The Fitness Trinity I: Endurance Exercise -- FPC sermon excerpt

This is the first of three messages on a topic that you don’t hear talked about in church very often — the link between spiritual fitness and physical fitness. This has been a passion of mine since I attended a most unusual worship service in New York City several Novembers ago.

Early one Sunday morning, I was among several hundred people crowded into a large tent for prayers, singing, Scripture‑reading and Holy Communion. We were a diverse group — in age, race and denomination — full of enthusiasm and nervous energy. But unlike your average Sunday morning churchgoers, we were all dressed in running clothes. The preacher encouraged us to pray for everyone we passed on the course that morning, and for everyone who passed us. Then we went out and ran 26.2 miles.

This was not your normal after-church activity.

That interdenominational worship service was held before the start of the New York City Marathon, and it served as a wake‑up call for me. For years, I had focused my Christian ministry on the soul, and I had seen the flesh as somehow less important. But that morning I caught sight of a movement that is seeking to reclaim an ancient truth: The truth that spirituality involves more than just the spirit — it also includes the body.

Look around our country, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The Baptist church up the street from my home is offering “Christian Yoga,” which presents elements of the Hindu practice of yoga in an intentionally Christ‑centered setting. Other churches feature weight‑loss classes with names like “Jesus Is the Weigh” — not spelled W-A-Y, as you’d expect, but W-E-I-G-H. Book publishers are turning out titles such as The Maker's Diet, outlining a “Biblically correct” eating plan, and Honoring the Body. While some of this is just a fad, I believe it reflects a very positive development in religious thought. After 2,000 years of being largely separated, body and spirit are finally coming back together.

But what does all this have to do with our relationship with Jesus? When you read the New Testament, you can’t help but notice that Jesus sees the body as a good gift of God, and he rejoices in the pleasures of touch and taste. Jesus comes on the scene in the Gospel of Mark as a man of action: curing the sick, casting out demons, cleansing a leper, and healing a paralytic — clearly, he cares deeply about the health of human bodies (2:13-19).

Jesus goes around saving people from illness, destruction and death, and then at the very end of his ministry he gives us the gift of his very own body, saying, “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matthew 26:26). He doesn’t say this is my mind, or this is my spirit — he says, this is my body. From the very beginning, Christianity has taken seriously the fact that God came to earth in a human body — “the Word became flesh and lived among us,” says the Gospel of John (1:14). This means that there is something good and important about our human flesh.

The bottom line is that Christian spirituality involves both spirit and body. Because of this, both our worship on Sunday morning and our work-outs throughout the week are critical elements in a life of health and spiritual growth. God has given each of us the gift of a body, and he wants us to take good care of this gift. In addition, the apostle Paul teaches that our body is nothing less than the “temple of the Holy Spirit,” and therefore we are to glorify God in our body.

But are we doing it? Are we caring for this gift? Are we glorifying God in it?

Or are we neglecting this gift, and dishonoring God?

I’m convinced that we can all do a better job of caring for the gift of our body, and glorifying God in it. To do this, I want to introduce you to “The Fitness Trinity,” which has been devised by my friend Vik Khanna, an exercise coach and health educator. The Fitness Trinity is simple, memorable, and, I believe, quite biblical. Like the Holy Trinity of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Fitness Trinity cannot be found in the Bible, but it is a formulation that is true to the Bible.

You might be surprised to learn that the word “Trinity” never appears in the Bible. But almost every Christian has come to accept that God is, in fact, a Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is nothing wrong with building new understandings on the foundation of Holy Scripture.

The Fitness Trinity consists of three parts: Endurance exercise, strength training, and good nutrition. Each has an important role to play in our physical and spiritual health.

Endurance exercise is any exercise that puts you into motion and requires you to use the biggest muscles in your body — your legs, hips, and rear end. Endurance exercise can include walking, running, or riding a bike, but it should be done vigorously, for at least 30 minutes at a time, and at least 3 times per week.

Since I turned 40 back in the year 2000, I’ve been doing a lot of running. I had never been a runner back in high school, and I avoided it pretty successfully during my young adult years. Then a friend challenged me, on my 40th birthday, to join him in running the Marine Corps Marathon. I thought he was crazy.

The marathon was still six months away, however, and my friend convinced me that I could train for it in that amount of time. I started out slowly … very slowly. I would go out and exercise for an hour at a time — running for 3 minutes, walking for 7, running for 3 minutes, walking for 7. Three minutes of running at a time was about all I could endure. But the next week, I ran for 4 minutes and walked for 6, ran for 4 minutes and walked for 6. After seven weeks of training in this way, I made it to the point where I could run for a full hour.

That was the key to my ability to complete a marathon — starting slowly, and building up my running time … one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours. I would sometimes let the words from the letter to the Hebrews cycle through my mind, “let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2). Over the years, my marathon training has become a running meditation for me, and I have been amazed by the clarity of thought — along with the occasional agony of the body — that I experience during my workouts. This exercise cuts through the clutter of life and offers the gift of simplicity — if only for a few hours a week. There are no phones to answer, no bills to pay, no sermons to write — only the path that lies ahead. I have come to love the freedom that running provides me to think and dream and pray and problem‑solve, and I find myself becoming tense and irritable when the opportunity to exercise is taken away from me.