I grew up watching Olympic sports on television.  The American Broadcasting Company pioneered Olympic Game Coverage, and through their popular weekly broadcast, ABC's Wide World of Sports, they introduced me to a wide range of thrilling athletics which would have been otherwise unknown to me in 1960s rural western North Carolina.

Forever etched in my memory was the program's beginning.  Each week the announcer would wax poetic about the "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat," the latter phrase spoken as a Winter Olympic ski jumper catapulted off the ramp and painfully crashed onto the mountain slope below.  Eight-year- old boys find gruesome fascination in such graphic destruction, and I was no different.

But it was the Olympic Games themselves which captured my imagination.  The stories of the athletes' sacrifices, the power of the movement's ideals, the quality of human achievement left me in awe.  And there was something about the Olympic anthem, flag, and flame that resonated deep within my soul.

Recorded history assigns 776 BC as the date for the first Olympics, although virtually all historians presume that the Games began well before then.  As a testimony to the religious nature of the Games (held in honor of Zeus, the most important god of the ancient Greek pantheon), all wars would cease during the contests and a sacred flame would burn continually on the altar of the goddess Hera (Zeus' wife).  Athletes would compete in the nude.  Instead of medals, a crown of olive leaves would be placed on the head of the victor.  These Games were staged every four years (an Olympiad) until they were ended in AD 394 by the Roman Emperor Theodosius, who believed that their nudity and pagan practices were unfit for the newly Christianized Roman empire.  Some fifteen hundred years later, a French nobleman named Pierre de Coubertin would revive the Olympic Games, minus the elements that had caused such concern for Theodosius.

In 1996, my family had the opportunity to attend the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta.  While there, our sons insisted that Clifford and I make several trips with them to see the cauldron flaming high above Olympic Stadium.  For them as well as for me the fire was mesmerizing; it struck a chord deep within us.  Clifford and I were awestruck as we sat ten rows up from the track in Olympic stadium and watched the great legends of track and field, as well as the heroic unknowns, compete with honor and dignity.  The life of that stadium was so much more real than the two-dimensional world of television.

That night in Atlanta as we watched a medal ceremony for a virtually unknown athlete from a country which had never medaled in the Olympic games and this week as we watched the television coverage of Sochi's cross-country skiing marathon gold medalist waiting to shake the hands of the final two competitors who crossed the finish line, it seemed clear to me that the true power of these games lies in the hearts of the athletes as they attempt to live (and encourage others to live) the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius (Swifter, Higher, Stronger).

For in the end all of life is about the heart.  And the Christian life is about much more than the moment of our conversion, when God begins to transplant the living heart of Jesus into our breasts.  After the transplant, our training for the great race begins.

The Apostle Paul knew the Olympics and the world of Olympic sport well.  In his letter to the Church at Corinth he writes, "You know that many runners enter a race, and only one of them wins the prize.  So run to win!  Athletes work hard to win a crown that cannot last, but we do it for a crown that will last forever" (1 Cor. 9:24-25).

Conditioning the heart is difficult physical and emotional work.  It is painful, yet we must push through the pain.  It is rigorous, yet we must maintain the discipline of daily training which increases in difficulty with each and every workout.  Without pain there is no gain.  Without death there is no resurrection.  God has placed us in the stadium.  Fix your eyes upon Jesus, that great cauldron Light who will never be extinguished.  Citius, Altius, Fortius.  Take heart.  Run to win.

J. Derek Harbin, rector   

St. John's Church invites you as we host the 3rd Annual Mardi Gras Party for the wider community!  Join us from 7-11pm on March 1 for dancing and merry making to the sounds of the Olde James River Jazz Band.  Enjoy fabulous New Orleans- style food.  Tea, lemonade and beer provided.  Virginia's Alcohol Beverage Control rules say you can BYOB (wine or beer) to enjoy at your table, but leave the hooch at home!  This will be an adult-only event as we will be serving alcohol.