February 15, 2009
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Mark 1:40-45

      Let us pray.  Holy and merciful God, we gather as your church, called to confess you as Lord and Savior to a world that does not know you; called to be the body of Christ to serve the poor, the sick, the imprisoned and “the least of these”; called to exercise our variety and abundance of gifts to further your will, not ours; and called to proclaim, like Peter, the truth of who you are.  Grant us, we pray, clarity of purpose, courage of conviction and compassion for those who have lost their way. In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.

      At the time Paul wrote his letters to the Corinthian Church, the Isthmian games were held in Corinth as a warm-up for the Olympics. The city would often be filled with athletes, training and competing in preparation for the greater trophy of the Olympics. In his writing, Paul uses an everyday, familiar reality to remind the Corinthian Christians that they are always in training to receive a prize. The difference is that for the Isthmian/Olympian athletes, their prize is a tangible and perishable wreath; for the Christian, it is the intangible, eternal prize of life with God. Yet, like the athlete, the Christian must always be striving, never sitting back on his or her laurels, thinking all is complete. In other words, “You have to prepare, show up and stay in the race.” The competition for Christians is not with others; the competition for Christians is internal — to train, and to live a life full out for God.  (Elizabeth S. McWhorter, “God’s Olympics,” Sermon from St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C., February 12, 2006, stpatrickschurchdc.org.)

      Paul had a way with words, and very often he would use the poetry of his letters to teach us about life and death and who we are as children of God.

      On one particular snowy night in Vermont, a group of rowdy teenagers broke into an empty summer house near Middlebury College. In the course of a round of drinking and partying, they trashed it. They broke a chair and threw it into the fireplace, discharged fire extinguishers, tossed beer cans, smashed china, and soiled the carpet with vomit and urine. When all was said and done, the damage exceeded $10,000.

      The offenders were caught and that is when began to get interesting. Since the house had belonged to the great American poet Robert Frost, the vandals were sentenced to…poetry.

      Yes, that’s right. Poetry. You might want to call this “poetic justice.”

      According to the story that ran inThe New York Times (June 8, 2008), the criminal justice system called on Jay Parini, a Robert Frost biographer and literature professor. He had been in the process of writing a book called Why Poetry Matters, and this assignment challenged him to put his theory into practice. His job was to try to use poetry both to punish and to rehabilitate the young offenders.

      One of Parini’s lessons revolved around the poem “The Road Not Taken,” which begins as many of you may recall, with the words, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”   It cautions us about the fateful choices we make in the dense woods of life, and how our choices matter – with one path leading to another. Frost concludes it by saying,

I shall be telling this with a sigh 
 
Somewhere ages and ages hence: 
 
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — 
 
I took the one less traveled by, 
 
And that has made all the difference.

The young offenders began to wonder about the choices they had made, and where those choices were leading them.

      An even harsher lesson came from the poem “Out, Out,” which tells of a young man’s precious life spilling away in a buzz saw accident in Vermont. The boy is cutting firewood in his yard, and the day is almost over when his sister calls him to join the family for supper. Suddenly, the buzz saw leaps and cuts off the boy’s hand. “Then the boy saw all,” writes Robert Frost,

Since he was old enough to know, big boy 
 
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart — 
 
He saw all spoiled.

      The doctor is called, and the boy is sedated. His pulse is taken, and they listen to his heart. They hear little…then less…then nothing. 
 

      They cannot believe it.  The boy is dead. 
 

      Jay Parini reports that the juvenile offenders in his class seemed shaken to their very foundations. This was, for them, a wake-up call: “Don’t waste your life.”

      The poetry prescription can be powerful medicine. “Poetry is about life and death and who you are as a person,” says Parini, quoting Robert Frost. Poetry gives us images, figures of speech, similes and metaphors that help us make sense of life. Frost once said, “Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.” 
 

      So how can we get educated in metaphor? How can we learn about life and death and who we are as people?  The answer is, as I am trying to persuade our Confirmation class, we can start by reading the Bible. 
 

      The apostle Paul knew all about metaphors – figures of speech in which comparisons are made between unlike things that actually have something important in common. Sayings like, Love is a rose. That man is a snake. God is a rock. These are all metaphors. We use them every day. 
 

      In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that faithful Christians are athletes. This is a metaphor, of course, since we have no evidence that any of the Corinthians played competitive sports or participated in the Olympics. But Paul wants them – as well as us – to be educated in the use of metaphor, so that we will be safe to be let loose in the world. He uses poetry to teach us about life and death and who we are as children of God. 
 

