The Miracle Mile
Philippians 3:8-14 | 3/28/2004
Is there anyone here who knows who Roger Bannister is? What he did was inconceivable.
Inconceivable. That’s what people said about the possibility of running a mile in less than four minutes. Sports commentators claimed that it simply couldn’t be done. Physiologists believed that the human body and mind would rise up and rebel against the strain of such a race. The four-minute mile came to be seen as a barrier that no human being would ever be able to break.
Then, in the spring of 1954, exactly 50 years ago, Roger Bannister stepped onto the track.
Roger was a British medical student and runner for the Amateur Athletic Association, a young man absolutely determined to break the barrier. Bannister knew that many outstanding milers had attempted to achieve the goal, including one who had missed by a mere 1.5 seconds. But Bannister would not allow the four-minute threshold to intimidate him.
On a cold and windy spring day, he took his place at the starting line of a track in Oxford, England. There were about 3,000 spectators in the stands. The race was carefully planned, and Bannister was aided by two other runners who acted as pacemakers, Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway. As they began the race, Brasher took the lead and Bannister fell in behind, with Chataway running in third place. When Brasher began to wear out, Bannister called for Chataway to take over.
Then, just about 200 yards from the finish, Bannister exploded into first place with a final burst of energy. He sprinted to the finish line and collapsed into the arms of a minister friend, Nicholas Stacey. “It was only then that real pain overtook me,” reported Bannister. “I felt like an exploded flashlight with no will to live.”
A hush came over the crowd as the announcer read Bannister’s time. “Three minutes, 59 seconds ….” In an instant, absolute pandemonium broke out as the crowd realized that they had just witnessed the greatest feat in the history of the mile. In three minutes and 59 seconds, Roger Bannister has shattered the beliefs of a whole realm of professionals. In three minutes and 59 seconds, Roger Banister broke an unbreakable record and ran what came to be known as the “Miracle Mile.”
We can relate to Bannister and others who thought a four-minute mile was impossible. We all have our own impossible four-minute miles. Think about it. What personal goal seems to you to be attractive, alluring, exciting and enticing … but also elusive and maybe even inconceivable? One that “they” say can’t be done?
· Is it getting over bitterness and disappointment?
· Is it having a heart big enough to love your enemies?
· Is it finding the strength to live with constant pain?
· Is it forgetting the past and moving forward through the present?
· Is it having a great marriage?
· Is it learning how to live within your financial means?
The apostle Paul had a particular four-minute mile in mind: the goal of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection (3:10-11). “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead,” he says in verses 10 and 11 of today’s lesson from Philippians Chapter 3. “I want to know Christ.”
Paul was so committed to attaining this goal that he threw himself completely into the race, and said, “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (v. 13-14).
Did he achieve his goal? No doubt about it. And so can we. The good news for us today is that we can run our own personal Miracle Mile.
Let’s begin our training by gleaning some tips from Paul the apostle and Roger the runner, and then take their insights with us into our own personal races. If we begin to think like runners, we’ll develop some daily disciplines that can help us move closer to achieving our personal goals that sometimes seem like the carrot on a stick dangling just out of our reach.
The first tip is to let go of any attitudes that can distract us, dismay us or destroy us as we run the race that lies before us. For Roger Bannister, this meant rejecting the idea that running a mile in less than four minutes could not be done. For the apostle Paul, this meant tossing out his old religious background because he discovered that it was rubbish compared to “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus” (v. 8).
For us, destructive attitudes might include the fear that we will always have to live alone or the fear that we don’t have enough money saved for retirement or the fear that arthritis or another crippling disease will end life as we know it now. When we encounter these attitudes, we need to trash them. They are rubbish, and can get in the way of our goal. Just this past week, I let my imagination get the best of me in thinking about what Larry’s illness could mean to us—losing our house, his eventually being in a wheelchair or needing 24-hour care, my having to give up my calling as a pastor to take a full-time job for insurance benefits and to support us. When I poured out my fears to Larry, he gently chastised me saying, “Goodness sakes! Your faith is stronger than mine—you should know that God will take care of us, He always has.” The Apostle Paul says “if anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more (reason), (Phil 3:4b).” All the advantages he had—his successes, his high position as a Pharisee, his material possessions—all of those things he now says are worthless when compared to knowing Christ.
To be able to say that everything you have accumulated and accomplished in your life is worthless compared to knowing Christ is a profound statement about values. Our personal relationship with Jesus Christ is more important than anything else. To know Him should be our ultimate goal. Thinking about all I might lose in the future also reminded me to ask myself, “Do I place anything above my relationship with Christ? If my priorities are not in correct order, how will I work at getting them so?” In all of this, God reveals to me that I need my sermons as much as you do!
The second tip for the race we must run is to train over time and stick to a schedule. Roger Bannister didn’t decide on the spur of the moment to set a world record, but he worked long and hard in a disciplined way to prepare himself for the Miracle Mile. He had been a competitive runner for years, and then, in the weeks prior to the record-setting race, his training intensity increased. Every day, for one half-hour during his medical school lunch break, he ran 10 quarter-mile races at a pace of 59 seconds a piece. He took breaks of only two minutes between each race.
Not a lazy lunch hour.
