home | contact
Hope and the 100-meter dash

Message from Pastor Marty

Blue-ribbon grace

By Pastor Peter W. Marty

Most spring track meets are built on speed. Special Olympics track meets are based on grace. You can take your pick as to which one gives you the greater rush. Personally, I’ll pick the grace.

Last Saturday at North Scott High School was an Olympic track moment as special-needs kids and adults from all over eastern Iowa showed up to compete. Busloads of humanity huddled together on the football infield, clustered by their matching team jerseys. Beijing can have the smog. Let North Scott have the magnificence of sunshine on a windy day. This day had both sun and wind in good measure. Beijing can have all the gold, silver, and bronze it wants. Let the Special Olympians in Eldridge, Iowa, have the blue ribbons. Said one little African-American boy, who was all of eight years old: “I won this ribbon all by myself.” From the big smile that revealed his grossly crooked teeth, I knew he wasn’t lying.

When I arrived, I could hear everyone shouting: “Hold on, Daryl! Hold on!” I cleared the bleachers in time to see Daryl competing in the 100-meter dash all by himself. Here was this 50-year-old man hobbling down lane three at top speed — “dash” is always a bit of an exaggeration at the Special Olympics. He was giving the stopwatch everything he had. Using remarkable dexterity while running, Daryl was gripping his pants at the waist, a fist on either hip. “Hold on” from the crowd had nothing to do with the lead; it had everything to do with Daryl keeping his pants from falling down.

Such was the spirit of the day, everybody rooting for everyone else. I had tears in my eyes during the eight- to 11-year-old bracket for the 100-meter dash. One tiny eight-year-old girl with Down’s Syndrome simply stopped walking about 20 yards into “the dash.” I don’t know if she smelled popcorn in the stands or what. But she wasn’t going to budge. No cheering from the crowd would move her. Finally, another girl, a few inches taller and a few years older, came onto the track, grabbed her hand, and walked her to the finish line. The crowd went ballistic as these two slowly made their way. They weren’t teammates. They were just brand new friends — one human being looking out for another one.

I noticed all morning long that these Special Olympians rejoiced in each other, irrespective of what team they represented. It wasn’t competition in the usual sense. The only thing they seemed to be competing against was that strange inner voice in all of us that creeps up and says, “You cannot do it. You cannot succeed. You cannot even finish what you set out to do.” St. Paul Lutheran Church had its share of competitors in the field. There was Selah, and Bren-nan, and Hope among them. When Hope crossed the finish line in her stand-up wheelchair contraption, her shoulders positively aching, she kept repeating a line that beamed the pride of a champion: “I did it.” Hope is not a talkative young woman, which only goes to show you how carefully she selected those three words. I did it.

Hope did not complete the 100-meter dash with much form. But, she had all the grace in the world. There is nothing attractive in any conventional sense about dragging two feet that won’t behave, and propelling a body that cannot stand without assistance. But who cares about form? Planet earth was without form and void when God first laid eyes on it. And yet look at the splendor we inhabit. Jesus had “no form or comeliness that we should desire him,” according to some early musings of the prophet Isaiah. And yet look at the grace he embodied.

The world is infatuated with speed. We obsess over form. But grace trumps them both. I found that out last Saturday, all over again.

Pastor Peter W. Marty,

  ::