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Rev Mark Osborne
Good morning et Bienvenue à Paris! My name is Mark Osborne and I’m the Chaplain of St George’s Anglican Church standing just 300 metres from the Arc de Triomphe. But today I’m down by the Seine to welcome you to worship with us as we celebrate both our Bicentenary at the heart of Paris and the opening of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Paris is an exciting and dynamic city as well as being a fun and beautiful place in which to live. After the 1st World War, exhausted and traumatised Paris hosted the 1924 Games, reminding us that sport is about bringing the human family together, by both celebrating the best we can be and training us up that we can be better citizens of the world village. Today Paris is reinventing the Games again: with a lower carbon footprint; a more durable infrastructure; for the first time there are equal numbers of men and women competing in the Games. The Olympics draws people together from across the planet and we’re looking forward to welcoming them here this summer.

Music: Let all the world – verse 1
Sung by the choir and congregation of St George’s Anglican Church

The congregations here worship in English, French and Madagascan meet in a modern church, consecrated in 1978, that’s below ground level, hidden at street level, yet only 500 metres from the Arc de Triomphe. We’ve been in Paris for 200 years this year and have seen governments come and go, experienced the upheaval and violence of wars, as well as the more modern scourge terrorism.

Today the Sunday morning congregation, worships in English, and comes from English speakers across the globe including too French residents who cherish the witness of Anglicanism to the Gospel.

Music: Let all the world – verse 2
Sung by the choir and congregation of St George’s Anglican Church

Rev Mark Osborne
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.ÌýAmen.Ìý

The Lord be with you
and also with you.

Let us acknowledge our failures to respond to the riches of the grace Jesus shares with us

We have not loved one another as you have loved us. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

Although you call us your friends we have been disloyal to your friendship. Christ, have mercy.ÌýChrist, have mercy.

We have chosen our won way and so we have not borne fruit which abides.: Lord, have mercy.ÌýLord, have mercy

Almighty God, who forgives all who truly repent, have mercy upon you,
pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness,
and keep you in life eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord.ÌýAmen.

Almighty Lord and everlasting God,
we beseech you to direct, sanctify and govern
both our hearts and bodies
in the ways of your laws and the works of your commandments;
that through your most mighty protection, both here and ever,
we may be preserved in body and soul;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Reading: I Corinthians 9. 24-27
Read in French and EnglishÌý

Song: Fitiavana, rano velona (Trad. Madagascan)
Sung by the congregation of St George’s Anglican Church

Reflection: Revd Ben Harding
Chaplain, Trinity Church Lyon, and part of the Chaplaincy team at the 2024 Olympic Games

Song: Fitiavana, rano velona (Trad. Madagascan)
Sung by the congregation of St George’s Anglican Church

Reading: Genesis 28.17

Reflection: Rachel (member of the congregation)

Music: Psalm 133 vs 1-4
Sung by the Choir of St George’s Anglican Church

Reflection: John (member of the congregation

Music: Guide me, O thou great redeemer (2nd verse sung in French)
Sung by the choir and congregation of St George’s Anglican Church

Gospel reading: Mark 6.30-34

Sermon: Fr Jeffrey John

Baron Pierre de Coubertin is generally acknowledged as the father of the modern Olympic Games. He was born in Paris in 1863, and convened the first International Olympic Congress at the Sorbonne in 1894. He was the energy behind the first games to be held in Paris, in 1900, and then again in Paris on a much larger scale in 1924. So it is wonderfully appropriate that, another a hundred years later, the games are in Paris again.

De Coubertin was an aristocrat, an educationist and an anglophile. He believed strongly in the ancient Greek philosophy of sport as building character and esprit de corps, and thought it was ideally exemplified in English public schools. He was a great friend and admirer of Thomas Arnold, and strove hard, though unsuccessfully, to introduce the same ethos into the French school system.

His real and enduring success was the Olympic games themselves, though clearly it was never going to be easy to achieve the kind of harmonious agreement and international co-operation that the games demand. Inevitably there were problems.

In the London Olympics of 1908, there was a particularly bitter dispute between the British and American delegations, with the Americans complaining that a British jury had unfairly disqualified some of their best athletes. The dispute escalated even to the White House and Downing Street.

In a special service for the Olympics held that year in St Paul’s Cathedral, the sermon was given by an American Bishop, Ethelbert Talbot,Ìý who tried to calm the quarrel by reminding both sides that according to St Paul (in the text that we just heard) winning the game was not the most important thing. Runners may compete to win a prize, says Paul, but the earthly prize is nothing:Ìý

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.

