Fix Your Eyes

Hebrews 12:1-3

February 20, 2022 • Mont Pleasant UMC

I don’t care how old you are, we’ve all done it. Let’s say you’re getting ready in the morning to go to work or to embark on the day’s activities, and when you start to head outside, the wind is a bit colder than you thought it was. So you decide you’d better grab a sweater, an extra layer of warmth, and that causes you to head toward the bedroom to grab said sweater. When you get there, you look around at the room and you wonder, “What did I come in here for?” Anyone? Or you go upstairs and then can’t remember why you went up there. Anyone? Just me? Okay. Well, friends, I have good news for you this morning: you are not losing your mind. What’s happening is a phenomenon called “The Doorway Effect.” Yep, there’s been real, scientific research done though the people who did it can’t remember it. (That was a joke…or an attempt at one.) Anyway, when you decide to do something, that “something” is stored in short-term memory and your brain associates it with the place you decided on it. So when you change locations, the brain shifts with the location and other things come to mind, things that are particularly associated with that location. That’s why you can often remember what you wanted if you go back to where you were before. The brain reshuffles and voila—the memory comes back. Our memories are tied to the environment we’re in at the time. That’s also why when you go back to your childhood home, for instance, you will remember things you thought you had long forgotten, or why a particular smell brings back other memories. It’s “The Doorway Effect,” and it is incredibly complicated by a world in which there are so many things, particularly things on screens, that are pulling at and vying for our attention. The brain was not made for multi-tasking, no matter what business gurus tell you. We can only really focus on one thing at a time, but with so many things in front of us, it becomes harder and hard to focus on any of them. We’re becoming more like Dory than we like to admit (https://bbc.in/3sm7gcM).

The word “focus” is a Latin word that originally referred to the hearth, the fireplace where, in earlier times, meals were cooked and from which vital heat was provided. In those days, the hearth was the focus of the home, the center. Today, “focus” refers to the ability to stay centered, to concentrate intently. Our focus is the place where we apply our energy and our passion. And it’s something we need, something we have to work to develop. In our rapidly-moving, never-satisfied, multi-tasking age, we need to learn again how to focus on the things that give passion to our lives. We have so many things vying for our attention—where is our focus? What is our passion? Those who have been competing at the Olympics in Beijing know about this. In order to be there, they had to approach everything with a singular focus. They went to Beijing with a single goal in mind: they wanted to win gold for themselves and for their country. And they went determined not to quit, because history has repeatedly shown that the games aren’t over until everyone has competed. So many times, competitors who appear to have lost end up coming from behind to take the gold—and vice versa. There are always times where the predicted winner ended up not being on the podium at the end. Nevertheless, every athlete in Beijing had a goal in mind: to win a medal, perhaps set a world record or an Olympic record. They have competed in these games with their eyes fixed on their goal and they have given their all to reach it.

Today, as the Olympics come to a close, we’re wrapping up this series of sermons based on Hebrews 12 in which we’ve been seeking to go for “More Than Gold.” We have talked about remembering the witnesses and the importance of removing every hindrance. We also talked about recovering from injuries when we’re hurt, and all of those things are only possible if we do one other thing Hebrews says to do in this passage: “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. 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” (12:1-2). Underlying everything else that has been said in this chapter is this call to always fix our eyes on Jesus.

He is, after all, the “pioneer and perfecter of faith” (12:2). The author reminds his readers that everything they need is found in Jesus. He was there in the beginning and he is the one who designed our faith, the one who shows us the way to go. The New Living Translation (Pastor Rick’s favorite) puts it this way: Jesus is the one “upon whom our faith depends from start to finish.” If we don’t have Jesus, we don’t have a faith and we don’t have any hope. He is the one we should be looking toward in every situation. Even in an Olympics where spectators were mostly not allowed, there was still one important person who accompanied each athlete not only to Beijing but to the field of competition—their coach. That’s who each athlete always looks for after they compete. The coach is the one who has been with them all along, and that’s whose approval they’re looking for, whose encouragement they listen for. As Christians, we look toward the day when we hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It’s his approval we look for, not anyone else’s, and when we come to the end of our race, he is the one we want to see because he is the one “upon whom our faith depends from start to finish” (Wright, Hebrews for Everyone, pg. 150).

