Good Fight+Race+Faith=Life

...the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 1 Timothy 4. 5 - 13

On this day when we celebrate the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist, the verse above from the New Testament lesson is appointed. Paul is coming to the end of his ministry, has been deserted by many of his disciples and Luke is the only one with him. These three statements he makes have been a part of my spiritual formation for most of my life.

The picture below was taken at my mother's funeral in our home parish of St. Margaret's Hibernia in Fleming Island, Florida. The Tiffany altar windows were given in memory of Margaret Fleming who orchestrated the building of the church, but whose funeral was the first service held in the church in 1878. Having worshiped there since I was a child, those words were ingrained in my mind and my heart. So this must be what it's like at the end if you have lived a good life, I used to think.

The fight between good and evil must be what Paul is referencing here. The race to outrun the darkness and arrive at the victory of living into the Light must be what finishing the race means. And keeping the faith, knowing that good will prevail and all will be well, must be what Paul commends himself on having done. But oh my there are so many spaces in between that leave me cold and confused. If life were only that simple.

This picture is a little crooked because I was a little crooked when I took it that day. We were a "band of brothers, we happy few" as our mother called us, grief stricken in that place that had been our refuge for most of our lives. Her death had caught us all completely off guard, and we were gasping for breath at the reality of it. The fights had not been good, some of us didn't finish the race and keeping the faith seemed impossible, and there we sat with our mother's ashes in front of us, one part of the family on one side of the aisle and the other across what seemed like a fissure of fire. "Never the twain shall meet" as Rudyard Kipling said.

At the beginning of his passage in 1 Timothy, Paul commends the reader to "endure suffering" and so we must. Life includes fights and races, and ups and downs, chasms and failures are inherent in the human condition. But like the endurance of those stained glass windows, we must claim Faith, standing tall and strong, riveted by the mighty power of the loving God who will prevail and will enable us to prevail. And as the gospel from Luke appointed for today says, we must remember the words of Jesus:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free..."

and in so doing we will have fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith.

August 12, 2018

St. Margaret's Hibernia