Arms Linked Before a Tyrant

On August 4, 1936, in Berlin's Olympic Stadium, eighty thousand spectators watched as Jesse Owens struggled. The American sprinter had fouled on his first two qualifying attempts in the long jump. One more foul and he was out. That was when Luz Long, Germany's best long jumper and the very man Owens needed to beat, walked over and offered a quiet suggestion: place a towel several inches before the takeoff board and launch from there.

Owens qualified. He went on to win gold. Long took silver. And then, in full view of Adolf Hitler and a stadium draped in swastikas, Luz Long threw his arm around Jesse Owens and walked with him before the crowd. A blond-haired German athlete publicly embracing a Black American — in the heart of Nazi Germany.

That moment cost Long. He was sent to the front lines. He died in Sicily in July 1943, never seeing his young son grow up. But before he died, he wrote to Owens asking him to find that boy someday and tell him what things could be like between people.

Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). Luz Long did not have to cross that stadium. He did not have to link arms with a man his government despised. But real friendship risks something. It defies the powers that demand we stay apart, and it sometimes costs us everything. That is the shape of love the Savior was talking about.