      Paul knows that metaphors are powerful, and he uses them constantly: “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). “You are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (12:27). “You also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (Ephesians 2:22). “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light” (5:8). “You are all children of light and children of the day” (1 Thessalonians 5:5). Temple of the Holy Spirit. Body of Christ. Dwelling place for God. Children of light.  
 

      That is who St. Paul says that we are. This kind of poetry can actually shape our lives. 
 

      In today’s passage, Paul asks, “Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it” (1 Corinthians 9:24). Athleticism was highly valued in the Greco-Roman world – athletes were esteemed, and there were arenas in most major cities. But sports were not just a pleasant pastime to the Corinthians. “The games were analogous to war,” writes New Testament professor J. Paul Sampley. “The events were often those associated with battle. This association of games and battle fits Paul’s notion that God’s plan is like a battle and believers must be fit and ready.”  
 

      In order to be victorious in competition, followers of Christ must “exercise self-control in all things,” so that they will be able to win an imperishable prize (v. 25). Good Christians are not softies, according to Paul – they are highly disciplined athletes. That’s his metaphor for the life of faith.  
 

      Robert Frost has his road, and Paul has his race. Like Frost’s poetry, Paul’s word of advice in this text is a wake-up call, “Don’t waste your life.” 
 

      Run the race, insists Paul. Be a Christian athlete. 
 

      Then, to avoid the accusation that he’s nothing more than an armchair athlete, Paul assures the Corinthians that he practices what he preaches. “I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air,” he says; “but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified” (vv. 26-27). Paul’s committed to a life of focused, goal-oriented, rigorous, deliberate self-discipline – one that is devoted to the success of his mission of preaching the good news of Jesus Christ. The greatest tragedy, according to Paul, would be for him to proclaim the gospel to others, and then end up being disqualified in the final judgment. 
 

      What we have here is the metaphor of an athlete, one that challenges us to exercise self-control, run with purpose and not only punish our bodies but actually enslave them. Paul’s not saying that we save ourselves through self-discipline – no, only God can offer us the gift of salvation. But Paul is saying that our lives are shaped each day by the choices we make. As the poet Robert Frost wrote,

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — 
 
I took the one less traveled by, 
 
And that has made all the difference.

      Our lives are shaped by our choices. Will we take a road toward Jesus, or away from Jesus? Will we make something of the life we have been given, or will we waste it? Will we run aimlessly and without direction, or toward the goal of eternal life with God? Will we behave like disciplined athletes or like undisciplined couch potatoes? 
 

      It’s much easier to make the right choices if you think like an athlete.  But here I would also add a caveat, as we learned this last week, athletes sometimes make the wrong choices.  Whether it be Michael Phelps being photographed taking a hit off of a bong, or A Rod admitting to the use of performance enhancing drugs, these were not examples of athletes making the right choices.  But as President Obama pointed out in last Monday night’s press conference, these wrong choices can be used as examples for parents in encouraging their children to make the right choices. 
 

      To be sure, these choices may have nothing to do with training to run a marathon or complete a 100-mile bicycle race – as worthwhile as these goals might be. No, to think like an athlete means committing yourself to a life of focused, goal-oriented self-discipline. When we take the poetry prescription and embrace the metaphor of the athlete, we begin to exercise self-control in all things, and we discover that our lives have a purpose. We begin to follow Jesus on the road of discipleship, the road not taken, instead of wasting our lives on useless pursuits. 
 

      We are focused – focused on the Great Commandment of Jesus to love the Lord our God, and our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:34-40). The Christian athlete is going to work hard to eliminate the distractions of gossip, deceit, unfaithfulness and other unloving behaviors. 
 

      We are goal-oriented – pressing on “toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). When you live athletically, you always keep your goal in mind. Through every challenging moral workout – at home, in school, in social situations, on the job – you keep yourself oriented toward the prize of everlasting life with God. 
 

      We are self-disciplined – determined to live by the Spirit, and “not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). As humans, we are pleasure-seeking creatures, so we tend to pursue foods, drugs, drinks and sexual experiences that feel good to us. But many of these pleasures are short-lived, and some can do permanent damage. Disciplined athletes know what will hurt them in the long run, and they make every effort to avoid them. 
 

      We are people with a purpose – to live out the Great Commission to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19-20). Followers of Jesus are anxious to share what they have learned from their spiritual trainer, and they see teachable moments in each day and personal experience. 
 

      When we think like athletes, we learn a lot about life and death and who we are as children of God. With such a prescription, we’ll be on the right road – one that makes all the difference. Amen. 
 
 

Sources: 
 
Editorial. “The best way out is through,” The New York Times, June 8, 2008, www.nytimes.com. 
 
Frost, Robert. Selected Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1963), 71, 89. 
 
Sampley, J. Paul. “First Letter to the Corinthians,” The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 909-912.