Paul talks about this same motivation in his letter to the Philippians. In that letter, he talks about his deepest desire, his goal and focus in life, which is to know Christ. He wants to identify so much with Jesus that he shares in Jesus’ sufferings (3:10). Nothing else matters to Paul except knowing Christ. And then he goes on to say this; listen to these words:

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:12-14).

“I press on,” Paul writes, “to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me” (3:12). Paul’s main motivation, his focus, his only reason to keep running in the race of life is the fact that he has been loved by Jesus Christ. His eyes are fixed on Jesus, and earning his approval is the goal Paul reaches for. “I press on,” he says, “toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (3:14). And it’s not as if Paul’s “race” was an easy one. He tells the Corinthians he went through imprisonments, floggings, beaten with rods (in fact, five times he was beaten nearly to death), stoning, multiple shipwrecks (after one of which he was adrift at sea for a night and a day), bandits, sleepless nights, hunger and cold. Then he says, “Besides everything else [as if that wasn’t enough!], I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:23-28). Paul knew about being stressed out. Paul knew about pressure. Paul knew about having many things demanding his focus. What kept him going? He fixed his eyes on Jesus, and everything else fell into proper perspective. Paul pressed on toward the goal because the reward, the prize that was waiting for him was worth more than gold.

Olympic athletes know about focusing on the goal. One of the stories that captured my attention over the last two weeks was that of Nick Baumgartner. Baumgartner was the oldest athlete on the US team, maybe the oldest at the Olympics, at the ripe old age of 40. He is a snowboardcross racer, and for four previous Olympics, he had failed to get on the podium. When he failed to get in the finals in his own race, he told a reporter he was heartbroken. “I don’t think people know how much we put into this.” he went on. “I put so much time and effort, and then one little mistake, and it’s gone. I’m 40 years old. I mean, I’m running out of chances.” But Baumgartner wasn’t done. He had a team event with fellow snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis, and they put their heart and soul into it. I watched them qualify for the final race, but the actual race was going to be in the middle of the night Indiana time. So the next morning, I went to my news app to see if they had won—and they had. Then I watched the race. It was tense. It was intense. But you could see the hearts and the attitudes of both racers as they attacked that course. Their eyes were fixed on the goal; there was only one end that was acceptable to both of them, particularly Baumgartner, and that was the gold medal. One writer described it as “the most intensely human moments of the 2022 Beijing Games” and an example of why people love the Olympics. Watch his reaction while his partner is racing and see if you don’t agree.

VIDEO: Nick Baumgartner

Baumgartner is not the best snowboarder of all time, but he fixed his eyes on the goal and he was willing to endure whatever it took to reach it. And reach it he did. Fixing your eyes makes all the difference.

Here’s why we fix our eyes on Jesus, according the Hebrews: “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame” (12:2). The cross was not something anyone longed for or embraced. It was horribly painful (the word “excruciating” means “out of the cross”), absolutely demeaning, and incredibly shameful. It looked like a defeat. Yet the Scriptures remind us that Jesus chose the cross, and he did so, Hebrews says, because he was able to look beyond the cross to the coming joy, “the joy of bringing salvation to those he loves” (Morris, “Hebrews,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 12, pg. 134). So, Hebrews says, even when it seems like you can’t win and when the situation in life seems impossible, fix your eyes on Jesus and remember that he’s been through everything we go through and worse (Wright 150). Hebrews says, “Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” (12:3).

