Introduction
We love our sport in this country. There are names, even if you’re not really a sports person, that jump across from the sporting arena into our lives. We know Don Bradman, we know Ian Thorpe, Evonne Goolagong, Dylan Alcott, Ray Gun—names that jump away from the sports and enter our hearts. At this time of year, sport has a special part in Australian thinking.
I mentioned earlier my wife. I now have one, which is convenient and legal. She didn’t tell me the whole story before we got married. We’ve been married for 33 and a third years. There are some people who are into vinyl who will know that 33 and a third is a number. She didn’t disclose everything, and because she looks just like us and she sounds just like us, she didn’t disclose that she was born in Queensland. Not just Queensland, ladies and gentlemen, not just over the border a little bit, not just Coolangatta, not just the Gold Coast, Mount Isa, the Queenslandest Queenslander of Queensland. My wife was born there, and she left there when she was two years old and has never lived in Queensland again. She will only watch three rugby league games a year. Last Wednesday, she had things on before me, so she had first shower. I came out into the living room, and she’s wearing her maroon socks, her maroon jacket, her maroon beanie. She was ready for that night for our Bible study group to be done quickly so she could watch her mighty Maroons. Spoiler alert, it was a good result.
It was good to hear about scripture in schools earlier. Scripture is a little bit like rugby league; it only really happens in New South Wales and Queensland, and the rest of the world don’t really understand it. But God bless the scripture teachers who, over 180 years in this state, have been taking our Lord to our schools so that little ones get to know the truth of Jesus. If there’s scripture teachers here today, God bless you. You are doing a mighty work, and in 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 years time, one of those little ones is going to come up to you and say, “Do you remember me back from 2025?” and you’ll go, “Yes,” and be lying. They would have come to know the Lord because they heard the truth that you taught them in those schools. So God bless you involved in scripture, and please be praying for your scripture teachers and for your schools. It is one of the great blessings we have in New South Wales that we share with those dirty filthy Queenslanders 362 days of the year. I love her a lot; three days are special.
Friends, we love our sports in this country. Sports chaplaincy has been a thing for about 40 years, and it got a big kick at the Sydney Olympics when there were people from a number of denominations who went, “The world is coming here, let’s make sure they hear about Jesus.” Doors were open through the Olympic villages to take Jesus to those athletes, and from that work, a number of sports chaplaincy organizations were born. There are now over 500 sports chaplains accredited across Australia, a couple of dozen in horse racing. The work we do is 400 and something for all the other sports, including the other racing, the one which does petrol. We love our sports, and sports is where we come together. In racing, there are 300,000 people either employed or volunteering in racing in this country—300,000. That’s a population of Wollongong across 300 tracks, and the door is open to send chaplains who love Jesus to share Jesus in those places.
The video we just saw, filmed by Sky News as part of their Racing Dream show, Deb had been a chaplain for a month when that was filmed. When they knew that she was involved, they were keen to put her on because they’re keen to support the work. After years of being involved in school ministry, this is a revelation to me. This is a different world; we’re actually welcomed in. Of the 300 tracks, we could put another chaplain tomorrow if we had them across this country. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Let’s try to think about chaplaincy, and I think one of the passages that helps us understand it is this passage from Mark that we heard read earlier this morning. Thank you, ma’am, for reading that so beautifully for us.
Sports chaplaincy is the ministry of carrying people towards Jesus.
The Context of Mark’s Gospel
The Gospel Writers
That view, ladies and gentlemen, is Randwick Racecourse from the other side. You can see the stands there in the back. That is what it looks like from the ambulance that goes around to pick up the people who are hurt. Mark’s Gospel is one of the four gospels of Jesus at the beginning of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The four gospels are written at different times to slightly different crowds. Matthew wrote his gospel talking to people who’d come out of Judaism, so you can see a lot of the big Jewish festivals spoken about. Mark’s Gospel that we’re looking at this morning was for converts in Rome. Luke was for Greek converts, and John was for everyone, written after the other three—almost the Bob Dylan of the gospel writers. It is more poetic, more sporadic.
