One of my favorite metaphors for Christian spirituality is the race. These verses reveal that we should run with gutsy, audacious, self-denial–and with trusting, child-like, dependence. We should move as fast as we can, while realizing that the fact that we can remain on our feet is entirely in the hands of Another.
1 Corinthians 9:23-24:
I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.
Psalm 37:23-24:
The steps of a man are established by the LORD,
when he delights in his way;
though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong,
for the LORD upholds his hand.
This comes from N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone Part One, but it reads like a paragraph out of a novel. A historically-true, gospel-centered, heart-thumping novel that reflects the kind of “education” a seminary grad can only pray for and aspire to.
Peter and John had a secret–a secret that enabled them to run rings round the book-learning of the authorities. They had been with Jesus. They had been with him night and day. They had seen and heard him pray. They knew how he read the scriptures, in his fresh, creative way, drawing out their inner message and finding his own vocation in the middle of it.
Now that he had died and had then been astonishingly raised, and had then been exalted into the heavenly realm, all Peter and John had to do to explain what they were about was to develop the lines of thought they had heard him use over and over again.
This didn’t just give them “boldness” in the sense of courage to stand up and say what they thought. Sometimes people can be bold even when they’re muddled. It gave them something more: a clarity, a sharp edge, a definite point at which to stand. And the authorities knew it.
Clean the slate, God, so we can start the day fresh!
Keep me from stupid sins,
From thinking I can take over your work;
Then I can start this day sun-washed,
scrubbed clean of the grime of sin.
I really enjoy the imagery in Eugene Peterson’s The Message paraphrase. But I have to admit, my favorite line in this passage from Psalm 19 is “Keep me from stupid sins.” Sometimes a blunt request has more power than the best metaphor.
I like the way N.T. Wright describes the new landscape defined by Pentecost and the explosive growth of the early church, as related in Acts 2. Jesus wants the same thing to happen in cities today:
Imagine a world without this astonishing teaching! Imagine a society where there was no ‘common life’ built around a shared belief in Jesus! Imagine a world without ‘the bread-breaking,’ or a world without prayer! Life would be bleak indeed — as it often is for many people, not least those who embrace a relentlessly secularist lifestyle, shutting the door on any of these possibilities. And if you lived in such a world, and then suddenly found yourself swept up in this pattern of teaching, fellowship, bread-breaking and prayer, you would know that new dimensions had opened up before you, and new vistas of how the world might be had suddenly become visible. - Acts for Everyone Part One, page 45
Sometimes really old preachers have the best eye for analogies. Here’s Gregory the Great writing about the cryptic passage in Ezekiel where the prophet gets a vision of an archetypal new temple–including, yes, a porch:
What then is meant by the inner porch but the breadth of eternal life, which now in the limits of our present life is only conceived in the mind through hope? - Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Ezekiel, Daniel
I like the thought that, with strong hope, our life can be spent kicked back drinking lemonade and shade on Heaven’s front porch. So to speak.
