When the time is near
And the follower of Christ
Does not feel so chipper,
We need that speech
To go out and win one for the Gipper.[1]

Once there was a young man named George Gipp, who played football for Notre Dame for four years, from 1917-1920. He was 22 when he was a freshman and 25 when he was a senior. He played many positions including halfback, quarterback and punter. He was fortunate, in some respect, not to have been drafted and shipped across the sea to Europe to join the allies in their fight against the Kaiser and Germany. It was the first world war. He and his teammates took to a different battlefield, one less violent, and played football during this tumultuous time. Sports was then, what it is now, a way to offer a distraction from the world’s affairs. He took the field with his colleagues and went to battle against the usual foes: Army, Nebraska, Penn and Stanford. He was fortunate to avoid one major conflict, only to be ushered into another. In his senior year, he became quite sick and was diagnosed with a serious throat infection, and pneumonia.

George’s coach visited him in the hospital several times, offering encouragement and prayers. The coach was the famous Knute Rockne. He and George started together at Notre Dame and a close bond grew between the player and coach, especially during the sickness. A few weeks before he died, George said this to his coach, who was battling a losing season and going up against great odds. “Coach, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper”. He died at the young age of 25, not in a field hospital thousands of miles away, but locally, near his home.

The movie, “Knute Rockne: All American” followed twenty years later, starring another young talent who was cast as the famous coach. His name was Ronald Reagan. That quote was used verbatim, to inspire many others through the second world war. Forty years after that, the same actor would become president of the United States, affectionately called, “The Gipp”, who went and went out to ‘win one for the team’ against Gorbachev and Russia, to end the Cold War. Yes, “nations have risen up against nations and kingdoms against kingdoms.”[2] Heard this morning in today’s Gospel, maybe we, too, are not feeling very "chipper” by what we see happening overseas, or right here, at home. What are we to do when we suspect the time is near?

There will truly be signs. The first is the fall of the temple, or the church. What has notoriously been the sacred space for God’s presence, will be brought low. Paul’s second letter to the followers of Christ in Thessalonica is evidence of a people who became mere ‘busy bodies’, giving appearance of doing God’s work but being idle in the affairs of carrying out God’s promises. They were not really working. They were idle. The churches fell. For the disciples, hearing Jesus say these words, seemed far-fetched. The walls of Jerusalem, the temples throughout the villages were built over a long time. How could anything bring them down so easily. As Reagan, and other leaders before him said, our house cannot stand if it is divided from within.

Jesus was warning the people, the great day will come when the false teachers will say, “I am he!” and “The time is near!”. Jesus is saying the odds are truly against those who follow Him, that is if you were betting on this world. But Jesus wants us to endure through time. For some, we will be drafted to serve the Lord far away and some nearby. Some will live a long life and some a short one. Persecutions will happen for all of His followers in some way, because the world is in opposition to the message of Christ and to His followers. When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified. When you hear of plagues and famines, these are all signs that point us to God. You may be hated and even put to death for testifying Jesus as the Son of God and Savior of the world.

The field is before you. Take it with courage. Go and play the position that Jesus has formed and created you for a time like this. The time is near. It is for all followers of Christ to find the means to share joy and peace, to be “chipper”. It is a time when perhaps, Jesus is giving us a similar sentiment to invite others to know Him, and to go out and win one for the Gipper!

[1] The Rev. Jon Roberts
[2] Luke 21:5-19