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.

Explainer

Creed

Weirdness

6 January 2025

5 min read

The year of the mystics

Ready to be turned upside down?

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

An abstact image hints at twisting figure in front of a St Andrews Cross.

Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

Last year, a journalist called me, completely out of the blue. We’d never met before, but she had a couple of questions she wanted answering about Christianity and, somehow, she found me.

Firstly, she wanted to know what the heck was going on with Christianity at the moment – why can’t Nick Cave stop talking about his Wild God? What was up with Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s infamous U-Turn? Why, despite decline in church attendance and institutional failures, are more and more people finding themselves falling into the Christian story? I wish I had then, what I have now: Graham Tomlin’s round-up of 2024 as the year Christianity (for better or for worse) made somewhat of a comeback. Because, she’s right, it really has been quite something.

But, leaving Graham to answer her first question, this article is an attempt to answer her second, far more unexpected, one: where are all the Christian mystics?

I got the sense that this second question wasn’t being asked for the benefit of a piece she was writing, but for the sake of her own mystically inclined heart. I feel like what she was really asking was something akin to - is there a place within the Christian story for people who are friends with mystery and oddness, who want the unexplainable and the ecstatic, who consider ‘strange’ and ‘spiritual’ to be two sides of the same coin? Is there a way in for those who don’t want the weirdness of it all to be underplayed? Is there space within Christianity for one to be turned up-side-down by God’s ‘heart melting nearness’?

Well, in short, yes. Completely and utterly. Yes to all of it.

Where are the mystics, I hear you ask? It would be my pleasure to introduce you to a few of my favourites.

First up to the plate, it’s Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179).

A master of music, medicine and mysticism – Hildegard of Bingen is one of the most interesting women in German history. As a Benedictine Abess, she dedicated much of her time to mystical theology and philosophy, largely informed by her visionary experiences of God. She reluctantly recorded twenty-six of these visions in a piece of work entitled Sci Vias Domini (which translates to mean ‘Knowing the Ways of the Lord’). She also composed songs, again largely inspired by her visions of God, and even a musical mortality play entitled Ordo Virtutum.

Her Christian mysticism bled into her understanding of science and medicine; she emphasises the deep interconnectedness of all living things - having originated from one creator - and therefore sees medicine as just as spiritual of a pursuit as theology. According to Hildegard, all is sacred, all is connected, and so the health of the natural world matters. It both informs and reflects our own health.

Clare of Assisi (1194-1253) is celebrated as an Italian saint and founder of the Order of Poor Ladies.

Born into a wealthy family, Clare shunned comfort, luxury, and an arranged advantageous marriage in favour of a life devoted to intimate and vibrant prayer. She soon gathered a community around her, and their obvious disdain for luxury of any kind is what caught the world’s attention and earned them the title of ‘Poor Ladies’.

Her life of prayer had dramatic consequences and, ultimately, saved the lives of those she loved. While their Order was under attack, Clare’s prayers caused a violent storm to sweep across the town and scatter the terrified attackers.

Next up is a particularly strange (in the best way) character, Catherine of Sienna (1357-1380).

Catherine had religious visions from the age of six or seven, and took them incredibly seriously, even then. As she grew older, her parents urged her to marry the widower of her sister, who had tragically died in childbirth. In response, Catherine cut off her hair and joined the Sisters of Penance of St. Dominic. That’s quite the outright rejection, isn’t it?

After three years of isolation (during which she is said to have prayed, contemplated, and developed a rich understanding of Jesus’ death and its implications), she became quite the famous figure, feeling sure that God had commanded her to publicly speak of what he had told and shown her.

Now for a personal favourite, Theresa of Avila (1515-1583).

I read her prayers and poems endlessly. And, can you blame me? Just listen to this:

Let nothing disturb you,
let nothing frighten you,
all things will pass away.
God never changes;
patience obtains all things,
whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone suffices.

The gentleness of her words are like a balm to a world that can so often sting us. And, indeed, stung Theresa, as she suffered with severe ill-health and persecution her entire life. Nevertheless, she developed a passion for mental prayer and is said to have heard God’s audible voice, seen visions, and even felt her body levitate. She became infamous for her poetry, her mystic theology and her unusual independence as a medieval woman.

These women, these mystics, are separated from us by time and context. And yet, to many, they are close companions. They are still aiding those on a quest to enter into Christianity through the ‘mystic’ door. They are still reminding us that we oughtn’t be fooled by the pesky left-side of our brains, the part that wants us to believe that we understand all that’s worth understanding. They are still challenging us with the knowledge that all that we see is not all that there is.

You want mysticism? Christianity can down-right give you mysticism.

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