When I was a kid and I was told how the gap between Jesus’ death and the writing of the gospels, I used to think that used to be a long time, but now I’m a little older, it feels not that long. Matthew’s Gospel, for example, was written 40 years after the death of Jesus, Mark’s Gospel 25 years, Luke 50 years, John 60 years. I used to think that was a long time; doesn’t feel that long now. If you think it’s a long time, wait about three weeks when you turn 50; it won’t feel that long either. To give an illustration of how long ago those things were, Matthew’s Gospel, that was the America’s Cup 40 years ago. Mark was the Sydney Olympics, Luke was those big wins in the Melbourne Cup, and the Beatles for John—not that long.
Each of the gospel writers is telling a particular story.
Jesus Returns to Capernaum
In Mark’s Gospel, Mark doesn’t use a lot of words, not flowery, very straightforward. We heard this morning of this lovely story. For those who are just reading the Bible for the first time and you read the gospels, you go, “They aren’t all the same; they’re all a bit different.” As I said, they’ve all got different targets, and John is very helpful to us, and he gives us a verse to say that Jesus did many other things as well. If all of them were written down, I suppose there wouldn’t be enough books in the whole world to write them down. Each of the gospel writers is telling a particular story. In Mark’s Gospel, we start off Jesus’ work up in the top part of the Holy Land.
If we bring up a map of the Holy Land, down at the bottom there, you can see the Dead Sea down at the south, the river that runs into it, the Jordan, and the little lake up the top is Lake Galilee, also called Lake Tiberius because apparently politicians renaming bodies of water isn’t a new thing. Unfortunately, that’s a map that’s too familiar to us if we ever watch the news, but it’s helpful when you read the Bible to have a map handy just to see where we’re going. If we focus in on that top part there around Galilee, you’ll see place names there that are familiar: Nazareth and Galilee, Capernaum. We read here in chapter two of Mark that Jesus is returning to Capernaum, and there’s a buzz happening, and there’s excitement. It’s only chapter two of Mark; how did such a buzz happen so quickly?
The Story of the Paralyzed Man
The Buzz Around Jesus
If you wanted to go anywhere in Jesus’ time, you walked, not the 45 or 150 meters, but kilometer after kilometer after kilometer. There were no cars, there was no public transport. Occasionally you had horses and donkeys, but those were more for moving stuff than moving people because you want to take things to the next town to try to sell them. If you wanted to go somewhere, you had to walk. When you read most of the later parts of the gospels, Jesus is doing a lot of walking, but in this part, he’s got to a lot of towns quickly because there’s a lake. Lakes have boats, lakes have little towns around them, so Jesus has been going out to all these towns quickly. In a very short period of time, a great buzz has built up around Jesus so that when he returns to Capernaum, this is his second time there, it’s a full house. There’s a buzz; Jesus is coming, and the house is so full that even the people at the door can’t squeeze in any further.
There’s a paralyzed man, and you get a sense that he doesn’t live 45 meters from this house or 150 meters. You get a sense it’s a little further away, and a group is organized to get him to Jesus. We don’t know how that group was put together. We’re not told that they’re his brothers, they’re not told that his friends. We don’t know how that group is put together, but they have come together. In some of the other translations, you read that there’s a larger group of whom four were carrying Jesus, carrying the paralyzed men, and they were carrying him to Jesus because they wanted him to walk. There would have been excitement. The paralyzed man lying back being carried, did he say something like, “It’s okay, lads, you’re only going to have to carry me one way; I’ll walk home myself?” There would have been something, a buzz of these blokes as they’re walking to the house to see Jesus so that this man can walk again.
Sometimes we need to think that we carry our friends to Jesus like these blokes.
The Hole in the Roof
They get close to the house, and they see they can’t get in. There’s people spewing out the door, and they could have said, “Oh well, we gave it a go; we’ll carry you home now.” They didn’t do that. In this group of blokes, in every group of blokes, there’s an ideas man. Generally, we have to make sure he’s not listened to because nothing good comes from the ideas man, except in this case where the ideas man has gone, “Lads, I reckon we can take him up onto the roof, knock a hole in the roof, and lower him down.” Getting up onto the roof not a big issue in that part of the Middle East back then, and even now, often flat roofs because in the heat of summer, if you’re trying to sleep, you go up onto the roof. There’ll be a bit of shade cloth or something similar just to keep it a bit cooler. We read earlier in the Old Testament people like David and others on the roofs of buildings. Getting up to the roof not a big thing. They’ve carried the bloke up to the roof, and they’re going to lower him down in front of Jesus.
