Vive Le Tour
July is always a great month for Aussie sports fanatics, but this year is next level. The Rugby League is in full swing and peppered with Origin, the AFL is going end to end, the Wallabies are looking for redemption against the All Blacks, the Netball Grand Final was a thriller, our cricketers sending thunderbolts at England, the Matildas are getting warmed up for the World Cup, the Tour de Femme is not far away and the 12 Aussies are currently racing in the Tour de France. I am sure I have missed things.
Now I would be up for a chat about any of those events, but I want to focus on the Tour de France because it’s not just a great bike race - it’s also a great illustration for the Christian life and a great opportunity to turn sport chats into Gospel chats.
The Tour is as powerful a French icon as the Eiffel Tower. It’s a 21 stage spectacle, in which 22 teams of nine riders spend three weeks cycling around France and its neighbours experiencing all the joy, pain, suffering, heartbreak, elation, and high drama that professional sport can provide. It includes truly gruelling stages over the monumental passes of the mighty Alps and Pyrenées, reaching a climax, when the survivors hurtle over the bone shaking cobbles of the Champs Élysées, at the end of the final stage into Paris.
As one writer says, it takes a brave man to enter the race, a hard man to finish it and a superman to win. And he’s right - but he is also wrong. While any winner needs to be incredibly strong, fit and resilient, they cannot do it alone. Everyone wanting to win needs a strong team around them for drafting, supplying food and drink and spare parts, general encouragement and more.
No one wins Le Tour alone. No one endures as a Christian alone.
Open up Hebrews 10:19-39 and take a read. It is fascinating to me that in this chapter we find both that urgent call to meet together and a compassionate call to endure. As you read the whole passage you will see that the two are intrinsically linked. We need to meet together for all sorts of reasons but a primary one is to spur one another on, to encourage endurance, reminding each other that we have a better and lasting inheritance than this world has to offer (note all the plural yous at the end of the passage). Without you, I am weak, frail and prone to failure. I need you. You need me. We need each other. And every time I see a rider with his jersey stuffed full with bidons or slowing down to help a teammate or tearing a wheel off his bike for someone else, I see a little picture of church at its best - resourcing, caring, bearing burdens, restoring, enduring.
No one wins Le Tour alone. No one endures as a Christian alone.
As for Gospel chats, keep Hebrews 10 in mind. When you get to chatting with friends about Le Tour (or the Wallabies or Matildas or …), why not simply say, “Watching Le Tour reminds me of what it is like to be a Christian.” Just put it out there and see where the conversation leads. I suspect it will provide at least a chance for you to talk about the importance of going to church. And that could lead to the importance of Jesus to you. And that could lead to the need for Jesus for them. Give it a go and let me know what happens. I love hearing encouraging stories about attempts at mission.
So Vive Le Tour. But better, may we all encourage each other to endure in faith and mission.
