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My mother Nancy, throughout her life of nearly fifty-nine years, probably did not run or jog more than a very few miles, and all of them in her very first years of life. She contracted polio as a child, and suffered serious post-polio syndrome. Just before her death, she reflected on the topic in her last conversation with one of her grandchildren.
“What do you think I will do first when I get to Heaven?” she asked her then-four-year-old grandson, John. He replied, “I don't know, Nana, what do you want to do?” “I want to run,” she said. “My mother told me that when I was a little girl I ran everywhere, ran down the stairs, down the block, to school, to the neighbors, everywhere. And then when I was eleven I got sick and couldn't run anymore. I miss that, and that's the first thing l'm going to do because I know that in heaven my body will be fixed and I will be able to run as far and as fast as I want to.”
In heaven my body will be fixed.
Let’s unpack this a little. Heaven, the first Christians teach us, is not just an afterlife paradise. Heaven is this earth, our world, restored to God’s dominion of justice and peace, with the whole communion of saints, living and dead, gathered here in one gleaming, tree-filled city. The leaves of the trees offer healing balm to all the war-torn nations. But even if heaven descends to earth in this way, and even if heaven descends to these earthly bodies of ours, some of them resurrected from death – even then, we humans may still imagine that in this earthly heaven, all bodies will be fixed.
Many of us long to be freed from disabilities. Some days after my mother’s conversation with my nephew, the funeral home asked my father if he wanted her to wear her glasses in the coffin, at the viewing. He shook his head, exhausted by decades of my mother’s health problems and final cancer struggle. “No,” he said. “No more disabilities.”
“In heaven my body will be fixed.” “No more disabilities.”
This is all understandable, and poignant, and close to the quick for my family. I have never, ever known a world without someone I love – someone I need – experiencing a physical disability. I remember my mother’s body casts, and I was intrigued as a child by the steel rods they installed in her lower back. I learned quickly how to monitor her fluctuating mood, and sensed the obvious truth that chronic pain was one of its key drivers. After she died, my dad went on long, long walks in the suburban wilderness east of the Minneapolis airport: his wife could never have joined him for those walks, so maybe, after she was gone, maybe he felt a little less sheepish about taking them.
Less critically, my father and mother both had myopia, and gave it to all their children. They’ve passed on other more serious problems to some of us, like psoriatic arthritis. I dearly love people who are hard of hearing. I have friends and colleagues who no longer can walk, or they walk stiffly and haltingly. Isn’t it understandable to dream of a heavenly fix for all these human conditions?
But we humans, for all our dreams of fixed bodies and perfect freedom to run, would do well to re-examine the teachings of Saint Paul. Paul doesn’t encourage an idyllic dream of so-called “fixed” bodies. Perhaps Paul understands that one can’t fix what’s not broken. In his second letter to Timothy, he urges us to “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching … As for me … the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord … will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”
Paul does not promise comprehensive ability to God’s people, everyone uniformly perfect and flawless. (Neither Paul nor Peter, both deeply flawed apostles to the end, would try to sell perfectionist ideas to us. They would recognize perfectionism and ableism as the idols they surely are, and they both learned much from their complicated and unique identities.) They simply tell us what we must do, whatever our ability, and in all our splendid and endless diversity: we should proclaim the message, no matter what; we should convince, rebuke, and encourage; we should practice patience, fight the good fight, finish the race, keep the faith.
And even though my mother (understandably!) dreamt of a “fixed” body, Paul’s message fell easily on her ears, and on my father’s: they were both patient faith leaders. They exemplified hard work and dogged endurance, whether the time was favorable or unfavorable. They likely understood that Paul didn’t talk about able bodies, or spectacular gifts or strengths, in his description of our life of faith. He doesn’t say that we win the race. He says only that we finish.
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
We don’t have to win the race. We just have to finish it.
Of course I love this metaphor – finishing the race. I’ve finished several long-distance-running races over the past ten years, and a few in high school when I was the slowest runner on the cross-country team. Last weekend I ran a half marathon in southeast Seattle, which many of you know since of course I posted a fitness brag on social media.
In that race, I placed 691st out of 1178. I ranked 38th among runners between the ages of fifty and fifty-nine, assigned male at birth. (37 guys in my demographic beat me.) I averaged ten minutes, nine seconds a mile. (The winner, some kid in his twenties, ran a five-minute, forty-five-second mile.) But: I finished. I was not distinguished and the prize winners were headed home by the time I finished, but – I finished.
But there were more than 1178 runners that day. An additional 28 runners were marked as “DNF” – did not finish. “DNF”: how rude! I tell you this Good News, today: the “DNF” runners also finished. “The race” – even a literal race on a literal course – “the race” is not only run by superheroes like Captain America, who famously jogs an easy half marathon in under a half hour, calling out repeatedly to the slower runners, “On your left.”
“The race” is many things, and everybody of any ability is running one race or another. It is not just all of us slow runners plodding down the trail while Captain America is irritatingly calling out “On your left!” over our shoulders. Showing up at all is a race well worth finishing. Cheering on other runners is definitely a race well worth finishing. Accepting one’s own limitations, and recognizing it’s time to pass the baton to the next runner — that’s a race worth finishing, too. Standing up as a queer person or queer ally in proud solidarity with all LGBTQIA+ people: that’s a race many of us are running, particularly this weekend. And whenever we stand up for what’s right but not popular, we are running a just and righteous race.
And sometimes the race is about justice, but it’s also deeply personal. Back at that literal half-marathon race last week, one athlete pushed himself along the course on his wheelchair, his upper-body strength orders of magnitude stronger than my own. In a competitive and ableist world, his witness is profoundly inspiring. Another race finisher was in a recumbent wheelchair, pushed over the course by a companion. Signs on the wheelchair promoted “Payton’s Project,” an organization that advocates for mental health and wellness, in memory of Payton Rose Freeze, a bullying victim who suffered fatal symptoms of Persistent Post-Concussion Syndrome.
In this particular example, there are a few races being finished: there’s the finisher in the chair, perhaps suffering from PPCS; then there’s the finisher pushing the chair, an ally up at dawn to guide a friend across the finish line in an effort that could help save lives. And then there’s me, an aging amateur athlete noticing all this and, I hope, finishing the race of letting these advocates and their witness go to work on me.
Every person at that race last week is running lots of races. Everybody here today is running races. And, always with God’s help, everyone is a finisher.
And finally, one race that we at St. Paul’s are running is the vigorous race of our mission in this lovely, challenging corner of God’s heaven. But in this race, we get to take turns. We pace each other. We help each other. I run a mile, then you run a mile; then it’s your neighbor’s turn, then mine again; and on along the course we go.
And this is the great insight we learn today from our patron Paul, and Peter, his fellow apostle: we will all finish this race, but this race is a relay. Paul wrote his second letter to Timothy shortly before his death, when he handed off the baton. And though it sounds like he’s a solo finisher of a race – the personal pronoun “I” comes up a lot – his letter assumes a communal faith, a team effort, a body of bodies, bodies not necessarily “fixed,” everyone working together toward a shared finish line.
And so I encourage you, I implore you, to take heart, to take courage. Your body may not need to be fixed. Your body, your mind, your spirit: no matter your struggles, no matter what, you are already running the race. You are finishing the race with all of us here. And only when we run the race together, pacing each other, spotting each other, supporting each other — only then can we shout to the dreadful and destructive powers of this world this cry of victory:
On your left.
***
Preached on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (transferred), June 30, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Ezekiel 34:11-16
Psalm 87
2 Timothy 4:1-8
John 21:15-19