It’s hard to “fix our eyes” when you have bad vision like I do. Without my contacts, I can’t focus on anything, and even with them I still sometimes need cheater glasses to help see the smaller print. I’m thankful for the lenses that help me focus my physical vision, and I wonder if a couple of another kind of “lenses” might help us fix our eyes on Jesus. These are both fairly simple and tangible and anyone can do them. The first “lens” is to make Christ our first and last thought of the day, to train ourselves to pray the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. Even before you get out of the bed, you can pray a simple prayer: “Lord, thank you that I have another day.” And before we go to sleep, we can pray, “Lord, thank you for all the blessings and all the challenges of this day.” Or you might say the Lord’s Prayer or sing a favorite hymn or chorus. I often wake up with a song in my head, and I try to see that as prayer, or as, perhaps, God setting the tone for my day (though I tend not to sing out loud too early because Cathy doesn’t appreciate “morning people”). The Wesley Covenant Prayer that I gave you a few weeks ago is a good way to start your day; I have a musical version of it memorized that I often sing (again, usually just in my head) before I get out of bed. Another well-known prayer comes from Saint Patrick of Ireland. His prayer is much too long to read in its entirety this morning (I’ll post the entire prayer on Facebook later today, if you’re interested), but according to tradition, Patrick’s morning prayers began like this:

I arise today through a mighty strength,

the invocation of the Trinity,

through a belief in the Threeness,

through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.

Now, that’s kind of wordy, but the point is this: his morning prayer reminded him what he believed, especially affirming the Trinity. Then, in a part of the prayer you might recognize, he prayed,

Christ with me

Christ before me

Christ behind me

Christ in me

Christ beneath me

Christ above me…

Christ when I lie down

Christ when I sit down

Christ when I arise…

Christ in the eye that sees me

Christ in the ear that hears me.

And so on. Patrick spent his day looking for Christ literally everywhere because he spent time first thing in the morning fixing his eyes on Jesus. Making Christ the first and last thought of our day places our focus where it needs to be for the entire day. It helps us fix our eyes on Jesus.

Then there's the rest of our day, which leads me to think of my daughter when she was younger. Actually, some of you knew Rachel when she was dancing for Terre Haute South, but her dancing career goes way back to when she was three years old. We were actually on a vacation at my aunt’s house in Rockville, Maryland, and she happened upon a dance recital in a community center. When she came out of that building, she informed Cathy and I, “I’m going to be a dancer.” Now, when I heard that, I heard, “I want to take dance classes,” and actually we figured by the time we got home to Indiana she would have forgotten about it. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and so at age 3 Rachel enrolled in her first dance class. But there came a point when I realized that, during that part of her life, it wasn’t that she was taking dance. She was a dancer. She didn’t walk from one place to another in the house; she danced. She would twirl and gracefully glide. She didn’t dance; she was a dancer. Here’s my point (and no one is wondering more what that point is right now than Rachel): we want to get to the point where our faith is not just something that we enroll in a class for or where we just devote an hour a week to some sort of religious practice like Sunday worship. We want to come to the place where this faith is who we are. The goal is that our faith becomes something that is so engrained that the natural thing for us is to pray, the natural thing for us is to read our Scriptures, the natural thing for us is to respond to everything out of our faith. What might it look like to frame our entire day, for instance, in prayer, in connection with Jesus?

