Article

Character

Creed

Sport

6 August 2024

6 min read

Letter to the Olympians

A veteran sports chaplain writes a letter to Christian Olympians, on how they can find joy amid the 'funerals and weddings' of the games.

Ashley Null

Ashley Null serves as a chaplain to elite athletes and coaches. He is also a priest and an academic.

A swimmer at the end of a race, looks to the result screen.

Adam Peaty after an Olympic race.

BBC.

Dear Friend,

Congratulations on being selected to compete in the Olympics - the greatest games in the world! I’m sure you can’t wait to get out there and show the world what you’ve got - your amazing talent and skill and all the hard work and dedication that has gone into becoming an Olympian.

Now, it has been said that being at the Olympics is like experiencing 10 funerals for every 1 wedding. You know this if you’re in elite sport - every one person’s victory is at the expense of many others’ agony of defeat.

These next few weeks will be full of the strongest emotions and potential challenges to how you think about your faith. What does it look like to integrate your faith and your sport in the midst of such pressure?

First, God has called you to the Olympics to experience true joy.

The first reason God gave the good gift of sport is for it to bring joy.

“In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course,” writes the Psalmist.

God compares our sport to a honeymoon - both physically and emotionally satisfying - what high praise for the joy of sport!

Every race, every match, every competition, is an opportunity to experience this God-given joy.

This joy will help you in the ups and especially in the downs over the next few weeks. The Bible makes this clear again and again, that it is joy that helps us endure the difficulties in life.

These next few weeks, make a conscious effort to count every blessing, thanking God for the joy of sport and the amazing experience he has given you.

As you compete you can witness to many the wonderful joy of sport... By not torturing yourself in defeat with self-loathing and shame, instead rejoicing with those who win and weeping with those who don’t.

Second, but Elite Competition isn’t only about joy. It includes uncertainty, fear, and even loss. God can use all aspects of sport, both the highs and the lows, to draw you closer to Himself.

The second reason God give gifts to his people is to use them as a school of discipleship.

St Paul writing to Christians in Ephesus said: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."

God has given you this vocation as a ‘school of discipleship’ to learn what it looks like to love God and love others.

As you compete and lean on the promises of God, you have endless opportunities to grow in living out your faith.

To remember your identity is based on the cross and not your success and failures
To remember the power you have to compete does not come from your own strength but from Christ who is at work in you
To remember your standing before God does not change because of God’s grace, whether you win or lose, fail or succeed
To remember that if you do lose, God will be there with you and use your pain, but that the pain will not have the last word in your life - God will work all things for good

Third, you can serve others as you compete.

As you compete you can witness to many the wonderful joy of sport:

By competing drug-free and within the rules you can show an alternative to the winner-takes-all attitude so prevalent in all sport.
By not treating your opponent as the enemy but valuing them as a ‘co-worker’ you can push each other on to excellence.
By showing humility and thankfulness in victory, recognising that other Christian athletes have worked just as hard and prayed just as much, but that God has set aside gifts other than Olympic success for them.
By not torturing yourself in defeat with self-loathing and shame, instead rejoicing with those who win and weeping with those who don’t.

In all this you can show the wonderful, transforming news of the gospel at work in your life as you experience joy in the midst of the funerals and weddings seen at the Olympic Games.

But what if things don’t work out as you hoped? God will be there for you and with you in the midst of the pain. As you grieve, look for Jesus.

He will give you the comfort you long for.

He will remind you that his love for you is stronger and will last much longer than your present pain.
He will assure you that he still has good things for you.

Ask his help to hold on to this truth. Because when you are hurting, it is so easy to listen to lies. You see, it’s a real danger to view God as your ultimate coach.

The lie says that if you make good spiritual choices then you will be on God’s winning team and blessed with success. But when success doesn’t happen, the lie says it’s because you have made bad choices and don’t deserve to be on the team, at least not until you can prove yourself spiritually good enough again.

In all of your sporting career you’ve probably been taught to only feel good about yourself when you’re winning, that if you lose, you’re nothing. Your coaches may have told you to use the shame of losing to motivate you to success.

Friend, you need to separate your sense of worth, your identity, from your performance. Equating significance and achievement will always leave your self-esteem at the mercy of the natural ups and downs of being a top-level sportsperson. But only love has the power to make humans feel significant, performance never will.

The good news of the gospel is that in God, you have unconditional love, not based on any of your performance. You are valued and loved not because of the talents you have or the way you compete. Your worth and value is seen in the love God proved he had for you when he died for you on the cross.

St Paul tells us:

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Now, as people reconciled to God there is no condemnation, nothing can separate us from God’s love and we are adopted as God’s children - this is who you are. This is where you identity alone can be found. This is where you can find peace, even in the midst of a major loss.

Friends, enjoy these next few weeks and the amazing opportunity it is. If you feel the pain of loss, know that with Jesus pain never has the last word. His love always does. If you win, know that it is a wonderful gift of God to be thankful for, and he will make good use of it, long after you have retired, giving you decades of joy.

Solo Deo Gloria!

Adapted by Jonny Reid, for Christians in Sport, from Pastoral Care in the Olympic Village by Ashley Null in Sports Chaplaincy: Trends, Issues and Debates.

