Sermon

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Athletes and Christians-the story of St. Demetrios

It’s an exciting weekend to be a sports fan. A full day of college football yesterday, the Bucs playing this afternoon, hockey season is well underway, the basketball season is about to begin and our hometown Tampa Rays are playing in the World Series. If you are a sport’s fan, today’s sermon will hopefully be right in your ballpark, no pun intended, and if you aren’t, perhaps you’ll not only learn a little more about our faith, but about sports as well.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Demetrios. One of the titles that Saint Demetrios has is the title “Athlophoros,” from which we get the word “Athlete.” In the English text of the service where this title is used, the word is translated “Champion,” or “athlete.” Usually we think of champions as the athletes who win. I did some research into the meaning of the words “Athlete” and “champion” and found that they actually have very similar meanings. The word athlete means “one who competes.” The word “Champion” means “one who is a warrior, or a fighter, one who challenges, one who competes.” Interesting, that we usually think of a champion not as one who merely competes, but as the one who wins. According to contemporary thinking, only one team will walk off the field as a champion at the end of the World Series. A recent trip to the Little League baseball field showed me that today, from the earliest age, 6 or 7, the emphasis of parents and coaches toward these young athletes is not on learning to play a game, or learning to play together with a team, or learning to play by the rules, or even learning to love a sport. The emphasis is winning. It brings to mind a phrase, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” And to this statement I must disagree. Winning isn’t everything. Actually, you learn more about yourself, and if you are an athlete, when you lose. Because it makes you try harder. Winning at sports is certainly a goal, but it is not always the only goal. Nor will it be fair to call only the winning team in the World Series the champions. Aren’t both the Rays and Phillies champions, for even making it to the World Series?

The ideal of athletics, which actually comes to us from Ancient Greece, is the idea of healthy competition—people who are training and preparing to compete. There is honor in merely going on to the field, even if you don’t win every time. Because it takes discipline to be an athlete. It takes constant training to get ready to take the field. And if one has been vigilant in preparing to play, the moment he takes the field he is an athlete, he already is a champion.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of similarities between sports and being a Christian. A basketball player practices shooting free-throws every day, until he has the perfect feel and perfect touch on the ball to get it in every time. Would you believe that even the NBA players, the most elite basketball players in the world still practice shooting free-throws everyday? Because shooting a free throw isn’t a skill to be mastered and then forgotten. It is a skill that must be practiced constantly in order to stay sharp. The baseball player practices hitting the ball and playing in the field. Even the Major League Baseball player, who has been playing this year since Spring Training began last February, is still practicing his hitting stroke or his pitching motion before a World Series Game in October, making sure he is prepared to play. And the golfer, from the beginner to Tiger Woods, the world’s best player, practices all facets of his game—hitting a tee shot at the driving range, sinking balls on the putting green—to make sure that he is constantly improving. The greatest requirement if one wants to be an athlete is not skill—it is discipline. A person can have all the skill and talent in the world but if he doesn’t practice his skills, refine them, improve them, then he loses them. After all, no one is born perfect. Practice makes perfect. And practice takes discipline.

Being a Christian is a lot like being an athlete. It doesn’t take skill to be a Christian. You don’t have to have a wonderful voice like our choir members, or know the order of the services like our chanter. You don’t have to memorize the Bible or be a gifted theologian or a great speaker. A great Christian is one who has great discipline—in Greek we call this Askesis. Discipline to always be watching what he is doing, what he is thinking, what he is saying. Discipline to always be practicing what he says he believes. Discipline to be constantly improving himself spiritually.

I used to be an athlete on the sports field. I played soccer and baseball. By today’s standard, I wasn’t a great athlete. I didn’t have great statistics, I didn’t win many trophies. But I practiced hard, I was constantly improving and so I wasn’t always as worried about winning and losing as I was about how well my team was playing, were we giving a good effort, was I giving a good effort to the team. My mom taught me, there will almost always be someone better than you—you can’t control that. You can control how hard YOU work, you can control how disciplined YOU are in your preparation. One other remembrance from my time as an athlete—I remember practicing the same things day after day, year after year, doing the same exercises and stretches, running the same laps and sprints, doing the same drills, day after day, year after year. And you know what’s interesting? This “routine” never got boring. I enjoyed each and every day. I looked forward to it, each and every day. When it got taken away from me because of a serious elbow injury at age 19, I missed it. Now so many years later, I don’t remember how many games my teams won and lost. I appreciate that I got to compete at all.

To be a great Christian, to be a champion for Christ, to be an athlete for Christ, to compete for a spot in God’s kingdom—it takes discipline. It means that you prepare every day—you pray, you do good works, you have discipline in what you say and what you do. You think about other people a lot—how can you do things that help them; how you can avoid doing things that hurt them. And like the successful athlete, you look forward to practicing, because you know the more you practice the better you’ll be. To be a great Christian, we’ve got to find joy in practicing our faith, we’ve got to find joy in worship, in prayer, in charity, with confidence that the more we do them, the better Christians we’ll be. And we’ve got to be consistent in our practice. When an athlete takes a few weeks off, he gets out of shape. And when a Christian takes a few weeks off, he gets out of shape also.

