What Caitlin Clark and Jesus Christ have in common

Caitlin Clark has just been announced as Time magazine’s “2024 Athlete of the Year.” This is no surprise. As the article explains: in February, she set the new NCAA Division 1 women’s basketball scoring record. A few weeks later, she broke Hall of Famer Pete Maravich’s mark, making her the top college scorer of all time.

Her college championship game between Iowa and South Carolina generated a larger American viewership than the 2024 NBA Finals or World Series. For the first time, more people tuned in for the women’s NCAA championship than the men’s.

She then turned pro and set a rookie record for most three-pointers made in a season and also set new all-time WNBA marks for most assists in a season and most assists in a single game. She also signed a reported $28 million endorsement deal with Nike, the largest ever for a women’s basketball player.

Not a bad year.

When asked to define 2024 in one word, Clark chose historic. She explained: “I’ve been able to captivate so many people that have never watched women’s sports, let alone women’s basketball, and turn them into fans.”

She’s right: the WNBA’s overall attendance jumped 48 percent year over year to its highest level in more than two decades. Her team broke the WNBA record for home attendance by a single franchise. Some of their games actually had to be moved to larger arenas to accommodate the hordes of fans, many wearing Clark’s No. 22 jersey.

“A powerful symbol of the ubiquity of God”

When I read the story, my thoughts turned immediately to a statement by the novelist and theologian Frederick Buechner I read recently:

Every automobile bears on its license plate a number that represents the number of years that have elapsed since the birth of Christ. This is a powerful symbol of the ubiquity of God and the indifference of the human race.

Of course, no one knew this at the time. The year most historians identify with the birth of Christ was known to Rome as “750 Ab urbe condita” (“from the founding of the city”). Our BC / AD system was not devised until the sixth century and did not become popular until the ninth century.

Unlike Caitlin Clark, who burst onto the scene amid national publicity and quickly rose to global superstardom, Jesus spent his first thirty years in relative anonymity. Even after he began his public ministry leading to his death and resurrection, few outside the area of Palestine had heard of him. When Peter preached the gospel to Jews gathered in Jerusalem from across the Empire, it seems clear that the message was new news to them (Acts 2).

But it didn’t take long for the word to spread and the world to change.

“Jesus Christ is no mere man”

Like Caitlin Clark but to an infinitely higher degree, Jesus Christ changed the world. The Empire that crucified him is no more, but more than two billion people around the globe call him their Lord. Billions will celebrate his birth again this year.

Napoleon famously said of him:

I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him.

However, unlike Caitlin Clark, Jesus made his reputation not by social media and sports marketing but by changed lives. It is no disrespect to her to say that those who watch her play leave the experience as they entered it. They are likely entertained and impressed with her amazing talent but are no different themselves.

By contrast, every person who truly experiences the Christ of Christmas, trusting him as their Savior and worshiping him as their Lord, leaves the experience changed. How could it be otherwise? If we genuinely engage an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Lord of the universe, how can we be the same?

“God himself is present”

Here’s the problem: many of us come to Christ more as fans than as followers.

We fill his “arena” on Sunday to watch his designated representatives perform. Many of us are even willing to pay for the privilege through our tithes and offerings. But few of us expect to be changed by the experience. And we rarely get more than what we expect in life.

To illustrate: for many of us who attend worship services, God is the topic of the event, but the congregation is the audience of the experience, and the pastor and other worship leaders are the performers. We then measure success by how well the performers perform.

According to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, this is not how things are in reality. In Purity of Heart, he wrote:

In the theater, the play is staged before an audience who are called theatergoers, but at the devotional address, God himself is present. In the most earnest sense, God is the critical theatergoer who looks on to see how the lines are spoken and how they are listened to . . . The speaker is then the prompter, and the listener stands openly before God. The listener . . . is the actor, who in all truth acts before God.

Which of these two descriptions is more true for you? To answer, you might ask yourself these questions:

• When you attended worship last week, who was your audience (or Audience)?

• When you pray, is your purpose more to seek the help of God or to please him with your praise?

• When you read Scripture, are you fulfilling a religious duty while hopefully learning something, or are you listening to the voice of the Author and submitting to his will?

• When last did it cost you something significant to serve Jesus?

• When you celebrate Christmas this year, will your focus be more on the gifts or the Gift?

In other words,

Would Jesus say you are his fan or his unconditionally committed follower?

For you to be more the latter than ever before, what would need to change today?