Brandon C. Jones's Blog, page 21
September 6, 2012
Will the Real Good Samaritan Please Stand Up?
I often watch The People’s Court during lunch, which is a show that focuses mostly on deadbeat renters and landlords, friends and family who loan money to one another, and the existence of dogs. One case featured a lady who referred to herself as a “Good Samaritan,” because after she damaged someone else’s car with her shopping cart she magnanimously let that person know what she had done when she could’ve just driven off. Of course, the reason she appeared on The People’s Court was that she refused to take legal responsibility for the damages her actions caused, citing faulty equipment and the liability of the grocery store as the real culprits. The title of Good Samaritan is now for people who are all apologies, I guess.
Every year Beloit College surveys incoming freshman to compile cultural touchstones that they do not remember. This year the results of their survey led the researchers to conclude that among these incoming freshman “the Biblical sources of terms such as “Forbidden Fruit,” “The writing on the wall,” “Good Samaritan,” and “The Promised Land” are unknown to most of them.” Without knowing the source of these terms, it’s easy to see why a lady who damaged someone else’s car can consider herself a Good Samaritan with just an apology rather than anything resembling love.
I don’t know how big of a deal it is that people by and large are becoming less familiar with famous biblical passages like the writing on the wall, but the Good Samaritan is synonymous with loving our neighbor. We do well not only to let others know what it ought to mean, but also to portray what it means through our words and actions. While we may not be as bold as the defendant was on the People’s Court, we can easily pat ourselves on our backs for our great acts of love, when all we’ve offered are trite apologies. What are Good Samaritans supposed to do, exactly? For an answer, we must return to the source of the phrase in Luke’s Gospel.
“On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”“What is written in the Law?”he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii [two days’ wages for an average worker] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:25-37 NIV).
We all want to justify ourselves. We have a knack for considering our love to be far greater than it actually is. We also love to champion our causes, especially victims to which we can hold other neighbors responsible, while we are safely off the hook. Likewise, sins that are easily visible in our neighbors or sins that we do not struggle with at all can become our focus rather than sins against which we struggle daily. In response to our prideful yearning for validation and the relief of telling ourselves that we are one of the “good people,” Jesus’ story challenges us to rethink what love is and who our neighbors are.
If you’ve read much of the Gospels and Acts, then you can piece together that Jews and Samaritans did not get along. There was mutual animosity between the two groups of people, even though they were so similar and lived so close together. For us in South Dakota, the animosity between natives and non-natives is quite similar, and Jesus’ story illustrates that we cannot truly talk of love for our neighbors until we think first about neighbors that do not like us.
Arthur McGill looks at the details of the story of the Good Samaritan and shows how this seeming one-time event discloses much about the kind of love the Samaritan had. He was traveling in enemy territory and wasn’t headed home. He was a stranger in a strange land, yet he was the man with all the help, unlike the familiar priest and Levite. The Samaritan, despite being a persecuted person in a strange land, was able to love his enemies nonetheless. The Samaritan did not just drop off the injured Jew at some nearby facility. Instead, he poured costly oil and wine on the injured man’s wounds, put the man on his own donkey, and stayed with him the first night at an inn. He even left behind significant funds for all the necessary care the injured man would need. This kind of love goes beyond writing a few checks a year to charities out of our excess. The Samaritan did not give out of his excess; he gave out of what he needed for himself. He even promises to return and personally take care of the injured man’s future needs, offering to repay the injured man’s debts. Those debts become the Samaritan’s debts.
For McGill, Jesus tells this story not just for his followers to know that they are to go and love their neighbors, but also to tell them howthey can do it. Jesus is like the Good Samaritan, and we are like the injured man. This story reveals God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. For Jesus did not come like the familiar Levite or priest. Rather, he came humbly as a carpenter’s son—an itinerant preacher who attracted fishermen, tax collectors, and women. He ate and drank with sinners and spoke often about his Father’s kingdom. According to McGill, “the parable [of the Good Samaritan] warns us, not of the difficulty we face in trying to love others, but of the difficulty that all of us will have in appreciating the one who loves us and lays down his life for us, namely, our neighbor Jesus Christ. . . . On the surface he is simply not impressive enough to satisfy us. And yet he heals our deepest wounds and brings us the gift of eternal life.” His power lies in his sharing of his own life, crucified and raised, which enables his followers to go and be like him.
Who is your neighbor? How do you love her? God did not answer those questions abstractly. He answers them through Jesus Christ. Go and love likewise! And if you damage someone else’s car along the way, don’t call yourself a Good Samaritan just because you stopped to say you’re sorry.
