The Olympics are almost over. It has been a wonderful two
weeks for sports junkies like me. Great stories - triumph,
tragedy, and everything in between. I liked Andy Rooney's column
in yesterday's paper.(1) He said, "In the original Olympics, the
athletes didn't wear clothes. If they had done that this year,
NBC wouldn't have been able to televise the games, but more
people would have come to the stadium in Athens to watch." True.
"American basketball players ought to have been embarrassed to
lose to both Puerto Rico and Lithuania...if you added the
salaries of the 12 NBA players on our team together, it would
exceed the total income of all 3,600,000 citizens of Lithuania."
I suspect the Apostle Paul was as much a sports junkie as I
am. He was always using sports metaphors to make his point. For
example, our lesson this morning: "...I press on toward the goal
to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ
Jesus." Paul is "going for the gold" in these long-running
Olympics that we call the Christian life.
Have you ever wished you could be a spiritual giant like
Paul...or any of the other great saints of the church? Sure. We
would like to be great Christians - faithful disciples, powerful
witnesses, tremendous leaders - spiritual gold medalists. But
then we start to think about it, see the obstacles, our own
limitations, and with a sigh of resignation, we settle into what
we come to see as unavoidable mediocrity.
Well, I want to challenge that this morning. I really
believe that too much excellence has been given up too easily by
too many potentially great Christians. If the Bible is right in
saying that all of us have different spiritual gifts that, if
used, will benefit the whole church (and, indeed, the whole
world), then there is no reason to be content with the silver or
the bronze or anything less than excellence and the prize of the
heavenward call of God in Christ Jesus...the Christian gold
medal!
Since today is the day we commission our teachers for the
coming year, our focus is automatically Christian Education.
Presbyterians have always held education in high regard. But in
recent years, the emphasis has not been as strong as in times
past. Today I would like to recharge those educational
batteries...and in the process challenge you to the kind of
excellence of which you are capable. We can get some direction
from the Apostle Paul in the lesson we just read.
To begin with, Paul started with a genuine DESIRE for a
relationship with God, something I will assume we all have or
else we would not be here this morning. The difference between
Paul and the average Christian, though, is that from the very
beginning, Saul of Tarsus committed himself wholeheartedly to
that relationship...the pursuit of holiness. "If any other man
thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more,"
he modestly says. "A Hebrew born of Hebrews..." He CARED about
his faith, he KNEW what was involved with being a good Jew
through years and years of study and wanted to be the best Jew
that any Jew could possibly be. Religion MATTERED to him. Good
for him!
One wonders how much religion matters to US these days. The
numbers paint a rather poor picture. Sixty-nine percent of
American adults have their names on the rolls of a church or
synagogue. But from week to week, less than half bother to even
show up for worship. And less than half of those bother with
Sunday School, the one place where real learning...real growth...
can take place on a consistent basis.
Perhaps we have things too easy. Someone has said that the
church began to decline in 312 AD when the Roman Emperor
Constantine was converted. The persecution of the church
stopped, being a Christian no longer presented any hardships, and
things have been going downhill ever since. There is some truth
to that, of course. We desire things we cannot have. Where the
American church is concerned, because we live in a free nation
with no hindrance to participation, we are tempted to take
religion for granted. Too bad.
To borrow a phrase from the Army, would you like to "be all
that you can be" as a Christian? It really is not that hard...
but you have got to want it first. DESIRE!
Once the desire is there, what next? Listen to Paul.
"...in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting
the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless." Paul
began with desire but fleshed it out with DISCIPLINE. He worked
hard to LEARN what was expected of him, and then he acted on it.
Discipline is not a high priority for most church people
these days. We are more than content to live and let live; to
make no real demands on ourselves or others; in short, to take
easy ways out. There is no strict moral code; no certain tasks
MUST be performed; even attendance at Sunday School or worship is
frankly optional. No discipline.
Let me share one of those good news/bad news stories with
you. Actually, it is no story at all - it is a finding from
those regular Gallup polls that measure America's religious
attitudes and beliefs to which you have heard me refer before.
The good news is that about 85% of adults in this nation believe
that the Ten Commandments are still valid as a code of conduct
for today. Wonderful! Amen! The bad news is that less than
half of those who said that could even name FIVE of the Ten.
Harry Cohn was the longtime head of Columbia Pictures. His
brother Jack once suggested that they produce a Biblical epic.
"What do you know about the Bible?" asked Harry. "I'll lay you
fifty dollars you don't even know the Lord's Prayer."
After a moment's thought Jack began, "Now I lay me down to
sleep..."
Harry pulled $50 out of his pocket. "Well I'll be..." he
said as he handed the money to his brother, "I didn't think you
knew it."(2)
Of course, religion is not the only area of society faced
with this sort of lack of discipline when it comes to basic
knowledge. For example, this poll commissioned by the National
Geographic Society to see how much people knew about geography.(3)
Three-thousand 18- to 24-year-olds in Canada, France, Germany,
Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden and the United States
were interviewed. None did very well, but Sweden was best,
Mexico worst, and the US next to last. How bad? Well, despite
it's being in the news almost daily since September 11, only 17
percent of young adults in the United States could find
Afghanistan on a map. Believe it or not, about 11 percent could
not even locate the United States on a map. More young US
citizens in the study knew that the island featured in the TV
show "Survivor" was in the South Pacific than could find Israel.
