Are We Running?

Are We Running?
Isaiah 59:7; 1:23; 40:28-32 Prov. 1:16; 18:10 Psalm 147:15 Hebrews 12:1-2
Running is a popular way of maintaining physical fitness – and more than physical fitness, for it is incontrovertible that physical exercise is an effective means of reducing depression, and even forestalling dementia. Not surprisingly, then, every community has a ‘running room’ of some sort, whether an indoor track, or an outdoor path, or a treadmill where you can run on the spot without having to contend with potholes in the sidewalk or traffic at the intersections or nasty dogs.

I: — While there is a running, then, that is good for us, there is also a running we ought to avoid. In the book of Isaiah (59:7) the prophet laments, “Their feet run to evil. They are swift to shed innocent blood.” Just to make sure God’s people get the point, the book of Proverbs (1:16) makes the same point: “Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood.”
Here Scripture is speaking of fallen humankind, human existence in the wake of Genesis 3, human existence as corrupted by our sinnership. Here Scripture speaks not of humankind as created by God and meant to reflect his glory; here it speaks of humankind self-distorted and self-disfigured. The ensuing human predicament is that we defy God: “We neither need you nor want you.” We disobey God: “We resent your claim on our life and won’t yield to you.” We denounce him and disregard him: “We’ll do things our own way. We’ll do whatever we think will please us.” The result? Cain slays his brother Abel; his brother, no less.
Cain is still slaying Abel. Everyone is watching nervously the hostilities between Russia and Ukraine. Most people regard Russia’s lethal assault on Ukraine as inexcusable. And I am not going to excuse it. I do not want to see thousands of Ukrainians slain, and along with them thousands of attacking Russians. I am, however, going to comment on the boil-up.
In September 1942, at Babi Yar, a ravine in Kiev, Ukrainians executed 34,000 Jewish people in 48 hours. One bullet to the back of the head of a Jewish person, times 34,000, in two days. If this weren’t enough, in the same undertaking Ukrainians also slew between 100,000 and 150,000 Russian prisoners of war, together with communist sympathizers and Gypsy folk.
Next, the Ukrainians supported Nazi forces in their assault on St Petersburg (then called ‘Stalingrad,’ where the Russians lost 800,000 people), and supported as well Nazi forces in their assault on Moscow (where the Russians lost 1.1 million people.)
On the other hand – and let’s be even-handed – before all this, we should remember that Russia (USSR), deliberately starved four million Ukrainians in a famine that was entirely man-made.
Please understand: I am not saying for a minute that this kind of bloodshed legitimates anything today. I am saying, however, that both the prophet Isaiah and the writer of Proverbs appear correct: in the era of the fall, the feet of men and women run to evil.
Earlier still, 1861-1865, the American Civil War killed 750,000 young men, in a country of only 30 million people. And since permanent derangements outnumbered deaths three-to-one, after the Civil War there were 2.2 million young American men who were deranged, psychotic, for life.
But why beat up Americans? Two hundred years earlier, the English Civil War saw 500,000 British folk killed out of a population of five million, a death rate four times higher than that of the U.S. Civil War.
My first pastoral charge was in northern New Brunswick. Maureen and I visited Bathurst frequently, and our older daughter was born there. One evening the Bathurst town police went on strike; for one night, one night only. And throughout that night the town convulsed. People looted and laughed about it; they walked, unhindered, out of stores brazenly flourishing the costliest goods. They shamelessly helped each other shoulder large, expensive items that were too awkward and too heavy for one person to carry. The liquor stores didn’t have a bottle left on the shelf.
“Vulgar creeps,” you say; “they are coarse oafs.”
Really? Not so long ago I was invited to address the American Psychiatric Association. I did so, and my address was well received. Whereupon I was invited to address the World Psychiatric Association. I made my plans to attend the conference in Jerusalem, only to learn that I would have to pay for my air ticket (no small expense), plus my hotel accommodation, plus my conference registration (even though I was a speaker.) The psychiatrists attending the conference didn’t have to pay a nickel, since their expenses were met by the faculty of medicine of the university from which they had graduated. I decided not to attend.
When the conference was over, a psychiatrist who had attended (for free) casually asked me if I had already prepared my address prior to withdrawing from the conference. I had. He then asked if he could see it, simply to read it. I gave it to him. Whereupon he submitted it as a chapter in a prestigious medical book published by Oxford University Press, with himself as the author. Another word for this is theft.
Only a few days ago we were informed that the overwhelming majority of driving school instructors in Ontario will sell certificates of completion to learners who have not completed the driving course.

