To stage the Opening Ceremony of an Olympics on water instead of land, with crowds gathered along a riverbank instead of in a stadium, and with performers perched on buildings instead of stages… It was outrageously creative. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. Ohh, to have been an antipodean fly on the wall in those team meetings!
Epic success. I’ve never been to Paris, but now I can’t wait to do so—and I think I’ll manage without Google Maps for much of it, thanks to this ceremony (which, for me, is saying something!).
However, knowing they had a captive global audience, with the peoples and cultures and religions of the world gathered in family groups around their screens—what is it that they decided to do? Raising issues around sexuality in that way? What came over them? Did they think that such a performance was going to help where these issues are the hardest across the world? Surely not. They’ve made it worse. What happened to the ‘outrageous creativity’? Why take such a serious matter, with the opportunity to engage it instructively on a global stage, and then do something in such an offensive, preachy and polarizing manner?
Epic fail. I can only assume that the Games Wide Open are, in fact, the Games Partially Closed for many; that liberté, egalité, diversité, unité, fraternité, solidarité and the like are true for some, but not for all; and that European colonialism, albeit a softer 2.0 version, is still imposing its will and its way on others.
nice chatting
Paul
About Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
Recent Posts
Football helps me train preachers. See, when you speak to me about football—or, ‘footie’—I need to know where your feet are before I can understand what you mean. Are your feet in Ireland, or Brazil, or the USA, or NZ—or in crazy Australia? It must be the most fanatical sporting nation in the world. Within…
Having been born in 1959, I don’t remember much about the 1960s. But I have heard a lot. Hippies. Drugs. Rock ‘n Roll. Assassinations. Moon-walking. A quick trip across to ChatGPT informs me immediately that it was ‘a transformative decade across the world’—marked by the civil rights and feminist movements, Cold War tensions, consumerism and…
A sad contrast to “Queen Elizabeth” parachuting into the stadium.
Yeah, Fred, I’d still put that London Opening Ceremony ahead of this one.
The humour and the fun in it caught us off-guard as viewers.
I might also add that I only saw ‘the Lord’s Supper’ controversy spreading across social media AFTER I wrote this little piece. It was not on my mind because on this occasion I was trying to reflect more as a global citizen than as a Christian…
Paul