Not Winning, But Finishing

Introduction

What does the Bible say about success? At the end of Acts 28, Paul in Rome has finally achieved his great ambition, but he arrives in chains. Revd. Mark Fletcher asks whether failure and faith can belong together, and finds that the goal of a life is not winning at all, but finishing the race and being faithful to the last.

Have you stopped to consider what it is you aspire to in life? I think it’s a really very important question, because all too often what we think we want is actually just what everybody else wants. It’s just about comparison with other people. Or even more concerning, it is stuff that’s been sold to us by people in advertising or influencers. And the danger is that we spend much of our life chasing things that we never really wanted in the first place. Oscar Wilde once said, there are only two tragedies in life. The first is not getting what you want. The other is getting it.

And the few who do actually make it to the top and get everything they want very often discover, to their horror, that it simply isn’t enough, and that wealth or fame or success never actually satisfies and often leaves us more empty than ever. There is this great challenge, in a world that is trying to make you just like everyone else, to be the unique person that God has made you to be. And so my question this evening is, what does the Bible say about success? What does success look like in this case for the Apostle Paul? And he’s not a bad example. He is the great apostle, the man who wrote more of the New Testament than anybody else, which was the biggest selling book in history. He’s one of the most famous and influential people in history. He was responsible for planting churches across the ancient world. Not many people have a legacy like that. And here, at the end of the book of Acts, is in many ways the pinnacle, the thing that he hoped and aspired to do. It has been his dream to preach the gospel in Rome, to see the good news of Jesus proclaimed at the very heart of the empire. And so he has achieved his great ambition. But did you spot, he probably hasn’t done it in the way that he imagined? Verse 20 says, “For this reason I asked to see you and talk with you. It’s because of the hope of Israel that I’m bound with these chains.” Paul has arrived in Rome, as he always hoped that he would, and has been able to preach the good news of Jesus, but he does so in chains, as a prisoner. How did it happen? Well, it all goes back to Acts 21. As he describes here, he was arrested in Rome. He was tried and found not guilty, but there was an appeal. And so in response to that, he had to use his right as a Roman citizen to appeal to Caesar, which as a result meant that he would be transferred to Rome in chains. It’s a really interesting observation that even for the great apostle, to be part of the purposes of God may take you to very difficult and dark places.

The other thing that I don’t know if he quite expected was that the gospel had got there ahead of him. My suspicion is that what he thought was that he was going to be the one who brought the gospel to Rome. But did you see this lovely detail, that when he arrived, brothers and sisters, Christians, arrived to meet him? And it must have been slightly off-putting for him. How did that happen? Well, it turns out that the gospel had spread organically, as it should. Good news travels. And the gospel had already been shared in Rome. A church had been established. So it turns out that even the great apostle Paul is not indispensable in the purposes of God. Do you see, it must have all been slightly dispiriting. And I suppose my first question is, is Paul actually a failure? Because certainly in the eyes of the world, it must have looked like that. He’s penniless, imprisoned, and condemned. He himself must have had moments of doubt. Was this all worth it? Has it all come to nothing? And I wonder whether the first thing we ought to say is that apparent failure is not necessarily a bad thing at all. You know, I think that one of the things about our aspiration, success-driven culture is that it never equips us to deal with failure. We are terrified of the idea. But failure in life can and should be the making of you. There are things that you can learn that way that you will learn no other way. By the grace of God, we will often look back on some of the hardest times in our lives and say, well, I wouldn’t want to go through that again, but I wouldn’t have not had that experience. Show me someone who has never really experienced failure, and I’ll show you someone who’s never really had to grow up.