II: — Then is the human condition hopeless? Not at all. Vivified and ignited by his life in the Lord, the psalmist cries, “His word runs swiftly.” (147:15) The word of the Lord, the gospel, ultimately Jesus Christ himself – the word of the Lord runs so very swiftly that it outruns the feet running to do evil.
It is often said that people seek after God. According to Scripture, however, we don’t seek God; we flee God. We run from him. The Bible isn’t the story of our seeking God; the Bible is the story of God’s seeking us. He doesn’t hide from us. We attempt to hide from him, and in his mercy – nothing but mercy – God runs after us.
If I lose my screwdriver, I seek it. I can seek it because I know what a screwdriver is, I know what a screwdriver looks like, and I know I’ll recognize it when I find it. And then I can stop looking.
When people say they are seeking God, however, they don’t know what they are looking for. They aren’t aware that the only God there is, is the One who humbles himself in a manger and humiliates himself between two criminals on a cross at the city garbage dump. People who say they are seeking God are looking for anything but this. They are seeking they know not what. Then how would they ever know when to stop looking?
God doesn’t play games of hide and seek. His word, he himself in his word, runs swiftly. The gospel is the event and truth and announcement that God has run so very swiftly as to overtake us and find us. Because God runs faster than we, he overtakes us, plants himself in front of us, wraps his arms around us and exclaims, “Here I am. I’m the One you were fleeing but could never escape. I’m the One you will never have to seek because I have never been lost.”
The God who outruns us is the One who has enfleshed himself in Jesus of Nazareth. The swiftly running Word became flesh, dwelt among us, and dwells among us now. On Easter morning the disciple Thomas looked at the risen Saviour and cried, “My Lord and my God.”
The apostle Paul was running away when, on the road to Damascus in present-day Syria, Jesus Christ confronted him. In other words, our Lord outran him.
It still happens. It has always happened. Luke (10:16) tells us that when Jesus sent out the 70 missioners, Jesus said to them, “Whoever hears you, hears me.” We tend unconsciously to add a subtle ‘as if’: “Whoever hears you, it’s as if they heard me.” But there is no ‘as if.’ “Whoever hears you, hears me.” Every time the gospel is preached, Jesus Christ acts and speaks. In other words, every time the gospel is preached, Jesus Christ puts on his running shoes and overtakes the person who says she is indifferent to ‘all this Christian stuff’ but in truth has been fleeing him.
Every time the gospel is preached Jesus Christ stands in front of us, and says to us as surely as he said to Peter, “Who do people say I am?” And then he waits to hear us say with Peter, “You are the Christ.” The Christ: the world’s sole Saviour, the only One who can outrun us all, confront us, challenge us, mercifully embrace us, and re-direct us whose feet happen to be running in the wrong direction.

III: — Knowing this, and having welcomed the Word Incarnate that runs swiftly, the psalmist now joyfully exclaims, “I will run in the way of your commandment (Torah, gospel) when you enlarge my heart. (Ps. 119:32)
“When you enlarge my heart.” The psalmist isn’t speaking here of cardiac quantity. (A larger heart of the same corrupted nature won’t help him.) The psalmist is speaking here of cardiac quality. His ‘enlarged heart’ is the new heart, new mind, new spirit that Ezekiel insists we need and are offered.
The psalmist uses the word ‘commandment.’ In English ‘commandment’ sounds heavy, as if a gun were being held to our head. In Hebrew, however, ‘commandment’ is Torah, and Torah means ‘way.’ And for the Hebrew mind, ‘Torah’ always has the mood of invitation. The psalmist doesn’t resent the Torah as heavy-handed commandment; the psalmist insists the Torah is sweeter than honey, inviting, winsome, delightful. Torah is an invitation to walk the Way, and the Way is blessing, blessing only. Jesus insists he is Way and Truth and Life. He himself is that Way we are to walk. Of course he is; after all, he is Torah incarnate – winsome, attractive, sweeter than honey.
Not merely to walk, but to walk with him, since he is our companion on the Way. Not merely to walk with him, but to walk with him just because he has already travelled it ahead of us, and therefore now assures us that in his company the Way can be walked.
The book of Hebrews exclaims, “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” (Heb. 12:1)
Our Lord is the founder, the foundation, of our faith-journey. To say he is the founder, the foundation, is to say he found his way victoriously to his journey’s end, for he remained humanly faithful to his Father despite setbacks and discouragements, treachery and assaults. To say he is the perfecter of our faith is to say that he stands now at the finish line, assuring us that the ardours of the venture need not overwhelm us; disappointments need not defeat us. He has pioneered the way ahead for us in our journey; he finished victoriously, and now he keeps urging us, “Don’t quit; don’t despair; don’t allow the negativities in the world or in the church to distract you. Stay the course. Cheerfully aspire to love me, obey me, and cherish the people I bring to you – you can do it, for I have done it ahead of you; I am your companion every day as you do it; and I shall see that you finish well.”
