1. “Habits for Love” (Hebrews 12)

So I want to tell you about a guy – his full name is Claus Henning Schulke –  he’s better known as “Bottle Claus”.  Bottle Claus is probably the most famous water bottle handler in the world.  One TV commentator said about him – “Never has so much fuss been made about a man giving a drink to another man.” In 2018 Bottle Claus was the water bottle handler for Eliud Kipchoge winner of the Berlin Marathon running the 26.2 miles in a record breaking –  2 hrs, 1 min, and 39 seconds. In 2022 the two paired up again for the Berlin Marathon – there is a fantastic little YouTube video that chronicles the whole thing – from Bottle Claus picking up Eliud Kipchoge from the airport – all the way through to the marathon race itself. Bottle Claus is a super high energy, positive guy.  In his mid to late 50’s, he has white hair, very lean German man. Thirteen times throughout the race – Bottle Claus must get in position to hand Eliud his drink. It’s quite entertaining to watch– each time he positions himself, water bottle held out ready and easy to grab.  He watches for when the runners begin to approach…. He screams in his heavy German accent – “Eliud.” And then after each successful hand off he does a big double fist pump – jumps on his bike, and sprints ahead of the runners so that he can be ready for the next hand off. 

In 2022 – Eliud Kipchoge won the marathon again, this time beating his previous record by running the race 30 seconds faster – at   2 hr, 1 min, 9 seconds. When you’re running a marathon race – every detail matters, obviously your training matters, your nutrition matters, your sleep, the clothes you wear on race day, the shoes with carbon plates that literally propel you forward as you run……. And yes, even the water bottle handler matters…

The Christian life – Hebrews 12 tells us, is a race.  Just notice a few things in the text of Hebrews 12.  Multiple times the author uses the word – “endure” or “persevere” to speak of what kind of race this is:

1. 1 – “let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,
2. 2 – Jesus, who “for the joy set before him he enduredthe cross.” 
3. 3 – we are told to, “Consider [Jesus] who enduredsuch opposition from sinners against….”   

The life of faith, of trusting in and following Jesus – is like race.  It’s like a marathon or ultra-marathon race. It is a race of endurance. It is long, and difficult, and hard. The text begins v. 1 – with THEREFORE – connecting 12:1 with the previous ch. 11 – where the author lists person after person from the Old Testament beginning with Abel in Gen. 4 through Abraham, Moses and many others – men and women of faith.  These men and women, the author says, lived lives of faith  – they had confidence in what they hoped in and the God they trusted, even though they didn’t see it or experience the fulfillment of God’s promise in their lifetime.  These people throughout time and history who trusted God and were commended by God form this great cloud of witnesses that surround us as it were as we run the race. 

What must we do to run this race well?  Two things I want us to consider from the text this morning –  Two things we see in the opening two verses – look again at the text – 

Heb. 12:1      Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, ² fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.

First there are things that we must throw off, that we are called to lay aside.  And Second – There’s a direction, to which we must orient our vision.  We must throw off, and we must fix our eyes.  Let’s consider each of those. 

We must throw off – v. 1 says – everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.  The second part of that you would part of that you would assume – yes, to run the race of faith, to run toward Jesus and grow, sin is going to be an obstacle.  It’s going to entangle you and make it difficult.  But there’s this whole other category Hebrews gives us – “everything that hinders”.  Let’s think about that.  

“Everything that hinders” – the idea is everything that weighs you down – Everything that makes it more difficult and unlikely you will grow and thrive into the person you’re meant to be in and through Jesus. There are things that might not necessarily be categorized as “sin” but that will keep us from running well, keep us from becoming the person we’re meant to be through Jesus.

If you think about this through the race metaphor – this is the opposite of Eliud Kipchoge.  Imagine the opposite of a Kenyan marathon runner.  The person is not properly trained, wearing big boots, baggy sweatpants, a winter coat, while holding a 2 liter bottle of coke and a bag of Doritos – that person is just not going to run very well.  That’s not going to work.  

This passage probes you to ask – What’s my goal?  Really, what is it?  What’s the goal of my life?  What’s the goal of every part of my life – work, school, family and parenting, friends, community… every part? Is my goal, is your goal – trust Jesus and follow him – to grow and become the person and the community we’re meant to be in Jesus? If so, then this requires that we look honestly at our lives and consider what things might be standing in the way.  