The McGill quote is from his book, Suffering: A Test of Theological Method
August 30, 2012
On Labor and Labor Day
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
–Frederick Buechner
As a kid when I first learned the definition of labor, I smirked that our annual Labor Day holiday was marked by the absence of labor. It took me a while to get the unique history of the holiday. Like most boys, my Dad was responsible for first teaching me about work. He worked a lot. When I was fourteen I began working too. I started out small, just working once a week and then taking on some odd jobs every now and then. Once I left the house and started college, work became a regular part of my life, except for a couple voluntary and involuntary gaps between jobs.
For the most part my work was always a means to another end. I was working to pay bills, while preparing for something I loved—a calling. My calling happens to be directly involved with church ministry, but make no mistake, God also calls delivery drivers, plumbers, farmers, shop-owners, insurance adjusters, and even lawyers to contribute to his sacred work. That’s right, God designed us humans for work, even before sin distorted our world—including ourselves—cursing much of our work with being irksome. While a lot of people merely work to make a buck, we Christians who believe in a God who created us in his image for a specific purpose, consider our work to be a calling, or vocation. Our work is part of what it means for us to be human. According to Dorothy Sayers, work is “a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God’s image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing.”
Of course, somethings are not well worth doing. A mafia hitman may take pride in the efficiency of his work, but there is nothing creative or dignified in coldly killing people for your bosses. Perhaps when you were younger, you had a job or two that didn’t seem worth doing well. My first job after completing several years of graduate school involved days full of un-stapling, copying, and then re-stapling mortgage documents for stuffing envelopes. Needless to say, I didn’t feel like it was work worthy of MY doing it well.
But I was wrong in approaching my work as just a paycheck rather than a regular opportunity to worship God and bring him glory. I failed to see how my work was a way for me to serve my community by serving my work, and my rotten attitude did not help the dignity of my coworkers one bit.
Approaching our jobs as a divine calling, or vocation, should give us a better perspective for all our labors. We serve our community by serving our work and doing it well. I once heard a comedian ponder the expertise Jesus had as a carpenter, joking that were he to be hired all anyone would care about would be the quality of his tables. But the comedian was right. When we reflect God’s glory through our vocations, it is by doing our jobs well. Were I a carpenter, my goal would be to make my customers pleased with high quality work that serves their needs.
I grew up hearing that if you really wanted to serve God, then you would serve the church through narrowly defined positions, whether they be as a pastor, missionary, teacher, usher, greeter, or choir-member. But the truth is all of us can serve God through our vocations, especially when we strive for excellence in our field and look for ways to show love to our coworkers, bosses, and costumers. Given our fallen world, we can often find ourselves in jobs where we are not invested in the end-product of our company, or in a global economy we may have serious doubts whether our corporation is doing good in the world. And we shouldn’t dismiss those concerns lightly. Perhaps our efforts would be better spent elsewhere, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we are limited to “churchwork” when it comes to serving God. Going back to Sayers, “The only Christian work is good work well done. Let the Church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is Church embroidery, or sewage-farming.”
When Labor Day comes, enjoy your day off work. And when the next day for your labor comes, remember that you are in a sacred business and God is using you for his work too. Of course, the God who made us to work also designed us for rhythms of rest, but we’ll save reflections on the Sabbath for another time.For more on the history of vocations, see the introduction to my paper here.The Sayers quotes are from her book, Creed or Chaos?The Buechner quote is from his fabulous little book, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC
August 23, 2012
The Glory in Groaning: A Reflection on Romans 8
I’ve never created anything alive. I’m not God. But I have been responsible for pets, and my track record is spotty both as a child and adult. My mother will never forget my boyhood cat
As an adult I quickly forget pets that pass away, but to my children Mrs. Frisbee the guinea pig was a vital part of our family. They painted a tombstone for her and have had regular visitations to her backyard grave the past few weeks. The bond of love a child has with a pet is a bit magical in that the pet takes on personality outside its capacities, and there’s nothing a child hates more than the groaning of a pet in misery and the jarring sight and feel of a dead one. Death is such an unwelcome interruption that changes everything. The weight of responsibility, normally reserved for us grown-ups, becomes too much to bear in the aftermath of a pet’s death. Kids figure if they were such a part of the pet’s thriving, then they must also be somewhat responsible for its demise.
Children can’t describe well the weightiness of that responsibility, but they feel it all the same by shedding tears and looking defeated. I wish I could tell them that coping with death will get easier with time. But I can’t. I may joke with my kids about the existence and habits of the Stinky Monster or make empty threats to stop the car on the highway during a twelve-hour trip, but I won’t lie to them about the pain and emptiness of death. It always hurts. And it never makes much sense.
