An Unexpected Image of Discipleship

Paul tells the ancient Church in Corinth that discipleship is like running a marathon. This is an unexpected image of discipleship, but one that is useful for the contemporary Church, and I think particularly for the United Methodist Church. There are several important things that we can take from Paul's image. First, the notion that there is an objective winning and losing, of right and wrong, correct and false when it comes to discipleship. In a marathon, there is literally one winner, and the runners can objectively rank themselves from first to last. In discipleship, there are different paths that we take to become holy, but holiness is holiness. We are either sanctified or we are not. We are either living as God's people or we are not.

The correlation of discipleship with being an elite athlete also reminds us of the demands of discipleship. Too often our discipleship is put on the figurative back burner and given less priority than our employment, our finances, our extracurricular activities; pretty much everything. This is all, of course, unstated and implicit--we would never admit this to ourselves or to others. Imagine a marathon runner trying to win a marathon without giving his or her training the highest priority and being constantly preoccupied with training and preparation. Discipleship has to be like that.

Perhaps the most important point of Paul's text, however, is to remember that God has a definition of winning that is different than the world's definition of winning. What it means to win in God's eyes is to be holy. Winning in the world's eyes is defined in terms of status, physical appearance, financial resources, and vocation. God wants us to be holy. This is what it means to win in God's eyes. If we are holy, we win. If we are not, we lose.

As always, we look to Jesus as our model for what it means to win in God's eyes. Like an elite athlete focused upon the prize of winning a race, Jesus lived life focused upon fulfilling God's will. In the eyes of the world, he lost. In God's eyes, he won.