…On Thursday I watched the opening ceremony for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. I don’t think there’s a greater spectacle to behold in the world. For most Americans, the World Cup holds little value. I’m not sure why we chose to go with American Football or basketball over soccer, or football as most the world knows it, but we did. Apparently over 100 million people watched the Super Bowl in February. Probably a few tuned in for the halftime show or the commercials. About 20 million people are currently watching each NBA Finals game.
But probably more than 6 billion people across the world will watch a world cup game. Most likely, more than 1.5 billion people will tune into the final game. This is quite astounding. The countries that usually make the final average 75M inhabitants, which means that if every single person that lived in the two countries that made the final, that’s only 150M people, which means that hundreds of millions of people tune into a sporting event where they have no nationalistic identification with the teams playing. I remember traveling through parts of Europe in June 2010, during the World Cup. Everywhere we went – Germany, Austria, Türkiye, Greece, Netherlands – people were tuned into the World Cup.
Why does the World Cup attract so many viewers? One simple word. Glory. People want glory. They want to share in glory. They want to ascribe glory to their team, or their player. When I visited Argentina, I saw murals everywhere that equated a man named Diego Maradona to God. These fans want to declare his glory among the nations. They want to tell of his power and his mighty deeds. Of when Maradona won revenge against the British in 1982 by scoring a goal with the “hand of God.”
I like the World Cup. I like the spectacle of the thing. But I am always amazed at how much glory humans will put in sport compared to how little they will give to God. God created us for glory, to share in his glory, to reflect his glory. But in sin, human hearts are dull to things of God by default. It’s easier to look at what we’ve created with our own hands and give us praise. We do not see things like God sees things.
But God wants us to see things like he sees things. And what this passage will teach us, is that God’s glory is magnified in Christ crucified on the cross. If we want to see God in all his glory, then we need to look upon Christ crucified….
