Of Eric Liddell and the power to run
One hundred years ago Eric Liddell won gold at the Paris Olympics. He died in a Japanese concentration camp in China during World War II. In 1982, the story of the 1924 Olympic races, focusing on Liddell and teammate Harold Abrahams, was turned into an Oscar-winning movie, Chariots of Fire. Because of how the characters wrestled with issues of conscience and faith identity, the movie became my all-time favorite.
Growing up – and even now – people often make assumptions about my Pentecostal faith. Actually, little different than the way Pentecostals often view people from other faith backgrounds. We’re always misjudging people with the bits and pieces of information we have about each other. Even people in their own faith traditions, or those who have left a particular tradition, don’t have all the facts. So, we paint broad, sweeping pictures and assume we know what we are talking about.
Abrahams was a Jew in a very Gentile, and often antisemitic, world. Liddell was an evangelical with firm convictions about what his faith allowed or didn’t allow him to do – particularly running races on the Sabbath. Neither man’s faith nor convictions fit comfortably in the culturally mainstream Christian society of the British 1920s. But as with Jesse Owens, the African American who raced in Hitler’s Berlin in 1936, Olympic gold has a way of silencing the critics.
The ability to engage with others without losing your balance comes only with feet firmly planted. In my work in ecumenical circles, I’ve often heard people make ecumenism sound like the lowest common denominator, “a little bit of this, a little bit of that.” Ecumenical dialog does require finding commonality, but that is not the same as banality. The overlapping spaces are only starting places; they are not the end all of faith exploration.
When I was running a food pantry, we had a public official come and speak at a fundraiser. Supportive as he was of our work, I didn’t want to criticize his speech, but I did cringe at his opening remarks. Knowing we were a faith-based organization, he tried to identify with everything religious by talking about his dabbling in this and that and never landing anywhere. The unintended takeaway was that he’d found a higher plain in life that wasn’t rooted in any particular faith tradition. That does not make one ecumenical.
In 1928, the American missionary and writer, E. Stanley Jones, wrote Christ at the Roundtable about his many conversations with people of differing faiths in India. In the book, Jones, who was a friend of Gandhi, set guidelines for these interfaith interactions. The goal was less about making points than it was about listening to each other. Instead of espousing creeds or arguing positions, participants shared what they had learned of God through personal experience. What Jones discovered is that he didn’t have to preach Christianity; rather Jesus stood out above all else when equal opportunity to share was given.
Jones wrote, “We never become more universal by being less Christian.”
That ability to embrace others while holding firm to what one believes is what is so endearing about Liddell. Rather than rip his teammates for not sharing his convictions, he cheers them on in their races, even the ones on Sunday, and finds ways to support his team and country without compromising his own beliefs. He is secure in Christ; he doesn’t need to fit in at all costs, something that one British official, in one of the most memorable of the movie’s scenes, notes is at the core of Liddell’s strength.
Eric Liddell at the British Empire versus United States of America (Relays) meet held at Stamford Bridge, London on July 19, 1924
In another scene in the movie, Liddell asks, “Then where does the power come from, to see the race to its end?” He’s describing how everyone runs the race of life in their own way, a line that observers will note is especially true of Liddell who had a most unique and unwieldy running style. It wasn’t his style that won the races; it was his passion.
So, where does that passion – or really power – come from? To quote Liddell in the movie, “It comes from within.” He goes on to explain how Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God being within us. It is not some external force moving us from the outside; it is a power that wells up from deep inside.
For Liddell that power is Christ. In another of my favorite moments in the movie, Liddell is speaking in a church in Paris during the Olympics. As we see his teammates competing across town, we hear Liddell reading from the prophet Isaiah. The voice of the actor is embedded in my mind so much so that to this day I cannot read Isaiah 40:21-31 without hearing the actor’s voice.
God is above all the powers of this world, the eighth century B.C. prophet declares. There is no being that can compare. Look to God for your strength, for God gives strength to the weary. Liddell can run like the wind because God is the wind within him.
I think of all this as Pentecost Sunday approaches this weekend. We Pentecostals treat this holy day as if we own it. We often forget that Christians around the world, and not just Pentecostals, will be celebrating the birth of the Church and the empowerment of the Spirit of God.
Back in February, I was preaching at a small-town Presbyterian church. Happened to be Transfiguration Sunday, the day on the liturgical calendar when the passages of Jesus’ transfiguration are read. The text for that Sunday was Mark 9:2-9 where Jesus shines with an otherworldly glow along with Old Testament figures Moses and Elijah.
Jesus’ core disciples, Peter, James, and John are present and speechless at the spectacle. Or at least Peter should have been. Gobsmacked at what he is seeing, Peter mumbles something inane about needing to put up shelters for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. At which point, a cloud shelters them from view and a voice says, “Pay attention to Jesus.”
Elijah is an interesting figure to be there with Jesus. He is that prophet of old known for ascending to heaven in a chariot of fire (note the connection with the movie). And as he disappears above, a disciple of his own by the name of Elisha stands nearby. Elisha doesn’t want Elijah to abandon him. But if he must, he wants double whatever power it is that Elijah has. Elisha’s request is granted when he sees his mentor disappear in a whirlwind.
Which reminds me of another scene in the Bible, this one with Jesus and his disciples, including Peter, this time in John 14, where Jesus says that “Whoever believes in me will do what I have been doing, and even greater things than these.” There’s that Elisha double portion thing again. We don’t want you to leave, but if you have to go, can we have more of your power?
Jesus doesn’t leave the disciples so much as he sends them God’s Spirit to live within and empower them from their core. Like before, but even more. Like a spiritual form of nuclear energy that doesn’t run out.
Liddell, the child of missionary parents, gets all this. And when he returns to China on his own mission, he takes that same power – the power than made him run fast – into the headwinds of World War II and ultimately his own death.
Pentecost is about receiving the power to do what we have been called to do, whether it is running in races or dying in concentration camps. It is also about reminding ourselves that we don’t have to get unhinged about the competition – whether it is other entities vying for our allegiance or other runners or critics or rulers of this world. We can engage without losing our balance. We can shine without fearing the darkness. We can do what we are called to do.
I’m no sports coach, but if you are running the race of ministry or leadership and finding yourself needing an extra two yards, check out my coaching offer. To watch the “Power from within” segment of the movie, Chariots of Fire, find the link here.