19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) – August 11, 2024

St. Paul – Lyons, KS

1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34:2-9; Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51

“I can do all things” & Run so as to win”

As you may or may not know—you probably know—the Olympic Games finish up today. And I think most people are fans of the Olympics, right? For two weeks out of the year we are thoroughly interested in professional squash, handball, breakdancing—they’re our favorite sports! August 12 comes along, we couldn’t care less, but from July 26 through August 11 we can’t get enough of ‘em! I remember watching the Olympics as a kid, and how jazzed I got from it. I remember back in 2004—Paul Hamm coming back to win all-around champion in gymnastics. Justin Gatlin won the gold medal that year in the 100m sprint by 1 one-hundredth of a second. And it was also Michael Phelps’ breakout year in swimming—he won six gold medals that year. And what I remember vividly was how I was watching them and dreaming about doing that one day. You can ask my mom: all of a sudden I was out on our rings, practicing gymnastics. I was out in the field running hundred meter dashes. I wanted to go to the pool—start swimming more. I wanted to be just like them! I wanted to imitate their success!

The other thing that you would always see, and we saw a lot of it this year—the athletes would always thank God for their success. A lot of them post on their social media about God or have the tattoo: Philippians 4:13. Do you know what Philippians 4:13 says? “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (We’re not going to get into how Paul’s not talking about sports in that passage, or about how Christ is going to “strengthen” people win gold medals or whatnot—but hey! it’s nice that people are thanking God!) If people are a little more religious, they’ll also quote 1 Corinthians 9:24. In that passage, Paul says, “Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win.” Run so as to win! Again, a great quote from Paul.

But what’s Paul getting at? Is Paul giving Olympians advice on training while believing in God? Is Paul taking a break from talking about Jesus and giving a pump-up speech to athletes? A Herb Brooks “You were born for this” speech to the USA hockey team? Is that what Paul’s up to? No.

Paul isn’t talking to athletes, he’s using athletes as an example to help us understand how to live our faith. Everyone here—especially in small-town America where sports are king, and everything revolves around sports’ schedules and practices and games—everyone here knows and understand the importance of training, and discipline, and practice, and competing, and everything that goes into being successful in sports. And we love it! We thrive on it! And like I said, we’re always happy to use quotes from our faith to support us in sports: Philippians 4:13, 1 Corinthians 9:24. But—and this is the but—but are we willing to allow the skills we’ve learned because of sports to influence our practice of the faith? Are we willing to use what we’ve learned in sports to help us live our faith—which is the point Paul is actually making? Are we able to recognize that just like if we want to be successful in sports, or go to the Olympics or whatnot, we need to train, and be disciplined to find “success” in our faith? Paul says in that passage from 1 Corinthians: “Athletes deny themselves all sorts of things so as to win a crown…I do not run aimlessly…I drive my body and train it” (1 Cor. 9:25-27). Michael Phelps, he said, “The greats do things when they don’t always want to. And that’s the separation.” Think about what it takes, how much work and dedication and effort and time and sacrifice and focus and discipline and everything it takes to win. And then think: am I as focused when it comes to following Jesus Christ? Because what Scripture make clear is that we need that kind of focus.

New Series: Imitators of God

In today’s second reading, Paul gives us one of his most famous commands. Paul tells the church in Ephesus, he tells each one of us, “Be imitators of God.” Paul doesn’t say, “Hey, believe God exists, try to be a good person, say a prayer every now and then, and go to church when you feel like you need it.” Nope. Paul says, “Be imitators of God.” And I want you to think about that: do you think just anyone can imitate God? Do you think you will accidentally become an imitator of God? That word “imitate” means exactly what it sounds like it means: can you do the things God does, can you follow his example? In our context as in Paul’s, the question is, “Can you embody Jesus Christ? Jesus, who is God, can you imitate him, can you embody him, can you do what he does?” Today, we start a new series called “Imitators of God.” Because that’s our call.

I don’t know if you noticed but—physical specimen of human athleticism that I am—I did not make it to the Olympics, not even close. Why? Because about two weeks after the Olympics, I lost interest, I stopped training, and I quit. And have you every watched those clips where normal human beings are side by side with Olympians and they try to do the things Olympians do? You know how we sit on the couch and criticize Olympians for their marginal errors, like we could do better—and then we see a normal human try these things next to them and they look like absolute fools? Ok, point being: we cannot do the things that Olympians do! We cannot! Even if we want to be just like them, even if we want to imitate them—we can’t just get off the couch and do it. What would it take? Practice, training, work, dedication, single-mindedness, an intense discipline to pursue that one goal.

