August 15, 2010 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Up All Night

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 121
Luke 12:32–40
Hebrews 12:1–2

I lift my eyes to the hills—
from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121

The lesson from Hebrews this morning instructs us, saying, “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.”

It has been said that “the Christian life, the life of faith, is like a long-distance race.” The analogy goes all the way back to the scriptures, to this famous passage in the Letter to the Hebrews. This analogy should mean something to me. I have been a Christian and a churchgoer all of my life, and for almost as long as I can remember, I have been a runner. I can remember clearly the first time I ran a mile in gym class and the first time I received a ribbon in the 440-yard dash; I ran in high school and in college, and I still go out for a jog two or three times a week. This comparison, though, between a long distance run and Christian faith has never resonated with me quite so strongly as earlier this week when I was reminded of a circumstance that completely sums up what running, for me, is all about. I remember this circumstance most vividly from my days on the high school cross-country team. There is a point in every race, a moment when the early energy starts to wear out and you become a little weak and distracted. This moment involves a heightened awareness of the pain and shortness of breath, a straining and striving to keep up your pace, something that you didn’t feel just a few minutes before. This is a moment that requires courage and fortitude; at this moment you need to reach down inside of yourself and pull something up from your very depths, something that is true and honest and pure, something to push you through to the end, and when I used to reach down inside of myself at those essential moments, the exact thought that rose up inside of me was, “Why am I doing this to myself?”

In the passage from Hebrews before us this morning, we hear an inspiring message to persevere in the race, presumably because the author knew that was a message someone needed to hear. We need these reassurances more often than we’d like to admit. Many of us put up a good front, but for most of us, if the life of faith is like a long-distance run, it is because there are many times when we are inclined to throw up our hands and say, “Why am I doing this?” And God knows it.

In that vein, I would like to step back to the first passage we read this morning, the passage from Luke, the passage that begins “Do not be afraid, little flock,” and I would like to assure you that when Jesus mentions the little flock, he is talking to you and to me. Because God knows that left to our own devices, left to face this world and run the race all on our own, like sheep, we are little and we are afraid.

Now I have served Fourth Church for several years, and as I look out at the congregation this morning, it is my hunch that many of you seated in the pews are thinking to yourself, “Yes, this congregation has its little sheep, but, Adam, I am not one of them. I am blessed and God has been good to me! There are precious little sheep in our Tutoring program and receiving job training at our Urban Farm. There are precious little sheep in Children’s Chapel and Sunday School, and there are sheep who are fed by our midweek lunches and Sunday and Monday Night Suppers, but when Jesus mentions the little sheep, he is not talking about me.” It is also my hunch that none of you are so arrogant as to think that you are the shepherds of the little flock; that, of course, is what Jesus does, and it would be wrong to insinuate that you are in that place, that you don’t need Jesus at all. More likely, perhaps, you think to yourself, “I am a medium-sized sheep, working my way up in the world” or “I am a grown-up sheep, helping the younger ones along the path, moving along well through the difficulties of life.” You might say to me, “Adam, life has not been a bed of roses, but God has been good to me. I have worked hard and weathered the storm. The financial crisis might have hurt, but it did not bury me. The divorce I endured was difficult, but I have landed on my feet. The addictions I feed and the bad habits I fight are there; I’ve never shaken them entirely, but neither have they quite laid me low. I’ll be alright, Adam. I am not that fearful; certainly I am no little sheep.”

I know that the examples I’ve just given may hit home with some of you, but not all. So if you have trouble warming up to the idea that you are a little sheep, let me call your attention to the words right next to those in the Luke passage, words that are even more universal. I am talking about the part that says, “Do not be afraid,” because another thing God knows is that every one of us is afraid of something.

Some of us are afraid of the past, that mistake or error in judgment that no one really knows about, the unfair deal you got away with, the small act of infidelity, the white lie you told. You ask yourself, When is my past going to catch up to me? Some of us fear the present: What if I don’t get the job? How will I pay my bills and my debts? Why is my spouse always coming home so late? Am I going to be the next one the boss lets go?... And some of us fear the future: Will I have enough money to retire? Will my children turn out OK? What will happen to me—will I lose my mind, will I lose control of my body, will I languish for months being kept alive on machines, stealing my children’s inheritance? What is going to happen to me?

We are all afraid. It is nothing new. Theologian John Calvin suggested 500 years ago that our minds are factories of fear. Isn’t that a powerful and timeless metaphor? Right up here in our minds, there are engineers and analysts, project managers, and certified public accountants churning out things for us to worry about. It is an operation of dedicated employees; they work long days, and sometimes they pull an all-nighter.

You know what that feels like: Something is on your mind at night, and you can’t quite settle down. It manifests itself in our own beds that we find too soft or too hard, too hot or too cold. We toss and turn, adjust the covers, flip over the pillow once more to get back to the cool side. We turn on the light. Go to the bathroom one more time, read a book or do a little more work. We think, maybe some Tums will settle my stomach; maybe I’ll be able to sleep if I pour myself one more drink. And eventually sleep comes, but the next day is hard, and the next night or the next week or the next month we are up once again. Perhaps the object of our fear is different, but it’s the same old anxiety rolling around inside.