Despite our protests, death persists. Not only does it persist, but the whole dying recipe of misery, disease, addiction, oppression, hatred, anger, and violence is simply part of life in a fallen world. A groaning world. Not only do we humans hate death, but we also groan at evil and futility. We hardly ever desire what is best for us. We desire it even less for our neighbor. God has revealed what is good and for everyone’s best, but it’s not what we think we want. We get embroiled in culture wars and let our misplaced passions mobilize us more for the service of earthly powers and authorities rather than the service of love for God and neighbor. Love calls us to be vulnerable. Love expands us and opens us up to the world around us, the world of our neighbors, misery and all. God himself gave us the example he wants us to follow by opening up himself to this world and all its groanings. He took on our flesh, became a servant, and disarmed the forces of evil that run amuck down here by dying and then rising again as a new creation. God has started a new family, using Christ as his down-payment (or firstfruit for those familiar with the OT sacrifices), calling his people to be like Christ—offering them a taste of that new life now, in community together as his church, and an even better new life in his future kingdom.
In his future kingdom there will no longer be a gap between what humans desire and what rightly worships God and allows for human flourishing. God’s Spirit will be so active in all aspects of the world that its bright diversity of sights, sounds, tastes, and textures will harmoniously merge into a masterful symphony of worship. The kingdom is a promise so true, so good, and so beautiful that we Christians sometimes wonder if it will ever really come. There cannot be even a comparison between that world and the one we inhabit currently. The realist in us doesn’t see it happening, given all the problems that face us today and how short we fall of doing what we ought to do, but we hope for God’s kingdom anyways. Who hopes for something they can easily see?
We may not see his kingdom easily, even when we gather to worship around his Word and around his table, but we still wait patiently for it. In our patience we still groan plenty. Whenever we do the truth in love, we risk resistance. We also risk misunderstanding. Sometimes the call to love amid misery can be too much to bear and prompt us to retreat in the isolation of our daily routines. But God’s left a spark in us to love, to expand, to be big, and to face suffering just as he did in Christ. And we groan at that too. Sometimes we feel like whimpering children all over again, not even knowing how to explain what it feels like living between two worlds, one fallen and one that seems so imaginary—even if we hope for it with all the faith we can muster. In those awkward, silent moments God reveals himself through both our groanings to him and his reassuring promises back to us. For Christ pleaded often to his heavenly Father.
God is patiently waiting for his kingdom too. He is eager to reveal his kingdom to his children. He doesn’t want the creation that was designed to reflect his power, love, and goodness to go on groaning like it has for so long and calling his intentions into question. So he groans too, sometimes through us. And that groaning—that desire to see the world, including ourselves, finally be different—in a strange way reveals God’s glory. There is no God “behind the back” of Christ crucified. When God came to suffer and die, opening a path to a new kind of life for his people, it revealed his glory. He wouldn’t let his own creation go to waste. He wouldn’t give up on them and scrap them away. No, instead he redeemed them, taking on sin, death, and the Devil and receiving their worst—for us. It took a lot of suffering and groaning to create a new family this way. But the suffering and pain was not for nothing. Like the pain of childbirth it was and is toward a beautiful hope.
God desires to grow his family larger, not just by sheer numbers, but also by nudging us toward the same path he walked in this old fallen world—the path marked most often by love and suffering. We talk much of striving to be like Christ, but when God obviously reveals that being like him means acting like him, we push back as if that’s not really for us. But God is patient, knowing that his methods will one day produce a large diverse family that reflects his glory. And God sticks with us, because he loves us and always will.
Last week I was in the backyard and overhead one of my son’s visitations to Mrs. Frisbee’s grave. He took Daisy, the surviving guinea pig, to see the grave and consoled Daisy with words I couldn’t quite make out because he was so quiet. I later asked what he talked about. “Jesus,” he said. I don’t think Daisy was able to take it all in, but I’m thankful that my son is starting to realize that even though there will be much more groaning in his lifetime there’s also hope to share with others. May we encourage him to share that hope by loving others and desiring for them to flourish as God’s children. Sure, everyone’s all mixed up when it comes to how exactly we as humans best do that, but God gave a clear example to follow—love in truth. It’s risky, but it’s worth it.
