I’m surprised, as I write this, to discover myself
confessing that I was more excited about the opening ceremonies than I was about the
Green Bay Packer’s last appearance and win in the Super Bowl and the St. Louis
Cardinals appearance and win in the World Series (both 2011). Given that these two share the top spot
as my favorite sports teams, I’m compelled to ask myself why. I do not have a commitment to any
particular athlete like I do either of the sports franchises nor do I think I
am as patriotic as most Americans.
And though I always cheer for the Americans to win, I find that I’m
genuinely excited for the all the winners, regardless of their country of
origin, in a way that I could never be for the Minnesota Vikings or the
SEC.
Maybe it’s because the Olympics are really about more
than athletics. Because I have a
deep love for rankings, brackets, and all things sports-comparison, I’m a
regular participant in ESPN’s polling questions. Tonight I was asked to rank the best American Olympians of all
time. ESPN offered me 10 athletes
to choose from. I was immediately
confronted by the question, “how am I ranking them?” By the numbers?
Phelps hands down! By
Significance? Jesse Owens ...
that’s who I picked. His episode in the 1936 Berlin Olympics means more to the development of human history than
Phelps 14 gold medals. The
Olympics offer a different sort of commentary on the state of the world. They demand that hundreds of the
nations come together and confront the fact that before we are American,
Canadian, Afghani, Russian, Iraqi, we are all human, whether our/their
respective political establishments want to acknowledge that or not.
Two facebook comments stuck out to me as we approached this
Olympic season. The first I got
from Anne Lamott via my friend Craig.
She said:
“The only thing that could possibly save this country right
now is in fact starting up in eight days--the Olympics. The timing feels like a
miracle. My dressage horse Eric has just been sitting around my office for the
last two weeks, eating cinnamon toast, so I don't think we are going to get to
compete. But I will watch it all, and my belief is that two billion of us
worldwide are going to experience this collective show of greatness as a salve
to our minds and spirits, like when a few billion of us get to watch a solar
eclipse together. A hush falls over the whole world, like a mantilla, and then
gasps of amazement, and gratitude to be out of the prison of our thinking and
self-absorption and anxiety and greed. We get to watch the Olympics together,
holding our one great human breath and cheering others on. Wow.”
Yes, Wow. Visa
just ran an add on my television, even they got it right “Go World.”
Though I do not consider the Olympics an explicitly
Christian extravaganza, I do not consider them an un-Christian
extravaganza. That is because, as
UBC has taught me, the division between the sacred and the secular is a bad
one. The community has helped me
develop the skill not of detecting if something is beautiful, but why
something is beautiful.
In my last semester at Truett, I took my capstone
class—Reconciliation. I had little
interest in the topic and made the choice out of scheduling
convenience. But as is often the
case, if we take the time to expose ourselves to new ideas, themes, and
concepts, we learn something. What
surprised me in that class, was how pervasive that theme is within the
Bible. Of everything I read, I
found myself particularly taken with Ephesians 2. Here, as is often the case with Paul’s epistles, he is
talking about Jew/Gentile relationships.
In 2:16 describing what the cross does, Paul says:
“and [Jesus] might reconcile both groups to God in one body
through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.”
The reason this surprised me, I now know, is because as an
American Western Protestant under the spell of the Reformation, I was latently
(and exclusively) taught that the cross was about Jesus taking my sin so that I
could go to heaven. It’s not that,
that is not true, it’s just that, that is not the only thing that is true.
Atonement may be unique in that it’s the one theological issue that does not
demand a right answer or even the best answer. Scot McKnight offers a nice metaphor when he suggests that
atonement theories are like golf clubs.
Depending where you are on the course, you use a different club. Christus Victor, Penal Substitution,
Satisfaction, Ransom, Recapitulation, etc. They all make use of language that permeates the New
Testament. The lesson to be
learned is that the cross did a lot of things.
Jesus didn’t just die to save sinners from hell, he died for
a heaven full of different kinds of saints.
The other comment I noted from Facebook, I consider
theological exposition of Lamott’s commentary. My friend Emily posted this:
“The way I figure, the Olympic parade of nations may be a
beautiful, tiny preview of what it will look like when all of the earth's
nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues are streaming into the new Jerusalem at
the center of the "new heavens and new earth" (Rev 21-22). Behold,
Christ is making all things new!”
Indeed! To
bolster the statement I add Revelation 5:9-10. A ditty from the Eschatological Victory Chior:
“9They sing a new song:
‘You are worthy to take the scroll and
to open its seals,
for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed
for God
saints from every tribe and language and people and nation;
10 you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God,
and they
will reign on earth.’”
In the last few years the phrase “thin places” has gained
traction within Christian writing and speech. It’s an idea from the Celtic tradition that describes the
places where the boundary between heaven and earth seems especially thin. Perhaps what we witness in the Olympics
is about more than cycling, running, swimming and even great stories narrated
by Bob Costas. Perhaps what are
witnessing is a thin place--the nature
of things to come.
loved this. thanks for writing.
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