UNOH Supporters’ Celebration Supper - 22 November 2008

It took me forty three years of preparation before I ran my first marathon.  I’m still psyching myself up for the second one, and despite having such a finely tuned athletic body it may just take another forty years, or maybe a bit longer.

A lot of people think running a marathon is pure masochism.  But I have to say that I enjoyed training for it and I enjoyed running it.  OK, except perhaps for the last few kilometres.  They were a bit hard.  I’m told that at the end I staggered deliriously over the line and collapsed, saying, “I have diabetes and I might be having a low blood sugar attack, or I might be just finishing a marathon, which feels the same.  Just give me something sweet and I’ll be right.”  They took me off to the sick bay, but I felt terrific inside!

Running one marathon fifteen years ago, of course, makes you an instant expert on long distance running, and I’d like to pass on some of my great wisdom this evening.  If you’ve done your training and you’re fit, you only need to know three things on the day:  Pace yourself, never miss your drink stop, and stick with a group going the speed you want.  Then you’ll stay the course and feel the wind in your hair and feel incredibly good to reach the end of the race.

Pacing yourself is hard at the beginning.  There were four thousand of us, and, after the starting gun, it took ages for the huge crowd to move and then walk and then get running.  I just wanted to go!  But I slowed down, stuck to my times and ran the second half in the same time as the first half.  And finished — OK, I just finished.

It’s been just as hard for me to pace myself as a follower of Jesus.  I was brought up in an incredibly active Christian family.  I just assumed that first we save the world and then we rest.  But I soon realised that this doesn’t work.  Yes, Jesus calls us to take up the cross and walk in his footsteps of welcoming the poor and so on, but he paced himself too.  Yes, Jesus calls us to lose our lives in order to gain them, but I had to learn the best way to spend a life for Jesus!  I soon discovered John 10:10, where Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”.  You can’t share good news unless it’s good news for you.

I discovered boundaries.  I discovered recreation.  I discovered sustainability.  Now I mark in blank spaces in my diary.  I mostly get around at bicycle pace or public transport pace.  I don’t answer the phone during meals.  In fact, I sometimes lose my mobile on purpose and don’t answer it at all.  Our family has always taken annual holidays, even when we couldn’t afford to go anywhere.  Although our house is like a neighbourhood centre, our neediest friends know that I’m not always available;  it wouldn’t be good for me and it wouldn’t be good for them.  Discipleship is costly but it shouldn’t lead to bankruptcy.

I’m sad to say that I have friends who went out too hard, and they blew up in the middle of the race.  I feel for them deeply.  I hope that with the guidance of God’s Spirit I’ll still be pacing myself for many years to come so that I can still be running for whatever time I’m given.

As for not missing your drinks, I have to confess that the reason I was delirious at the finish — and yes, I was dangerously low in blood sugars — was that I missed the last drink station at forty kilometres with two to go.  Too tired to hold the drink, probably.  But that’s actually when I most needed that strong cordial.

When it comes to spiritual nourishment I’ve been through many stages.  Let me pause and define ‘spirituality’.  Spirituality, to me, is how we relate to the transcendent dimension of life, the spiritual dimension, God.  It’s the way we live in relation to the spiritual.

What I’ve discovered is that I need to give it regular attention in some way.

Sometimes those who are committed to social justice and the poor are stereotyped as not having time for their spiritual journey.  I’d like to disagree strongly and say that in forty years of working alongside Christian justice activists I’ve experienced the opposite.  The more you roll up your sleeves, the more you realise you need to locate the spring of living water.  The more overwhelming the poverty and disadvantage we find ourselves in the middle of, the more we need regular sustenance.  The outward journey and the downward journey stimulate the inward journey.

I take regular retreats.  I journal.  I see a spiritual director.  I head out of the city regularly.  I read nourishing books in cafes.  I walk and pray.  I cycle and pray (actually, I think every cyclist prays — it goes with the danger on the roads!).  Everyone will find their own path in opening their lives to the refreshing and nourishing power of God’s spirit.  But we all need to do it.

If pacing myself is a challenge, and if remembering take my drink stops is a discipline, the third thing, running with a group, I find much easier.  It’s hard to explain how close you feel to someone when you’ve just run twenty or thirty kilometres beside them, perhaps not even saying a word.  An unspoken agreement grows that you’ll both stick together and try to keep an even pace and encourage each other.

Once a friend of mine came up next to me in a fun run and said, “Ross, I’m gone, mate.  Can I run next to you?”  He was a real joker.  I said, “You crack the jokes, and I’ll keep the legs turning.”  Well, it worked really well, except when we were laughing so much we could hardly run!  We got there.

You know I’m talking about community, don’t you.  I have a friend who is an invalid pensioner, a bit of a talker, has too much time on his hands.  I’m his next of kin, and we go back a long way.  My father-in-law lives in a flat on our property, and my mate spends a couple of hours a day with my father-in-law’s dog.  He also has a meal a week at the house of someone else in my church, and drives an old lady to do her shopping, and so on.  Through the week he’s at six or eight houses in my Christian community.  In community it works because we all share the load.

Sustainability, at least for me, absolutely requires community.  My community makes me laugh.  My community tells me when I’m not pacing things well.  My community turns up when we’re loading a trailer or painting a house or minding kids for a suicidal mum.  In the group that meets at our house for a meal and sharing, we’re nearly all sick.  We call ourselves the walking wounded, or God’s rag tag army.  But we’re in it for the long haul together.

And you know the most important thing my community does for me?  It gives me hope and helps me to understand the paradox of losing my life in order to gain it and to gain it abundantly.  I’m not just giving and giving. I’m giving and receiving.

In 2001 I wrote a song for UNOH, but I was really writing it for myself.  The third verse goes:

We’re called to go outside our comfort zone.
We dare to dream a different world,
As neighbours bearing hope in daily life.
Such energy!  What is the key?
What if we faint or fall?

And the chorus will be familiar to you from Matthew 11:28.

Come to me if you are weary
With heavy burdens:  I’ll give you rest.
Walk in harness with me, for I am gentle.
My yoke is easy, my burden light.

I pray that wherever you serve, however costly and edgy your ministry may be, however driven you sometimes feel in God’s service, you will pace yourself, stop for your drinks, and find a group to run with.