This sermon was preached at the church of St Peter and St Paul, Langham on Sunday 2nd July 2023 for the feast of St Peter and St Paul.
Readings: Acts 12:1-11; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18; Matthew 16:13-19
Any last words? It’s a classic film trope where the villain turns to the captured hero and gives them one final opportunity to speak before they plunge them to their doom or whatever method of disposal they have selected for the hero. We can think of Julius Caesar saying ‘Et tu, Brutus?’ Or ‘This is the day you will always remember as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow’ – Captain Jack Sparrow.
I don’t know if you have ever thought about what you might say as your last words. I know that’s not a question we tend to ask, especially on a celebratory Sunday morning like today. But a lot of us would want it to be something good, something that summed up our lives and who we were. If you are unsure and need some inspiration, then you can try these words from our second reading.
‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’[1] If there were ever two people who could more fittingly say these words, it would be Peter and Paul. In fact, it was Paul who wrote these words in his letter to Timothy. He wrote these words at the end of his life whilst he was in prison.
You can get the sense in his letter to Timothy that Paul was aware that his execution was near. He says in verse 6, ‘As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come.’[2]Paul knew that these were his last words to Timothy and he was trying to say everything that he wanted to say to him, using his last words to convey the heart of what he had seen from his life and ministry. ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’[3] At the end of his life, Paul could sum up his life as a disciple of Christ as someone who had fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith.
Both Paul and Peter faced incredible challenges when it came to preaching the gospel and building the early church and they could both sum up their lives with these words. But what do they show us about what the Christian life means, what it means to be a disciple of Christ?
1) To be a Christian is to fight the good fight.
It can sound quite dramatic to refer to the Christian life as a good fight. But it is true. The Christian life is a fight for good over evil. It is a fight to see God’s light shine in a world of darkness, it is a fight to see his perfect heavenly kingdom spread across the world instead of our broken and corrupt human powers and dominions. It is a fight to make sure that the world knows that Jesus came as our Lord to be our Saviour.
We saw in our reading from Acts 12 that the apostle James died early on in the life of the church.[4] As well as telling us something significant that happened in the story of the early church, it shows that there have always been opponents to the gospel of Christ. There are always people who try to stamp out the good news of Jesus. In this country, we do not fear for our lives for proclaiming the gospel, but we know of many around the world who’s lives could be taken away at any moment because of their faith. But many experience push-back, mockery, being isolated and ridiculed. In a wake of cancel culture, where people are written off completely if they do or say the tiniest thing that goes against the modern cultural milieu, we can fear for our social acceptability and our careers. The Christian life is a fight and so we will take punches and come away with our fair share of bruising, metaphorically, but sometimes physically as well.
Fights are tough, and early on we see that the Christian life is not always a life that we will win on earth, as we saw with James. Paul and Peter both ended up losing the fight as they were executed. But they fought for the ultimate good, the good gospel truth that could never be taken away. The gospel truth that Jesus says the gates of Hades cannot overcome.[5]
Our Christian life is a fight and so we should not be surprised that it is a hard battle at times. There are many times that we might want to give up. I’m sure Peter and Paul both had times when they wanted to give up too. Why I am putting up with the beatings, the imprisonment and the death threats. But they didn’t, they kept going. Why? Because as we see Paul write to Timothy, ‘But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it.’[6]God always stood by Paul even at his lowest when he was in prison and about to lose his life. God stood by him and gave him strength. God stands by us and gives us strength for the fight. Being a Christian is a hard fight, but it is a good fight, and one that God will sustain us for and help us fight it for sake of his good gospel.
2) To be a Christian is to run a race.
Now I know that for many of you the idea of thinking about running is bad enough, let alone to actually run a race. But Paul says that the Christian life is a like running a race.
If you have ever run a race, you know that it is hard, and also that it requires training. It is something you work towards. You can’t just go out and run a marathon. You go and do your runs and go to the gym, and you make sure you eat right and sleep enough. It’s been a long time since I was running regularly, but when I was running more regularly, I got to the point of running the distance of a half-marathon, but most commonly I was running 5ks, and I got to a point where I was regularly running sub 25 min 5ks (which I was really happy with). How did I get there? I had to keep training. I went out several times a week to run. It was through doing the runs and the training that I was able to keep going so I could finish the Park Run race. Could I run 5k when I first started running? Absolutely not. I had to train and build up the stamina so I could run the Park Run. It was only through training that I could run the race.
Peter and Paul ran the race of the Christian life. They faced several uphill battles in their lives. You would forgive them for thinking that this being a disciple of Jesus malarkey was more effort that it was worth. But they carried on and pushed through so that they reached the end of their lives having never given up the race. They made it to the finish line. It takes some going to go through all that was thrown at them and still, at the point of death, never give up running the race.
