that this one issue, whether a person or organisation is perceived as being 'pro-gay' or supporting those who are 'pro-gay', trumps every other issue and activity including the vital work of mission and relief throughout the world. In her view it is acceptable, on the basis of this single issue, to argue that funds for vital relief work should be directed away from Tear Fund and that CMS should be discouraged from engaging with those in its support base who attend Greenbelt and from seeking to broaden its support base for mission through the Festival.

Third, those posting call for other organisations to set up debates on the issue of homosexuality in a way that they are not prepared to do themselves. So, the call is for Greenbelt to "allow equal air time for traditional sexual views" but where are the examples of Anglican Mainstream adopting this approach of affording equal air time to those they oppose? As is often the case when a single issue comes to dominate an organisation's agenda, that organisation expects a privileged position for their own views at the same time as denying that privileged place to their opponents. Until Anglican Mainstream itself affords equal air time to those calling for what they view as 'non-traditional' sexual views, this call is a case of one rule for you, one rule for me.

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Röyksopp - Remind Me.