Let’s talk about the gold medal game in women’s ice hockey at the Olympics: United States vs. Canada, the two titans of the sport. The U.S. has been on an absolute tear through the tournament; throttling their opponents by a combined score of 31-1. That included a 5-0 victory over Canada. I had their semifinal game against Sweden on in the background a couple of days ago and there was a two and a half minute stretch where the U.S. scored three goals. It was like this team was playing the Olympics on Rookie mode.
So naturally this inevitable juggernaut was losing 1-0 to Canada with just over two minutes left in the gold medal game. With a stoppage of play, the United States made the move of pulling their goalie to allow for an additional player to help the offensive attack on the other end. The obvious flip side of that move is that it there is no one to protect the goal leaving the net wide open for Canada to put the game on ice (I will not apologize for puns whether intentional or unintentional).
The risk paid off as Hilary Knight deflected a shot from teammate Laila Edwards into the goal for the equalizing score. Then the United States went on to win the gold in overtime on Megan Keller’s beautiful goal that made me leap off the couch. The official slogan for the Winter Olympics should be “Making Ice Hockey the Most Important It Has Been to Me Since the Mighty Ducks Trilogy.”
Sports metaphors are pretty much everywhere in American life and oftentimes implemented imperfectly. I mean the point of sports is to defeat the other team and I generally do not want to beat someone else in this life. But it does stick out to me that in this case the way forward was gained by risking vulnerability. I don’t know if the U.S. wins the game if they did not leave themselves wide open to certain defeat. To take that metaphor into our lives, vulnerability is difficult. We often don’t want to lose, admit weakness, error, or anything like that. Maybe it’s scary. Maybe we have been vulnerable with some people and it has blown up in our face. Most of us want the biggest, most cat-like goalie guarding our proverbial goal.
One of the verses in the devotional that I read this morning was from Luke 9:24: “Whoever would save their life must first lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” Not a perfect parallel, but again, it is that idea of risking loss for something even greater. In my faith tradition, there is a lot of upside down thinking: death leading to life, power being found in weakness, love conquering hate, etc.
To live a Christian life is to live a vulnerable life. Not so much that you are just wide open all the time so that you can be hurt by anyone at anytime. Vulnerability is not a call to be a doormat or an empty goal. But it does wind up asking us to put ourselves out there in an honest and authentic way. There is great risk in that and great possibility that we will lose in some moments. But there is so much to be gained as well. Granted that is easier said than done.