Athletic Discipleship

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

February 15, 2009

Text: I Corinthians 9: 24-27

PE class my senior year in high school was agonizing. In the previous three years of high school I had been on the basketball team. I was a new student, having moved into the Mineral Wells district just before my senior year. UIL rules said that athletes had to lay out a year before playing on the varsity. So I was in the gym with all of the non-athletes.

Our PE teacher was the varsity basketball coach. He was a fine coach, but teaching PE was an assignment that did not agree with him. And so he took it out on us. I still remember him walking up and down the rows of our reclining bodies as we did suspended leg raises and 50 sit ups. He did not smile. Failure meant laps or worse.

We were required to endure the pain of exercise, but with no goal in mind other than a passing grade at the end.

At basketball practices, I had endured almost any exercise. Then I was exercising for a goal: to compete well, and to win ball games. But PE calisthenics at the time was goal-less. We were not even motivated to work hard for his approval.  The only reward was a passing grade----not something that caused us to give PE our all!

You may have had similar experiences. From a parent or from a coach, you may be now or were at one time pushed beyond the point of fun or accomplishment. Maybe you did not get any strokes for doing well or giving it your best, because the person in charge had only one goal: to win the contest.

So now when you hear someone speak or write about self-disciplined physical pursuits, your stomach tightens and you get the feeling of impending failure or pain.

Or in the broader realm of life, you may have tried too many times to remember to adopt some healthier eating plan or to refrain from certain harmful foods or drinks, so that now any notion of self-control or self-direction  “looms like an insurmountable barrier….” (Beverly Gaventa, Texts for Preaching, Year B, page 148)

Or, as I can testify, you may have tried so many times to protect a weekly Sabbath day of rest or a daily prayer time, and failing each time,  you think you must have a deficiency in the realm of spiritual self-discipline!

And yet our experience teaches us that dedication and discipline are crucial elements of any valuable pursuit.

The book and CD The Purpose Driven Life has stayed on the best seller list for many months. Why? Perhaps it is because we know that discipleship was never intended to be a casual affair. Discipleship requires a “long obedience in the same direction,” self discipline and self-control. (Eugene Peterson)

“Paul compares this discipline to the vigorous training of an athlete. Without sacrifice and dedication, one cannot live the Christian life. It is one thing to talk about Christian ideas; it is quite another to carry out the demands of being and living as a Christian….” (V. Paul Rigdon, Pastoral Perspective, in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume One, page 353)

How does this play out in real life?

PRACTICE

An old joke: boy walking across the field with his father. The bull starts to charge them. The father starts to run. The son, too. As they are running, the boy asks his father, “Aren’t you going to stop and pray for safety?” To which the father replies, “I am all prayed up for times like these.”

Staying “all prayed up” for life requires habitual immersion in the story-line of our faith and regular times of conversation with our Triune God.

Ordinary solitary activities such as prayer and pondering are exercises of the soul and mind and body.

Old friend: “The older I get, the more I pray.” Opening our hearts and minds to receive what we need to hear and see.

Regular worship of God with others works in ways similar to team practices. There is a holy camaraderie and sense of common purpose that builds us up. And though it is almost a quaint exercise, Methodists have always relied on hymns to invigorate. Singing is a physical and a spiritual discipline.

We lean forward and our personal stories become intertwined with the sacred story of salvation and service.

And like athletes, we can’t rely on feeling like it? If I do   physical exercises only when I feel like it, I will not gain much. So it is with prayer and worship.  Our feelings are fickle.

So we tell our bodies to kneel or to take us to worship: we tell our bodies to take us to where we know we need to be.

Soul, mind and body are distinctions of one unified self! We “pommel” (exercise) our bodies because they are God’s gifts to us, too, and we can discover that our minds and spirits are lifted when our bodies are stretching.

THE CONTEST

The life of self-imposed spiritual disciplines is not an end in itself. Yes, we may seek a greater degree of peace or wisdom. But for us, these cannot be all of the story. For in a variety of ways, we are contestants, spiritual athletes and valued members of the team called the body of Christ.

