Thank you for the privilege of preaching, and of trying to relate my Christian faith to sport.
Sport in Society Today
A lad was signing out from school recently—going around all his teachers to return books and gear before
heading off down the drive for the last time. I said to him, “All the best. What are you going to do?” His reply would not have been possible even 10 years ago. “I’m leaving to become a personal trainer.” Yes, these days we don’t just get involved with sport for fun, for leisure, for camaraderie, or to get fit.
There are jobs now in the sport and fitness world, and some pay well, and some obscenely well. And sport is now more than a game or an opportunity for employment.
Sport in New Zealand, or in the world influences such things as
• a person’s status (being a Black cap, or Black Stick or All Black)
• race relations (especially in NZ where rugby in particular has been such a cohesive force as Pakeha, Māori and Pacific Islander play together at all levels of the game)
• automotive design (4WD vehicles )
• business life (through massive sponsorship, advertising and media links)
• clothing styles (leisure wear, track pants, and Adidas, Nike or Canterbury) the concept of the hero
Sport now occupies a place in society that it never used to—just note the pages of every newspaper devoted to analysis, investigation, and scuttlebutt concerning the lives of sportsmen and women.
Values Promoted by Sport
Sport has also become a means of expressing some dominant values in society, particularly at the moment. You only have to listen to the interviews of captains or players or coaches before and after games to hear those values extolled, often by slogan after slogan. We are constantly reminded of the values of:
• planning and strategising – “this was our game plan”
• success – “this has been our aim all season"
• ambition and drive – “we wanted it more than they did (or its converse!)
• hard work – “we’ve trained really hard for this match"
• character – “we had to dig deep, but we came through"
When I was a young sportsman and a young Christian, I too focused really hard on some of those values, for they were, and are important:
I tried to practice hard, and to work on my game.
I was disciplined—I saw alcohol and smoking (drugs hadn’t been invented when I was playing!) as encumbrances that could get in the way of being at my best.
I thought poorly of those who cheated.
Above all, I focused on the apparent fact that, by accident of birth, I had been given some sporting talent, and it was up to me “to use it, or lose it.” So the parable of the talents told by Jesus was pretty important to me.
And I thought of Jesus as a young strong man (only 33 when he was crucified) who could easily have been a sportsman. I remember picturing him not as some nambypamby meek and mild fellow, but as a crash-tackling centre-threequarter – a real gutsy strong and fit young man.
What have I learned since?
Well, after 15 years of first class cricket, after 5 years of international cricket, after 27 years of playing cricket
almost all my sporting world came to a halt, and the game I played I now watch. Though I was a selector (briefly) and a school boys’ coach for many years, I was no longer the active sportsman. I am, and have been for the past 37 years, a teacher, 21 of them spent as the principal of two schools. What have I learned?
I have learned that sportsmen and women need to prepare for life beyond sport. Some of the saddest people I have come across are those who live in their past glories and achievements, who pine for days gone by, who have forgotten that life is for living now. I’m glad that others have seen things differently, have taken the opportunities and experiences that sport gave them, and have turned them to good account. They have seen active sport as a passing phase, they have learned its skills, and what it teaches of lasting value about:
• team work
• sacrifice for others
• serving others
• trying hard for a common cause, or even for a lost cause, and their past sporting lives have become
vibrant, and a blessing to others
I have developed a broader perspective on life. People often say to teachers like me that we don’t live in the real world. That is most emphatically not true. I might not be party to boardroom battles, or corporate nastiness, or wheeling and dealing, but I see very much the results of human frailty and deviousness and deceit as it is played out in the often innocent lives of children. I am very much aware of the real world. And what I see of that real world is this:
Some young people are truly blessed in their lives and especially their family lives. They have homes where they daily experience love. They are accepted by family and friends. They have opportunities to develop. Education, and faith, and forgiveness are valued and practised. Their lives, and often, therefore, their futures are sound and secure. But that is not the lot of others:
• life for many is very tough
• hard hard work doesn’t always lead to success
• sickness can strike at any time, and it often strikes young people
• people can be dreadful to one another
• where young people ought to be able to look to their family for security and a safe haven and for support,
they are sometimes left bereft and unutterably sad
And many of the slogans we bandy about as gospel are simply not true:
• success doesn’t necessarily come from hard work
• good planning doesn’t always result in winning
• ambition and drive can easily produce a callous disregard for others
• the emphasis on competition and athletic success (and the wealth that may accompany it) can lead to very
negative values, like undue violence to intimidate an opponent, cheating on the field, or cheating through the use of performance enhancing drugs, or capitalising on inside information through betting on sport
In such circumstances the very character that sport can produce which is part of the reason for playing and promoting sport, is totally undermined.
