Back to the Annual Sermon Menu Rev. Ann C. Fox (508) 992-7081 UFairhaven@aol.com		The Unitarian Universalist Society of Fairhaven, Massachusetts "Pax Olympia" Rev. Ann C. Fox February 17, 2002 (Reading attached at the end)          If you could choose, in your heart of hearts, would you be an American citizen or a citizen of the world? I recall that in the 1960's I said, "I do not believe in countries. I am not American or British. I am a World Citizen!" I felt such a thrill saying and even thinking this. It felt daring and new. I thought it was my very own new idea.          I want to ask you: how many of you said or thought this? Keep your hands up please and look around. Oh, what hopeless idealists! What irrepressible Unitarian Universalists you are! And how many of you heard your children utter the very same idea and clearly they also thought it was their new idea?!? Ah, just a few. I remember the day that my daughter came home from school and said, "Mum, Mum, I have this wonderful idea: There should be no countries; we should all be world citizens. It would solve so many problems!" And then she infected her brother with the same idea!          Our religion has its roots not only in the Judeo-Christian tradition but also in Nineteenth-century idealism with its emphasis on individualism and world community and all the ambivalence these imply.          All world religions rely on three things: scripture, tradition, and experience as their foundation for interpreting life in the light of their religion. And scripture is the revelation of the divine. We Religious Liberals say that revelation is ongoing within the individual. And so, in the Twentieth century, we Unitarian Universalists gave voice to what was intuitively known in our hearts and we embodied this in our Seven Principles and six Sources from which we draw our inspiration. I remind us that our Sixth Principle is "The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all."          We would have admired the French founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. In the late Nineteenth century he worked tirelessly to resurrect the Olympic games of ancient Greece. He thought athletics would improve the physical condition of the French and provide a rallying point for national unity. He included music and arts with athletics. He also thought it would be good for nations to compete and this would help world peace. Like our Founding Fathers, Baron de Coubertin "was suspicious of conventional theistic religion" (Guttman, 2) and he promoted Muscular Christianity and developed a philosophy called "Olympism" which meant being the best person you could be. (www.nostos.com) This is an interesting religious streak in the light of how the ancient Games were bound up with the state religion. (I sometimes wonder whether when our ideals soar and we reach naturally beyond ourselves, we enter the realm of the human religious response.) Let us ha ve a look at the early beginnings of the Games.          There is evidence that the very early Olympics were funeral rites and fertility festivals in honor of ancient goddesses. By 776 BC the Greek society and religion were more aggressive and male-God oriented. The Olympic Games of record began at Olympia in Greece in 776 BC. It was based on the Olympiad, the four-year period between games. "The games were staged in the wooded valley of Olympia in Elis. Here the Greeks erected statues to the gods and built temples in a grove dedicated to Zeus, supreme among the gods... At first the only Olympic event was a 200-yard dash, called a stadium. This was the only event until 724 BC, when a two-stadia race was added. Two years later the 24-stadia event began, and in 708 the pentathlon was added and wrestling became part of the games. This pentathlon, a five-event match consisted of running, wrestling, leaping, throwing the discus, and hurling the javelin. In time, boxing, a chariot race, and other events were included.          The victors of these early games were crowned with wreaths from a sacred olive tree that grew behind the temple of Zeus. According to tradition this tree was planted by Hercules (Heracles), [legendary] founder of the games. The winners marched around the grove to the accompaniment of a flute while admirers chanted songs written by a prominent poet [of the day]." (www.nostos.com, 1-2)          Only Greek citizens could compete in the Games. When the Greeks colonized the world, scattered citizen groups began sending athletes to the Games and it was a great source of pride for them if their athletes distinguished themselves. The athletes received only honor for their reward and the greatest athlete had the Olympiad named after him (women were not allowed to compete). The City States ceased their wars for two to four months to allow athletes safe passage to and from the Games.          Many of these ancient games were violent and with few rules. When rules existed, they were oftentimes ignored. The ancient Greeks loved to see the athletes hurt each other. Wrestling was particularly barbaric. (Today's popular TV wrestling would lead us to believe that appetite to watch people hurt each other is still with us.)          When the Romans took over the Greek Empire, they declared all free men in the Empire a Roman citizen and every citizen was allowed to compete in the Games. Thus, Saint Paul must have been well acquainted with the philosophy and ethos surrounding the Games. The Romans were proud of the peace their control brought and they called this period Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome.          "The Games were held every four years from 776 BC to 393 AD, when they were abolished by the Christian Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I [because of their pagan religion connection]. The ancient Olympic Games lasted for 1,170 years." (www.nostos.com, 2)          Many late-Nineteenth century European nations revived their own version of the Olympic Games but the charismatic and optimistic Baron de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894 and the International Games in 1896. The Winter Olympics were established in 1924 (check date). "The express purposes of the Olympic Games are to foster the ideals of a 'sound mind in a sound body' and to promote friendship among nations." (www.nostos.com, 5)          The early modern games struggled with classism. The reason athletes must be amateurs and cannot be paid was an attempt by the Victorians to "exclude the 'lower orders' .... [It was thought that] good sportsmanship [is] possible only when sports are an athlete's avocation, never his or her vocation." (Guttman, 13) However, over time the Games overcame their bourgeois bias to allow participation of so-called lower classes and Third World nations.          We enjoy the games (especially the opening ceremonies for me), but we all know there is a political aspect to the games. It is a stage on which to perform the Human Drama and display human foibles. The latest drama and foible is in the current Winter Games where a judge is accused of trading score favors so that a Canadian couple lost the figure skating event to a Russian couple, in spite of a perfect performance. Let us look at some other well-known dramas:          First, some triumphs:          In 1912, Jim Thorpe, a Native American, became the only man to win both the decathlon and pentathlon in one year.          