Satchel Paige, the greatest pitcher in the former Negro Leagues, never had a chance to play major league baseball until 1948 when he was 42. He played in the major leagues through 1953, and then bounced around in the minor leagues until he was 60. However, in 1965, when Paige was 59, Charles O. Finley, owner of the Kansas City Athletics, signed Paige to a 1-game contract, and on September 25, 1965, Paige started and pitched 3 shutout innings against the Boston Red Sox, facing only 10 batters. The ancient Paige offered up the following as his "Rules for Staying Young":
Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society—the social ramble ain't restful.
Avoid running at all times.
And don't look back—something might be gaining on you.
Commentary
We’re coming in on the middle of a plea by Paul. In v1-11, Paul lists off all the worldly successes he has achieved, and then he declares all of his achievements "rubbish" (v8). He concludes (v10-11):
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
v12 The above is what Paul says he has not yet fully obtained. Let’s break the above down: (1) knowing Christ; (2) knowing the power of his resurrection; (3) knowing (having) fellowship with Christ in suffering; (4) becoming like Christ in death; (5) being resurrected from the dead.
What on this list would Paul say he has achieved?
What would Paul say he is striving to achieve?
v13 Remember last week’s sermon about trials and temptations, "Don’t Put up Crooked Numbers"? Temptations are all about going backwards in life, while trials are all about going forward to what God is called you to be and to do. The ordeal is the same, but in your troubles know that God is calling you forward—to transform into some new thing. Backwards glances buy us nothing.
v14 What is the prize for which God calls Paul, or me, or you? I believe a lot of us settle for thinking of eternal life as our prize. [1] In pop culture, eternal life in heaven is everyone’s birthright; in evangelical Christianty, eternal life is a gift received by prayer after asking Jesus into our lives. Does either of these notions match how Paul is talking here? He seems to be working awfully hard if the prize is automatic, or a gift. Don’t conclude that Paul has to earn eternal life! Rather, I think Paul is talking about a different prize—one without which eternal life is worthless.
v15 Remember the sermon a few weeks back about perfection, "We Did Everything Right but Win"? Here again in v12 and v15 we see teleios, the common adjective for perfection, translated differently; in v12, it’s translated as "perfect" (although I think "complete" fits more with the point that Paul is making) and in v15 it’s translated as "mature".
In v12-16, Paul is talking about sanctification, the process whereby God changes us from what we were into a new creation. In this verse, although Paul urges everyone to adopt his perspective, he allows for different points of view. What do you think Paul means when he says, "If on some point you think differently that too God will make clear to you"?
v16 Regardless of whether we agree or not, Paul says, we must live out what we have attained. In v17-21, Paul contrasts those who live in a worldly manner with those who are living as citizens of heaven even now.
Application
Yogi Berra, once said, "I never blame myself when I'm not hitting ... If it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?" Frequently a batter mired in a hitting slump will say stuff like, "I’m hitting the ball well—I’m just hitting it at people." To the uninitiated, this may sound like a rationalization, but to a ballplayer confidence that one is, in fact, making good contact is more important than the actual hits. If one is swinging well, logic says, the hits will eventually come.
Likewise, in our spiritual life, there are no guarantees that doing the right thing—loving our enemies, forgiving those we’d prefer to punish, telling the truth, etc.—will always get us the results we want at that time. Love your enemy? Your enemy may well try to take advantage of your good nature. Forgiveness? The one you forgive may well do the same thing again. Telling the truth frequently makes it easy for others to know where to ascribe blame. The Bible even warns us that such will happen (Matthew 5:38-38, Matthew 18:21-35, and 1 Kings 22, respectively). There is go guarantee that doing the right thing will get us a "hit", spiritually.
Here is why it’s important to know:
that God has called us to follow him,
where God has called us to follow,
what God has called us to do, and most of all,
what success looks like as we are following him.
We want success to look like prosperity, peace, happiness, etc.—all those good things that are part of shalom. God does want us to have all that, right? But the prize is Christ-likeness that comes only as Christ is alive in us and transforming us from the inside out. Peace without Christ in our lives is a false, and temporary, peace. On the other hand, turmoil in our lives we can accept if, and only if, Christ is at work in us. Just as hits will eventually come to the batter who is making good contact, peace and all the rest will come to those who are "making good contact" with God—i.e. have the Spirit of Christ at work in us.
The temptation during troubles is always to look back. See in this a regression—something that takes you further away from Christ. Rather, the challenge—and the prize—is to be changed through your ordeals into something new: a version of you that is more Christ-like than you were before, more mature, more complete, closer to being perfect.
Points to Ponder
So you want to live forever—good! Now, why would you want to live forever in heaven with God if you’re not working now to be a heavenly person?
Consider Luke 9:61-62:
[Someone] said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family." Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."
How does this story fit into today’s lesson?
End Notes:
1 - Eternal life, in and of itself, is not what God has called us to. Consider the Greek myth of Tithonus, lover of Eos, goddess of the dawn. Eos asked Zeus to give her lover eternal life, but she forgot to ask for eternal life. As time passed, Tithonus became continually weaker and more demented. Finally an exasperated Eos turned him into a grasshopper, and he lived forever, chirping in his dementia for death to take him. God offers us eternal life, but that life comes as we are conformed to the image of Christ. Eternal life without Christ-likeness would be no better than the fate of Tithonus.
