The stars of this year’s Olympics aren’t in medal
contention. In fact, they are in dead last place in their event. Regardless,
they are rock stars wherever they go around the Olympic village. Mainline news organizations can’t get enough
of them, and videos of them dancing with folks around the Olympic Village are
going viral on Twitter. Long before they
arrived in Sochi, we worried for their weather-disrupted travel and lost
luggage.
They are the Jamaican Bobsled Team.
Their immense popularity doesn’t stem from their medal
chances. Much of it is due to the beloved Disney film, “Cool Runnings,” that
detailed (loosely) the travails of the very first Jamaican bobsled team. But there has got to be more to this current
crush of love than simply an old movie. Why are they so popular?
My hunch is that it is the incongruity of these Olympic
athletes that is drawing the world’s adulation.
It is one thing to admire the honed skill of a bobsledder who grew up in
a long tradition of winter sports in a cold weather clime. It is something else entirely to watch
someone competing from a country that has never seen a snowflake. Would you have been able to imagine that
Jamaica would be able to field a bobsled team? Ever? It’s just not the way that
we expect it to work out. We are impressed
with the many Jamaicans who have excelled in the summer Olympics, but we are
amazed at the daring improbability of Jamaicans who bobsled.
The cross in on my mind these days, probably since I’m in
the thick of worship planning for Lent, Easter, and beyond. Thinking about the
Jamaicans has gotten me thinking that maybe that’s why we Christians are so
taken with the cross. It’s not the
typical story of faith and redemption. It involves lots of unexpected elements,
and victory doesn’t come about in the usual way. Our story involves outsiders,
like tax collectors and prostitutes and others shut out totally from religion. The culmination of our story involves no gold
medals. There are no victory speeches
for the cameras, only words of love and pain spoken from the cross. Yet the
power of that story endures, because it is our story.
Who ever thought someone from Jamaica could bobsled in the
Olympics? Who ever thought that a bunch of flawed and broken people would be
worth dying for? Isn't it wonderful when reality is so much bigger than our imagination?
