Sermon for the 10th Sunday after Trinity

Sunday 15th August 2004

Preached by Rev Paul Hewitt

Citius! Altius! Fortius! … or is it the other way around? Anyway, it’s all started, sixteen days of Olympic sport, the crowning glory of an athlete’s career, and what is it they have said, “Legends will be re-made”. And the human body (and indeed the human spirit) will be stretched to go faster, jump higher and be stronger. I often wonder, in my day-dreaming mode, if the athletes are continually getting faster, and all the rest, I presume the record for the 100 meters is going to come down even further. Are we then going to get to a point where athletes are going to run the 100 metres not in 9.8 seconds, but 0.8 seconds!?

My wife Christine and I were once on the ancient planes of Olympia (where it all began in 776 BC) and I persuaded her to run the 100 meters with me in the ancient stadium, because I would’ve looked completely foolish on my own! I knew it would be the nearest I’d ever get to the actual Olympic games. The Ancient Olympic Games lasted until 393 AD when it was banned as a “pagan cult”.

At the opening ceremony, the great ideals of the Olympic games were expounded. The ideals of fair play, brotherhood, peace among nations and so on. Ideals which we would all conform and adhere to. And it was wonderful to see some of the 202 countries represented, including such grief-stricken places like Sudan, Iraq and others. To see the Olympic flag of five intersecting circles of Blue, Black, Red, Yellow and Green, one colour of which appears on every flag in the world. The games has come home to the place of its birth, Greece.

Even if you’re not a sport’s fan, you can appreciate the kind of spirit that the games brings; the ideal that it brings friendship and cooperation between the nations.
And it is given all that kind of background that I have had great difficulty with the NT reading for this morning.

It is a very disturbing thought that Jesus came not to bring peace, but division. The fact is, that his teaching did bring division and heartache. He knew that it would, and that is what he meant. To say it so plainly was a shock tactic, and includes a quotation from Micah which warns of imminent danger. This crisis is a crisis of which his own fate will be the central feature – this ‘Baptism’’ which he must still undergo, . And he is astonished and dismayed that so few of his contemporaries can see it at all.

All this doesn’t negate his message of love and forgiveness. The reality of it all today isn’t whether you are for or against Jesus’ teaching; the reality is that most people don’t even care, or at least they are not listening. Other gods and other concerns have become much more important. Indeed, dare I say it on such a day, there is a concern that sports, far from being simply a threat to ‘religion’, have actually become a religion. Whereas the ancient games of Greece were dedicated to the Olympian gods, especially Zeus, the modern Olympic games are dedicated to no god at all. I remember a rugby coach many years ago saying to a group of us that rugby is his religion, and he meant it. The modern games demands a kind of commitment which supersedes anything we have known before. It demands, as Stephen Redgrave has said, an obsession. If you want to get to the top you need to be obsessed by the goal to get there. The competition is so great that we can all understand this drive.

In 1980, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. As a protest, American President Jimmy Carter ordered the U.S. boycott of the Olympics, which that year were to be held in Moscow. You remember all that. There were huge outcries at the time that this action had dashed lifetime hopes and dreams and even destroyed the meaning of life for so many athletes.

During the whole crisis, one very brave and thoughtful athlete reflected on some of the positive aspects that had come from this crisis. He even went on to express a certain gratitude at the cancellation of the games, because over the previous five years he had sacrificed friendships and family and pursuits of all kinds for the sake of sport. He felt foolish that he had given so much of himself to something which could be taken away so abruptly.

There are not many of us who can ever have hoped to have been on an Olympic team, and for those who are supreme enough at their sport, the window of opportunity is very small, so I think they should go for it with all their heart.

But at the end of the day, it is such a fleeting thing. However grateful we may be to the excellence of sport and the joy and the fun it brings, it is not our religion. To us ordinary mortals, or at least that’s most of us, sport, for all the good it does, it is not one of those ‘other gods’ or ‘other concerns’.

If you are a sports fan, I simply want to say that I hope you enjoy the next two weeks. And if I may also say this, at the very end, (and I did get permission!) but look out for a certain Michael Williamson! Who’s Michael? Michael Williamson is a grandson of our own Rosemary Johnson, and on Tuesday morning he is competing in the heats of the 200-metre breaststroke for Ireland. It begins at 9.10 am, and Michael is in the very last heat. So don’t forget to look out for him!

In an interview, as he was leaving, Michael said, “I’m just going to enjoy it”

A fitting end!