“The Gospel According to the Olympics”
Hebrews 12:1-2, 12
Isaiah 40:28-31
Romans 12:3-18, 21
There have been many wonderful memes, highlight reels, commercials, and short videos to come out of the Paris Olympic Games, but my favorite reel of all stars an anonymous fan lying on his bed in an Olympics-overload stupor. Day after day, night after night, he has watched the coverage on television, and now he is seeing yet another sport he knows nothing about.
But something about the play-by-play commentary catches his attention, and he sits up just in time to see eight-person crew teams rowing long, skinny boats—each shell measuring 60 feet long and weighing 200 pounds—flying backwards through the water and swinging in unison. He’s never seen anything like it, and he is hooked.
Over the course of 60 seconds he goes from lying down in boredom to becoming curious, sitting up and starting to cheer, sitting on the edge of his bed and cheering loudly as he pretends to row with a pair of short tubes, jumping up and down and screaming while wearing an inner tube around his waist, to—finally—after the race is over, falling back on his bed in exhaustion while chanting “USA! USA!”
For me, that short, hilarious sequence captures perfectly one of the best things about the Olympics: The pure joy and excitement we can experience while watching other people—people we don’t even know—pursue and sometimes fulfill their dreams as we support those athletes and teams, even if only from our couches, while they give their all.
Right?
And what is that about anyway?
Well, I have a theory, which is that the reason the Olympics and, to a certain extent, lots of sporting events, give us so much joy is that watching other people pursue excellence and fulfillment and a sense of accomplishment and joy—engages something true and deep within us, something universal and God-given.
It’s hard to put a name to that something—because no name or word seems big enough or deep enough or true enough, and because almost every word or phrase I can think of seems either simplistic, cliche, insufficient, hackneyed, downright naive—or all of the above.
But because I believe that “something” is central to who God has made us to be and how God has made us to live, I’m going to try to describe it at least, if not name it.
The words that come to mind when I think of this something are life, purpose, light, vitality, authenticity, spirit, soul, and connection.
I think of the famous dictum attributed to Howard Thurman:
Don ’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
The Olympic Games, you see, are filled with people who have come alive. They have discovered what makes them come alive, and they have not only followed their joy, their passion, their calling, but they have given themselves over to it. They have devoted themselves to it.
And when we see them living out loud, pursuing their passion in a most public and vulnerable way, it awakens a God-given feeling in us. We, too, want to feel alive. We, too, want to know exactly who we are and what we’re called to do. We, too, could benefit from having a defined path with clear objectives. We, too, would love to have the support of family and friends—if not corporations and committees and coaches and nations and teammates—along the way. We, too, would be overjoyed to have folks acknowledge and celebrate our life’s major milestones.
Deep in the human psyche there lies the understanding of life as a journey, a quest—a race, if you will. Every culture and religion has its sacred stories about long, dangerous, and transformative journeys that have less to do with getting us to a particular place than forming us as particular people.
Our own faith tradition has the entire Israelite people wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. It tells of regular people surviving floods and shipwrecks, wrestling with angels, being thrown into a lion’s den or fiery furnace—and living to tell the tale. The gospel speaks of God’s grace stepping into our journeys in such a way that the broken are healed, the lost are found, the hungry are fed, the weary being renewed, and even the dead are raised to new life. The gospel story is, among other things, an invitation to a sacred journey.
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews recounts these and many other faith-filled, grace-shaped, and heroic journeys, and then says, “So let’s run with perseverance the race that is set before us.”
Now, it is my experience that we people of a progressive faith—especially we progressive folks who happen to breathe the air of American individualism—spend much of our lives trying to figure out what our personal race is. What am I called to do? Who am I called to be?
Surely these are important questions, but this morning I would like to direct our attention to a different question, which is Why.
Why are we on a journey? Why are we running a race?
The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus ran his race for the sake of the joy that was set before him. For most of the church’s history, its leaders have told Jesus followers to endure all manner of not only hardship but also injustice for the sake of the joy they would experience in the afterlife.
