The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
February 15, 2009
Vol. 12 no. 07

Everything But...
           When Paul talks about runners competing, he does not mean running away or running around. Runners run towards a goal, the finish line. And then they run again.
          It is curious that Paul has injected this athletic note into his pastoral letter to the Corinthian Church. There were no Super Bowls or professional sports leagues then, though there were games of the Olympic sort, with running, wrestling, boxing, throwing the discus. Then there was the circus. No clowns at that circus, for such games were the chariot racing spectacles depicted in the old Charlton Heston movie, Ben-Hur. And you thought football and hockey were violent sports!
          Paul, of course, was really not into sports and by the end of these few verses one wonders whether he knows which is a base and which is a ball. No matter, he has a larger point to make about our faith. Faith is not a casual or part-time occupation; faith requires the commitment of all of one’s energy, and an unusual idea then and now, discipline.
          Reminding his parishioners that in a race everyone is competing, but only one wins the race and the prize - a perishable wreath of olive leaves - Paul is not preaching a winner-takes-all attitude, but that you and I need to hold nothing back in our effort to live out our Christian faith, an imperishable reward. To do that, you have to train.
          Then as now, people readily grasp how an athlete disciplines and trains his/her body. What we are not so sure about is how to train ourselves for the rest of life. Training our minds is one thing, training our faith and our hearts is not easy and obvious. Yet, prayer takes practice to make it work, love takes practice, and you cannot practice too much at love.