How did they do it? As I said before, running a race requires training, and Peter and Paul both underwent training as a disciple of Christ. There is the initial part of the training when Peter and Paul are both learning about Jesus for the first time. This is the point where someone is learning to run for the first time. How to expand your chest when you breathe in not when you breathe out and learning to land your feet heel-toe. This is where you learn the basic building blocks of running. For Peter, it would have been during his three years with Jesus, and for Paul, it would been a combination of his Jewish religious training and his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.
Then the second part of training is bringing it altogether and putting in the miles to build up the strength and stamina to run the race. This is where you have to live and practice being a Christian. This is where we gather together to worship and pray, when we read our Bibles, when we talk about faith with others, and take time to be still in God’s presence. Each of these practices are part of training our discipleship muscles so that we can run the race of faith. Is it easy? No. It requires persistence and pushing through the hard times, and at the end your body will often feel exhausted, but you are able to complete the race in the end. Training does take a toll on the body, and running a race is hard, but it becomes something that is within our capabilities. Think of training for a marathon. No matter how much training you do or how fit you are, running a marathon is always hard. But through the training, it is something that, though still hard, is within your capabilities.
The life of faith can feel like a race. But throughout it, we don’t run the race alone. God is there next to you. He is the coach, he is the support car, he is the training and strength in you to get you to the end of the race and across the finish line. Think of how Paul said that God was his strength and stood by him as he ran the race of faith. God stands by us as we run the race of faith, and he will bring us to the end and protect us as we run. As Paul says, God rescued Paul from the lion’s mouth and from every evil attack and at the end of the race brings him to God’s heavenly kingdom.[7]
3) To be a Christian is to keep the faith.
Keep the faith. It’s a phrase that has fallen out of use, but it’s a phrase that still has a place in our language. What does it mean to keep the faith? It means to keep on going, to keep hoping, to keep believing. It sounds like something said during a war film. Keep the faith that we will get to safety; keep the faith that we will overcome the enemy; keep the faith that we will reach the promised land of peace.
To keep the faith is simply this. Keep going and keep believing. It’s what you tell yourself when you are running a race and it is really hard, when you are in a fight and you are taking blow after blow. Just keep going. One step at a time. As the great modern sage Dory from Finding Nemo said, ‘Just keep swimming.’ It is in this, that we, like Peter and Paul, live the life of faith as a disciple. It is through this ‘just keep going,’ ‘just keep swimming mentality,’ that they are able to go through the challenges thrown at them in their Christian life to reach the finish line.
So often we end up believing that once you become a Christian, that life gets easy. But anyone who has been running the Christian race for a while knows that it is not the case. The race of faith is hard, and sometimes it takes everything out of you, but step by step we keep running. One foot at a time we persevere to complete the race. If you look at the book of Acts and the lives of Peter and Paul, you see that this is what they had to do. It was not easy to keep on running when they had everything thrown against them. In both readings of Peter and Paul they were in prison, and they were often in prison for their faith. But they kept going. They knew that at the finish life God had reserved a crown of righteousness, the victor’s crown that the Lord will give to them on that final day they have completed the race and enter into the heavenly kingdom. Not only them but all who run the race and chase the finish line.[8] I hope that as St Peter and St Paul’s church that we can take inspiration to keep going like Peter and Paul did when our Christian life gets tough.
Conclusion: What do Peter and Paul teach us about being a Christian?
So what do Peter and Paul teach us about being a Christian? They show us that being a Christian is about fighting the good fight, running the race, and keeping the faith. It is not easy, but God is with us through it, especially through the gift of the Holy Spirit living in the heart of each disciple of Christ, in each one of us. God being with us doesn’t stop the race being hard, but through being with him and sticking with him in living and practicing our faith, the race becomes something that is within our capabilities.
What do you want your life to say at end? This is what Peter and Paul wanted their lives to say. Their lives were an example to us of how to run the Christian race to the finish line. Sure, they got things wrong, they tripped up and fell down, but they got back up again and kept going. God lifted them up and kept them running the race. What do you want your life to say? I know for me, I want to my life to reflect what Peter’s and Paul’s did. That ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’[9] What do you want your life to say?
Amen.
[1] 2 Timothy 4:7 [NRSV].
[2] 2 Timothy 4:6 [NRSV].
[3] 2 Timothy 4:7 [NRSV].
[4] Acts 12:2.
[5] Matthew 16:18.
[6] 2 Timothy 4:17a [NRSV].
[7] 2 Timothy 4:17-18.
[8] 2 Timothy 4:8 [NRSV].
[9] 2 Timothy 4:7 [NRSV].
Check out what I am reading:
Shakeel Nurmahi 