In preparation for the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, Nike put up a billboard that said “You don’t win the silver, you lose the gold.” According to Nike, it was supposed to be inspiring, but for US wrestler Townsend Saunders, an Arizona State alum, when he walked out of the arena wearing a silver medal, he said those words stung. “It’s not terrible for everyone else to read” he said, “It’s just terrible for every silver medalist.” He went home depressed thinking he should have given more effort and won gold. “It was an honor to represent my country,” he said, “but to have come so close.” Eventual he came to terms with his loss and realized that not very many people have a silver medal either.[i] And really, the billboard seemed to be in opposition to many of the things the Olympics represent. Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, said “The important thing in the Olympic Games in not winning but taking part. The essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.” And that, I think, is one of the things that make the Olympics great. Because while there are certainly those who win, who mark themselves as great, that we celebrate, people like Jesse Owens or Simone Biles or Michael Phelps, we are often just as amazed by those who give everything even know that they have little chance of winning. The Olympics are just as much, or maybe even more about those athletes. And so perhaps with that idea it’s appropriate that today’s film is Cool Runnings about the Jamaican Bobsled team who first participated in the 1988 Olympics in Calgary.
In trying to find films for this series, I was looking for a film about someone who was expected to win and didn’t, but there aren’t a lot of them out there. And so the next best option was films that celebrate the mere act of competing and there are some good films that do that, and this is one of the best. But, we do have to be honest and say that it says that this is based on a true story, and that is true. There was a bobsled team from Jamaica, and there are a couple of other things that are true from the story, but most of the rest of it is made up for entertainment purposes, and so that does mark this story as different from other Olympic films. It’s still very entertaining, but don’t take this as what actually happened, and in it also has a bigger connecting to the story of David and Goliath.
But, in
trying to set up the story, the creation of the team starts with dreams of
Olympic glory and then failure. Take a look… Just like that their Olympic
dreams are over. And knowing that 4 years is a lifetime for most athletes, especially
for track and field, they realize they will probably never have another chance,
and perhaps their lives will always be filled with the what might have beens.
But, after they lose out of running in the Olympics, Derice Bannock sees a
picture of his father, who had been a gold medal winner, alongside of an
Olympic bobsledder, who had come to Jamaica to recruit sprinters thinking they
would be great at bobsledding because the push start is one of the most
important elements, and thinks he sees another opportunity. And so Bannock goes
to see Irv Blitzer, played by John Candy in one of his final roles, and gets
him to agree to coach a bobsled team as long as Derice can put the team together.
Which of course he does. Now this is part of the made up section, as the real
team was recruited together out of the military and had not been elite
sprinters beforehand. But, their goal is not just to put a team on the track,
but to also compete. While also recognizing that the best teams in the sport
are the best for a reason, one of them probably being that they come from
countries not just with bobsled traditions, but also snow and ice. In reality,
the Jamaican bobsled team did go to Lake Placid to train, and then competed in
a few events in Europe before the Olympics, but they still really only had a
few months of being on the track, and that year the Swiss were considered the
best team around, along with the other usual candidates the Germans, west and
east, and the Soviets, the goliaths, if you will.
But Derice, who is the driver becomes enamored with the
Swiss team, studying their every move and trying to be just like them, and to
get the team to do the same, but this leads to their first official run, after
qualifying, a little less than desirable. Take a look…
When Goliath appears on the battlefield, the Israelites are
terrified, because, by the accounts given here, the man is huge. Although there
are differences in the manuscript traditions, he is said to stand anywhere
between 6ft 9 and 9ft 9. Even at 6ft 9, he would have been huge for the time,
and it’s possible that the higher height is given as an exaggeration to make a
point, like saying I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. The tallest man on record,
Robert Wadlow was 8ft 11 inches at his death at the age of 22 and still growing.
He also happened to have immense physical strength. And Wadlow’s disease, as
Malcolm Gladwell points out in his book David and Goliath, also causes eyesight
problems which could explain other portions of the story that seem a little
strange. So, Goliath is huge and exceedingly strong as his armor weighs about
125 lbs., and even the spear point is 15 lbs., and so perhaps the Israelites
are right to be afraid. And what Goliath is calling for is an individual
battle, our best soldier against your best soldier. Sometimes that battle would
end there, and sometimes it would be followed by a battle between the armies,
but the side that won the first battle went in with a decided psychological
advantage. And so Goliath is yelling at the Israelites to send their best out
to fight, and no one is willing to go because no one thinks they can win. They
see Goliaths size and his armor and they see this as too powerful to overcome,
but then along comes the young David.
Not this is where we might say that this passage is based
upon a true story, because there are several problems, many of which cannot be
reconciled. The first is that David has to be introduced to Saul as if he is
meeting him for the first time, although in chapter 16, David serves Saul and
is so beloved he becomes Saul’s armor-bearer, although there is no indication
of that in chapter 17. Now it’s possible that this is just another story in
David’s tradition that gets thrown in and the author, or editor, is not looking
for continuity, which is sometimes the case. But we cannot really reconcile that.
