Last week as we began our worship series on the gospel message to be found in movies about the Olympics we looked at the movie Miracle, about the 1980 US hockey team who won gold. To help them prepare for that, their coach told them they were going to work harder than they had ever worked before, and wanted to know that they were actually going to be dedicated enough to actually get it done? That is often the difference between success and failure not just in sports, but in most aspects of life. How much are you willing to put into it? Are you willing to put in everything you have, and even more, or do you want to just do enough to get by? And more importantly in our faith lives, what are we willing to do? Paul really asks the Corinthian community, are you putting everything you have in to win the race of faith, or is your desire and wants somewhere else?
And so today we look at the movie Race, which is about Jesse Owens who is arguably one of, if not the greatest Olympic athlete of all time, having won 4 gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, and I hope that didn’t ruin the surprise for anyone. There is so much we could talk about this film including that the movie’s title has sort of a double meaning to it, not only being about the races that Owens won as a track star, but also about the realities of being a black man in America and in Hitler’s Olympic games. But today we are going to focus on the fact no one gets to the Olympics by just talent alone. Talent will get you only so far on its own, but it takes more than just talent to be your best and especially the best in the world. And so Owens, whose family moved to Ohio from Alabama when he was a boy, goes to Ohio State University to run on their track team, at a time in which their football team was still another 7 years away from being integrated. And when he gets there, his coach, Larry Snyder, wonders what he has. Take a look…
The question is, are you going to be willing to do what is
necessary to compete at the highest level? Are you going to give everything you
can to win the race? That’s the same question that Paul is asking of the
Corinthians. And Owens’ coach, Larry Snyder. Just like last week I said that
Herb Brooks was the last player cut from the last US hockey team to win Olympic
gold, and so didn’t get his shot at glory then, and could only do it now
through coaching, the same is true with Snyder. He crashed the plane he was
flying just three weeks before the 1924 Olympic games in Paris, which is the
Olympics portrayed in the movie Chariots of Fire about the British track stars,
and so never got his shot at Olympic fame and glory. And so Snyder knows
something about running the race to win, and also about the disappointment of
not getting there, and we’ll talk about coaching next week.
But, the apostle Paul knows something too because Corinth
was the home to the Isthmian games. This is a picture of the temple of Poseidon
in Corinth, you can see the amphitheater in the back, and what you can’t see is
that off to the right as you are looking at it are the ruins of an ancient
stadium. The Isthmian games took place every two years, and the Olympics would
take place in the in-between years every four years. And so when Paul is
writing this letter and talking about races and boxing, he is at most only one
year separated from the games having taken place, or it might be that they are
taking place that year. It’s also entirely possible that Paul spends time in
Corinth specifically for the games. And so imagine if the Olympic games were
held in your city every two years, it would just sort of dominate everything. You
would know things just because it was part of the culture, even if you didn’t
know anything about sports. And even more importantly, the games were deeply
religious and were tied into the worship of Poseidon, which is the reason for
his temple being there. And so while we may talk about people worshipping their
sports teams now, that was literally what was happening then. Sports and
religion could not be separated, nor could they be separated from military
preparation. This is not just some random analogy that Paul is talking about.
This is deeply engrained in their culture.
And yet what Paul has also been talking with them about is
that being a Christian is different than just continuing to participate in the
cultic worship that goes with existing in the 1st century. He wants them to know
that Christians were called to something more, something different, that to claim
to be a follower of Christ was to set yourself apart. To discipline yourself to
doing the things that Christ calls us to do, including rejecting some things
society says you are supposed to do. And so this athletic reference has deeply
religious implications. Additionally, when athletes came to the games, they had
to pledge that they had been training for at least 10 months in preparation for
the games, that they weren’t just showing up and hoping for the best. If you
are going to compete you need to have the goal to win, and train every day, to
practice discipline and self-control in order to work to win. This is not about
showing up hoping you will come in second place, not about just shadow boxing,
or running aimlessly, but about seeing the finish line, knowing what it will
take, and then doing everything we can in order to run to win. Which
means that we have to train and dedicate ourselves in order to do it.
Jesse Owens begins to undergo that training under his coach’s
tutelage spending hours working on his start, which was his weakest point. He
was fast enough to still catch up after a bad start, but if he could improve
his starts, he would be unbeatable because every fraction of a second counts. Take a look…. and it pays off. At a track meet in Ann Arbor
Michigan, Owen did what is widely considered the greatest track and field
accomplishment ever, because not only did he win the four events in which he
competed, but he set new world records in 3 of them, and tied the world record
in the fourth, although many people rightly believe that he broke that record
as well, and he did it all in 45 minutes. One of those was setting a new record
in the long jump. The long jump was part of the ancient Olympic games, and the
world record had only moved 2 feet in 2500 years. The record when Owens began
the day was 26’ 2”, and when he was done the record was 26’ 8 ¼”. He broke the
old record by more than 6 inches, and it would stand for another 25 years. That
mark would have come in 6th at the last Olympics.
