many nations, one kingdom

“Although Olympic teams enter the stadium at the opening ceremony carrying their national flags, the closing ceremony is designed to highlight unity as if all the athletes belonged to one unified world. This concept came about because of 17-year-old John Ian Wing during the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. During the days just before those games, the world was in turmoil. As teams made their way to Australia, Soviet tanks and troops entered Budapest to put down the Hungarian uprising.

A few days after the opening ceremony John Wing wrote a letter to the organizing committee. He suggested a different kind of march for the closing ceremony: "During the march there will be only one nation ... What more could anybody want if the whole world could be made as one nation?"

So it was done, and this march with a different attitude has become a tradition that has lasted for all Olympic Games-athletes from many nations saying farewell as one body, instead of marching separately under their own national flags. What an inspiring thought about how sports could be in the prophesied world of tomorrow!” (by Graemme Marshall, The Olympic Ideal, http://www.ucgstp.org/lit/gn/gn030/olympic.html)

To be more explicit than I was yesterday in my sermon, what a beautiful symbol of many nations marching in to the Olympics and one nation marching out that a young man envisioned and brought about through a letter written. God sent another young man, whose very life was the Word incarnate, whose dying and rising and made God's kingdom which will never end available to all. Jesus has brought about the "many nations to one kingdom" through his life, death and resurrection; he is the unrivaled Lord and King, and the only one who can deliver on his promises.

And it is not to the beautiful, the strong and the swift that the invitation to march in the glorious procession of the one, everlasting kingdom comes; but to the hurting and helpless, the weak and dependent, who do not trust in chariots or horses, in their own wisdom or strength, but only in the Lord their God.

There are many Scriptures we could use that point to this truth, but I will close with this one:

"You are worthy... for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe, language, people, and nation, and have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth."
(Revelation 5:9-10)