So Bishop Talbot concluded:

“If England be beaten on the river, or if America be outdistanced on the racetrack, well, what of it? The Games themselves are better than the race and the prize. St. Paul tells us how insignificant is the prize.Ìý Our true prize is not perishable but imperishable, and though only one may wear the laurel wreath, all may share the equal joy of the contest.

De Coubertin heard the bishop’s sermon and wrote later how deep an impression it had made on him. It made him see more clearly than before that the Olympic aim was not simply a sporting or educational ideal, but a human and religious one; and that overcoming both personal and national ambition in a spirit of genuine co-operation is essential to real flourishing. As he put it:

What matters in the Olympic games is not winning but taking part, because what matters in life is not to triumph but to compete well. We must hold fast to this truth: it is basic to every area of human experience.

That dictum, ‘It is not whether you win or lose but how you play the game’ has become proverbial in French and English, but do we actually believe it?

It is easy to be cynical. Oscar Wilde said it would be truer to say ‘It is not whether you win or lose, but how you lay the blame’.Ìý

We know very well how much corruption, drugs, commercialisation, and the buying and selling of athletes for obscene sums of money have tarnished every kind of sport.Ìý

Some modern athletes have flatly contradicted Coubertin’s grand ideal: ‘Of course winning isn’t everything; winning is the ONLY thing’ said one.

But I think the cynics are wrong.Ìý Even if sport can be abused, ‘abusus non tollit usum’ – abuse doesn’t cancel out proper use. And even if some athletes are obsessed with winning, what inspires is not the gold medal but the extreme dedication and courage it takes for all the competitors to reach their peak of perfection.

The motto of the games isn’t ‘Fastest, Highest, Strongest’, it’s ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger Together’.Ìý In other words, as De Coubertin said, what counts for everyone in every sphere of life, is the determination to do the best you possibly can, against whatever odds. The explosion of enthusiasm for the Paralympic Games in recent years is because somehow, we fell that we are all made braver and nobler in reaching our goals by seeing their bravery and nobility in reaching theirs.Ìý The beauty revealed by the games isn’t just of the body, it’s of the soul.

Whether it is in sport or anything else, if we strive to do the best we can with what we’ve got, in the end we can all hope to say, as St Paul said at the end of his life, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith’.

Music: Christ is the world’s true light
sung by the choir and congregation of St George’s Anglican Church

Prayers

Confident that Christ intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father, we make our prayers in the power of the Holy Spirit:

For the whole human family, especially where it is suffering through war, economic oppression and the climate crisis. We pray for renewed grace and courage to live as children of the one God.

Lord, in your mercy,ÌýHear our prayerÌý

For the Olympic Games, for athletes, officials and spectators, especially for those who are tempted to win at any cost. We pray for a fun and safe games for all.

Lord, in your mercy,ÌýHear our prayerÌý

For France and our President and for the leaders of the nations. Inspired by the Olympic Games we pray for an end to war and violence in Ukraine, in Gaza and Israel, in the other violent conflicts around the world today.

Lord, in your mercy,ÌýHear our prayerÌý

For all in any kind of need: for the sick and dying, for those travelling and those afraid of the world around them. We commit them to your healing love.

Lord, in your mercy,ÌýHear our prayerÌý

Lord’s Prayer

Music: Tantum ergo – de Severac
Sung by the Choir of St George’s Anglican Church

Rev Mark Osborne
The contemporary novelist Edmund White wrote of his time in Paris as living inside a pearl and since gas street lighting in the 1860’s Paris has been described as the city of Light. But it was Francois 1, the king of France who met Henry VIII on the Field of Gold, who said that ‘Paris isn’t a city, it’s a world.’ If all that hyperbole were true we’d not be living in God’s world but in an egocentric and narcissistic place empty of any hope of salvation, of redemption and restoration, as God’s beloved.

But as the first hymn reminds us wherever we live, whatever our circumstances, we’re called to triumph! To train - like athletes, work – like soldiers, persevere – in season and out of season – to act as citizens of the Heavenly City where with the Lord there’ll be joys beyond words, beyond music even and light beyond compare.

Music: Jerusalem the Golden
Sung by the choir and congregation of St George’s Anglican Church

Blessing and Dismissal

Organ Voluntary

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