Saint Demetrios was a soldier and also a Christian. He was also one of the most outstanding orators and public speakers in all of Greece. Shortly after the year 300 AD, the Emperor Maximianus came to the city of Thessaloniki in Greece, to attend the gladiatorial games which were held annually in that city. The Emperor was enraged to learn that St. Demetrios, a solider in the Imperial army, was preaching Christianity so successfully that hundreds of Army personnel and civilians were being converted to the Faith. The Emperor ordered the immediate arrest of St. Demetrios, who was put in prison. The Emperor brought to the gladiatorial games his favorite gladiator who was called Lyaeus, the giant. This gladiator stood over seven feet tall and was the greatest fighter in the arena. No one dared to challenge him in combat. While St. Demetrios was in prison, he was visited regularly by his good friend, Nestor. Nestor told Demetrios about the giant Lyaeus, and Demetrios decided to show the Emperor the power of the Christian Faith. Demetrios told his young friend Nestor to challenge Lyaeus to combat in the arena. St. Demetrios told Nestor that Christian prayers would see to it that he would defeat Lyaeus. The word was soon spread throughout the city that the prayers of St. Demetrios would help Nestor defeat the giant gladiator. The Emperor was amazed by such a ridiculous claim and was very anxious to witness the slaughter of Nestor in the arena at the hands of his favorite gladiator. Nestor, however, defeated the giant within a matter of minutes. The thousands in the arena could not believe their eyes at such a sudden defeat of the greatest gladiator in the Empire. The Emperor was so angered that he ordered the immediate death of Nestor and Demetrios. The feast day of St. Demetrios is celebrated on October 26^th. The Feast day of Saint Nestor is celebrated October 27^th. (The above information in this paragraph was taken from “Lives of the Saints and Major Feast Days,” by Fr. George Poulos, 1981, p. 18)

Saint Nestor won his fight with Lyaeus, only to lose his own life along with Saint Demetrios. Were they champions? Or failures, because they didn’t live another day. Well, they certainly weren’t champions in Thessaloniki that day, as they were booed to their deaths. But Church History judges them as champions, because through a discipline of prayer and faith, they did amazing things, and were willing to give the ultimate sacrifice as a witness for their faith. And to their friends, families and followers, their untimely deaths must have come as a shock, evoking feelings of extreme sadness. But put into proper perspective over a long period of time, sadness and shock have given way to our feelings of respect and true devotion to these heroes of the Christian faith.

If we want to go anywhere as Christians, it takes discipline—it means there are going to be some difficult days, some disappointments, some sadness. There are going to be days when it looks like we’re losing and everyone else is winning—it’s certainly going to feel that way. And that’s when it takes faith to believe that there is only one game that counts, only one fight that needs to be won, and that is the fight against the temptations that seek to take us away from God. And that’s why we have to have discipline in our lives, a clear set of values that are sacred to us, standards that are unwavering, and a spiritual life that perseveres through good times and bad, times of spiritual excitement and times when spiritual apathy threatens. No successful athlete gets far on the field if he hasn’t put in long days, months and years of practice. And no Chrisitan gets into heaven unless he puts in days, months and years of practice. Many people look at life as the World Series, an end unto itself. I look at heaven as the World Series, life on earth as the regular season, if we are using the baseball analogy. It does matter what I do here in life. If a baseball player wants to reach the World Series, he better work hard and have a great year. If a Christian wants to get to heaven, he better work hard and have a good and solid Christian life.

One risk in playing sports is the constant threat that injury might end your season or your sports career as it ended mine 17 years ago. On the Christian team, there are no season-ending or career-ending injuries. Because we have a church, sacraments and priests, eager to nurture us back to spiritual health from any spiritual injury. And while losses can pile up and destroy a season for a sports team, losses can quickly be turned into victories in our church through prayer and the sacraments.

One more analogy today and this one comes from the game of football. A play in a football game begins when the quarterback goes up behind the center and has the center hike the ball to him. But the quarterback does two essential things before he runs the play. He calls a play so that all his teammates know what to do once the ball is hiked to him, and he looks around to see where the defense is playing to make sure that there is a chance for his play to be successful. If the quarterback just runs up to the line and gets the ball hiked to him without looking around and without calling a play, he is going to be unsuccessful on almost every play. That extra few seconds to call a play and look around are crucial to the success of any play.

The successful Christian is not one who goes through life recklessly, or in a hurry or in a chaotic way. The successful Christian, like the successful quarterback, thinks out his decisions, looks to see where the obstacles are, and then runs his play. A quick look at the sports page football box scores will show you that it’s not the team that runs the most plays that wins—it’s the team that runs the most successful plays. It’s the team that shows the most patience. It’s the team that makes the fewest mistakes. And the most successful Christians are those who have discipline to slow down, look around before making decisions, consider the spiritual consequences, be they negative or positive, before doing something, those who are patient, those who try harder not to make mistakes. It takes discipline to take that extra few seconds to look around and see where the pitfalls to our spirituality might be.

The professional athletes are champions because they merely compete, because they have the skill developed through years of discipline that make them champions even for just reaching the level of professional athlete. The committed Christian is a champion, because he is trying, fighting for the good and against the bad, because he is trying to live a disciplined life. He knows that there will be good days and there will be some bad days, there will be triumph and there will be tribulation, but as long as he is competing, there is a chance to win. Keep that in mind, especially on days like today, that the spiritual champion is the one who fights a good fight, finishes his race, however long and hard it is, and keeps the faith. As long as one competes and tries and fights for the things of God, he is a champion, an athloforos in the eyes of God, just like Saint Demetrios. Amen.