Tag Archives: Olympics

Olympians shine through — God is good, there is hope.

A life in the Spirit, , ,

I was so happy when NBC allowed Jesus to have the last frame of their broadcast of the Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony. The enormous statue of Christ the Redeemer is unmistakable on the Rio de Janeiro skyline and they did not ignore it, as I somehow expected them to do.

I don’t know if Jesus blesses the Olympics. Surely he is grateful for them if only because he would like to bless Americans with a breather from their soul-numbing politics. But I can’t help but think the Lord must be pleased with the games, whether people receive his blessing or not, because they show that humans are a splendid creation.

The Olympic Games are a great place to see our splendor in many ways. For one thing, the modern Olympics are such a great piece of idealism. The Olympic Hymn so beautifully sung by children from the favela during the opening is full of hope:

Let fraternity and fellowship
Surround the soul of every nation.
Oh flame, eternal in your firmament so bright
Illuminate us with your everlasting light.
That grace and beauty and magnificence
Shine like the sun
Blazing above.
Bestow on us your honor, truth and love.

What’s more, if you watched the opening ceremonies (between the ads) like I did (well most of it), then you saw the most beautiful people on the planet in their top form ready to do spectacular things for which they sacrificed hours of training. They are humanity in our most presentable shape. Inspiring.

Even the commercials were better and kinder, filled with a sense of camaraderie.

Of course, the Olympics movement is a shadow of the fullness presented in Jesus, arms outstretched over Rio in hope and welcome. We followers also have a hymn or two (or thousands) that highlight the beauty of humanity. Try on Psalm 8 as a good song to add to the chorus from Rio and help focus those splendid creatures on the Creator smiling on their accomplishment.

While you are at it, look around Circle of Hope. We may not be Olympians (most of us) but we are certainly a splendor to behold as we run all our races!

[The opening ceremonies seem like a long time ago! This was first published in Circle of Hope’s blog]

There is a lie in the middle of Olympics

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So let me be clear. I think the Olympians in Rio are spectacular and I thank God for them. They shine brightly and inspire us in many ways. Frank Bruni in the NY Times did not want that glory to be supplanted by complaint. And I don’t want to write this post and supplant it either.

But I do want to complain.

I am not complaining about all those nice kids being nice, being healthy, being dedicated and having a great time with their families all lined up in the stadium to watch them be the best. Just look at Simone. Thank you Jesus!

I am complaining because I think Christians should always be testing the spirits to see if they are true. And the Olympic Games tell a lot of lies, in case you are not noticing.

The Olympics imply, if not say, that the games are about bringing together athletes and supporters from around the world in a peaceful “fraternity.” But it is hard not to think that the games are mainly for profit, not love. Certainly NBC wants profit; Brazil expected some; the athletes hope to get endorsements and sponsors so they can spend their whole lives training. What’s more, the games are about the games, not community: the tradition, the health of the movement, the sports industry that needs to find a way to be fed.

The Olympic rings are supposed to represent peace and fraternity among nations, combining, as they do, all the colors of the flags. When Michael Phelps finally hugs Chad le Clos instead of trying to burn a hole in him with his laser vision, maybe that’s working out on an individual level. But when Russia is banned and booed, you got to wonder what is really going on.

One of Rio’s murals
  • Rio sold itself to the world at the expense of their poor. The Olympics seems to have been the political straw that broke the corrupt camel’s back. The games don’t always bring peace and fraternity. The 1996 Atlanta Games displaced homeless people, the Sydney Games foisted a huge debt on Australia, the 2004 Athens Games played a role in the Greek financial crisis, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics highlighted a repressive military state. Now, in Rio de Janeiro, private developers are reaping profits and exploiting workers, while anti-Olympic protesters are treated like terrorists.
  • NBC bought the rights to distribute the footage of the “fraternity’s” activities. They cut it up according to whatever algorithm they thought would supply the most return and sold the bits to whoever would buy them. The powers assess if we are watching enough to justify their investment (they love watching us watch and watching themselves watching us). Am I the only one still complaining that giant corporations (Comcast owns NBC) can buy the airwaves? I am not sure it is right to commodify communication.
  • Are there regulations for how small your bikini must be because beach volleyball players want to wear them, or because for years they pimped themselves out to get some viewers?
  • Is the crush of media outlets looking for stories to harvest from among the brilliant youth of the world really a good thing for them? Aren’t they exploited for a hot minute and then discarded when the machine moves on to unharvested people?

We could go on with a lot more questions, couldn’t we? (And act like we did not already know the answers). It is tempting to hear people say, “Don’t be so negative” and shut up, just stop testing spirits altogether, just let Comcast create the world and be the ruler of the air. At the same time it is tempting to not shut up, go ahead and damn  it all and miss all the beauty in the middle of the dump, like missing all those beautiful children in the favela. Maybe most of all, it is tempting just to shut down and just buy it all, as every product vies to make some connection between itself and the shiny Olympians, as if Coke really were some universal drink of love.

