Pros
update
28 February 08
Sticking out for Jesus
Very few people like to stick out. In fact for most of us there’s
nothing worse than being the odd one out. I remember playing in a rugby
match in a large stadium some years back and coming into the last five
minutes the voice over the stadium speakers announced, “Substitution
number two Pete Nicholas for number sixteen Matt Parker”. The dugout was
the far side of the pitch from where play had stopped and so I jogged
across to the sideline. About half way across I saw the coach waving his
hands “Get back! Go back to the lineout! You’re staying on!” Red faced
and with a packed stadium looking on, I had to turn-around and jog back
to the huddle. It’s pretty difficult to stick-out more than that.
Sometimes it can feel like this as a Christian in sport. The world
around us, those we play with and against, even our friends and family,
can often make us feel like we’re going the wrong way. “Christianity’s
weird!” they shout, and if we’re honest we just want to be normal and to
fit-in. This is the reality that faces every Christian, that feeling of
not fitting-in of being a bit weird.
Over the past few weeks we’ve been looking at a number of issues that
Christians face as players. However the danger is that we can become
introspective and forget that wherever we are – we are Christ’s
ambassadors, his messengers to reach a lost world.
The Apostle Peter wrote to his friends ‘as aliens and strangers in the
world’ (1 Peter 2:11) because he knew how hard it was in first-century
Palestine to be different; to follow Jesus. Two thousand years on the
landscape hasn’t fundamentally changed. In the world of sport everyone’s
got god in their life – and sport is it. Anyone who stands up and tells
people about the true and living God Jesus Christ is going to stick-out.
However, let’s just think for a moment. Who is the normal person: the
one standing up for Jesus or the one going with the flow? You see normal
isn’t doing what everyone else does, but normal is doing what you were
made to do. Peter tells his friends in the same passage that ‘you are a
chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to
God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of
darkness into his wonderful light’. Representing Jesus and talking about
him to those you come into contact with in the world of sport may make
you look different, but it’s what God made you for and called you to do.
In short it’s normal behaviour. The weird person is in fact the person
who isn’t doing this. So ask God for the grace to go out into the world
of sport and be profoundly normal!
Pete
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