Ethics of the Olympics and the race of faith
A sermon by Kenneth Padley
Readings: Job 28, Hebrews 11.17-31
Last Sunday my colleague the Youth Missioner preached about a tree. In the spirit of continuity, let me begin with another. Nestled in the foothills of the White Mountains in northwestern Crete is a small settlement called Upper Vouves. Here at the crossing of two winding roads, just to the west of the village church, stands an olive tree. The height and circumference of its crown are like the many millions of other mature olives which ring the Mediterranean. But this belies the truth which is revealed by the massive girth of this olive’s trunk. Because of those many millions of olives which ring the Mediterranean, the ancient olive of Vouves is the oldest of them all. Scientific calculations date it to between three and five thousand years old. It is an extraordinary survivor, one of the oldest living things on our planet. Year by year it has sprouted leaves and produced fruit while powerful cultures and violent peoples have come and gone around it – Minoans, Myceneans, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Byzantines, Venetians, Ottomans, Nazis. Such is the significance of the ancient olive of Vouves, that when the Olympic Games returned to Greece in 2004, the victors of the very first and the very last contests were awarded a wreath cut from its branches.
With the Olympic Games in full swing once more, commentators are posing questions about the ethical issues, the metaphorical garlands, which encircle this greatest of athletic gatherings. Some are perennial questions about morality in sport: how can athletes be best supported through training which stretches them to their limits without becoming abusive and controlling?; how can prestigious lucrative events like the Olympics be organised without descending into corruption and bribery?; how can economic redevelopment and grassroots excellence in sport be fostered as lasting legacies of the vast up-front cost to the host city? And then there are controversies which beset each individual Games: in the case of Paris 2024 this includes a reinterpretation of Leonardo da Vinci during the opening ceremony, challenges posed by trans-gender athletes, and the sticky issue of sewage in the river Siene.
For me, such criticisms – pointed though they are – are vastly outweighed by the moral good which accompanies the Olympics and similar sporting jamborees. This great quadrennial contest unites sportspeople from across the globe in peaceful competition, while fostering understanding and celebrating diversity among the nations of the world. For the competitors, it gives an opportunity to test their ability against the very best. For the masses, we have a month of wonder and entertainment across our TV screens. I say a month and not a fortnight because, of course, the Paralympics have done so much to raise the profile of disability sport and access to sport for everyone.
Two thousand years ago, when the ancient Olympics were still contemporary but the olive tree of Vouves was already ancient, a peripatetic pedaller of polemic from Palestine used the imagery of sporting accolades as a metaphor for the spiritual life: ‘Do you not know’, wrote St Paul, ‘that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable garland, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.’ (I Corinthians 9.24-27)
Paul was issuing an exhortation to his readers in Corinth. He wanted to promote a Christian life which is visibly distinct from the untrained, flabby spirituality of the world. Paul knew that in order to be evangelistically alluring, Christians needed to stand out. To attract positive attention from their friends, family and neighbours, they needed to be deliberate in mission – not boxing the air aimlessly – and they needed to be morally irreproachable – enslaving their bodies, to use Paul’s terminology.
Paul also talks in this passage about pursuing an imperishable garland. In this, he is pushing the limits of his metaphor because, of course, Christian salvation is not competitive. One person will hardly be excluded from God’s love because another Christian is faster, higher or stronger in their religious life. Indeed, none of us is so fast, so high or so strong as to merit the joys of heaven through our own abilities. St Paul is well aware of this, writing elsewhere about justification through faith, people put right with God not because of what they do but because of their trust in Jesus.
This significance of faith is also in the mind of the writer of tonight’s second lesson from Hebrews. Hebrews was included within the New Testament because the early Church assumed it to be a letter written by St Paul. In reality, it is no more a letter than it is the output of Paul. However, its emphasis in chapter 11 into chapter 12 on faith as the virtue which binds people together within God’s story is straight out of Paul’s playbook.
This emphasis in Hebrews on faith was enthusiastically lapped up by Protestant reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They particularly warmed to the way in which chapter 11 not only retells the history of salvation, but how that great roll call of faith, including (as we heard) Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Rahab, terminates in the person of Jesus and in those who believe in him today. Chapter 11 concludes ‘Yet all these [the Old Testament heroes] though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, without us, be made perfect.’
According to the writer of Hebrews, even though these saints lived before Jesus they were, nonetheless, saved through faith in Jesus because they anticipated his advent. We heard about such proleptic faith when tonight’s passage commented on the example of Moses abandoning the comforts of Pharaoh’s court because – verse 26 – ‘he considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward’.
The writer of Hebrews knew that Christians run a spiritual race not because they hope to earn a victor’s garland, but simply because they are compelled to run by faith itself. Chapter 12 makes a vital deduction from the roll call of heroes when it asserts ‘since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…’ Faith inspires perseverance in good works, even when the race is long, hard and sweaty.
As we enjoy the Olympics and Paralympics over the weeks ahead, reveling in the athletic prowess which is so worthily rewarded with earthly garlands, let us remember that the Christian race, though demanding, is not a competition but a race which is open to all who, through grace, pass the starting post of trust in Jesus.