“Everything is free, nothing is due and yet all is given. And therefore, the greatest humility and obedience is to accept the gift, to say yes – in joy and gratitude. There is nothing we can do, yet we become all that God wanted us to be from eternity, when we are eucharistic.” – Schmemann, For the Life of the World
Three terms that continue to resurface in this exploration “On Being a Christian Athlete” are: thanksgiving, offering, and faith. Simply stated: the Christian is that individual who seeks to respond to the gifts of God by offering themselves in thanksgiving by faith. Five times in Colossians (1.12, 2.7 3.15, 3.17, 4.2) Paul exhorts us to be “thankful”; in the last chapter he goes as far as encouraging us to “devote” ourselves to it. As I stated in “Part 2”, when all things have been given to you as gift the only proper response is one of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the opposite of pride because thanksgiving recognizes that it had nothing to do with it, or that it was somehow earned. No, thanksgiving understands that the gifts were freely given by the grace of God and not warranted at all. In following Schmemann, I want to suggest again “real life is ‘eucharist’ (thanksgiving), a movement of love and adoration toward God, the movement in which alone the meaning and the value of all that exist can be revealed and fulfilled.” It is in eucharistic existence that we live in God and He in us. One of primary ways the athlete (or anyone) lives thankfully before God is by seeking to make the most of the gifts and talents that s/he has been given.
Speaking in such terms takes us to the very heart of Christian worship, and I dare say, the very center of the Church and Christian existence. Here, we are talking about none other than the Lord’s Table – the Eucharist. The Eucharist is constitutive and programmatic for the Church, and thus, the Christian. In the Eucharist the Church is constituted as the Church, for the Church is all those individuals that have been accepted into the “eucharistic life of Christ”. At the Lord’s Table we offer the world and ourselves back up to God; the bread and the wine represent this offering. Schmemann reminds us that we offer in Christ and in remembrance of Christ, because each time we offer ourselves and the world back to God we realize that there is “nothing to be offered but Christ Himself”. Our offering becomes joined to Christ’s and in Him is made pleasing and acceptable before the Father. The most amazing thing takes place in the Eucharist; God receives our thanksgiving and turns right back around and gives it (bread and wine) back to us with the gift of Himself – communion. God shows up in the midst of thanksgiving, offering and faith.
I have suggested that the Eucharist is constitutive for the Church – the unique act of remembering that “makes” the Church the Church. In addition, it is also programmatic for the Church; it initiates, informs, and reminds us again and again who we are. And who we “are”, or suppose to be, is that eucharistic being, an individual that accepts the gifts of God and offers them back to Him out of love. The bread and wine are the gifts that we have been given that we that we offer back. But we have not really been given bread and wine; rather we have been given the ingredients and abilities to make bread and wine. So we take those ingredients and with our own hands and reason we make/toil/create the bread and wine that we offer. In so doing, the gifts of God are transformed into our gifts – our creation – that we offer back to God in thanksgiving.
When we talk about the Lord’s Table – the Eucharist – in most Christian traditions we find ourselves speaking in terms of the Sacraments. The entire foundation of the Sacraments within the Church is that “God can operate upon the creature in his visible reality” with the end goal being union with God. The Sacraments – Table and Baptism – are the means through which our relationship with God is established and maintained. Traditionally, it is also true to speak of the creation itself as sacrament, that is, the created things as means through which we communion with God. The former (Sacraments) is directly related to our means of salvation while the later (sacraments) refers to our daily experiences with God. The Sacraments of the Church and the sacraments of created things are not to be confused with one another, but they are connected together through Christ “who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:6). For us here the important point is that “things” of the world can become sacramental along an analogous line with the Sacraments. More specifically, the “things “of the world, such as, sports can be sacramental and a transparent means through which we live into God’s divine life.
To tie these theological concepts together, I want to restate a few lengthy quotes from “Faith Offering – Part 1”. Staniloae contends,
“The world is necessary for the human person not only because he needs it to be given to him, but also because he himself has need of it so that, in his turn, he may make a gift of it for the sake of his own spiritual growth. The things given us by God can become our own gift to God by the fact that in the return of these things to God we are free. We transform things into gifts of our own through the act of our freedom and through the love we thus show to God. Having this aim in view, we can be endlessly transforming and combining the things of creation. God gave the human person the world a gift characterized not just by continuous fertility, but also by a great wealth of alternatives that man has the capacity to make actual through freedom and work. As talents given by God but multiplied by the human person, this process of actualization is the gift the person returns to God.”
The Christian Athlete responds to the gifts of God and lives into this Gift by offering back to God all that s/he is and all it takes to become the best s/he can be at their sport. In giving back it is God’s desire that (He even enjoys when) we put our own stamp upon these gifts. It’s our freedom and privilege to add our work, our creation, in bringing the “gift” to fruition in order to make it truly our gift that we offer back. In other words, God has given us the freedom, talent, ability and rational faculties in combination with the inherent nature of creation to be rational, adaptable and malleable so that we might create something unique out of love for God and our neighbor. In this way the gift offered becomes truly your own gift, your own creation. The important point to keep in mind here is that it is not merely the end product (e.g. for the athlete the performance) we are offering up to God, but everything that leads up to that performance as well – the blood, sweat and tears. For the athlete, the gift offered back includes all the practice and sacrifice it takes to become your best. In so many ways the performance is secondary. The gift offered back to God is the “all it takes” to make use of and not waste the gift God has given. In short, your gift to God is your attempt to make the best of what you have been given.
Our gifts – offerings – are never perfect and our thanksgivings are never sufficient, but in and through faith our thanksgiving offerings are joined with Christ’s all sufficient one and are made holy and pleasing to God. An amazing thing happens, an even greater gift is given, in the midst of this thanksgiving, offering and faith; God grants the gift of Himself – communion.