August 16, 2012
God Grew Tired of Us
When God reveals his patience—his capacity to put up with us—it is often in the context of offering salvation to evil people. Paul considers his salvation as an example of God’s ability to show patience to someone who was “the worst of sinners.” The New Testament speaks much of God’s patience, sometimes in unexpected ways as when Peter describes God’s patience waiting for Noah to finally finish building the ark before the floods came. Some people would question how patient that sounds, given the flood’s devastation.
The Old Testament also reveals many places in which God is ready to act in judgment, but instead patiently waits. He waited for Abraham to find righteous people in Sodom. He waited for Moses to convince him not to destroy the Israelites who forgot about him so quickly and credited their Exodus from slavery in Egypt to golden calves forged from a fire. He waited for Nineveh to repent, even though his prophet, Jonah, was cheering for fire and brimstone to fall on that great city. Eventually, Sodom was struck, and Nineveh’s repentance didn’t last either. Israel and Judah also suffered horrible exile for their ongoing disobedience.
Given all the rebellion, murder, oppression, poverty, misery, and violence in the world, is it any wonder that God grows tired of us sometimes? That’s at least the way John, a Sudanese refugee, puts it in a movie that describes the genocide of his homeland. It was a sign of the last days when God “grew tired of us, tired of the bad things the people were doing.” John never thought God was behind all the evil in Sudan, just that God wouldn’t intervene since people had been so bad for so long.*
As Christians we rightly focus on God’s promise to open up his eternal life to us and let us be part of his kingdom. But sometimes we would do well also to remember our place in the here and now in giving others a taste of that kingdom, marked by justice and righteousness. When we neglect that role because of our apathy and laziness, what does God think of us? I can only guess it is similar to what he thought of Israel, when he says through his prophet Amos:
“Woe to you who long
for the day of the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not light.
It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him. Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness? “I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:18-24)
Thanks be to God that his patience outlasts his tiredness. He is willing to identify himself with and dearly love even his lukewarm church, because it is Christ's church. But we do not want to be those who shrink back at his coming when he finds us being unfaithful. Rather, we want to be people who are alert and ready, longing for his return, because it will be a day of celebration and rejoicing for us instead of darkness and terror.
*For more on God and evil, click here.
August 9, 2012
When the Gospel of Jesus Christ Isn’t Enough
Last week I felt like I was around my Dad once more. When we were on the reservation we had the pleasure to work with a remarkable man named Bob. He is tan, strong, talkative, and opinionated. He loves to tell old stories and brags constantly about his kids just like my Dad would. Bob also likes to talk about his latest blood-type diet before, during, and after every meal—and in between meals too. I heard about his hunter and gatherer genes and the many evils of complex carbohydrates, despite my showing zero interest in the subject. Once I found out he and I shared the same blood type I tried to pay a little more attention to what he said, but in the end I don’t think anyone’s blood type gets the green light to eat nothing but bacon and ice cream while losing weight. I should’ve asked Bob about it, though, just in case.
Bob talked the most about his diet, but his actions confirmed that other things were more important to him. He gave up his previous “successful” life to join a fledgling reservation ministry that offers few opportunities for triumphs and hardly any money. Christianity needs more Bobs. He wanted nothing more than to humbly serve God by providing for and leading his family and spreading the gospel to children of the Oglala Lakota people at Pine Ridge. Only a deep passion for Christ’s gospel would compel someone past middle age to maintain facilities with no budget, work with volunteer unskilled labor, and drive an oven-bus through the heat of the South Dakota badlands. That’s my guess at least, because Bob never talked much about what drew him to the reservation or keeps him going through discouragement. I never heard him talk much about the gospel when we were together. Looking back, I guess I didn’t talk about it much with him either. Maybe the problem isn’t just with Bob. Maybe it’s with all of us.
When I was in college Calvinism was a four-letter word thanks to ambitious people who wanted to talk about nothing but Calvinism. At one time I was one of those people, even discussing Calvinism on my first date with a girl, saying that I couldn’t be with someone who didn’t see things the way I saw them (since then I’ve come to understand that what is commonly called “Calvinism” is quite compatible with what other people think). I’d like to say the old first-date Calvinism talk was my most embarrassing dating moment, but Veggietales and Saving Private Ryan probably got me into more trouble in the ‘90s. From time to time I’ve been known not only as a dreaded “Calvinism guy,” but I’ve also been known as the hockey jersey guy, Jayhawk guy, and MCI telemarketing guy. Looking back on past conversations I wish I was known as someone who would talk your ear off about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Instead, I’m probably more known for
Why do I become so passionate and talk so much about things that, despite what I may have thought at the time, don’t matter very much? Part of the reason is that we are all worshippers by design, seeking our identity in anything other than ourselves by being part of some movement. We want to become pseudo-experts, purists, legalists—even Gnostics, and our fodder can be anything but Christ crucified. Of course, some people notoriously do not want to be part of any movement, which usually qualifies them to be classified as part of the hipster movement.
