The Gospel According to The Tour de France

Having now followed the Tour de France for 25 years I never dreamed that a stage of it would be passing just a few miles away from my home. But that is exactlly what's happening this weekend as the Tour starts in Leeds and I am really looking forward to going out to watch it.

I had a drive up to the Yorkshire Dales last weekend and it was great to see all the bunting and signs out in the villages ready to welcome Le Tour.

So in honour of Le Tour coming to God's chosen county I thought I would reprise a sermon that I wrote a couple of years ago about about the Tour de France

The Gospel According to The Tour De France

I’m sure that it won’t have escaped your notice that the Tour de France bike race which will start in Yorkshire next Saturday. The Tour de France lasts three weeks and it is the greatest bike race in the world. I have been watching it now for 25 years and it’s a bit like American football in that when you first start to watch it you haven’t got a clue what’s going on half the time. But after a few years you start to understand it and come to see that it is one of the greatest dramas and spectacles that take place in the sporting world.

And one thing that has struck me over the years is how much Christian imagery and symbolism you can find within the race. As I watch the race I often think of events and situations from the Bible, Let me share some of those thoughts with you.

There are twenty two teams in the tour and each team comprises nine riders. Each team leader chooses his team and they are like his disciples. He will choose team members for their different talents and abilities and those team mates will embody qualities that we associate with Christ. 

As Christ always sought to do the will of the Father so the team members will seek to do the will of the team leader.  And they adopt the role of the self sacrificial servant. For those three weeks they put aside their personal ambition to serve the team leader. They will fetch drinks for him from the team car, if he has a puncture they will give him their wheel or even their bike, they will encircle him in the main group of the race to protect him. They will shield him from headwinds and they will act as his pacemaker to keep him at the front of the race until they are exhausted and have to drop back. They are the model for Christian servanthood, they work tirelessly for the team leader emptying themselves in the process. But sometimes the roles will be reversed, sometimes the leader will serve his teammates, perhaps helping a team mate who has a chance of winning a stage. When that happens it always reminds me of Jesus tying a towel around his waist and washing his disciples’ feet.

And there will be much suffering along the way. During the three week race the riders will cover on average around 130 miles a day at an average speed of 25-30mph. They will climb mountains on their bikes that you probably wouldn’t attempt going up in a car. They will keep going whatever the weather, in torrential rain or blistering heat. Injury very rarely stops them as well. A few years ago an American rider called Tyler Hamilton crashed early on in a stage. He rode on another 100 miles to the finish in terrible pain because unbeknown to him he had broken his collar bone. By the end of the stage he had been in such pain that he had ground down a number of his teeth.

As in the Gospels a number of the significant events of the Tour de France will take place on the mountains. The mountains are where the Tour de France is won and lost, if you don’t perform well in the mountains you will never win the race.  They go over mountain pass after mountain pass in the Alps and Pyrenees with the highest measuring 2100 metres. 

 I wonder whether on those horrendous climbs any of the riders ever think of the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 121

“I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where will my help come?”

 And when I see those mountain stages I am always reminded of those words from Isaiah 52

 “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news. Who announces peace And brings good news of happiness, Who announces salvation, And says to Zion, "Your God reigns!"

And I am also reminded of how many of the significant events of Jesus’ life took place on hills and mountains.  I am reminded of the Sermon on the Mount, of the Transfiguration of our Lord and how Jesus took his disciples up on a mountain before he ascended to the father and said to them

“Remember I am with you always, to the end of the age.

And sometimes during the Tour de France’ history there have been even starker reminders of important events from Jesus’ life that took place on hillsides. In 1967 the British rider Tom Simpson died of heat exhaustion on the slopes of Mont Ventoux during a stage of the Tour. Mont Ventoux is in the Pyrenees and the upper slopes of that hill are stark and stripped of vegetation. In the summer it gets very hot up there and it was there Tom Simpson died. A young man suffering and then dying on a hillside, does that remind you of anyone?

As Jesus faced a time of trial of his own so the riders in the Tour de France will also face their time of trial. On stage 20, the penultimate stage of the Tour the riders have to complete an individual time trial against the clock. There is no hiding place on the individual time trial, any weakness that you have will be exposed, you are on your own!

But ultimately of course any race is about victory. The ultimate goal for all the team leaders in the Tour de France is to pull on the winners yellow journey on the podium in Paris at the end of the race. Then you are victorious, then you have vanquished your foes. The winner will receive a cheque for €450,000 but here’s the strange bit, he won’t keep a single euro of that money for himself but will give it all to his team mates. In his moment of victory he will keep nothing back but will give everything he has won to those who have been with him during the race, his victory is shared by all of them. And that definitely makes me think of Christ.  

On the cross Jesus achieves his victory and vanquishes his foes. In his hour of victory he defeats sin, the devil and even death itself. On the cross Jesus holds nothing back, his generosity is such that he endures ridicule, shame, suffering and death for us. And like the winner of the Tour de France does, Jesus shares the spoils of his victory with his followers. The prize he wins he does not keep for himself but instead he wins the prize specifically so that he can share it with us. The prize is reconciliation with the Father, the prize is the forgiveness of sins, the prize is eternal life. It is a prize that Jesus shares not just with small group of disciples who were with him on his journey, he shares it with the whole world, with anyone who believes in him and acknowledges him as their saviour. Unlike the Tour de France winners teammates we have not earned our share in the winners glory through our own efforts, Our share in Christ’s glory is freely given to us by the love and grace of God.

Disciples, servanthood, suffering, drama and death on mountainsides, times of testing, the Tour de France has them all. And as I watch the Tour de France over the next few weeks I know that I will be reminded of important elements of my faith. And what this tells me is that we can find God in the ordinary. We don’t have to be in a church gazing at beautiful stained glass windows to find Christian imagery and symbolism. It is all around us in the everyday things of our lives and our world. We can find reminders of our faith in the people we meet, the places we go, the buildings that we enter and yes, even in a bike race.  And that ability to find God in the ordinary is the proof of what Jesus said to his disciples

“Remember I am with you always. To the end of the age.”