Article

Character

Creed

Leading

Politics

20 May 2025

5 min read

World leaders can learn a lot from Pope Leo

Graham Tomlin was at the Pope's inauguration in Rome. This is what he noticed.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A VIP couple stand and talk with the Pope.

Usha and J.D. Vance meet the Pope after his inauguration.

Vatican Media.

On Sunday morning, along with a host of bishops, patriarchs, priests and assorted others, I was led around the back of Peter's Basilica in Rome, into the cavernous spaces of that extraordinary building.

As we walked through the echoing church with the sunlight slanting through the windows like shafts of light from an angelic realm, our small group of Anglicans waited for our turn to walk out into the blinding sunshine. The names of the churches were ticked off like a game of ecclesiastical bingo: “Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria? OK.” Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch? – This way please. “Armenian Apostolic Church – just wait a minute…”

As we moved through the front doors of the Church, the first thing we saw was a crowd of 200,000 people stretching as far as the eye can see. Behind us was the imposing face of St Peter’s, that great monument to Catholic supremacy and authority. The world’s media looked down from the balconies above us. Opposite our seats were the rich red velvet chairs ready for President Zelensky, J.D. Vance, and the heads of state of numerous countries across Europe and beyond.

As we walked out, I turned to a friend in our group, and instinctively said to him, “you'd need to be someone of remarkable humility not to let all this go to your head.”

I couldn't help thinking of Robert Prevost, who was about to walk through these doors, a man who was made a bishop in 2015 - only became a cardinal two years ago, and was now to find himself the focus of rapt attention by this vast crowd and millions of others on TV, as the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Catholics, catapulted from relative obscurity to being the most famous man in the world within a couple of weeks.

St Peter’s is designed to impress. The piazza in front of the church is surrounded by imposing statues of apostles, saints, martyrs, and fathers of the church, all looking down on proceedings below. It was this church that inadvertently triggered the Reformation, as a fund-raising scheme for its construction involved selling some indulgences in Germany that raised Martin Luther’s fury. The frontage, with its soaring pillars, grand windows, sumptuous balconies and rich tapestries, is meant to overawe you. Inside, the space is huge, with vast windows letting in the light, stunning works of art everywhere. This was a display of the Renaissance papacy, leading into the Counter-Reformation, the confident Baroque spirit that announced the triumph of the Church over all its enemies.

A Pope with a streak of vanity would be a dangerous thing. Everything points to the power of this position – the successor of Peter, the one on whom the rock of the Church was to be built; the leader of the largest body of Christians in the world; someone instantly recognisable across the globe, to whom world leaders have to come, cap in hand. No wonder some popes in the past have become political manipulators, vying with emperors and kings over who has more power.

Yet these days, the Catholic Church sounds a humbler note. Pope Francis started the church down a line of ‘synodality’, inviting other voices into the church’s deliberations rather than just male priests. Pope Leo seems to want to continue down that line.

Referring to his election he said:

“I was chosen, without any merit of my own, and now, with fear and trembling, I come to you as a brother, who desires to be the servant of your faith and your joy, walking with you on the path of God’s love.”

The tone was not of self-aggrandisement, asserting the power of the position. There was no strategy to dynamically change the church and the world. No grand design to use the levers of power to shape society according to his vision. Instead, this was about unleashing a more elusive and uncontrolled force: the power of self-denying compassion.

As Pope Leo put it:

“The ministry of Peter is distinguished precisely by self-sacrificing love, because the Church of Rome presides in charity and its true authority is the charity of Christ. It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda, or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving as Jesus did.”

Now that’s different from the way popes have sometimes spoken in the past. The Church has no power other than the power of love – the kind of self-sacrifice seen in the life of Christ. If the pope ‘presides’, as Presidents do, he ‘presides in charity’. A little different from some other Presidents I can think of.

Admittedly we don’t know much about him yet, But Bob Prevost strikes you as a humble man. Someone who can turn down a place at Harvard Law School to go instead to serve the poorest communities in Peru for 20 years, sleeping on the floor of huts, travelling by donkey to remote villages, unnoticed and obscure, suggests a distinct lack of self-importance. You don’t canvas to become pope, announcing your candidacy, working your way up the ranks, arguing your merits to the electorate. Instead, you get on with what you do, and if the call comes, you follow it.

As Pope Leo, he will need that humility as he takes on this role for the rest of his life. He will need it to resist the subtle lure of the deference others offer him, the adulation he will receive wherever he goes, the buildings he lives in, the magnificence of the popes who went before him, the way people will hang on his very word. The temptation to think that Bob Prevost is, after all, a mighty big fish, someone whose talents have got him to this point will be strong.

But if he gives in to that temptation, he will slip back into the run of the mill way of the world, lording it over those he oversees. He seems aware of the slippery nature of such a position. Whoever was called to be the successor of St Peter, he said, needed to exercise oversight “without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him. On the contrary, he is called to serve the faith of his brothers and sisters, and to walk alongside them."

It was Jesus who said:

“Among the nations, their rulers lord it over them. But it is not so among you. Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant.”

Other Presidents, prime ministers and patriarchs could take a leaf out of that book.

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