I had gone for many years, decades even, without wearing a watch. I kept telling people that my phone told me the time and I was rarely if ever without my phone. And then along came the Apple Watch, and at first I said I didn’t want to wear a watch again. Then they added a whole lot of health monitoring benefits, and I had a second heart surgery, and suddenly wearing a watch that could help monitor my health made a lot of sense. But one of the things my watch does, something some people find annoying, is tell me to stand. If I’ve been sitting down for 50 minutes, it will ping at me and tell me it’s time to stand. If it pings here at the office, I will get up and do at least one lap around the sanctuary or maybe around the whole church. Why do I do that? Why do I let a piece of technology boss me around? Because I know there are health benefits in getting up and moving around. It’s not because of the watch, really; it’s because I need a reminder to do healthy things. And I need a reminder to do healthy spiritual things, too. I’m guessing you do, too. If you have a smart watch that tells you to do things, what if you used that reminder to not only do the healthy thing but to also offer a prayer? Or if your phone can be made to remind you of things, use that to ping you that it’s time to pray. Or if you’re truly old fashioned, put a post-it note on the refrigerator and every time you go to get something out of it, pray for a moment. Many of us pray along with our devotions, maybe in the morning or in the evening, but you know as well as I do that there are other things that come up during the day. What if, instead of promising to pray for someone, we actually prayed, right then and there? Or we prayed for them the next time our phone or watch pinged? Let’s get creative in finding ways to connect with Jesus many times through the day, to fix our eyes again and again on the one who went to the cross for us.

And yes, there may be some people (maybe a lot of people) who won’t understand what we’re doing. There are people who don’t understand why those athletes in Beijing give up a huge piece of their lives to become better at their sport. They do small things that might seem silly or useless in order to pursue a bigger goal. So can we. People will tell us prayer doesn’t “work,” that it’s small and unimportant. But proving our worth to others or making everyone happy is not the goal we’re reaching for. We’re reaching for “the prize for which God has called [us] heavenward in Christ Jesus” (3:14). We’re seeking to be like Paul, who said, “One thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead” (3:13). Can we get to the point where nothing else matters except becoming more like Jesus, fixing our eyes on him every moment of every day? It’s a process; spiritual champions are not made overnight. But we’re in this race for the long haul.

And we can’t really run this race alone. We need others to run with us. Just like Nick Baumgartner, that I mentioned earlier, found he couldn’t win the gold medal by himself, he needed a partner, we too will find that it’s vital that we’re connected to a small group of some sort. I mentioned this last week as well, that it might be a Celebrate Recovery group, or a group that engages in a ministry like Yarn Spinners, or a LifeGroup. In a church our size, we can’t possibly connect with people on a deep enough level just in Sunday morning worship. We need others who will be there for us in good times and in difficult times. We need people with whom we can “do life,” people who will help us fix our eyes on Jesus. Maybe someone else can say it better than I can. Take a listen to some folks from my group.

VIDEO: LifeGroup Perspectives

As I told you last week, if you’re looking for a LifeGroup, we’ve tried to make it pretty easy to sign up. You go to our website, mtpchurch.net, and click on “Small Groups.” Right there at the top is a “Small Group Interest Form,” so just fill that out and a notification will go to our small group coordinator. Do it today, maybe even do it now, before you lose your focus and forget what it was you were doing.

It’s absolutely vital to our spiritual survival that we have the right focus. One more Olympic story before we close this chapter. In the 1996 summer Olympic games in Atlanta, the United States women’s softball team was playing against Australia. In the fifth inning of that game, American Danielle Tyler hit a home run over the center-field fence. She flew around the bases in a rush of adrenaline and sped toward home plate. There, she was greeted by a swarm of well-wishing teammates, but in her hurry to celebrate, she forgot to touch home plate. She lost her focus, and when all of the excitement subsided, the Australian team appealed to the umpire who called Tyler out. Rather than scoring a run, Tyler’s blast over the fence gave her team an out. Had she kept her focus and done the quick and simple thing of stepping on home plate, her team would have won 1-0. Instead, in extra innings, Australia emerged with a 2-1 win and the U.S. team took their only loss in the Olympics, all due to a lack of focus. Now they did go on to win the gold medal, but Danielle Tyler never forgot the moment she took her eyes off the goal and focused instead on the crowd.

Hebrews says, “Reach for the goal; fix your eyes on Jesus, for he alone knows the way to get home.” Are you aiming toward “more than gold”? Are we focused on the goal? Remember the witnesses. Remove all hindrances. Recover from injuries. And fix your eyes on Jesus. Let’s pray.