So what have I learned that helps my Christian faith?
I’ve learned, I think, three important and basic truths about the Christian faith, and of my own relationship with Christ. I miscalculated Jesus.
I think my earlier “sporting” view of Jesus was inadequate. I miscalculated him. I muscularised him. I saw
him or I turned him into a full on, totally committed winner, and I suppose in a sense he was, wasn’t he? After all, he beat the most ancient of enemies—death.
But I need also to remember that Jesus was born in a stable, not a hospital or home. He was a refugee before he was 2 years old. His earthly father died probably while he was a teenager. He lived as a peasant carpenter in a country occupied by foreign troops. He had no house nor property. He founded no family dynasty, and he died a particularly agonising death at a young age. No wonder, when you read his teachings he had a particular fondness for the poor, the outcast, the down trodden and the dregs of society. He came to bring compassion and hope to the lost and the lonely, not to the rich and the powerful. No wonder, over the centuries, that Jesus has been such a comfort to those who suffer, or who grieve or who are oppressed. As the old spiritual puts it, “Jesus knows all about our troubles” because in his earthly life he went through plenty of troubles of his own. Jesus appeals to people like that.
I Iike the story of the hard living, hard drinking man who struggled to do the right thing by his wife and family. He became a Christian, and one day found himself trying to defend the miracles of Jesus. “I don’t know about miracles,” he said, “and whether Jesus changed water into wine. But what I can tell you is this—in my house, Jesus changed beer into furniture.” Yes, Jesus is there for all of us, winners and losers alike.
I can see sport as a picture of our human condition.
Sport has so much potential for good. People can benefit enormously from their chosen game. They can learn lessons for life. They can experience the exhilaration of strength and grace and movement and speed. They can develop skills and life-long friendships, they can know and understand the character building process of winning and losing. But they can cheat and lie and become arrogant, and develop contempt for losers, and get into drugs and alcohol.
The power for good, or the power for evil—isn’t that what we all fight with every day? We want to do the right thing, and often we do, but then, against all our better judgement, we suddenly find ourselves doing the wrong thing.
As I understand it, that’s what Jesus came to sort out. That’s why he is often called “Our Saviour", because he came to save us from the effects of doing the wrong thing, if we will but trust and follow him.
I can see that the values sport promotes are good, but wait, there’s more!
At the heart of the gospel, Jesus says some pretty tough and revolutionary things to us, and which are in real contrast to some of the key values of sport, and we who are sportsmen and women need to take them into account.
Jesus said things like:
"The last shall be first, and the first, last."
"Whoever will save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life for my sake and the gospel, will save it."
"Whoever humbles himself, as this little child, the same is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven."
In other words, God is not interested so much in what success we have, or what we achieved. No matter who we are, no matter what we’ve done or not done, whether in life we “make centuries” or get golden ducks, God will accept us simply because he loves us. Jesus is there, in fact, for losers. Pretty radical, eh? The unworthy can be made worthy. The lost can be found. The crooked can be made straight, and rough places can be made plain. Now I reckon that that is really good news for all of us. That’s the gospel. At the foot of the cross there is not a victory podium—highest for the gold medal achievers, and lower for the rest of us. The ground at the foot of the cross is level. When I understand that, then I understand Archbishop Tutu’s recent comment when he said “I think we will be surprised at those we find in Heaven; God has standards that are actually quite low.” In a real sense, we can all truly thank God for that. If we had only to rely on God’s justice, none of us, to use a golfing phrase, none of us would make the cut. We all fall short of glory. Thank God not only for his justice, but also for his grace, his mercy, and his love which we may accept freely, and at any time. I encourage you to do so.
May the Lord bless us all.