And so we take the time to discern our own gifts and which piece of God’s vision of the world we are called to serve. And we take the time necessary to prepare ourselves to “give of our best to the Master.” And we learn to exercise self-control and self-denial for as we point our lives in certain directions. Elizabeth O’Connor: nothing so inspiring as one who has discovered their gifts and are dedicated to using them for others..

In other words, inspired by God we live intentionally, not like someone boxing the air, but for the purpose of glorifying God and joining God in the work to be done, with the gifts we have, and within our limitations of time and energy.

We are not spectators; we are players in the contest of discipleship!

A child may not have the skill yet to preach a sermon, but they can show kindness of other children who are being excluded.

We may have influence and use it for the sake those who do not.
 
We may be particularly gifted in guiding others to come to know and love Jesus Christ.

We can dedicate ourselves to conserving the earth’s resources for the next generations.

We can be a wise counselor or caregiver.

Do you get the picture?

Athletic discipleship means that we discipline our selves for the effective living out of our convictions in everyday life. We get good at our craft, and we get into the game!
 
And we live intentionally for the sake of those who are looking to us to know what Christian life looks like, sounds like. In other words, for the sake of the community of faith. We are not solo practitioners of  faith; we are members of the body of Christ.

Of course, we are commanded to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But love is commanded “only because the ones commanded to love cannot imagine doing anything else! They freely embrace what they are ordered and compelled to do.” (J. Paul Sampley, New Interpreter’s Bible, First Corinthians, pages 908-912)

Paul expresses it this way earlier in the letter: “The one who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him….You (your own very self, body and soul) becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have with God. You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God with your body-mind-heart-soul self!” (6: 12-20)

Albert Outler wrote: “No one can come to be themselves fully---- save as they enter into the truth of their being in God’s hands and not their own. No one can love in responsible freedom, lovingly and without predation (preying on others for one’s own advancement), save as their love arises as response to God’s love and God’s demand for righteousness and community.” (Psychotherapy and the Christian Message, page 144, altered and amended.)

You and I take on lasting disciplines of body and soul because we are captivated by the undeserved, astonishing mercy and goodness of God.

In Jesus, rooted in the faith of his people and their sacred story: his teachings,
 his actions on behalf of suffering people,
 his gentleness to the afflicted
 and his courage in critiquing hypocrites;
 and in his willing passion and death, we have been set free from sin and death.
 If Jesus has done this for me, there is nothing I won’t do for him. I will consecrate my talents to continue his ministries.

The best athletic teams I have watched and followed through the years were teams that loved their coaches and loved each other. I suspect this is true for orchestras and choirs as well.

And there is no love that can compare with the love that God has given us in Jesus Christ.

 We are commanded to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But love is commanded “only because the ones commanded to love cannot imagine doing anything else! They freely embrace what they are ordered and compelled to do.” The difference is the free embrace of love. (J. Paul Sampley, New Interpreter’s Bible, First Corinthians, pages 908-912)

The One we are working for can make all the difference in how enduringly we stay with the disciplines necessary to succeed.

So we run, and we wrestle, we exercise, and we show up when we are aching in body, mind or soul. Discipleship is mostly practiced in daily life, not performed in a stadium or on a stage but it is no less a contest.

And our competition is not other people, but the principalities and powers that Paul describes.

We meet up with enemies, chief of which is a zeitgeist (spirit of our times) which tries to scatter us in a 100 directions at once, and wears us out; or, with much the same effect, tells us that we are helpless victims whose efforts count for nothing.

But, as Leslie Brandt wrote, “Whatever form the enemy of my soul may assume, I must continue to do battle with him. If I fail---and I will at times---I must claim God’s forgiveness and rise to fight once more.

“If I remain sensitive to divine leading and receptive to divine enablements, I shall by divine grace become stronger through my struggles and shall live to claim eternal victory.” (Great God, Here I Am, Concordia, 1969, page 53)

We “run to win.” Win what, we ask?

The prize in this life is the satisfaction of sharing in the blessings of the good news and of contributing with our own gifts to the kingdom of God which God is bringing.

The prize beyond this life is that Day when we will cast our perishable wreathes before God, and, in the presence of God’s glory, be “lost in wonder, love and praise.” (“Love Divine,” Hymn 384 in UMH, by Charles Wesley)