So, I know it's hard to tell looking at me now, but there was a time when I was a winner! Back when I was 16, I was the top swimmer in the state of Tennessee. Nobody could beat me at the 100 meter freestyle. It's not that I was better...I was unbeaten. And that's something. So, I want to tell you about this one race.
I had already be proclaimed #1, and now we were in the local summer season where I was on the Red Bank team in the Chattanooga region. We were having our last regional swim meet of the summer, and it was time to race. I was, of course, in the middle lane with all the advantages. Next to me was my serious long time rival/friend, Mike Roberts. We had competed since we were 7. And we almost always swam neck and neck.
On your mark, get set, BANG!. And we were off. Fifty meters down, a flip turn, and 50 meters back. I was ahead of Mike by about half a length and was only putting in about 75% effort. I had this in the bag. I got to the wall, executed my flip, went to push off, and...
Nothing. There was no wall to push off of.
You see, I had flipped too soon, by about 6 inches. And when I went to push off, I was dead in the water. Now the rules are, when you do a turn, you have to touch the wall. Most swimmers do it with their feet off the flip, but if you don't, you have to swim to the wall, touch it with your hand, then push off, and keep going. But you have to touch the wall.
Later, my mom said she heard me groan in anguish as I surfaced, paddled back, touched, then kept on going. And came in last. My year long streak of being top dog was over.
When I finished, Mike was there next to me. He patted me on the back and said one word: Duuuuuuuuuude. Then he got out and toweled off with the rest, leaving me alone in the pool with dozens of people looking at me.
It felt like millions.
And I promise that, at that moment, I was NOT thinking of our reading from Second Timothy that we heard today. And if I had, I would have probably only recalled, “At my first defense no one came to my support, but all deserted me.”
So it is that I wonder why THIS episode in my life came back to mind when looking over this reading. And why this particular reading kept pushing the gospel out of the way when I kept trying to write about the Pharisee and the tax collector.
But if I was being pushed, I suppose there was a reason, so I sat down to live with Second Timothy for a while. And I came away with this.
All my life, when I was taught this passage in Sunday school as a teenager, I came away with the feeling that we were all supposed to look at St. Paul as the ultimate winner. Winning races and fights, having Jesus at his side, and being boastful, as Paul is wont to do. We are supposed to grow up and win for Jesus!
Remember all those Bible verses, be as sinless as possible, hang out with the right people, see the right movies, don't get caught smoking at the mall, and win! Jesus loves a winner, and being a winner proves to the world that Jesus loves you!
Man was that ever wrong. I mean, I was a winner...at least in swimming. But I was telling Fr. Brooks on Friday that there was one time when I was swimming against a friend of mine who had never beaten me.
And I let him...LET HIM...pull ahead of me for a little bit. Give him a taste of what I felt every time I swam that year. Then I turned on the finish, zoomed past him, and left him in my wake.
Some winner, right? Jesus sure loves this winner, right?
See, here's the thing about Paul. Not once does he say, he beat his opponents in a knock out. Not once did he say he WON the race. All he said was he “fought the good fight, and finished the race.”
No gold medal; no blue ribbon; no national anthem playing in front of adoring crowds.
In fact the context of Second Timothy is a prison cell. Paul is saying that he struggled with others to get his message across, that he fought with those who tried to keep this message from entering the world, and he ran after every soul who was willing to stand still long enough to listen to the message of Christ's love. And here is where he ended...in trouble time and again, ultimately dying as a martyr.
And that's ok to him. Because even there he can see that the message is getting across, the word is getting out, and the church is growing.
And Paul is finished.
He's done what he could do as best he could do it. And he asks that we, us followers of Jesus – he asks that we do that, too. It's the doing, not the winning. It's living for Christ as best we can, not better than others.
It's loving others as best we can, not being loved by others. It's creating the possibility for the Love of Christ to enter in, not creating a place to hang our medals and ribbons and trophies.
It's living for the kingdom and not ourselves.
That day, that awful day in my memory, I finished the race...and I never swam again. Partly because it was my last race of the season. Partly because I was discovering that I didn't particularly like the jerk I'd become when I was a “winner.”
But partly because I had that good friend...Mike Roberts. We hung out when we weren't competing, getting clunker cars when we got our licenses. Hanging out with the kids at the mall. Camping, fishing, doing those teenage things that would soon fade away when we grew up and became adults.
And I realized that I actually liked not having to get up at 4 in the morning to hit the pool, again at noon, yet again in the afternoon.
I realized that I liked it when someone asked if I wanted to join the gang at McDonald's and hit a movie, I could say, “Yeah, that sounds like fun.”
I realized that I liked it when I could see a sunrise and not the inside of a pool.
I realized that I liked it when I could slow down and notice an entire world around me without wearing goggles.
And I realized that I have other races to run. I may not win them, and I'm not even sure I care if I win or not.
Because the races I run now are when I'm racing from one life experience to the next, being with people who may not be able to run as well as me...more likely MUCH BETTER ABLE to run than me.
But racing to the next adventure because the next adventure is always the best adventure when we run alongside Jesus.
Amen.