The Torch
Its journey is historical, global, and soon to be eternal. Carry it today with courage!
The tradition of the Olympic flame began during the ancient Olympic games. A flame was lit for each Olympics, every four years, and burned throughout the games. The flame symbolized the death and rebirth of Greek heroes, and was started at the Olympic stadium by using a parabolic mirror to focus the rays of the sun into a searing beam that would light the torch.
And so, fueled by flame from sun to torch, Greek gods, heroes, and athletes carried the hopes and dreams of vitality and victory in a torch of life.
The relay of the Olympic flame actually didn’t begin until the 1936 games in Berlin. Since then, the Olympic flame has been lit in the ancient Olympic stadium in Elis, Greece and after a tour of Greece the flame is taken to the country where the Olympics will be held (usually by airplane). The flame is then carried around that country (usually by torch) and the last torch bearer lights the large Olympic torch which burns throughout the games as a symbol of hope, heroism, vitality, and victory connecting past, present, and future.
In the Mexico Olympics in 1968 the torch followed the route taken by Christopher Columbus. In Sydney in 2000 the Olympic torch actually traveled underwater in the Great Barrier Reef and covered the longest distance in the history of the games. The 2004 relay at the Athens Olympics was the first global journey of the torch.
Christian congregations celebrating the liturgical church year based on the life of Christ will have two torch relays to celebrate on Sunday, February 26. That is the day of the closing ceremonies of the 2006 winter Olympic games, and is also the day of the church year on which we remember the transfiguration of our Lord.
Worshippers will once again witness with wonder the blazing glory of Jesus on the mountain, as the torch of hope, heroism, vitality, and victory is passed on to him from Moses and Elijah, two Old Testament heroes. Jesus is about to compete in his hardest fought battle yet in a final journey to Jerusalem to face the powers of evil and his own human weaknesses, so he needs to have the force with him. Not some mystical power or mythological dream, but a real power. A proven, witnessed, awesome intervention into the activities of the human race by the only true God who created it all. And wants to save it from itself.
So Jesus takes the torch into a race for the souls of people, a race at the end of which he knows he must suffer and die, before he rises again.
That torch he will not carry alone, but Peter, James, John and the other disciples and followers will grab hold of that torch and carry it along with Jesus and even after he’s dead, risen, and ascended. It is a torch for fishermen-turned-disciples, and worn out parents, and mistake ridden professionals, and burned out students to carry still today. Heroes. All of us. Connected to heaven’s hope and Christ’s suffering and resurrection by the flame of faith in the power and grace of God. Its journey is historical, global, and soon to be eternal. Carry it today with courage!
PRAYER: You are my hero and champion, Jesus, because you stood firm against the powers of sin and temptation to endure suffering and death, and to save me from my guilt and weakness. Brighten my faith with the torch of your saving grace and power. Enlighten my journey through dark troubles in this life. Flare my passion and commitment into a burning desire to know your will and carry it to completion in this journey of mine. Of ours. Amen.