SunJun52011
Scripture: ACTS 1:6-14
Shortly after I arrived here as pastor, a member is reputed to have said to one of her friends, “I hope he doesn’t talk about sports.” She is not the only one with that feeling; there are a number of church people who don’t want to be subjected to sports stories week after week. Sports, after all, is not our whole world.
That said, though, it is a major part of our world. It often takes up more pages in The Plain Dealer than any other section. It fuels countless water-cooler conversations, accounts for a fair amount of our entertainment spending, and occupies a good deal of the imaginations of many of us. When I was a child, in fact, I thought I would never be able to get married, because I had too many sporting events to attend to, and wouldn’t have time for a wife!
With this week’s news of the resignation of Jim Tressel as coach of the Ohio State football team, sports has once again become front page news—or home page news. So it seems worthwhile for us to reflect on this dominant story in light of the scriptures that refract and focus our lives this Sunday.
The book of Acts was written as the story of the early church, of how it started and what it became. And central to that entire story is that the church was to be faithful to the presence of the living Christ in its midst. The most important conviction of early Christians was that, though Jesus had died, his Spirit remained with them. And that Spirit was giving them the power to be the people God wanted them to be.
In the first chapter of the book of Acts, this Jesus who had died but was still with them tells these early followers that they would soon receive an amazing power called the Spirit, and that they were to be Christ’s “witnesses” (1:8), wherever they went and whatever they did. To be a witness means all sorts of things. A witness is someone who sees something: “She was a witness to that car accident,” we might say. A witness is also someone who testifies in a legal trial. “He was a witness for the defense,” we say, and we mean that he was supposed to speak the truth. And sometimes we mean that a person him- or herself is a manifestation of some larger truth: “Her whole life was a witness to the power of goodness.” Witnesses see and speak the truth and display admirable qualities. And this is what Christians are to do.
The heart of the matter is this: the Bible passage tells us to be witnesses—to see and tell the truth and to be embodiments of good—and this is what Jim Tressel did not do. He failed to be a witness.
I know there are some people who are convinced that he has been maligned by a hostile press, but the evidence to the contrary is pretty damning. Sports Illustrated this week details the offenses committed under Tressel’s watch. It’s a portrait of a football program that turned a blind eye to countless violations, all under Tressel’s watch. Players received improper benefits from boosters, inappropriately sold and traded memorabilia for profits, and generally abused the system for their own benefit. And Tressel knew about it and let it go. It’s a huge disappointment, especially for those of us who had looked up to him and respected him. And for us in the church, the sense of betrayal is deepened because we had believed him to be a person of deep Christian faith and moral rectitude. Unfortunately, no matter what the depth of his commitment to, and relationship with, Christ, he still failed to be a witness—failed to tell the truth, failed to be a model of decorum and integrity. As Sports Illustrated put it, “His integrity was one of the great myths of college football. Like a disgraced politician who preaches probity but is caught in lies, [Tressel] was not the person he purported to be” (June 6, 2011, p. 43).
It would be incredibly naïve if we thought Tressel were the only one doing this. He wasn’t. It’s clear that college football is rife with just that sort of shallow moral compass. And because of that, it’s more than just Jim Tressel who bears responsibility for the state of affairs in which we find ourselves. Nor is it just coaches, administrators, and players who are at fault. While Tressel is obviously directly implicated, there’s an extent to which many of us bear indirect responsibility. Because in such a deep and wide-ranging way, we sanction and support big money college football. Winning is so important to us that universities will go to great lengths—even improper lengths—to accommodate us. To some extent, we’re almost all part of the “win-at-all-costs” mentality. And when we are, we’re not witnesses to Christ.
Witnesses to the presence of the risen Christ would rather fail a test than cheat on it. They’d rather lose a football game than win it improperly. They’d rather miss out on a contract than secure it by bribery or extortion. Witnesses to Christ often take the more difficult road and forsake the glory. They care for aging and dying spouses and parents even when it takes everything they have. They rock their sick babies in the middle of the night even when they’re so tired they could scream. They find a way to include and embrace the annoying co-worker even when everyone else shuns them.
Most of all—most of all—witnesses to Christ testify to the power of God. They’re aware that God affirms choices that are good and right, that God provides blessing and honor and grace in all circumstances, that God transforms even the most average moment into something extraordinary and sublime. Witnesses to Christ are grounded in something larger than themselves.
In contrast to the shadiness and the drivenness that too often characterizes major college sports, I was struck this week by the story of another college athlete. I first became somewhat entranced by him because of his name. Because one of our sons ran track and cross country in high school, I would follow the results in the papers and online. Regularly I would notice the name of a runner from Lakewood High School: Makorobondo Salukombo. How could you forget it!
After Taylor’s high school career ended, I forgot about this runner with the intriguing name. But then, at one of Taylor’s college meets, there it was again. Makorobondo Salukombo had gone to Denison University, one of the schools in Taylor’s North Coast Athletic Conference, and it turns out he would often be at meets Mary and I attended. At one of those meets, I found out that he’s often called Dee. Hardly surprising.
Now fast forward a year or two. I’m sitting in the stands one cold spring day—I think all track meets are on cold spring days—watching a meet. There, running around the track in a 3000 meter steeplechase, is none other than Makorobondo Salukombo. I’m sitting in the midst of about twenty Allegheny College runners—competitors of Dee’s—and on one of the laps, they all decide to shout together, “Go, Dee!” Now most athletes are impervious to cheering fans. They’re focused, and they go about their business with no obvious acknowledgement of the fans. And cheering for a rival is certainly far from ordinary. But as Dee runs by the stands, leading the race, he hears the genuine cheers of this competing team, and he turns to the stands, and smiles as broadly as a person can smile, and humbly waves to the adoring multitudes. It was way cool, and it brought screams of delight from his many fans.
Dee, I learn later, grew up in the Republic of Congo, and, when he was twelve, he and his family had to flee, during a civil war, to Uganda, where, for three years, they were refugees. When he was fifteen, they came to this country and settled in Lakewood, where Dee ran and played soccer and studied and volunteered with refugees at Catholic Charities.
Now fast forward again to this past week. Dee has just run in the national Division III track and field championships at Ohio Wesleyan University. And he decides that he’s going to run home. From Granville, where Denison is, to Lakewood. One hundred and twenty miles. In three days. Carrying nothing—no food, no water, no money, no cell phone. Nothing. He’s simply going to rely on what Blanche Dubois called “the kindness of strangers” (Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire). And on the mercy of God.
A devout Christian, Dee trusts that God will provide for him. And that’s exactly what happens. All the water and food and lodging he needs along the way is given to him. He stops at many houses where people are mowing their lawns in the heat, and they give him water. An elderly man takes him in for the night. “He was determined this was something he was going to do,” said his college coach. “He and his family . . . believe that the Lord will take care of you. He believed no matter where he stopped for a drink of water, a meal, someplace to sleep or take a shower, he would find someone to help.” In a world that largely doesn’t trust in such blessings, his was a radical act of trust. And besides that, while he was running he raised $4500 for “the school in the Congo where he once had to share a single book with all his classmates” (The Plain Dealer, June 2, 2011, pp. 1,6).
Life is funny. Sometimes we revere people for the wrong reasons, and turn a blind eye to their failings and deceptions, when all the while the greatest witnesses to the presence and power of the living Christ are right there under our noses. As we receive this strange and wonderful meal, may we be filled full of the grace of God. May we trust that we will always be filled with what we need. And may we be strengthened to be witnesses to wholeness and generosity and peace. In Christ’s name.