Ok, so bring it back to what Paul said: casually, almost flippantly, Paul tells us, “Oh yeah, be imitators of God, imitate Jesus Christ himself.” Think what it takes to imitate an Olympic athlete. Now think, “Ok, and what would it take to imitate God, to imitate Jesus himself?”

The Method Behind My Madness: Christian Formation

Let me give you a sneak peak behind the curtain. Here in the parish, I know that sometimes it can seem like we’re doing a lot of new things, or that we aren’t doing things we used to. And I am going to the the first one to take the blame for not communicating clearly enough about all of that; that’s on me. And I’m also not saying that I have some perfect plan, or that everything is going according to plan; there are plenty of things that are a work-in-progress. But—but there is a method behind my madness. And method is that we’re trying to align everything—little by little—align everything so that we offer everyone in our community a life-changing encounter with Jesus, and then support them in a life of missionary discipleship, which is another way of saying “support them in a life of imitating Jesus, imitating God.” Here at St. Paul, my goal isn’t to make sure there is a Mass on Sunday, and coordinate some donuts every now and then, and maybe teach kids some Bible stories and hope that they’re good people. No. 

The goal is that everyone would come to experience the fullness of life that Jesus Christ offers us. Jesus promised that for those who follow him, lived in imitation of him—they would experience a life 100x more full now! Jesus offers us a more abundant life here and now than any career, or sports, or stuff or whatever could ever give us. Jesus himself, our relationship with him and our life as members of his body, the Church, this communion of believers—this is what is offered.

Think back to our Gospel. The people are following Jesus around because he gave them this miraculous feast, fed 5,000 people, more bread and fish than you could ever hope for! And they keep coming after him, wanting more and more. But then today, Jesus makes a subtle but important move. He tells them that the bread he just gave them will never be enough; in other words, anything that comes from this world will never be enough. And that doesn’t mean it’s bad or sinful always—it just won’t ever truly satisfy us. We’ll always want more. No amount of food, or success in work or sports or gold medals or state titles or money or whatever will bring us the true and lasting happiness and joy and everything that we know we want. But what what will? That’s when Jesus tells them, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

What is Jesus saying? What is the radical—and it is radical, it’s absolutely bonkers!—what is the radical claim that Jesus is making? That he is what our heart is truly longing for. You know that feeling within that drives athletes to want to compete? That feeling that keeps us always wanting more? There is only one thing, someone that will satisfy that hunger: and it’s Jesus Christ himself, God himself. Jesus isn’t just a nice teacher, or someone who helps us be a good person. Jesus is—his claim is that he has come down from heaven, he is God.

Our Path to Imitation

But it’s not just enough to have God, to have Jesus. Again, go read the Gospels: does Jesus tell people, “Well, you met me, you saw me. That’s it! Have a nice life!” No! What does he do? Constantly, over and over, he invites people to? To follow him. And “to follow” is the way you would invite someone to? To imitate you, to become like you. Here it is: if we want the fullness of life, the satisfaction and joy and happiness our hearts crave—we must become imitators of Jesus Christ, imitators of God. The question is, as Deacon Nicholas spoke of so well last week, “Are we willing to follow him? Are we willing to do what it takes to follow?” Athletes deny themselves all sorts of things (Paul says): they drive and train their bodies, they follow a strict discipline, on and on. And we do this too when it comes to our job or to sports—we hand our lives over to our coaches and whatever schedules they send. As parents, even when you don’t like the schedule, you still follow it. Why? Because you know this is what it takes.

The question is: when it comes to our faith, will we follow the path laid down for us, given to us by Jesus Christ? Will we follow his lead in the Gospels? Will we follow his lead through the Church? Will we follow his lead through the parish? Will we implement a rule of life in our lives and in our homes and in our children’s lives? Fundamentally, the question is: what is the goal I am pursuing in my life, and am I willing to do what it takes? Again, Paul says, “[Athletes], everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last [a gold medal], but we do it to get a crown that will last forever” (1 Cor. 9:25). 

Which crown am I pursuing? Am I striving to imitate God, or just athletes? Am I striving to imitate God, or just to make money and get nicer things for myself here and now? Am I pursuing a crown, a medal, a state title, a championship which will not last, or am I going all in on Jesus Christ?

So friends, as we begin a new school year this week, I think it is a great time to reset, rethink, and re-begin. This year, let’s go all-in on the Lord. This year, let’s begin to imitate him. Why? So that we can say one day, just as our patron Saint Paul did, “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord…will award to me.” Let this be the year that Jesus and our imitation of him is our top priority.