Fight, Finish, Keep

This week we had the rather bizarre sight of Martin Jol sitting on the touchline as manager of Tottenham Hotspur for a European match, having already resigned from that position very shortly before the game. I wonder what his thoughts were as he sat there, watching the players whose performances had been part of the reason for him losing his job, and I’m sure just wondering to himself, ‘how did this happen’, or ‘What if I’d done something different earlier in the season.’

There are so many questions and decisions that we face in life, and almost without exception all of them are easier to answer after the event. It is much easier to know what we should have done in a situation after we should have done it !

But as we look at the reading this morning from Paul’s letter to Timothy (4:6-8,16-18), we get the sense of an interview with Paul after the game has ended. Basically his ministry is over – he is sitting in a Roman prison, with nothing to look forward to but his execution at the hands of the Roman government. He knows his time is up, but he wants to give us an interview before he leaves for the promised glory.

And as he writes we sense a man wonderfully filled up with faith, a man who knows all of his faults and failures, but a man who has trusted in God completely. He has fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith.

Paul’s early failures are well documented with his persecution and hatred of Christians, but though he can’t have been an easy man to know after his conversion, there is no doubt that his work and his writings have made an impact on not just Church history, but on world history.

In some ways here he is writing his own epitaph, not as something morbid, or looking for praise, but as a way of encouraging others to follow his example of faith and trust. In many ways, ending his life in a Roman prison, facing the death penalty could have been seen as a failure, but for Paul it was a triumph.

Many people have some wonderful epitaphs written about them : there was this one,

‘Here lies Ann Mann, Who lived an old maid, But died an old Mann,’ or one for Jonathan Fiddle which said simply, ‘Went out of tune’. And just a couple more, ‘Here lies my wife: here let her lie! Now she's at rest, and so am I,’ and finally,

‘Here lies a poor woman who was always tired;

She lived in a house where help was not hired.

Her last words on earth were: "Dear friends, I am going

Where washing ain't done, nor sweeping, no sewing:

But everything there is exact to my wishes;

For where they don't eat there's no washing of dishes...

Don't mourn for me now; don't mourn for me never -

I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever.’

I said that was the last one, but just one more and it’s from Winston Churchill’s. It says, ‘I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.’

And so back to Paul’s epitaph, ‘I have fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith.’ In these 3 simple phrases he offers as well as a summary of what he has done, a guide to what each of us as Christians should be doing.

He speaks first about the good fight – he knew all about fighting, first of all against Christians, and then for Christ. He didn’t look for an easy life. He looked in many ways for conflict, for debate, for arguments, for people who needed to hear the gospel message. As Christians it’s very easy sometimes to think of ourselves in a comfort zone, almost on a playground, but actually we are on a battleground as we strive to share the love and compassion of God with all around us.

Within a society that is hugely secular in nature, we have a battle to fight, against sin and against evil, but also against apathy and disinterest. The voice of God must be heard, and we are the ones to amplify that voice. But as we think of fighting a battle we must never be confused with the ideas of fighting a literal war with people as has happened so often in the history of our faith – our weapons are the word of God and prayer !

With those weapons we must never be afraid to stand up for Christ, to live as he wants us to live, and to share the gospel through words and actions of love and compassion.

And so we must fight a good fight just as Paul did. And then he wrote about finishing the race. In our lives we often reach the point where we think we have done all we can, but I’m sure we’ve also reached points where we’ve wished that we’d done more. Paul was confident that he had done all that he could have done – he had finished the race.

And as we seek to serve God through our lives, which of us can honestly say we could not have done more for him at times ? God himself will decide the length of our race on earth, but we make the decisions as to how we serve him, and we still have time to make that decision to serve him as he wants.

And then Paul comes to the third point of his epitaph – I have kept the faith. He knew all about the faith that he had once tried so hard to destroy – it had changed him, and it changes everyone who is touched by it. Paul maintained that faith through preaching and ensuring that it was passed on to different areas and to different generations.

Paul understood faith to be a great treasure, and a treasure to be maintained and shared. We have a wonderful privilege of being chosen by God to be his messengers today, but with that comes the huge challenges of being prepared to live for the gospel of Jesus, and we can only do that if we focus our lives and our thoughts on him.

That was the reason he was able to keep going when he was being chased by the authorities, that was the thing that kept him going when he was languishing in that Roman prison cell, and that was the thing that allowed him to face execution, knowing that that was not the end of his life, but rather a beginning of a new and perfect life with God.

There is one last epitaph I want to think about, and it says, ‘Here lies John Smith. An Atheist. All dressed up with nowhere to go.’ We have a wonderful faith to proclaim, and a wonderful God in whom we can put our faith and trust – may we live our lives with the desire and courage to be able to say at the end of them – ‘I have fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith.’ AMEN