Not surprising, really. After all, the majority of American
schools no longer include geography as one of the disciplines in
the curriculum.
To be sure, those are shameful results. But a more serious
problem becomes obvious when we realize that not knowing basics
prevents further progress. The foundation has to be laid before
the walls can go up. In a best-selling book some years ago
called Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, one
educator complained of an appalling lack of basic knowledge in
American schools. His thesis was that schools cannot be content
with trying to teach students how to think, but must give them
something to think about! Since that has not been done well
enough in recent years, in his words, "Many young people
strikingly lack the information that writers of American books
and newspapers have traditionally taken for granted..."(4) That
means we cannot effectively communicate.
For example, students cannot begin to intelligently discuss
American democracy until they know some facts about the
Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of
Independence, the Constitution. That is common sense. The same
applies to the church. Christians cannot begin to intelligently
discuss their faith until they know some FACTS about it. A few
minutes ago, I referred both to Paul and Saul of Tarsus. I
presume you know that those are the same person. How would you
know that? It did not come floating out of thin air. You
LEARNED it...somewhere...presumably in Sunday School. And any
further growth in Christian understanding will come in the same
way - through the discipline of learning.
The great thing about learning though, is that the more you
know, the more you want to know, and the more you CAN know...in
the church, in school, or anywhere else. Washington Post
columnist William Rasberry, in writing about the significantly
lower scores achieved by black students in standardized
achievement tests, wrote, "Whose fault is it that blacks tend to
get lower scores? I don't know all the answers to that one.
Surely a part of it is the simple fact that those children who
come to school already knowing a good deal of what society deems
important to know tend to find it easier to learn more of it.
The more you know, the more you can learn."(5) It is the same in
the church.
Paul knew the importance of that kind of discipline. But he
was not satisfied with leaving it at that. As we said before, he
took his pursuit of holiness seriously, just as the Olympic
athletes take their quest for the gold. Discipline, by itself,
does not do the job - there are lots of disciplined people who
will never win a medal. One more ingredient has to be added to
the mix: DEDICATION. That is why the Apostle would write,
"Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I
press on toward the goal..."
I like that line about "forgetting what is behind." Perhaps
I am just naive, but I hope not. I really believe that church
people DO CARE about being good Christians. They would never
have bothered to join in the first place if that did not matter.
But from years and years of conversations with members, I get the
impression that the reason so many of our folks do not bother
with pursuing Christian excellence is the memory of
unsatisfactory experiences in that quest in the past...boring
classes, unprepared teachers, unfriendly classmates. Things were
not as good as they could and should have been, so ever since,
good people have not bothered. That is sad.
With the Athens Olympics of 2004 about to wrap up, it might
be good to hark back to the words of the heroine of the `84 games
20 years ago, gymnastics gold medalist Mary Lou Retton. She said
to succeed one has to set her goal and be willing to pay the
price to achieve it. That is the discipline we have been talking
about. But she continued, "Achieving that goal is a good
feeling, but to get there you have also to get through the
failures. You've got to be able to pick yourself up and
continue." THAT is the dedication!
"...Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is
ahead, I press on toward the goal..." That which lies ahead is
our motivation for all this...the desire, the discipline, the
dedication. The day will come when we will meet our Savior face
to face, and the words you want to hear are the same ones I want
to hear: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter into
the joy of Thy Lord."
As I said earlier, I am convinced that at least 99 and
44/100ths percent of those who make a profession of faith in
Jesus Christ want it to make a difference in their lives. That
is the DESIRE! For that desire to take flesh requires a sense of
discipline - anything worth doing is worth working at. And real
excellence, not being content with the silver or the bronze or
anything else, will involve dedication - PRESSING ON toward the
goal even when things are not perfect.
Do YOU want to "go for the gold?" Would you like to know
ALL of the Ten Commandments? Would you like to be able to
discuss faith on a more than superficial level? Would you like
to "be all that you can be" as a Christian? It really is not
that hard...there is no good reason to settle for mediocrity...
but it does take desire, discipline, and dedication.
As I said at the beginning of this, since today is the day
we commission our teachers, our focus is Christian Education. I
will close with this. In Norfolk, Virginia a few of years ago,
there was an advertisement in a magazine for a local television
station. The ad was seeking to enlist more viewers for the
station's one-hour-long evening news program. Here was the
appeal: "Give us one hour and we'll give you the world."(6) The
educational ministry of the church can borrow that and say, "Give
us one hour, and we'll give you heaven."
Amen!
1. Andy Rooney, "Watching the Olympics,' Warren Times-Observer, 8/28/04, A-4
2. Clifton Fadiman, Gen. Ed., Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, (Boston, Little, Brown & Co.,
1985), p. 133
3. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1120_021120_GeoRoperSurvey.html
4. E. D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy, (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1987), p. 7
5. ibid., p. 111
6. Paul Lee Tan, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations, (Rockville, Md., Assurance Publishers,
1979), p. 1080
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