I am not cynical, which Merriam Webster says is a “sneering disbelief in sincerity or integrity.” I am not sneering at the Olympics. Much the contrary, I fully believe that humankind if destined to be sincere and integrous. I fully believe in sincerity and integrity. I want to have them as part of my character. And it is not hard to see how sincere one must be to train for the Olympics!

Jesus followers are set free to shine, not just complain that people are shedding false light. It’s just that when we shine, the light falls on NBC and I realize that I sincerely disbelieve that they had the world’s interests in mind when they delivered the opening ceremony in tiny bits between commercials. They pre-sold $1.2 billion in ads, showed a half hour of them during the ceremony  and had five breaks in the first half hour. That could make someone cynical, not shiny. As a Jesus follower I’ll try not to go there. I’m trying to note the deadly lie in the middle of Olympics at the same time I am straining out the goodness and love all around us.

Exile or Pioneer — we don’t really know what you are going to do with this blog post

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I really have no idea what is going to happen — most of the time, I like it that way. I don’t really know if Circle of Hope can sustain itself, since it runs on conviction and covenant. I don’t know whether the stock market will dive and take us with it, whether aggrieved people will unite and upend the social order, whether my friends will move away, or whether my pipes will freeze in the endless winter. Most of the time, all that uncertainty seems like a good excuse to have faith. It is a great grace that living by faith is more fulfilling than knowing whether I should have bought salt for the ice before it was all sold out.

The curse of certainty

mr. batesBut people have a lot of guilt and anxiety about not knowing. They are ashamed they made what look like mistakes and they did not know what was going to happen before it happened. Mr. Bates may do something terrible because of his guilt and shame about not knowing what was happening to Mrs. Bates!

The other day I was at a baby shower and people were quite satisfied that they did not have to buy yellow baby clothes because they knew the baby’s gender already — I am sure science developed in utero photography to ease the anxiety about how to decorate the nursery!  Maybe you laugh, but people are still angry that the government did not predict and prevent 9/11!  Many people defend the government’s right to collect our phone records because they think every measure must be taken so “nothing like that ever happens to anyone ever again!” — we even see our personal experiences as contributions to anxiety relief, guilt reduction and the hope of controlling the future. Don’t we insist that the future must be “better” than the past? And aren’t we taught that good people band together to make sure it will be?

what ifLast night a JIF peanut butter commercial tagged on to the coverage of Olympics was teaching children to imagine their perfect future.  The scripture lesson was:

What if I skated so fast the world stopped for a minute?
What if I had a sled and all my friends got in it?
What if I took a shot and scored the winning goal?
What if I cut through the winter air and didn’t feel the cold?
What if I could fly and soar like I had wings?
What if I stood up on the winners stand and heard my country sing?
Nourish every dream with the fresh roasted peanut taste of JIF.

I heard that and laughed out loud! What if I spend every waking moment becoming an elite athlete? Wouldn’t the moment of my achievement last me my whole life through? Wouldn’t I be happy and justify my existence? Wouldn’t my parents be alleviated of all the shame I normally bring them? Wouldn’t I have made all the right choices and achieved a mistake-free performance? Ugh. Our dreams of our splendid future, based on the fullness our personal splendor is not the same as having faith, JIF commercials notwithstanding.

Crazy audacity

I became a Christian for many reasons, but a main one was certainly because I was surrounded by people who had the breathtaking audacity to think they were smart enough to organize, even legislate my future. As they were organizing according to how they saw the past, I experienced the grace of looking over their shoulders and seeing God in my future through Jesus, the presence of the future.

I received the blessing (or curse, depending on how you look at it) of being a history student and watching people in the past repeatedly learning from their mistakes and repeatedly thinking that their brilliant conclusions meant they had a lock on the future. The people who killed Jesus were sure they were doing it for the benefit of future generations!

That arrogance is alive and well among the least of us — even among the odd people who lead Circle of Hope. We want to have a successful cell and end up reproducing what was, what was successful and familiar, not what is next. We stay on the treadmill of history applying the same crazy audacity, always thinking we will be the generation that gets it right.

Alternative, basic Bible teaching

We are strangers and aliens in the world. Jesus is the pioneer.

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:11

“Foreigners and exiles” is also translated: strangers and pilgrims, aliens and exiles, wayfarers and foreigners,  strangers and sojourners

Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith  Hebrews 12:2

“Pioneer and Perfecter” is also translated: founder and perfecter, author and finisher, source and perfecter, source and goal, leader and completer.

Jesus is at home in every culture and every era, yet a product of none of them. His grace makes us better and we contribute goodness to the world that makes it better, but we don’t base our security on whether we did that so right that wrong won’t turn around and bite us ever again. Our audacity is knowing that we matter very much, whether we prove it by getting everything right and having our retirement feel secure or not.

Know all you can, predict all you can, but trust all you must. Study to succeed, master the ways of everything, but rely on Jesus. Learn from the past, strive to be excellent, but understand that Jesus is going ahead of you and only God knows your future. Make your greatest achievement be mastering your exile.

Our great grace includes the promise that the hope of the faithful will not be disappointed. In that hope we have a lot of room to be joyful failures, to be people who can see the wonder in the rubble, to be pioneers who never tire of seeing the sun come up over the next horizon on the journey.