So, as many of you know, Brooks and Becca have bought eleven acres of land up on Lake Moraine above Hamilton. I go up there a couple times a week just to sit and look at the water and deer, the family of bald eagles and the occasional fisher cat. It's a great place to just sit and will be a good place for the Catos to live in a few years once they build it out.
Brooks has been slowly collecting stone and rubble because, for some reason, he likes to build rock walls. (I guess I can say it that way...I'm sure he says the same thing about me and cheese!) Anyway, he wants to build a substantial rock wall along the perimeter of the land all on his own, all by hand. Now I don't know how many feet that is, but I suspect this is going to take a long time. Years. Probably so many years that I'll never live long enough to see it completed. But that's what he wants to do.
One of the things he's been doing is asking his friends to donate stones. Now, full disclosure, if you know of any stones that need collecting for free, let me know. I'll get the word to him. But these I'm talking about are special stones. He wants his friends to donate stones that will be part of the wall the way being friends creates a foundation of our lives. They will be there in the wall, spiritually holding it up, like the cornerstones Jesus mentions in our Gospel reading today.
So, you see, this is a very special project. It's not just some fly-by-night hobby. It's more of a marathon.
I was thinking about marathons the other day when I sitting at the land, wondering what to preach about. The word “marathon” comes from the legend of the Greek runner-messenger Pheidippides. Around 490 B.C., a gigantic Persian army landed on the plain of Marathon, threatening the city of Athens, just 25 miles away. The Athenians prepared for a battle that would determine the fate of their civilization. And it didn't look good for them.
But against all odds, the vastly outnumbered Athenian army actually beat the Persians in battle. It was an unimaginable victory, but at that moment nobody left in Athens knew it had happened. So after the battle, in a story probably as much fable than fact, a runner named Pheidippides was sent to carry the good news of the victory to the residents of Athens. Pheidippides ran the entire 25 miles across the plain of Marathon to the city, not once stopping for a Red Bull. When he arrived, exhausted, dehydrated, covered in sweat, panting, Pheidippides burst into the city assembly, and he shouted, “Rejoice! We conquered!” And then he collapsed and died.
I wonder if Paul was also thinking of Marathon when he was writing to the Philippians? This is probably the most poignant of Paul's letter because it was probably his last. If you look back at his earlier letters, Paul is filled with bravado, eager to preach the gospel because there are no written Gospels. He's filled with the Spirit, literally, and wants to share this good news. And he wants to convert others to belief in the risen Christ.
Of course it wasn't always this way, as he says in his letter to the Philippians. He was a Jew's Jew, a Pharisee's Pharisee, a persecutor of the church, an enemy of Jesus. And being the sort of man that Paul was, he went at it one hundred percent. He is not the sort of man to do things by half. He was looking at the long plan...no matter how long it took, his marathon was being run to destroy this new church.
But then it happened. On the road to Damascus he had his Damascus Road experience! He found Jesus...or rather Jesus found him. And Paul's Christ Jesus had made phrenetic little man his own unlikeliest of all cornerstones.
And still he ran. Only this time it was from city to city in the Empire, preaching Christ crucified and Christ risen. Starting churches here and there. Planting seeds and letting the Spirit work wherever it would.
But this couldn't have been easy. Think about it. These letters of Paul that we have are all in response to some problem somewhere. We didn't keep any of his letters that may have gone something like, “Hey, just checking in with you. Saw that you are all doing amazing there. Keep up the good work.” They are all letters that show that something has gone wrong with the churches he planted.
And that's how we get to the letter to the Philippians. And that's how we get to the end of Paul's life. Because in this letter he is old, and he is in jail. This is a man looking back on his life. And, frankly, it's a life of a lot of joy, but probably even more pain and disappointment. He has probably lost more than gained, at least in the way the world measures these things.
Paul says, “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” and this is so beautiful. Simply knowing Christ...simply knowing. Not being like, not having the powers of, not being loved like. Just knowing. Having been befriended by Jesus, having been rescued by Christ. Just being able to know the joy of catching a glimpse of God's kingdom in the eyes of the Christ that knocked him to the ground so long ago on that Damascus road.
And here at the end of his life, Paul pushes on, growing closer and closer to Christ. Knowing that, even here near the end, the best is still to come. Knowing that while careers begin and end in this profane world, you never retire from your job of being a Christian. That every day, even in prison, even facing the pain and suffering of persecution, or perhaps just old age, the race continues as you continue on to the goal for that last prize, the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
That marathon continues for all of us, for all of our lives. And the end is glorious.
In Robert Browning's poem, “Pheidippides,” he imagines this heroic runner dying with a smile on his face, that his heart gave out not so much from exhaustion as from sheer bliss.
I can imagine decades from now an old, old man, finally having his heart go out as he adjusts some stones on a wall, a wall that so long ago completed its circuit around the land, but was never really finished until, years later, that last stone is adjusted and is in its proper place. And I can imagine the joy in knowing that he died knowing his job was well done.
And I can imagine Paul, a man who went from loss to loss, pain to pain, looking out at the world, and after that long-run marathon, opening his heart to be received by his much-loved Christ Jesus, and experiencing such overwhelming happiness at reaching his destination, feeling such ecstatic joy and doing what Jesus called him to do – sharing such good news with the people he loved.
And that's a race worth running.