I really want to watch a relatively recent movie that has been called a sports movie that's not. In other words, it is about something much more profound than a sports team winning games. The movie is We Are Marshall. It is the re-telling of the account of 76 Division 1 football players dying in a plane crash, and the school's response to the tragedy. Here's a quote from a website that discusses the real life drama:
"The new players didn't know the story. They didn't know the magnitude of the tragedy," he said. "This was to help them understand the magnitude if this tragedy and what role they needed to play in the future to build the foundation for the future generations of Marshall football."
Lengyel said this was a "private moment" for the team, which traditionally happened at 6 a.m. before the first game of the year with only the team, coaching staff and team managers there.
McConaughey uses the phrase, "The funerals end today," but Lengyel said he had to make that known not only to the players but to the schools the team played. Each time the team traveled, the school would have a memorial for Marshall, but Lengyel said the team couldn't continue and grow under those conditions.
Read the actual story of Marshall's football team airline crash
So, how important is at that we remember those who died before us? To answer that, I need to tell you about some questions my daughter fielded in one of her classes at Charleston Southern University. Her class has been reading Fox's Book of Martyrs. Her classmates said that they didn't understand why this book is such an important part of Western literature (if somehow you don't know what this book is, you need to get a copy on your Kindle, tablet, or computer and read it). What is the point of reading it? After all, it's just tragic, horrible, depressing stuff about believers that lived many centuries ago. What good could it possibly do for us today? My daughter was incredulous. This is a book she's been read; she has also read, and had been taught from since a child. Now, here was someone all but thumbing their nose at its importance.
With that in mind, I must ask myself, what is my motivation? Is it the living or the dead? In many ways, I believe it to be both. Read the words of 2 Corinthians 5, the Bible exhorts us all:
It takes death to brings us to understand our deepest motivation as Christians. That is meant in at least two ways:And He died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the One who died for them and was raised. (2 Corinthians 5:15 HCSB)
1) Because Jesus died, we have no reason to live for ourselves. His example is that love in truth is always worth dying for. Remember from last week, God so loved, He gave..."
Read about Love and John 3:16 here
2) Because others have died for the Faith and are dying without the Faith, we must tell them that Jesus died for them, not as an example, but in order to reconcile us all to God the Father and to take our sins away. Theologians call that "imputation." This is a banking term that means to "place on one's account." That means that Jesus' death as the sinless, perfect Son of God allowed us to place our debt of sin on Jesus' infinite account (See 2 Corinthians 5:18-19).Through death, we find life. In that, Jesus is our motivation, and in another way, they are our motivation. We live for Him because He died for them. We live for Him because they died for Him. Death is as much a part of life as birth. So because of that, the funerals will go on, but not in fear, but in hope that life doesn't stop with death. Death, because of Christ's resurrection from the dead, is now a conquered foe that holds no power over us anymore. No matter the circumstances, we can die in the Faith knowing real life has only begun.
Living for Him who died and is alive,
Pastor Trey Rhodes
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