This is the same kind of discipline that we are challenged to show as we pursue our own goals. By doing good things a little at a time, week in and week out, we reach the point where we can achieve some very significant objectives. It means having a solid foundation of faith to under gird you in the fearful and uncertain times that will inevitably occur in your life.
To know Christ should be our ultimate goal. There are certain disciplines that we have to incorporate and give priority in our lives for this to happen. We must set aside a specific time and a specific place each day to spend with Jesus. Perhaps it will mean getting up 15 minutes before everyone else in the house so you can be alone with Jesus. Choose one specific time and one specific place you will meet with our Lord daily, then stick to it.
We will also have a program of devotional reading that includes portions of the Bible. It means that we have decided how we will spend some of our spare time, giving up those things that are “rubbish.” It means that we will have a strategy for prayer and a plan for remembering those who need our prayers. One good way would be to tuck your worship bulletin each week into your Bible so you can pray intentionally and daily for the people on our Prayer List.
Helping others in a variety of ways will inspire us and enable us to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2). Brainstorm alone or with a small group ways you can be Jesus to other people. Perhaps it could be making twice as much for supper once each week and taking the extra to a different family. Maybe it’s working a few hours monthly or weekly in the local food bank.
The Apostle Paul reminds us in verses 8 and 9, “…For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.”
What exactly does he mean by that?” No amount of keeping a list of rules, self-improvement or religious effort can make us righteous—right with God. We are made righteous, receiving right standing with Him, by trusting Christ. Faith. That’s what it’s all about. Trust in Christ.
A third tip is this: Expect bad days. Every runner knows that sometimes training feels awful, and as an athlete you have to try to put the bad days behind you and keep moving forward. Even Paul said, “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things…(but) I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings…” (Phil 3:8b,10)
Will we face suffering? No doubt. Will we have setbacks? Certainly. But Paul forcefully states his radical theology of the cross — that the life of discipleship entails sharing in the “sufferings” of Christ (v. 10). What’s more, in order to “know Christ,” the disciple must become “like him in his death” (v. 10), meaning we must consciously “die” to sin. Just as the resurrection gives us Christ’s power to live for Him, his crucifixion marks the death of our old sinful nature.
It would be wonderful if the doctor never had bad news, relationships were nothing but peace and joy and harmony, and churches never lost members or suffered divisions. But we know that disappointment, pain and conflict are part of the daily race we face. Fortunately, God always gives us what we need. Just one of the many promises He gave us is this one from 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” (PAUSE)
Another training tip is: Don’t run alone. Notice that Roger Bannister did not run his Miracle Mile by himself — he was assisted by pacemakers Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway. They ran with him, kept him on track, inspired him and ultimately enabled him to set his amazing world record.
This is the function of the Christ Body. We’re pacemakers for race-makers. Ideally, we call out, watch out, step out and reach out — for each other. We can’t do this alone.
In the end, it is this spiritual Miracle Mile that matters the most. World records in running are remarkable, for sure, but they rarely last very long — and certainly not forever. Roger Bannister’s record was broken about six weeks after he set it. Since then, the time for the mile has consistently dropped, and in 1999 a Moroccan athlete ran one in three minutes, 43 seconds.
The most important race we’ll ever run is the one that ends in resurrection life. Claim the goal to know Christ, or to know Him better, beginning today. Paul said, “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14).
And the last tip for this race we call life? Forget what lies behind and strain forward. We’re challenged to keep our eyes on Christ and trust him to show us the way to go. There are always voices coming from behind, the painful past. It calls you to turn your head around and keep focused on your failures or sins. “How could you have done that?” the past keeps asking. Or it may preoccupy you with the failures and sins of others who hurt you. Either way, the voice from the past makes it impossible to move ahead because it doesn’t let you even face the future. It doesn’t matter how carefully you analyze your shame, or how long you nurture the hurts you’ve collected, you’ll never have a better past.
But when you remain focused on the goal, you can hear the other voice, which calls out to you from heaven. It invites you to keep moving into the future because you are not yet home, the place where you can settle down. You’ll know when you get there, because heaven is the place where you are no longer haunted by the voice from the past.
And as we strain forward to what lies ahead—the heavenly call—it means we have to forgive, forget and turn away from our past failures because that is exactly what God has done.
One of the best posters I’ve seen is by Nike. It shows a runner taking off down a highway in the middle of “nowhere” with nothing in sight. At the top is the caption “No Finish Line.” This is how I see our Christian life. Start giving up the habits that do not glorify Christ, give that extra time to study the Bible each day, take a few extra minutes to help that friend in need.
It is our faith in Christ that will get us closer to that finish line. Faith, combined with the good training of discipline, the support of our fellow runners along the way, and staying forward focused will propel us forward. We should be running in Christ like there is “No Finish Line.” START NOW!
Sources:
Craig Barnes, Weekly Devotional, January 6, 2002, National Presbyterian Church Web Site, Natpresch.org.
“1954: Bannister breaks four-minute mile,” On This Day, BBC Web Site, News.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved August 26, 2003.,br.
“The miracle mile,” Central College Web Site, Central.edu. Retrieved September 15, 2003. James Stogdill, “No Finish Line,” The GC Web Site, Home.bluemarble.net.
Retrieved October 3, 2003.