But Jesus focused on the realm of God within us, the people of God in this time and place, and Jesus himself seemed to care, too, the joy of this life. The joy of eating and celebrating with friends, the joy of community, knowing ourselves beloved of God, the joy of knowing God is always and forever with us, the joy of following his way of love, healing, hope, and living for others as well as ourselves.
Many Olympians have figured this out, too. Day in and day out their lives are neither the thrill of victory nor the agony of defeat, but rather the sacrifice demanded by their pursuit of excellence, the physical toll of grueling training regimens, the monotony of doing the same drills over and over and over again. Their disciplines demand sacrifice, dedication, perseverance, and resilience, and yet the more they succeed, the greater the pressure they feel to be the very best—to win the gold, to make their country proud.
And many of those who have been around awhile have seen that pressure sap their joy and threaten their mental health. So many of the stories I heard in this Olympics were about athletes who had stepped away from their sport for awhile and, with the help of therapy or faith or community, had rediscovered the joy that brought them to it in the first place.
“If it’s not fun,” said one American swimmer, “it’s not right.”
And so it is with us.
Of course, there will be days and entire seasons of our lives when we feel like we can’t go on. There will be moments and even long stretches when we lose sight of the joy and the love, the purpose and the meaning, and life feels more like a slog to be endured than a gift to be enjoyed. There will be basic tasks we have to do and important sacrifices we have to make that are not particularly fun but prepare us and others for joy and fulfillment. This, too, is part of the journey—whether we are couch potatoes or gold medalists.
The New York Times noted that “to become the GOAT [Greatest of All Time], [gymnast] Simone Biles first had to be a turtle. . . . She sealed her legacy with four medals at the Paris Games, [but] she created [that legacy] by being herself and going at her own pace.”
Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade had to overcome abject poverty and three major knee surgeries before she earned the gold medal in the floor exercise, but when she did, silver and bronze medalists Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles bowed down to her, and the three women created the first all-black podium in Olympics gymnastics.
Noah Lyles, now considered the world’s fastest man, has asthma, allergies, dyslexia, ADD, anxiety, and depression. “But what you have does not define what you can become,” he says.
Stephen Nedoroscik, aka Pommel Horse Guy, is a nerdy specialist who suffers from low vision—and yet he helped the USA men’s gymnastics team win a bronze medal. “Thank you to everybody who has supported me throughout my journey,” he said. “I am just a man shaped by those who have surrounded me, and I couldn’t have done it without any of you.”
I could go on, of course.
But what I really want to do is encourage us to think about it is how it is with as we run the race that is our life.
Even on the hard days, even in the discouraging seasons, are we keeping our eyes on the prize of the joy God wants for us? Are we finding ways to draw on the power God has given us, the blessings we receive every day, the ever-present love that is being poured out upon us, the hope that sustains us, the community of family, friends, and church that surrounds us and supports us?
One of the most poetic passages in our scriptures speaks of God giving power to the faint and strength to the powerless. It promises that those who wait for God shall renew their strength and mount up with wings like eagles; we will run and not be weary; we will walk and not faint.
It is a most beautiful promise and, if we’re honest, perhaps a little hard to relate to sometimes.
So, if that doesn’t encourage you to keep going on the hard days, I invite you to consider this:
The God who is love, the God who created you for love and for life abundant, the God who so longs to be with you that they became one of you so they could walk the journey and run the race with you, is empowering you and providing what you need to become the person you were created to be and know deep joy along the way.
Imagine that God taking notice of your dreams and your struggles, your pains and your hopes, and being right there with you in them. Imagine that God—a God much more powerful and engaged than a couch potato watching the Olympics on TV—cheering madly for you every step of the way.
Know, beloveds, that you do not run this race alone. Know that there is an entire community of Jesus-follower cheerleaders right here that is with you in it.
May we pick one another up when we fall. May we encourage each other to keep going when we feel like giving up. May we celebrate each other when we succeed. May we honor one another and live at peace with all. And may we share with one another and with all people all the joys and gifts of this blessed life.
Amen.