“Let us run with endurance, perseverance.” The Greek word is hupomones, and it is usually translated steadfastness. The Christian life isn’t a 100-metre sprint, over in 9.2 seconds. The Christian life, walk, race – we are running, aren’t we? – is lifelong.
Are we running alone? Not only are we accompanied by our Lord; we are accompanied by ‘the great cloud of witnesses,’ fellow-believers who have already finished the race, fellow-Christians whose running triumphed, fellow-disciples who have moved from the church militant (we folk) to the church triumphant, lovers of Jesus who lived and died ahead of us, and now surround us and encourage us.
Who, in the great cloud of witnesses, comes to mind? We could all name departed giants of the faith: Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Mother Teresa. But we have never met any of them. Let’s think of those we have met and know intimately.
I should like to begin with my father. My parents lived in Edmonton for 11 years. (My sisters and I were born there.) Throughout the week my father worked at an ordinary job for TD Bank. Sunday morning and evening he was at church. Sunday afternoons he went to Fort Saskatchewan Penitentiary, on the outskirt of Edmonton, to play the piano for a service of worship and preach to the men doing ‘hard time’ there. Every Sunday afternoon for 11 years. Then we moved to Winnipeg. My mother told me my father’s first question, upon the family’s arriving in Winnipeg, was, “Where is the penitentiary?” Whereupon he began his Sunday afternoon ministry at Stony Mountain Penitentiary.
A friend of mine, Stacey Campbell, is the director of Prison Fellowship Canada; Stacey who has visited every prison in Canada, tells me that Stony Mountain Penitentiary is the roughest, toughest, most lethal lock-up in the nation. And there my father spoke to hard, hard men about that Word (Incarnate) who runs more swiftly than the feet of those men had already run to evil.
When I was about 15 years old, I casually asked my father if he had ever seen anything come of his years of prison ministry. Did he have any success stories to relate? I thought my question sensible and entirely in order. My father looked at me, stared at me, as if I had just asked the stupidest question imaginable. Then he replied quietly, soberly, “I never did it because I expected to see something come of it. I did it because it was right.” (It so happens that one day my mom and dad were riding a streetcar in Edmonton when a fellow boarded the streetcar, recognized my dad, spoke briefly with him, thanked him, and moved on to a vacant seat. “Who was that?”, my mother asked. “A fellow from the pen whose life was turned around,” my dad replied.)
I began my ministry in northern New Brunswick, the poorest region of the poorest province in Canada. Following the service, one Sunday, a mother and her daughter invited Maureen and me to lunch. These people were poor. They lived in a primitive hovel with no indoor plumbing. The mother had advanced multiple sclerosis. The daughter was severely intellectually challenged. Lunch? It wasn’t lunch like the pot-luck lunches/suppers served here. The daughter opened a tin of sliced peaches. The mother told us it was the first time a pastor had called on them in their shack. The four of us ate the tin of sliced peaches. Our meal together was nothing less than an anticipation of the Messianic Banquet when all Christ’s people will be deficient in nothing, deprived of nothing, and know only their Saviour’s munificence. The woman and her daughter know that now, because they have since been promoted to the great cloud of witnesses.
We can run with endurance the race that is set before us. Isn’t the One who is the way or race our companion? And doesn’t he simultaneously await us at the finish line, always encouraging us? In addition, aren’t we at all times surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses?
Still, we must be honest. All of us have seen people who began running, even ran well, but gave up because they were discouraged, or quit because they fell into disgrace, or meandered off-course in a period of distraction and never got back on-course. Jesus warns his people to be wary of wolves in sheep’s clothing just because there are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Paul warns believers about making shipwreck of their faith just because he has seen people do precisely that. Then where is our protection? The writer of Proverbs reminds us, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run into it and are safe.” (Pr. 18:10) In Hebrew ‘name’ means person, presence, power, purpose, and deserved reputation. The name of the Lord is Jesus Christ. The righteous run into it and are safe. He will unfailingly safeguard us until any and all threats to our spiritual integrity are behind us.
Today we are going to give the last word to the prophet Isaiah (40:31), “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk – the Way – and not faint.”
You and I want only to be found running – not to evil, but with our Lord as he accompanies us on the Way. And this because he is also always ahead of us, just because he, the Word Incarnate, runs swiftly, and therefore will not fail to embrace us when our running days have concluded, and we, now in the church triumphant, will surround and encourage those behind us still running in the church militant.