I gained much of the inspiration for this sermon from a great preacher named Cleo Larue. I heard him talk about this phenomenon a few weeks ago. He reminded us of Mark Twain’s adage that 90 percent of the things we worry about never happen. And yet we’re still up all night. For people of faith, that’s a harsh reality, and here’s why: Cleo Larue quoted Psalm 121, which we read this morning—“He who keeps you will not slumber; the one who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep”—and he said, “Do you believe that the God we worship neither slumbers nor sleeps? Do you believe it? Well, if you believe it, there’s no need for both of us to be up all night. Why don’t you give it up to God and go to bed?” (Cleo Larue, Festival of Homiletics, 20 May 2010).

Even though we laugh, we must admit that this is the crux of the matter. We may believe on some level that God wants good things for us and does not want for us to live in fear, but we find it almost impossible, in the midst of our anxieties, to think or feel or do what we know we should. It is easy enough for us to laugh at our own foolishness. It is easy enough to see how crazy it is to stay up all night worrying about things, most of which will never happen. And we become less capable of calmly managing what life does throw at us because we are so worked up inside. We know all of this foolishness so well that every once in a while, in the midst of our midnight worries, we slow ourselves down just long enough for a voice inside of us to utter those same words I spoke in the middle of those cross-country races: “Gracious God, why am I doing this to myself?”

We tell ourselves that God can be trusted, and yet we refuse to allow ourselves to trust God. We say we believe that God neither slumbers nor sleeps, but we struggle mightily to really give our fears up to God and go on to bed, perhaps because we are afraid that, like our past or our present or our future, God cannot be trusted and therefore must be feared. So we refuse to trust, and it is that refusal to trust that John Updike says “form[s] a hollow space [inside of us that] terror [can] always flood” (Updike, Trust Me).

It is because that space is there, because of these fears we carry, because of the deep needs of our hearts that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that we must run with perseverance the race that has been set before us. It seems like a simple message, but if you really want to understand that reassurance, if you want it to help, you have to back up a few verses and see what’s been happening in the Letter to the Hebrews. The author is writing to a congregation, speaking to them like I am speaking to you. They are people who, like you and me, are afraid; they have been up all night with their worries. And so he starts to tell them a bedtime story.

The story he tells is not one of easily finishing this race of life; it is not a naïve story of lives lived without fear. He goes back to the beginning of the Bible and tells the congregation the stories of faithful people who have suffered and who have lived in fear; he tells a story of people who have been on the journey of life for a long, long time without knowing how it would end; and he tells us to look to these people’s stories in order to remind ourselves that life is often hard and, yes, there is much to fear, but with faith it can be done.

I commend these stories to you. Go home and read Hebrews chapter 11, and then turn back and read the stories of these people who are mentioned. If you don’t know where to find those stories in the Old Testament, Google it. Take a class this fall in the Academy for Faith and Life and learn the trajectory of the Old Testament, this collection of the stories of faithful people who struggled through life, just like you and me. The Bible is not a book of ideal people who danced through life without a care in the world. These are people who had plenty of reason to be up all night long. They made it. Noah and Abraham and Moses—they were up all night, like you and me; they were not without worries and fears, but faith got them through.

Listen to the words that lead up to the famous line about persevering and running the race:

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.

And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. (Hebrews 11:29–38)

These are the people who went before us. This is our story! It is a story of people who struggled mightily through their lives and had much to fear, and what’s more, we know that the struggle went on their whole life long, because the very next line in the passage says, “Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised.” They didn’t get all the way to the finish line on their own.

And this is why the text says that as we run the race with perseverance, let us look “to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” because the story of Jesus is that he has finished the race. He lived on the earth, struggled like we do, had fears like we do, and because we follow him, we can not only look back to those who have gone before us, but we can look ahead and see that it can be done. God’s promise to us is that in the midst of our fears we may know that someone has finished the race, and if at times you must ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” I promise you, you will make it. God is with you. No matter how long or hard the road of life, God will never leave or forsake you.

That’s all we need. But if you will indulge me with a few more moments of your time, having now softened you up with these words of assurance, let me finish with a word of challenge.

The ones who have gone before us in the race now pass the baton to you. And you must not allow yourself to be paralyzed by your fears, because there is work for you to do. Little sheep we may be, but there is a race still to be run. We are called, in the midst of this life where things are not as they are supposed to be, to run with perseverance the race that is set before us. There is much to be done. We have children to keep safe and to teach and to raise up to be responsible citizens who care for others. There are wars, and we must be wage them with justice. We have a health care system and economy that must be repaired by individuals who conduct themselves honestly and demand something better from the people we place in positions of power. Every one of you has work to do and people to care for, and the world needs your contribution.

God’s presence is not just there to see you through the night of fear, but to tell you to get up in the morning and continue running your part of the race. Often life is fearful, but sometimes we are not paralyzed by our fears and we persevere with incredible, hopeful results.

There is a poem by the name of “Sometimes” by Sheena Pugh. It reads,

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. . . .

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor. . . .

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

It is easy to be cynical and to be fearful, to think “Why am I doing this?” and to want not to finish the race, but the miracle of faith is not found in the midst of things being easy but in the midst of all that we have to fear; it is there that, miraculously, God’s love continues to come down to us. God’s love comes to us in the life of Christ and in the lives of those who have gone before us, the ones who call us to be worthy of the tradition we inherit.

I pray fervently for you today that God’s love would continue to come down into this world and make itself known to you, and since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that has been set before.