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The Good FightOctober 28, 2007 Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost What does it mean to live a good life? If you knew you were coming up on the end of yours, what do you suppose would matter most of all in the living of your days? And would that equate with anything we might call “good” in here? If you haven’t asked these questions of yourself for a while, you could try this little exercise on your way home this afternoon, or sometime this week with friends or family. If you’re in a covenant group you could give it a go at your next meeting. Ask the question of one another, what makes for a good life? The apostle Paul, writing to his friend Timothy, and evidently sensing his approaching death, said this: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is a reserved for me the crown of righteousness…” [1] Those are relatively famous words, often recited at funerals and memorials. As I read them this week detached from any specific context, they struck me with poignant force. I wondered if I could say something similar about my own life and actually mean it. These phrases are announced most often post mortem on behalf of another, whether or not the deceased would have claimed the sentiment for him or herself. “Dear Uncle John or Brother Harvey or Sister Sarah has ‘fought the good fight,’” we might hear the minister intone, “and has finished the race”…and so on. Just what did Paul mean by the “good fight”? I think we’re inclined to name the good fight any amount of time we’re able to endure on this earth, as though endurance is the greatest good we can think of. I suppose there may be circumstances where that’s true. Endurance is often virtuous. But Paul had something more specific in mind, something that actually had to do with doing good, promoting good, advancing good in a world that had gone terribly wrong. Not only that, but then spending out his life on behalf of that good. By the way, you’ll notice that he didn’t say anything about winning the fight, only that he had fought it. And that he had kept faith. By that, I think he meant keeping faith with the good as he had come to understand it. And the crown he references isn’t one reserved for monarchs, but for athletes. As he said, he finished the race and now would receive his crown of righteousness, that is, his runner’s award. Another way to ask the question yourselves might go like this: To what end are you spending your life? Is there some equivalent of a crown of righteousness for you at the end of life? We all have jobs and so forth, develop reasonably responsible habits for self-maintenance and so on, but beyond these rudimentary conditions, at the end of your days, what most of all would have captured your attention and focus? With which undergirding principles, or truths, or “good” would you have kept faith? And what does keeping faith actually mean, anyway? Paul kept faith with the good he came to know through Jesus. That’s an obvious conclusion. But probably we’ve never considered what that actually meant for him in his day. I thought it might be interesting to briefly reflect on Paul’s actual situation. The first thing to remember is that Paul wrote to Timothy from a prison in the empire’s capital city of Rome. The circumstances are intense and dangerous because these are the days of Emperor Nero’s ruthless persecution of Christians following a catastrophic fire that burned down much of the city. Many Romans suspected Nero of starting the conflagration because of an ambition to rebuild the city, but the fire grew out of control. Nero was among the most ruthless and cruel of the emperors. He came to the throne through murder and he would retain power by having his former counselors killed, as well as his wife, and even arranging the assassination of his mother, who was the very one who plotted his ascendancy to power. His depravity and corruption were over the top. Whenever anyone references the decadence of the Roman Empire, Nero’s reign serves as an archetype. He instituted daily contests for gladiators which became increasingly violent and bloody in the Roman circus. After attending one of these contests, the famous philosopher, Seneca, who had been Nero’s tutor wrote, “I felt as if I had been in a sewer.” [2] Following the great fire, Nero blamed the Christians and began a ruthless pogrom. The Roman senator, Tacitus, reports what happened: To get rid of this rumor [of the fire], Nero set up as the culprits and punished with the utmost refinement of cruelty a class hated for their abominations, who are commonly called Christians. Christus, from whom their name is derived, was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. Checked for the moment, this pernicious superstition again broke out, not only in Judea, the source of that evil, but even in Rome, that receptacle for everything that is sordid and degrading from every quarter of the globe, which there finds a following. Accordingly, arrest was first made of those who confessed [to being Christians]; then, on their evidence an immense multitude was convicted, not so much on the charge of arson as because of hatred of the human race. Besides being put to death, they were made to serve as objects of amusement; they were clad in the hides of beasts and torn to death by dogs; others were crucified, others set on fire to illuminate the night when daylight failed. Nero had thrown open his grounds for the display and was putting on a show in the circus where he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer. This was the capital city of the known world in which Paul was keeping faith, fighting the good fight and finishing the race. We know from his letters that he worked among the guards, some of whom, at least, were captured by the same good that Paul had been captured by – the grace of a loving God. We do not have direct knowledge about Paul’s death, but piecing the sources together it’s reasonable to assume he was martyred in Rome as one who advanced the transformative message of Jesus Christ. Ultimately that’s what keeping faith entailed for Paul. Now his story is not our story, of course. On the other hand, it does illuminate the meaning of his words. It gives us a context and a frame of reference for understanding what he meant. And as you can see, he meant something very substantial. It was no mere gloss of words about things that sort of mattered, but not really, within a context of easy pleasures, lots of money, and physical well-being. A couple of thousand years later, we’re now gathered in a different environment in another city, although most of us still claiming some allegiance to the same gospel. In fact, we’re very dependent upon Paul for our knowing about this Jesus. Interesting, isn’t it? He couldn’t have known what would come of his work. But here we sit. His keeping faith in his context has brought about our own faith, such as it is, in our context. The manner in which he spent out his life has impacted us directly. And not only us, but billions of others. Billions. By keeping faith, by fighting the good fight, by finishing the race. So I come round to ask you again: to which good ends are you keeping faith? Which is the principle race you’re running and which prize do you covet most of all? You know friends, in part, I think I’ve been hired to ask questions like this. To find as many different clever, and not-so-clever ways to slip these questions in over the transom of your consciousness so that they might lodge somewhere inside and noodle around, poking here, agitating there. Of course, these questions can be found out there beyond these walls; in fact, encountering those questions out there might be the cause that coaxed you in here – we certainly have no patent on the big questions. But we do have something to offer by way of answers. They’re the same ones Paul discovered. The same ones he committed himself to. He kept faith with the answer he found, and by so doing we have access to this answer as well. How do we keep faith with our gracious God of love? Our circumstance isn’t nearly as raw and life-threatening as Paul’s. In some ways, our situation is more akin to the Pharisee’s problem in the little parable Jesus told; he had just enough religion for establishing a self-righteous piety, and a narcissistic cult of one, but not enough to take him all the way to humility which, according to Jesus, seems the essential ingredient for keeping faith with the God of grace who is pleased to offer himself, in love, for our sakes and for the sake of the world. Paul caught hold of that same selfless grace and spent out his life on its behalf. That’s the good for which he fought and kept faith and ran the race. Bracing to think about, isn’t it? Bracing, demanding, inspiring. Thank God we’ve been given to each other. ______________________
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