In response to our misguided marketing for our latest pet fads, I wonder if Jesus would be any less harsh with us than when he called out the teachers of the law and Pharisees long ago saying, “You hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are” (Matt 23:15). There is a time and place for us to voice our opinions and enjoy hobbies and interests in this multi-faceted experience we call life. But perhaps we need to be cautious when we catch ourselves becoming more vocal about our political, theological, health, sports, and corporate-branding preferences, than proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ with both our words and our actions. Woe to us when we take vacation and drive hours to the latest gathering or conference about our niche interests, but have not yet told our neighbors about God heading up all things in Christ.
The Pharisees’ biggest mistake was their focus on so many minor things at the expense of having no passion left for the one major thing. Maybe they assumed everyone already knew the one major thing or that it just didn’t excite people anymore like it did in the past. I wonder if we have treated the gospel the exact same way. In contrast, Paul says our salvation in Christ is like an invaluable mine that needs to be “worked out” continually with fear and trembling. He pictures the depth of Christ’s love for us as something that has great height, width, and breadth for us to explore. He encourages us to keep growing to Christ’s full stature and to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. The vision of Christ’s kingdom affected not only Paul’s actions, but also his speech to the point where he just wanted to talk about the gospel. He figured that if people were annoyed or offended by him, let them be offended by Christ crucified and raised, instead of any flowery speech or supersecret peripheral knowledge on his part.
I bet Paul still loved to talk about the sights and sounds of growing up in Tarsus. Perhaps he also bored people with all his talk about the intricacies of making tents. He was obviously a sports fan, considering all the athletic imagery he uses in his writings. But Paul’s actions revealed someone who felt privileged that God included him in God’s mission to spread news of a future kingdom for all peoples. Paul figured it would also be best to let his speech be dominated by that mission and vision as well. He talked about it so much when he traveled that he couldn’t help but talk about it when he was just with his coworkers and fellow believers and vice versa. If we struggle talking about the gospel with our neighbors, why haven’t we thought about talking about it more among our family, friends, and fellow believers?
Has an appreciation for the gospel affected your speech? When we are known for always talking about something else in hopes we can convert others to that cause, what we are really telling our God, our brothers and sisters, and our neighbors is that the gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t enough. Ironically, by letting those other causes consume us, we reveal that we have not yet grasped the gospel for ourselves. As C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased” (The Weight of Glory).
August 2, 2012
A Taste of the Kingdom at the Olympics
Our family, along with billions of people across the globe, anxiously watched the opening ceremonies of the XXX summer Olympiad in London last Friday. Admittedly, I enjoy watching more events in the winter Olympics than the summer games. I’ve lived in colder climates most of my adult life. I have horrible asthma that keeps me from running, and I have always been unable to perform any feats of strength from my youth onward regarding track and field events. On the other hand, I love the cold, I love to ski, and I love hockey.
But as much as I resonate more with the cold-weather games, so few countries compete in the winter Olympics due to their geography, that the summer Olympics have a far greater emotion about them when it comes to the spirit and purpose of the Olympics as shown in the opening and closing ceremonies. The summer games are truly global as nations from every continent no matter how great or how small get a chance to shine and bring their gifts to the rest of the world in a friendly competition. People parade around, proud of their heritage and story, and they are sure to bring a little bit of their local flair to their one minute of fame in the stadium during the parade of nations at the opening ceremony. And the crowd cheers for each country, fueling every athlete’s moment in the sun.
Despite all the concerns of terror, commercialization, needless politicking, greed, corruption, etc. the Olympics, more than just about anything on earth, give us a glimpse of the kingdom—of the way things ought to be. People around the world who look different, dress different, speak different languages, and have different values all come in, bringing their athletic splendor along with them, and share in the celebration that is humanity.
When Jesus gave John a preview of the kingdom and its capital, New Jerusalem, John wrote, “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Rev 21:23-27).
There is plenty of impurity at each Olympic games, but one day there will be a great celebration of humanity, rooted in God’s new creation of us through Christ. God’s kingdom is bigger, much bigger than any Olympic ceremony, and one day we too will join our brothers and sisters and bring our splendor with us—after all, it will be God’s splendor that we’ll bring with us to a spectacle rooted in something much more firm than sport, a spectacle rooted in God’s glory.
Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus!
Amen.