In 1936, Jesse Owens, a black American, won four gold medals including a team.          Now some tragedies          In 1972 Summer Games in Munich, Germany, Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Olympic team members from Israel.          In 1980, more than 60 countries, led by the United States, withdrew from the Moscow Summer Games, in protest of the invasion of Afghanistan.          In 1984, the Soviet Union, withdrew from the Los Angeles Summer Games.          In 1988, the Summer Games in Seoul were rocked by the scandal of ten athletes disqualified after drug tests revealed steroid abuse and the corruption of judges and referees.          In 1996 Centennial Games in Atlanta, GA, with more than 10,000 athletes from a record 197 nations in attendance, the opening ceremonies featured a tribute to the ancient Greek games and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Muhammad Ali lit the torch. BUT a homemade pipe bomb loaded with nails and screws exploded killing one person and wounding more than 100 others.          You've probably heard of the two women sprinters who were training for the 100-metre race. One says to the other, "You won't believe this, but I've just run 100 metres in 10 seconds." The other says, "But that's impossible, that's the world record." The other says, "Yes, but I took a shortcut."          If our world can truly evolve, we will see it reflected on the Olympic world stage. No other event brings nations together, as does this one. We would prefer to tout individual achievement as a high ideal and yet the Olympic athletes walk behind their national flags. From time to time, athletes have tried to walk behind just the Olympic flag, as they did in 1980 to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but there were bitter complaints from fans that wanted to see their national flag. After all, no athlete can enter competition without country sponsorship. A victor is honored, a national flag raised and a national anthem is played.          Can nationalism and friendship amongst countries be compatible? Perhaps it can. Perhaps it's a bit like having many ethnic groups in our own nation. We used to promote the "melting pot" but now we say we are like a "salad bowl" of many different varieties. The Canadians have the "mosaic" as their metaphor of being able to retain their identity of origin and yet live in harmony. It's an ideal that is yet to be tested.          This morning 48 Unitarian Universalist youth from many UU churches left here after having spent the weekend with their many chaperones. I attended their worship-planning event. When they chose the chalice-lighting words, I asked them whether they noticed the likeness of our Flaming Chalice to the Olympic Torch. They said, 'Oh, yes, we said that last night in our worship service.' One of them asked the group, 'What do you think of last night's service?' Someone responded, 'It was okay but it lacked focus.' Heads nodded. The leader said, 'Yes, let's have a focus first for the next worship.' They offered: community, friendship, sharing, participation, cooperation, non-competitiveness, and love.' I was greatly impressed!          These are our youth; they are a reflection of us and look at their focus in a conference that they called Olympicon. They were gathered around the spirit of the Olympic theme: to promote friendship amongst nations. I think St. Paul would smile at our youth. Although St. Paul used the metaphor of the race for spiritual growth, he emphasized that everyone wins that participates because those who can run faster and better help those who run slower and less well.          But what struck me about our youth was their emphasis on non-competitiveness. We are essentially cooperative, not competitive. (Although, I heard a whoop of delight from my Dutch husband last night when two Dutchmen took the gold and silver medals for the long distance skating event! But he delighted in the wins of others almost as enthusiastically.) Nevertheless, we are likely to put aside national boundaries, at least in sentiment (until we're attacked!) in favor of our Sixth Principle of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all. All religions are systems of ideals that we keep reaching towards and hopefully getting closer to a better self and a better world.          The Olympic Games have a hymn, written in 1896, it reads:                    Immortal spirit of antiquity,                    God [I changed "Father" to God] of the true, beautiful and good,                    Descend, appear, shed over us thy light                    Upon this ground and under this sky                    Which has first witnessed thy unperishable fame.                     Give life and animation to those noble games!                    Throw wreaths of fadeless flowers to the victors                    In the race and in strife!                    Create in our breasts, hearts of steel!                    Shine in a roseate hue and form a vast temple                    To which all nations throng to adore thee,                    Oh immortal spirit of antiquity.          May the Summer and Winter Olympics remind us of the ideals inherent in their existence and of our Sixth Principle of world community with peace liberty and justice for all. Reading          Jesus of Nazareth was born into a Greco-Roman world. It was called Greco-Roman because the Greek empire had been taken over by the Roman Empire. Jews who lived in the cities were greatly influenced by these two cultures: Greek and Roman, Greco-Roman for short. We hear Jesus saying things like "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." He was essentially saying, 'Let there be a separation between church and state!'          We think that St. Paul, or Saul of Tarsus, was born a Jew in a Greco-Roman City-state. He was well educated in Judaism and in Greek language and literature. Paul helped establish many of the early churches in the Greco-Roman world and he wrote Letters to the churches in Greek in the style of other skilled literary figures of his day. He used athletic metaphors in many of his letters because Greeks and Romans held that participation in the Olympiad to be the highest honor and athletes, especially winners, were held in highest esteem. Here are two short readings from the letters of St. Paul:          "Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified." (I Cor 9:24-27)          and          "...let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us..." (Heb 12:1) References          www.nostos.com/olympics          Guttman, Allen. The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games, Urbana and Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1992.          Holy Bible, NSRV Return to the beginning of the sermon.