A bigger problem is that in 2 Samuel, we are told that Elhanan of Bethlehem,
where David is also from, killed Goliath. Because Goliath is only named twice
in this passage, as he is usually just referred to as the Philistine, it’s
possible that the story of the killing of Goliath got applied to David in later
telling to emphasize not just David’s military might, but also his wisdom and
fearlessness and boldness in action. The author of 1 Chronicles tries to
reconcile all of these stories by saying that Elhanan didn’t kill Goliath, but
instead killed Lahmi, who was Goliath’s cousin. But whatever the historicity,
Goliath is a giant who threatens the Israelites, and no one is able to do
anything until David says he will take on the challenge. And I might also add
that in a section of the passage we didn’t hear today Saul has promised big
rewards, including the hand of his daughter in marriage, to whoever kills
Goliath.
And so David says I am that man, or at least I want to be. And
what does Saul do? He straps his armor onto David and gives him his sword, and
David tries to walk it in, but he is unable to and says “I cannot walk with
these; for I am not used to them.” and so David takes the armor off, and begins
to prepare his own way. The same thing happens to the team after their disastrous
first run. Take a look… The best Olympians they can be are the best Jamaicans
they can be. They can’t be the Swiss, and they can’t try and beat the Swiss by
being merely pale imitations of them. They have to be who they are. And the
same is true with David. David cannot beat Goliath by trying to play the same
game he is playing. He can’t move in the armor, and as it turns out neither can
Goliath, but Goliath’s sheer strength will be enough to give him the edge if
David tries to fight him as Goliath wants. But what David does have is speed
and agility and the ability to use his slingshot. And so rather than rejecting
his skills and who he is, David decides to embrace them and goes out to meet
Goliath on his own terms. And note that Goliath is disdainful of David because
he won’t encounter him the way he wants. David has changed up the rules because
the way Goliath plays doesn’t work for him. And as it turns out what Goliath
thinks is his greatest strength, is also his greatest weakness, but he doesn’t
realize this until it’s too late, when he cannot move to evade what David is
about to do to him.
Goliath and Saul and the Israelites and the Philistines all
saw power in brute strength and size. They couldn’t image anything else. Just
like thinking Jamaicans might make good bobsledders because their sprinters
could be fast enough off the line that the other parts could be overlooked. Or
in the movie Indian Jones, you might remember the scene when the man is whipping
around two swords in front of Indy, and it’s obvious that Indy can’t beat him
with swords, and so what does he do? He pulls out a gun and shoots him. As they
say, don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. Don’t try and overcome someone else’s
power or skills by trying to be like them if you don’t have the same power or
skills, or if you don’t want to become who they are. You cannot beat hate with
more hate. You cannot beat violence with more violence. You cannot beat the
brute squad by becoming a better brute squad. Instead, come up with your own
way of competing, not by cheating or ignoring the rules, but by using your own
strengths, your own gifts, your own graces, by doing the things that God has
called you to do, because God won’t call you to do something that you can’t do.
I’ve said this before, but when Jesus calls the first disciples, he doesn’t say
come follow me and I will make you shopkeepers of people, or carpenters of
people. He says come follow me and I will make you fishers of people. Why?
Because they are fisherman. David can’t beat Goliath by being Goliath, and the
Jamaicans cannot beat the Swiss by being Swiss, they can only do it by being
themselves.
And so on what will be their final run, in the movie they
have a chance to win a medal if they
have a good enough run. That wasn’t true in reality, but it makes a better
story. And one other piece they added, which was also not true, was that their
coach, after winning two gold medals, had had them taken away because he was
caught cheating. When asked why he said that if you aren’t enough without medals,
you’ll never be good enough with them, and winning to prove you are worthy
becomes the ultimate goal. Derice then asks how he will know if he is good
enough, and he is told, “when you finish you’ll know,” and so here is their
final run, which is interspersed with actual footage from the 88 Olympics. Take
a look… I remember watching that live
because I love bobsledding, which I suppose is strange for someone from
Phoenix, and I didn’t think there was anyway the driver survived after slamming
his head into the wall at more than 85 miles an hour, and then dragging it
along the wall for more than 2000 feet. The brakeman said his helmet actually
began to burn because of the friction
and he could still smell that years later. And the most disappointing thing I
learned in looking at the difference between the film and the real story is
that they didn’t actually say “feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up, it’s
bobsled time,” but I’m going to overlook that and say that they did, because it
feels like something they should have said. And it marked them as doing it
their own way, and they did cross the finish line, although they didn’t carry
the sled, they pushed it, as it weighs nearly 500 pounds.
But what they show us, what David shows us, is that we have to be who we are, not who we want to be, who others tell us we should be. That power rarely comes the way the world wants it, and those who want to project power and authority and strength to let you know they have it are usually covering up deep insecurities and are only doing it to feel better about themselves, and you don’t have to give into that or to them. As Malcolm Gladwell says, David reveals the folly of our assumptions about power, and the Jamaican bobsled team reveals the folly of our assumptions about winning. Because you might now know that the Swiss won gold in 1988, but you probably didn’t know that yesterday, and I’m guessing you can’t tell me who won bronze or silver. Even though we praise winners and think it’s all about the winning, it’s also about doing our best, it’s about finishing the race before us, and sometimes simply by doing that we get greater reward than winning would ever bring, when it’s about using the gifts and graces God has given to us and trusting that God will help see us through. And ultimately it’s about knowing that winning doesn’t make us who we are, because our identity is that we are beloved children of God, and baptized children at that, and knowing that should be enough. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
[i] https://www.deseret.com/2012/7/22/20425340/ariz-olympian-recalls-winning-silver-not-gold
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