With the arrival of summer, all excuses for playing hooky from the gym have vanished out of the window. It is not that I object to working out. Generally, I am quite conscientious about it. But the truth is I find the gymnasium quite boring.
Body contact sports are much more to my liking, but unfortunately Rugby, American Football, and Gaelic Football are just a tad too painful for my aging body to endure. So, like it or not, the gym it has to be. And funnily enough, I believe St Paul would tell me to suck it up and get on with it
Now St Paul is not the sort of chap one might expect to meet at the YMCA or the health spa—doing aerobics, or wheezing around on a treadmill, or working out on one of those weird elliptical exercise machines. Still less would one expect to see him, clad in shorts and tank top, doing warming exercises up beside a running track.
The reason for this is most people picture St. Paul as an intellectual and scholar—in other words, a bit nerdy. But, actually, you’d be quite wrong. There’s nothing nerdy about St. Paul.
But, then, it is only in this decidedly wimpy age of ours that Christianity has been associated with nerdiness. Not so long ago young men needed both good grades and a respectable athletic record to get into seminary. Prowess in at least one “manly” sport—football, crew, track, or boxing—was considered an important qualification for an aspiring clergyman.
Indeed, The Rt Rev. David Shepherd, an internationally famous English cricketer, was a wildly popular Bishop of Liverpool—more or less the equivalent of Babe Ruth being elected Bishop of Maryland.
However, some 50 or 60 years ago, when Bishop Shepherd was being educated, educators subscribed to Juvenal’s maxim “Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano“—“A sound mind in a sound body is a thing to be prayed for.”
Indeed, educators in those days shared the belief with their Greek and Roman counterparts that a sound mind was actually the product of a sound body—that physical fitness was a precondition for optimum intellectual effort.
When archaeologists unearthed the Lyceum, the philosopher Aristotle’s famous academy in Athens, the evidence that persuaded them it was really Aristotle’s school was the discovery of its wrestling and gymnastics arena. Nobody today thinks of Aristotle as an athlete, but his brilliant mind was, in part, molded in the gym.
St Paul was a highly educated man in both the Jewish and Greek traditions. While Jews didn’t hold physical fitness in great esteem as an educational tool, the Greeks certainly did, and it is hard to imagine that St Paul managed to avoid the physical side of his Greek education.
I don’t know whether he was much of a boxer or a wrestler (both popular sports with the Greeks and Romans), but he was an athletics fan. You can tell that by the way he uses runners and races as metaphors many times in his epistles.
In fact, sometimes he sounds a bit like one of those veteran football coaches who see the whole world in terms of a game of football.
Take for example, the passage from his First Epistle to the Corinthians appointed to be read on Septuagesima Sunday: “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run that ye might obtain.”
That’s an athlete who has won some and lost some, and knows that winning is better. What St Paul is saying is that in order to win the prize, you’ve got to be in the race.
Paul was speaking to his audience in a language they understood. The Greeks of all classes, even slaves, were avid sports fans. They worked out daily at the public baths (the equivalent of our health clubs and spas) and eagerly attended sporting events at their local stadium.
Corinth, like most large Graeco-Roman cities, had a magnificent public stadium and often played host to international competitions that attracted athletic stars and hopefuls from all over the Roman Empire.
Christianity, Paul says, is like an athletics event. You have got to run in the race if you want to win the prize. Spectators don’t expect to win prizes at athletic events and nor can spectators expect to win prizes in Christianity.
It might seem strange to think of Christianity as a spectator sport. But, in fact, it’s a very apt metaphor. There are many people who consider themselves Christians, but who, in reality, are merely spectators.They are as different from real Christians as the fan in the stands is from the quarterback throwing the passes.
The fan might speak football jargon as well as the quarter back; he might have an even better grasp of strategy and tactics; but when it comes down to it, it is the fellow who is out on the field who collects the accolades and the million-dollar paycheck.
When all’s said and done, the football fan is simply a consumer of football.
The same is true of Christianity: Many churchgoers are not so much Christian as consumers of Christianity.
Sad to relate, it’s an easy enough attitude to slip into. Consumers of Christianity tend to be connoisseurs of religion: liturgy, theology, and preaching. They savor the faith more for the manner of its execution rather than what it means. They critique the way things are done instead of practicing the doing of it. In other words, with them style triumphs over substance.
Like football or any other sport, Christianity requires practice. You can’t just walk in off the street, take off your coat, run out on the field and throw a winning pass. It takes years of effort—physical and mental effort—to become even a passable professional quarter back. And same goes for Christianity—except, of course, there is no such thing as an amateur Christian.
With Christianity, there are no half measures: Either you play the game full time, or you’ll find yourself back in the bleachers, looking on. Being a Christian takes constant effort. Perhaps this explains why we call Christians who take their faith seriously “practicing Christians.”
But while there are many similarities between a sporting life and a Christian one, there is one a huge difference—and this lies in the division of the spoils, in the distribution of the prizes.
In the world of sport, there are no second place winners. Only one athlete gets the gold. With Christianity, the odds are infinitely better: Providing you enter the race, you’re guaranteed a prize—and not just any prize.
With Christianity there are no second place winners. As Jesus explains in the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, every one who enters the race wins first prize. Unlike the world of sport, with Christianity, quite literally, every one’s a champion. GPH✠
Newsletter