This is why we’re doing this series – Habits for Love.  If we want to grow into people who are becoming beautiful and whole in Jesus – we have to look at the whole of our lives and ask – How are the things in my life – the Structures and habits – shaping me?  What kind of a person is it producing? This week, most if not all of you received an email from Geoff asking you to consider thinking through your life and doing a “life-audit.”  If your visiting, or brand new, no worries, you’re here at the prefect time as we’re just getting into this – feel free to email me or Geoff, our emails are on the back of the bulletin and we’d be happy to send this “life-audit” to you for your reflection. In that “life-audit” document we asked you to think about the structures and habits in your life.

• Structures–
  These would be things like your role in your family; your job or school; where you live; your connection to church. Some of these are choices made years or decades ago – like you’re a parent of kids or your job.  Some of these are more recent choices – like the activities you sign up for.  The things you commit to for yourself or for your kids – the piano lessons, kids sports. These structures play into the rhythms of your life and give shape to it.  
• We could also think about Habits. Habits are repeated ways of being, thinking, and responding in our lives. Habits are things that often can kind of run-on auto pilot.  Much of your morning routine isn’t something you think about – Am I going to brush my teeth? Am I going to drink coffee?  We don’t think about it – we just do our habits. What are your habits, what are your habits with technology and entertainment? What are the daily and weekly almost auto-pilot ways of being and responding in the world that give shape to your life – who you are and who you’re becoming.  
• We could add a 3^rdcategory – Practices. Practices are things we intentionally engage in – they may not always feel natural or exactly what I feel like in the moment. But they are things we intentionally choose because we desire to change or grow in some way.   

The Structures, Habits, and Practices of our lives shape who we are and who we’re becoming.  

When Erin and I lived in Delaware, the first house we lived in backed up to a big forest that had a series of mountain bike trails.  I had a bike at the time for riding to campus as part of my job doing campus ministry and so I decided to try mountain biking.   As I got out on the trail – take a look at the front cover of the bulletin: on a mountain bike trail, especially in tight areas, there is a single track tire trail that has been worn into ground, the soil, the path… Well, not paying enough attention, instead of staying on that well-worn path my tire began to edge against the side of it, which threw off my balance and threw me off the bike.  You don’t get out of the worn trail without real intentional effort.  

Here’s the thing about structures, habits, and practices – Neuroscientists, which I am not, would tell us that our brains are similar to that mountain bike trail in DE.  Neurological pathways, ways of thinking, believing, and living have been practiced and habituated into our lives – trails have been cut and blazed that tend to keep us moving in a certain direction. Now this can be a great thing if we’re moving in a good direction, but if we find areas and places in our lives that are not the way of Jesus. If we want growth and change, it will feel difficult; It will take intentional effort to steer out of that rut, it very likely will feel unnatural.  

In those areas it will likely not be enough to try and just think your way into change – if our practices, habits, and structures got us there, if we practiced our way into it, we must practice our way out of it. Not apart from our minds, but as whole embodied people. 

Let me give an example – You may know that absenteeism, kids missing school is a problem right now across our nation. More and more, kids are missing school; much more than before the Covid-19 pandemic.  And of course it’s not surprising that this is the case. A recent New York Times article, “Where are the Students?” puts it like this – 

“If you’re a child — or a former child — you know how hard it can be to summon the energy to leave the house each day for school. It’s early in the morning, and you are tired. Maybe you have a test or a social situation that’s making you anxious. Staying in bed often seems easier. For as long as schools have existed, so have these morning struggles. Nonetheless, children overcame them almost every day, sometimes with a strong nudge from parents. Going to school was the normal thing to do. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t.” 

What used to be a habit, stopped.  The embodied action of getting up, doing the morning routine, get out the door and go to school – this thing that was practiced and habituated in bodies and the structures of families and community life, stopped….. And a new habit was formed.  Not going. And when the old habit is gone – now what do you do with the anxiety, about the test, about the social situation? It’s easy now not to go.  But of course, avoiding and retreating from the thing we’re afraid of is it’s own new habit that will only make it harder to go back.  