These blokes either figured it out exactly where Jesus was first go, or they didn’t, and they’ve dug some test holes in the roof trying to find him. Imagine for a moment if you’re sitting front row, clearly not an Anglican church because there was a front row that was full there, and bits of roof start falling on your head, and you look up and you see these blokes are digging a hole, and the room’s getting lighter because there’s no artificial light, and Jesus keeps going. Hole gets bigger, Jesus keeps going, the light dims a bit, you look up and you see a stretcher being lowered down. This isn’t something you see every Sunday morning, and the stretcher is lowered right in front of Jesus, and Jesus looks at the man on the stretcher. He sees the faith of the men upstairs, literally the men upstairs who’ve lowered him down, and Jesus says a sentence to this bloke, and that sentence is, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
Jesus shows his authority by saying, “I tell you, take up your mat and go home.”
Son, Your Sins are Forgiven
Do you reckon those blokes around the hole at that point were rejoicing? They were coming to get their mate healed, not to get him forgiven, and Jesus has said, “Son, your sins are forgiven,” which is an easy sentence to say if Jesus was a charlatan, if Jesus was a fake. “Son, your sins are forgiven.” How do you disprove that? You can’t. How can you prove that? You don’t have to just believe in your heart that you’re forgiven. It doesn’t work that way. We read that the religious leaders there are getting uppity. No one can forgive sins but God alone, they think. I reckon he could tell from the looks on their faces because if they’ve heard Jesus say, “Your sins are forgiven,” they would have been having a look on their face saying, “You can’t do this; you’re a blasphemer.” Jesus responds, “What is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?” The answer is, it’s easy to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” To say, “Pick up, take up your mat and walk” is hard. Jesus shows his authority by saying, “I tell you, take up your mat and go home.” The man jumped up, took his mat, and walked out in front of all of them in this room that was so chock-a-block he couldn’t get in. They’ve had to open a way for him to walk out.
Chaplaincy: Carrying People to Jesus
The Ministry of Carrying
Sometimes we think that we lead our friends to Jesus. Can I suggest we need to sometimes think that we carry our friends to Jesus like these blokes? Can I suggest, ladies and gentlemen, that sometimes our friends need carrying? Chaplaincy is the ministry of carrying people towards Jesus. I’m ecstatic that there’s 50 people coming along to your Alpha course. That’s a great blessing, and I’m thankful for all the people who have carried their friends there. If chaplaincy was just well-being, if it was just doing good as doing good, there’s no point. We are there in chaplaincy at the hardest times of people’s lives and the lightest. We spoke earlier of people being hurt, people dying. Sometimes horses are hurt, and sometimes horses die. One of the big studs up in Scone has a cemetery for the horses who’ve died, and you see tough men, strong men going in there and crying. It’s not a big step from being a dog person or a cat person to being a horse person. A horse is just a 650 kg Labrador. We get alongside people in their darkest moments to help them with their problems now, but we always work towards the thing they need, which is to come to Jesus.
We need people to know about Jesus, and through chaplaincy, sports chaplaincy generally, and racing chaplaincy in particular, we have an open door right now. I want you to pray for us. Somewhere near where you’re sitting, you’ve got a card with Randwick Racecourse at sunrise on one side and a comms card on the other. I would love it if you would pray for us and for us to be able to keep you updated about what’s happening, and that’s the top part of the card. Unless you’re really, really, really moved, totally ignore the giving bit on the bottom. I’m not really here to talk money; I’m here to talk prayers. I want you to be praying for us. I want you to be thinking about us as you think about your scripture teachers in your schools, as you’re thinking about your missionaries overseas, as you are thinking about the leadership of the Anglican Church and the other 268 parishes who are preaching Jesus this morning. There are a lot of ways where people are carrying their friends to Jesus. Please pray for us through chaplaincy to the racing industry as we carry people to Jesus there.
We do this because we want to bring glory to the Son of God who came to seek and save the lost.
A Spot on Your Prayer Diary
When you fill out your cards, I’ve been told there’s a few special code words. There is a gray bucket on the barrel at the back. If you drop the card in there and try to drop it with a picture face up rather than your name and details because people don’t need to see those. Friends, racing is not everybody’s cup of tea, but for those who it is, we’ve got a door that’s open for them to come to hear of Jesus. I appreciate the chance to speak to you this morning to talk about it and to encourage you, but I ask for a spot on your prayer diary, and I ask for you to ask to give me your details so we can inform your prayers. We do this because we want to bring glory to the Son of God who came to seek and save the lost.