A Homily for Septuagesima Sunday

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? . . .

Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.

—I Corinthians 9:24–25

Athletic contests are very much in the news these days. The Superbowl was played last Sunday; the Winter Olympics opened this weekend, and the Los Angeles Marathon is to be run three weeks from today. Athletic contests were also big news in first century Corinth, where the Isthmian Games were held every two years. In Greece, the games at Corinth were at least as important as the Olympic Games. The events included footraces and boxing or wrestling matches, as well as horseracing and even musical competitions.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Saint Paul, writing to the Christian community in Corinth, uses the imagery of athletic contests. Being a Christian, he suggests, is similar to being a participant in the games: a runner in a race, perhaps, or a boxer. The imagery continues throughout the passage that was read this morning, because the concluding phrase, “lest I be a castaway,” actually uses the same word applied to an ineligible contestant, so the phrase means, “lest I be disqualified.”

Originally, the winners of the events at the Isthmian Games were awarded a crown of wild celery; but in the first century, when Paul was writing, the prize was a crown made from fir or pine tree branches. So when Paul says that the athletes compete to win a “corruptible crown,” he means that quite literally.

The media attention surrounding the current games affords us some insight into what goes into being a championship athlete. Through the interviews and personal profiles we learn about the training regime of everyone from downhill racers to figure skaters. What they all have in common is the intensity with which they dedicate themselves to their sports. They spend hours every day practicing, working out, bringing their body into submission.

Paul says that anyone who competes for the championship must be temperate in all things. So much do we expect that to be the case that when one young downhill skier admitted in an interview that he had sometimes been intemperate it triggered a furor; and he is still giving interviews to insist that such behavior was an exception to his usual rule.

What we expect to learn about each of the young men and women at the games is that they arise early and go to bed early, that they eat nutritious meals and avoid anything unhealthy. If they use alcohol, they do so only sparingly. While their contemporaries are out partying and carousing, the athletes are working in the gym, or studying films of past competitions, or listening to their coaches.

And most of all they practice. Every day. They practice the same moves over and over. They immerse themselves in the fundamentals. They practice again and again, so that in the big race, or in the game, or in the rink, they can respond without having to think, without trying to remember what must be done. They practice until every move is second nature.

Why do they do it? They do it because of devotion to their sport and for the chance of winning a wreath of wild celery or a little gold medallion.

The athletes are striving for physical perfection, to run the race, or to play the game, or to make the jump and stick the landing in the best way it can be done. Always to be swifter, to go higher, to be stronger, until that physical perfection is attained. We Christians are, or we ought to be, striving for spiritual perfection with the same kind of dedication and focus that athletes bring to the quest for physical perfection.

Like an athlete in training, who must practice self-denial, passing up food, and drink, and activities that would interfere with his conditioning, so we must practice self-denial. Our modern culture offers many enticements that are incompatible with our spiritual health. If we immerse ourselves in the popular culture, with its constant emphasis on money and violence and sex, we run the risk of becoming spiritually flabby.

Like an athlete, who must constantly practice the skills of his sport, until they become a second nature to him, so we must constantly practice the fundamentals of Christian living. If an athlete does not constantly practice the fundamentals, then when the going gets hard, he has no inner resources on which to call. If he has not mastered the techniques of his sport before the games begin, he will not have a chance to do so while the competition is going on.

Paul offers the comic image of a boxer who, rather than scoring points by striking his opponent, flails about, beating nothing but the air. Paul says that he is not that kind of a boxer; he tells the Corinthians (and, therefore, tells us) that we should not be like that boxer either. Boxing for the championship is not just a matter of getting in the ring and flinging one’s arms about: it is the culmination of years of learning and practicing how to move, how to breathe, how to block the punches that may be thrown at one.

Life, like sports, has its rough places, its special challenges: disappointment, disease, the death of loved ones, betrayal by friends. If one has not practiced prayer every day, how difficult will it be to ask God’s help to get through those rough places? If we do not daily practice the virtues—temperance, justice, fortitude, prudence, faith, hope, and love—how will we able to invoke them when they are most needed?

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul reminded his friend that “an athlete cannot receive the winner's crown unless he competes according to the rules.” The temptation always exists to bend the rules, to take shortcuts. In the modern Olympic Games, as in American professional sports, the main temptation has been to use various forms of drugs and doping to enhance performance. But whoever falls prey to such temptation and is caught, is immediately disqualified. And, even if the doping athlete is not caught, he will always know that his medals were not won on the field, but stolen from those who deserved them.

Life is full of temptations. There is always an easy way, one that does not require all that hard work and self-denial. But there is nothing really to be won that way. From time to time an athlete may fool the Olympic committee, but there is no fooling God.

Of course, there is not a perfect analogy between athletics and Christianity. Saint Paul, in his letters, uses sports as a parable or an illustration, he does not mean to imply that there is a one-to-one correspondence. Indeed, in his letter to the Corinthians he points out two important differences.

First, he points out that in a race all of the competitors run, but only one can win the prize. It is not so with us. Everyone who perseveres will win the prize. Paul’s point echoes what Jesus himself says in the Gospel parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who hires workers to labour in his vineyard: some are hired early in the morning, others at the third, and the ninth, and the eleventh hours.

And at the end of the workday, when payment was due, all who had worked, whenever they were hired, received one denarius. Everyone who works in this vineyard, so long as he perseveres until the end, received the same reward. Everyone who runs in this race, and perseveres, will receive the prize.

The second difference is in the nature of the prize. The competitors in the games endure all that the competition entails, the training, the practice, the self-denial, in order to win a corruptible crown. But the prize that awaits us, if we endure what is entailed in living the Christian life, is an incorruptible crown: a treasure laid up in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.

Therefore, let us run with patience the race that is set before us, so that in due course we may obtain, together with all the saints, not a corruptible crown, but a crown of glory that fadeth not away.

Church of Saint Mary Magdalene

Orange, California

12 February 2006