A similar thing has happened in the American Church. At the congregational meeting, Geoff mentioned the book – The Great De-churching, which is about the phenomena in America, where suddenly some 40 million people have stopped going to church. A large category of those who left from the study that was done, are categorized as the “casually dechurched” – meaning what was a practice and something habituated in their lives for various reasons, stopped.  They stopped going to church.  And what was perhaps at first awkward feeling back about “oh I should probably go,”  became normal. Now the thought of going back is hard.  

This series – Habits for Love – is another way of talking about an ancient concept called “Rule of Life”. Over a thousand years before neuroscience could tell us about the importance of habits and practices. Christians seeking to follow Jesus and listen to the Scriptures, recognized the importance of shared embodied habits and practices that oriented and directed one’s life toward God.  Monastic orders and whole communities would order their lives around a common rule. Saint Augustine for example wrote a Rule of Life, as did many others……. A rule of life consisted of a set of practices –   A way of life together that sought to help a community follow the way of Jesus. 

There was a recognition long, long ago that the structures and habits of life taught us through embodied practices what life was really all about. Christians long ago recognized that ancient cultures, just like our modern one, already in a sense have a “rule of life” – that oriented and directed people.  There was a Roman Empire system of structures and habits that formed people just like there is a modern American Suburban system that forms us toward becoming a certain kind of person and a certain kind of community and society. The point of a rule of life was not rules or legalism or working your way to God.  The point was and is that we want structures and habits and practices that orient and direct us to dwell in God’s love, to drink deeply of God’s love, and to learn how to love one another and our neighbors. 

Jen Pollock Michell, who is leading our women’s retreat at the end of January, on this very topic says this, “A rule of life is a practice of intentional faithfulness for the busy, the exhausted, the distracted, and the uncertain.  [It is } a creative practice of patterning our lives in faithful response to God’s voice.” – We want to hear God’s voice and respond; and we know that won’t just happen.   

Author John Mark Comer in his great little book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, writes this, “A rule was a schedule and set of practices to order your life around the way of Jesus in community. It was a way to keep from getting sucked into the hurry, busyness, noise, and distraction of regular life. A way to slow down. A way to live into what really matters: what Jesus called abiding.”[1] We’re doing this because we want to grow together in the fullness of life that is offered to us in Jesus.  

Let me briefly say what this series is not – this series is not about “life hacks” and greater efficiency – I’m assuming you’ve heard that term – life hack – if not you can google it later – think about that metaphor: What is the object of “Hacking”? What does  “Life Hack” imply about you – you’re a computer, you’re a machine.  The point of a “life hack” is to see how much more we can get the machine to work and produce.  How much more can we crank out.  That’s the opposite of where we’re going; that’s dehumanizing.  You are not a machine, you are a creature made in God’s image.  

When you hear us use the term “system” throughout this series, when we talk about the system of your life with structures and habits, don’t think or picture in your mind “car engine,” something mechanical, like we’re just after getting more horsepower of you, more efficiency. NO. Think eco-system – think a nature preserve, a place of beauty where things are working as they were meant to be such that living organisms can flourish and grow….. 

This is not about “ life hacks” or greater efficiency – It’s also Not prefabricated – Geoff and I don’t have “a wonderful plan for your life” – it’s not all figured out.  We’ve been thinking and talking about this for the last few years and we’ve known since last November that we’re moving in this direction.  But this is a journey that we will need to take together.  We need the collective wisdom of this body.  We need to be helped by each other to examine parts of our lives – structures as well as habits – perhaps things we’ve just taken for granted, just assumed, well obviously this is just how we live, can’t change that….. this is how I’ve always done it…… We will need each other to grow in wisdom and love.  

The plan is for this series to last 2 years.  Each semester for the next two years we’ll consider an area of life and related practices. Four themes in all that we will consider.  

1. This Fall we will consider – REST– we’re starting with rest because, well. the speed of modern life is such that if we don’t start here it will be too easy for us to just try and add more and more to our lives.  The first thing we must learn and practice is the ability to slow down so that we can rest in God, pray and listen to God and dwell in his love.  
2. In the Winter/Spring semesterwe’ll consider practices of Devotion, following Romans 12,  in view of God’s mercies we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. The focus here will be around practices that help us live out the reality that we don’t belong to ourselves, but belong to Jesus. 
3. Then next year in the fallwe’ll consider – Community.  In a world where more and more relationships are transactional  – what are practices that can help us to live life together in a way that reflects what we share as fellow members of the body of Christ.  What are practices that help us to form sticky and deep relationships rather than shallow/surfacy relationships. 
4. And then finally in 2025 winter/spring  – Hospitality.  In a world where it is common to build walls between insiders and outsiders, where it is common to write off, protect against, be fearful of….. how can we learn practices of hospitality that orient us to live toward the world embodying the generous, self-giving love of God to our neighbors and wider community.  

