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Sporting ShrinesSeptember has seen a glorious expression of idealism and commitment by international athletes at the Olympic Games in Sydney, marred only by all too frequent incidences of performance enhancing drug taking. The Olympics have shown in modern times how sporting ideals can unite people and how personal excellence, commitment and idealism can ennoble the human spirit. Such sentiments are also behind a new Lloyd Webber / Ben Elton collaboration musical in the West End at the moment called "The Beautiful Game," in which football is seen to unite the Catholic and Protestant warring factions in Northern Ireland. Although this has proved to be both true and effective in desegregated schools in the province, the supposed reconciling power of sport has not been particularly in evidence in the history and present reality of Catholic-Protestant rivalry between Rangers / Celtic, Manchester United / Manchester City and Liverpool / Everton, to name a few. Myths are often built on half-truths. The myth here is that sport can truly unite humanity. It has some plausibility when the sporting ideal is maintained rather than the tribal ideal. The tribal imperative can be the curse of all that is excellent in human affairs; in culture, sport, and yes, in religion too. However, the myth of sport's reconciling power is now expanding to embrace wider and quasi-religious themes. Sociologists have commented on sport-as-religion for many years. Cable TV has now brought the sporting shrine into many UK living rooms. An advertisement on British TV currently promotes Mr. Murdoch's SKY Sports Channel by suggesting that emotional release in the following of sports can help deal with griefs and problems in our day to day lives. Nobody takes this too seriously of course, but sport is now rapidly becoming the new religion. This is especially true amongst disaffected adolescent boys whose sporting dreams and obsessions are wildly out of touch with their actual abilities and potentials in other areas. It is the one area of socially acceptable male identity and bonding untouched by feminism ... a place where "a lad can be a lad." Women and girls seem to have much more sensible ideas about sport in our culture. They are just as passionate and committed but the religious / gender subtext seems not to feature so much. What can we learn from all of this as Orthodox Christians? Well, there are things to emulate and recognise in common between Orthodox Christianity and sport if only by way of analogy. St. Paul writes to the Church in Corinth urging the Christians there to "run (the race)," and "exercise self-control" [1 Corinthians 9:24-27]. By this he means that the Christian life requires effort, commitment and dedication. Orthodoxy is a consoling faith, yes, but like sport at the highest level, it is also very demanding. Would it be worthwhile if it were not? Jesus tells us that without him we can do nothing, [John 15:5]. All our efforts, then, are only effective if we work with God according to His power and grace in our lives. This does not mean though that we just sit back and "let Him do it." God does not honour the lazy, the fickle, the inconstant and the waverers. "Because you are lukewarm," He says, "and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth." [Revelation 3:16]. Living the Christian life requires as much effort and dedication as demanded of every athlete. It is an ascetic calling to holiness and union with God; not just for monks and nuns, those "athletes of the Spirit," but for all of us. Without this dedication toward purity of heart, none of us shall see God, [Matthew 5:8]. We can also learn from sport (at its best) that tribalism has no place in the Christian faith. The Orthodox faith is Catholic because it is God's whole dispensation for all mankind. The Church in the power of the Holy Spirit has a diversity for all races and cultures for all these are one in Christ. The ethnic narrow-mindedness of much contemporary Orthodoxy is nothing short of scandalous, an insult to the Creator. The alternatives we find with some other Christians are just as wrong-headed. Vainly do they seek to build a united "mega-Christianity" by an adherence to one Christian leader, one Christian confession or even a toleration for co-existing discordant multiple human-based opinions. What a monstrous thing! The Church's unity (a symbol and instrument for human unity) is built on the God-manhood of Christ and the diverse expressions of redeemed humanity wrought by the Spirit in the Church which is His Body. Orthodox must embrace both in themselves and between each other an excellence in love and spiritual endeavour which will put all the sporting religious myths to shame. This divine unity in our midst must become so attractive to others, so worth striving for that all degraded notions of the Church built upon collective power, rampant individualism or tribal division will dissolve away in their exposed fallen states. True ecumenism exists where Christians first seek the Kingdom of God and avoid all occasions of ecclesiastical politics, (intra and inter-Church) like the plague. True ecumenism is to find salvation and finding it to love others with a dedication matching the best of the idealism we can find in sport or any other human endeavour. You never know. Were this to happen our youth might get a bigger "buzz" out of belonging to the Orthodox Church than cheering on their sporting heroes. It can happen if our idealism, commitment and dedication matches theirs. Fr. Gregory |