Now there was tremendous pressure and conversation about
whether anyone should go to Berlin in 1936, let alone black or Jewish athletes,
because they might be seen as supporting Hitler and his show. In one of the
great ironies, there was debate in the US Olympic committee about boycotting or
not, and a very close vote was won by Avery Brundage, who would become the head
of the international Olympic committee, who was a racist and anti-Semite and at
the very least was a German sympathizer, if not a Nazi sympathizer, and so
Owens directly contradicting Hitler’s stance on the superiority of Aryan
athletes was partially his responsibility. And in the end, Owens went to
Berlin, as did 15 other black athletes, including two women, and so to get
there he has to continue training, continue to face racism and discrimination
and dedicating his life to succeeding.
But one of the things that world class athletes will say is
that what makes them their best is competing against others who are excelling,
those who are close to them, who push them to be and get even better. That the
better the competition is, the better they will do. And Paul mentions doing
things not to be disqualified, and that nearly happens to Owens in the long
jump at the Olympics. He has two jumps disqualified and only has one more
chance to make the finals, when Luz Long, a German, who is the reigning
European champion and record holder does something amazing. Take a look…
Later Owens will tell him Long didn’t have to do that, and
if he didn’t he probably would have won gold, but Long tells him that he wants
Owens best, otherwise what’s the point. He and Long will remain friends and
correspond until Long was killed during World War II. In his memoirs, Owens
would say of that moment that it was the defining moment not only of the
Olympic games, but of his life.
And so that leads us back to Paul. Because while we might
easily try to see Paul saying that there is only one winner, and 42 losers, as
Lightning McQueen says in the movie Cars, that’s not really what this is about.
Paul is not saying that unless you beat everyone else you lose, which could
then lead to an anything goes mentality as long as you win, as well as a strong
individualism, which we certainly see in sports. And while we have individual
races that we are running, individual faith journeys that we are on, that we
need to be taking seriously and disciplining ourselves to run, a goal and a
purpose to seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness as Jesus says.
And so it’s not just about saying some simple prayer and then being done, it’s
not about just being baptized and then being done, it’s not about even just
showing up for worship, because unless we are living out our faith every single
day then we are not seeking to win the race. And so it’s practicing the
spiritual disciplines like prayer and worship and scripture reading and
fellowship and Sabbath, and even more importantly it’s about living in love
with one another. Because while Paul did not understand team sports, and there
were no team sports in the ancient Olympics, I believe there is definitely a
communal element to this passage.
Later in this letter Paul will talk about all being members
of one body, and that all the body parts are important and necessary, and he
rebukes the Corinthians for some thinking they are better than others, that the
spiritual gifts they have are more important. And so emphasizes the communal
aspect of the church and the body of Christ. And the word he uses to talk about
the body of Christ is the same one, same tense, etc., that he uses here when he
talks about disciplining the body. That has led to many to believe that Paul is
also referencing, although sort of tangentially, the body of Christ, the
communal aspects of the church, and that we also have to run this race
together, and practice the disciplines together, and seek to be one with one
another and love one another. Which is the other crucial aspect of this film,
which could be an entirely different message.
When Jesse Owens wins the 200 meter race, there is another
American who comes in second by the name of Mack Robinson. Robinson actually
beats the Olympic record in that race, but unfortunately for him Owens sets a new
world record, and he only wins silver. And when he comes back home, he is
unable to get any job other than being a janitor. And in 1947 he is working as
a janitor for the city of Pasadena California, and when a Federal Judge orders
Pasadena to desegregate their public pools, in retaliation, they fire all of
their black employees, including Robinson. And the irony of that is that 1947
is the same year that his little brother, better known as Jackie Robinson,
integrates major league baseball.
Race even ends with Owens and his wife attending a banquet given in his honor, but they are not allowed to walk through the front door of the hotel because of their race, and that’s not talking about the only two Jewish athletes on the US team not being allowed to compete in Berlin, and let’s also not pretend that racism or anti-Semitism or other forms of discrimination has ended. And so perhaps part of our work of disciplining ourselves, part of the work of making sure that we are not disqualified ourselves, is to make sure that no only do we see every one of God’s children and beloved brothers and sisters and treat them as such, but also do the hard work to make sure the world does as well. In Hebrews, after extolling the great cloud of witness that have come before, we read “Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet.” May we run the race before us in order to win that fruit of righteousness so that all of us will win. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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