Here’s why we’re doing this – because there is a better way of life, a more fulfilling beautiful way to be human in Jesus. Look back with me at Hebrews 12.  We are to run this race of endurance, throwing off everything that hinders us – v. 2 – Fixing our eyes on Jesus.  That’s the point – that’s the goal  – That’s where we’re headed.  

Notice what the author of Hebrews says about Jesus as he seeks to orient and motivate us to run?  He calls Jesus the “pioneer” and “perfecter” of our faith –He is the “pioneer” – he blazed the trail that we are to run.  He went first, he lived the life of faith, as a person in this world.  He pioneers the way, he leads the way.  He opens up this whole new way of life that’s not possible apart from him.  

Hebrews 11 ended by saying that all these heroes of faith, though they were commended by God for their trust, they didn’t receive the promise…. Their lives were built around anticipating what God promised…. But for us, as we run the race, we run on the path of the promise already taking root in this world through Jesus’s death and resurrection – the path has been pioneered, blazed ahead, with Jesus leading the way. 

Jesus not only blazes the trail and leads the way. Jesus is also the “perfecter”of faith. He is the one who brings the way of faith to completion.  He is able to bring us through faith to the goal, the end of the race.  He is able to bring us fully and finally home.  Remember the mountain bike trail – Our habits and structures can malform us in ways that lead us away from Jesus or weigh us down.  

 BUT – Hebrews says – Jesus has cut the trail of faith, and as we learn and grow in him and follow him, as we learn to dwell in his love and fix our eyes on him. Tthere is a way of life – of peace, of joy, of love, of hope – that can be formed in us.  There is a redemptive way to live in the eco-system of grace as we fix our eyes on Jesus and run toward him.  

And so………We fix our eyes on Jesus – Jesus who blazed the trail; Jesus who will bring us all the way to the finish line. We fix our eyes on Jesus – who loved us and gave himself for us.   The text says –v. 2 – Jesus, who –For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. The cross in all its awfulness was meant to scorn with shame all those who faced it’s dehumanizing and degrading torture.  It was a horrific and awful instrument of public humiliation, shame, torture and scorn – to be treated as insignificant – it proclaimed – look what we can do to you! 

Look what Jesus did – HE  ‘scorned the shame’ – Jesus treated the cross as insignificant –how, how could he do that? It was insignificant compared to the joy set before him.” And what was that joy? What was he looking forward to?  Look at the end of v. 2 – he “sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  It was to be seated at God’s right hand – to accomplish salvation. If you were reading through the book of Hebrews this is a theme you would see again and again – Jesus actually accomplished salvation – he sat down – he’s done it.  But here, as  various scholars note, the writer does something just a little bit different from all the previous uses of the verb “to sit down” – here the writer uses a tense in Greek that emphasizes not only that Jesus has accomplished it, but the ongoing significance of that accomplishment – in other words, he’s saying – – he  sat at God’s right hand…… and he sits there still today…. He’s there right now!

This was the prize set before Jesus, this is how he was able to count as insignificant the pain, agony, shame, and degradation of the cross – because he would be exalted at God’s right hand, and in that place of exaltation he would be in the position as Hebrews 7:25 puts it – to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, because he always lives to make intercession for them. He did it for the joy of completing the work of salvation – That as we run and we look to him – he could always be in that place, to help us, to keep us, to save us. 

Let his love, his example, his endurance direct you and motivate you as you live your life – running toward him and looking to him. And let me invite you if you’ve not already started. Come on this journey with us as a church.  Let me invite you to look at your life, your habits and structures, as we together seek to cultivate Habits for Love. 

Come with us as we seek to practice and develop habits that will help us to better know and experience God’s love.  Habits that will help us to better embody and express that love to one another.  Habits that will extend outward in love to our neighborhoods, communities, and even the world.   

[1] Comer, John Mark. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
(p. 94). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.