I think one of the greatest films of all, certainly one of my favourites, is a film about failure and what it looks like and what it does to you. It’s called It’s a Wonderful Life. Anybody aware of it? I think it’s about 1945. It’s black and white, Jimmy Stewart, a Christmas classic, although most of it doesn’t happen at Christmas. It’s a wonderful, wonderful movie. And it’s about a man who thinks he’s a terrible failure, who has the chance to see what the world would have been like if he had not been alive. And I think it is true for all of us who live lives trying to do good in this world, trying to be a blessing to others. We very, very often don’t get to see the implications of our lives, or the impact that we have had. And that is absolutely the case for the Apostle Paul. He has an impact on the world far greater than he could ever know. And the moral of the story of It’s a Wonderful Life is that remember that no one is a failure who has friends. And I love the little bit in this reading where Paul is actually rather surprised by that whole experience of being met by people, well, he’s never met before, but who are there to love him and to care for him. That they are people who he has had an impact on and who have this kind of sense of friendship to him, and they want to look after him. It may well be that actually friendship and love are the real indicators of success in this world. Do you know the joke about Jesus’ biggest miracle? What’s Jesus’ biggest miracle? It’s that he was a man in his 30s, and he still had 12 friends.

It’s funny, but it’s a little bit close to the bone, isn’t it?

But actually, that’s one of the things about the purposes of God, about being part of his family. In a world which seems so isolating and so lonely, actually, we have these relationships of love and commitment to one another. And Paul is blessed and surprised to discover those people who are simply there to care for him in one of his darkest hours. I think if Paul is a model to us, he is a model of his capacity to give himself for the sake of others, and for the greatest cause of all, even if it costs him everything. In fact, there’s a great quote by G.K. Chesterton, which says this. It says, the true joy of life is being used for a purpose recognised by yourself to be a mighty one, to be a force of nature instead of a selfish clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. Isn’t that great? And Paul is a force of nature. You see that in his character, which has been formed through some of the most difficult experiences. He is able to face even the worst of times with hope, with a peace, a stoicism, a strength and a love. And we see that in the quality of his writing, because Paul actually isn’t finished yet. He’s going to spend two very difficult years in prison, but in that place, he will have an even greater impact on the world than he has up till now, because in prison, he will write these letters, which we have in our Bible, letters to the church in Ephesus and the Colossians and the Philippians, and God will use those letters to change the world. Where does it end for Paul? Well, after those two years in prison, we don’t know for sure what happens next. He writes to a young Christian leader called Timothy and talks about the end of his life, and he says this: “I’m already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” And then we don’t know for sure. Tradition has it that he was martyred, which is almost certainly the case, martyred at the hands of a vindictive Roman emperor. But I’m really struck that what he talks about as the goal of his life wasn’t success, wasn’t winning, it was simply finishing. Finishing the race. Fighting the good fight. Keeping the faith. What if the goal of this life is not winning, but simply finishing? Being faithful to the last. And success is to fight the good fight. To keep the faith. I always think that marathons are amazing events. You know, when you see those tens of thousands of people running through London or Rome or something. And of course there are some people who are in the marathon to win it. But that is a very small number of them. The vast majority are just there to get through to the end. And finishing the race will be one of the great achievements of their life. And so as they do it, they do it alongside all of these other people. And on the sidelines there are these crowds cheering them on, because the goal isn’t to win. It’s just to keep going, through the struggles, through the hardships, to make it to the end. And what if the finish line for us is not anything in this life at all, but is that heavenly Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God, where the streets are lined with a great crowd of saints and angels cheering you home? And what if the prize is Jesus, who will look you in the eyes and say, well done, good and faithful servant.

And so this is the end, the end of the book of Acts and the end of Paul’s life. But of course, it’s not really an ending at all. It is in many ways just the beginning, because the seeds which are planted here will spring up in countless places and countless lives. And it may be that what Luke does with this book of Acts, with an ending which just isn’t really very clear, is that he’s saying, well, now it’s your story. Now it’s up to you. It’s in your turn. It is in your hands. I’m sure that that was true of those to whom the book of Acts was first addressed. I don’t know if you remember Theophilus and his friends in the late first century AD. But I think it is also true of you and I here in the 21st century. This is not an ending. This is just the beginning. And each of us is called to run the race set out before us with perseverance, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Amen.