5 comments:
What a thought provoking sermon. I especially was challenged by what the prize was.... eternal life,crown of righteousness etc.
My thought for discussion is;
After Salvation Is God calling us, wooing us to Himself? That we want to know Him & become Christlike? Granted we are all at different places and our walks are different but my experience is that I want, need and feel led to Know God, study the Bible, fellowship with Christians and search myself. I now am trying to discern God's will for my life daily. To hear His directions not my own.
So my question/statement is? Are Christians called by God to pursue the prize?
That we would want to know Him & Be like Him?
I enjoyed the baseball sermons and may request another set in October, haha.
What a good set of questions, Heather! My question for you would be, "What is your experience of other Christians? Do you know Christians that seem 'stuck' in their spiritual walk?"
To my way of thinking, evangelical Christianity has done a disservice to many followers by emphasizing a one-time commitment to Jesus as important as that is over and above an ongoing walk with Jesus. Realizing that we all stumble regularly, our walk is nevertheless the acid test of what we believe. (1 John 1:6-10)
You asked, "Are Christians called by God to pursue the prize?" I'd say, "Yes, but along the way, some have forgotten that the prize is to be a child of God." If I'm a child of God, then I stand to inherit a good deal of good stuff (Romans 8:13-17): eternal life, to be sure, but also a great deal more (but, strangely, also sufferings, v17). Having eternal life without being a child of God--in fact, being estranged from God--would be hellish.
Maybe we should see the banishment of Adam & Eve from Eden as an act of mercy. After Adam & Eve eat from the tree of the knowledge of good & evil, God says, "[Adam] must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever" (Gen 3:22). God is saving Adam from Satan's fate: knowing good from evil, but being eternally incapable of doing it. Instead Adam eventually dies and waits for his redemption and resurrection through Jesus (like the rest of us).
Do you buy that?
PS - Hmmm a baseball sermon in October? Well, what I said was, "This is the last of the summer baseball sermons." We'll have to wait and see what the fall brings :-)
Thanks again for your questions!
Not so much a question as a comment. I agree that we need to accept Jesus as Saviour AND testify to that saving Grace in day-to-day life. The struggle for me is that I can allow my faith to morph into a set of do's and don'ts instead of remaining focused on the relationship and allow my actions to flow from that. For list-makers, like me :-), that can feel tricky sometimes.
Great observation! The struggle is there for everybody, though, isn't it? It's not like everyone else has it nailed, and poor old list-makers like you (and me) make a mess of things.
It is all about the relationship. Some days you get up and just know that your relationship is wrong. It may take a while to figure out what is wrong--maybe even a long while--but in the end you figure out that you've drifted off track. You're doing too much of this or too little of that. I'm not even necessarily talking about your relationship with God here. We could be talking about a spouse, a child, a friend ... or God.
You start doing the thing that you realize you'd drifted away from doing (e.g. having nice pillow talk with your spouse) and everything starts to seem better for a while ... and then the relationship goes out of whack somewhere else. Doing more of what fixed the last problem (pillowtalk in this example) probably won't fix the current problem.
This is where we get weird; our gut response to most relational problems is to do more of what worked in the past (esp. what worked last time). If a little praying worked to make us feel better about our relationship with God, then maybe a lot of prayer will work now! Wrong! Maybe what is needed now is action in some particular part of your life.
I've had to deal with this just during the past two sermons. Two weeks ago I was feeling very distant from God. I was struggling with temptation in my mind--you know, when you really, really, really want to do something and it's on your mind all the time, distracting you and keeping you from what you want to be focusing your time on ... or am I the only person with these kinds of problems? :-) So there I was having to preach about not putting up crooked numbers (trials vs temptations) even as I was dealing with temptation. I totally felt what I was preaching about ... except I felt like the "here's what not to do" person.
It made no difference that I had prayed about it, and even confessed it to God. Strangely, it wasn't until I had confessed my problem to another person (two people, in fact) that I felt the temptation disappear. Talking it over with my spiritual coach helped me work through feeling bad and wrong--and realizing that what I want most is to be God's son. (Hence my energy at church when I said, "Eternal life is not the prize--being remade in Christ's image as a child of God is the prize.") Now, I'd like to make "confessing my sins to my spiritual coach" into a rule that I can run to next time I have a problem. Problem is, my next problem will be something else.
So, yeah, do's and don'ts aren't very helpful. Really all they're good for is a checklist of what might be wrong with your relationships. (And every now and then you get to add a rule to your checklist ... but don't count on it to fix your next problem. We're much too screwy for that!)
Is that any help?
Oh, another example. Parents will ask me all the time, "I'm doing this to discipline my child. Is that OK?"
My answer is usually cryptic, "Yeah, that sounds OK ... right up until it's not OK, and you're going to have to count on God to tell you when that is."
As parents we seesaw between discipline on one hand and mercy on the other. At various times a child will need more of one or the other. You just cannot make a rule out of how much discipline is too much and how much mercy is not enough.
I'm a big fan of http://www.loveandlogic.com/ Their whole approach of letting kids suffer the immediate consequences of poor decisions where the price tags are reasonable needs to be tempered by a huge dose of empathy. In fact, the whole approach fails if the empathy is missing. But how long a kid suffers and how much you lay on the empathy really depends on the situation, the responsiveness of the child, etc. So tough love is fine ... until it's time for empathy ... until it's time for tough love again, etc.
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