Sermon On The Queen's Gambit

José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera, a Cuban chess player once remarked: "In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before everything else, for whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame." Jeremiah 29:11 reminds us: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Chess is a two-player, ancient board game of challenge and strategy played on an 8x8 checkered board with 64 squares. Its objective is to checkmate the opponent's king, meaning to attack it in such a way that it cannot escape capture. Each player has 16 different pieces - including a king, queen, rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns - with individual movement rules, and the game regularly invokes judicious thinking and tactics.

The Queen's Gambit is a frequently used sapient chess opening where White sacrifices a pawn in exchange for central control and a developmental advantage. It is a specific, primordial and pivotal chess outset for White that involves offering a pawn to gain central control of the board. Chess has a complete structure of rules governing how each piece moves and interacts to achieve the overall aim of successfully checkmating the opponent's king.

Chess can serve as imagery for life. Although chess is deemed as a game, and life is seen as complex and experiential, many people use chess as a metaphor for life because it teaches valuable lessons in strategic thinking, planning, patience, resilience, and accepting consequences. In this analogy, a chess game's controlled environment helps individuals understand how to navigate real-world complexities by making calculated decisions and learning from setbacks. It also aids a foundation to Christian spiritual life, where God is the ultimate Player whose wisdom guides the game, and believers are pieces that must move with focus, intentionality, and faith to fulfill God's larger plan. By understanding chess strategy, believers can apply principles of spiritual growth, such as controlling anxieties, making choices founded in wisdom, and understanding that individual moves are part of a greater, divine design, ultimately leading to peace and a deeper, more fruitful relationship with God.

While the game of chess itself isn't recorded in the Bible, its narratives of strategic conflict, divine intervention, and the unfolding of a grand plan have led to the use of chess as a powerful emblem for understanding God's ways and the spiritual journey. A significant spiritual journey story in the Bible is that of Abraham's call and his journey to the Promised Land, described as a "pilgrim" whose willingness to obey and trust God became a model of faith. Genesis 12:1-9 reminds us: “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.”

In every game of chess, there is usually a winner and a loser. The beginning and middle strategies usually determine the endgame. The final outcome in chess may determine a similar master plan in life. The free-will of players that God allows always determine the end results in each game of chess which can represent life. Choices dictate actions that may incur advantages. Advantages in life may seemingly appear from nowhere, but always come when God feels the time is right. From a religious perspective, the advantages of life, such as existence itself, salvation, grace, health, wisdom, and fulfillment, are considered gifts from God, not earned through human effort but given freely through divine benevolence and grace. These divine advantages are believed to provide the foundation for a meaningful and righteous life, offering bounties like inner peace, protection, and the ability to live according to God's will and purpose.