For the past four weeks, we have been drawing lessons and illustrations from the game of football.  Ever since moving to Columbus, I have suspected that football aspires to be its own religion.  And it appears that, indeed, there are many similarities between football and religion.  Listen to how Football is described in a recent Time Magazine article:

“Baseball is America’s pastime, but football is its true passion.  The Friday-night lights bond towns across the heartland; on Saturdays, fans forget their worries to worship at the altar of the campus tailgate, smoke rising above grills like incense.  On Sundays, we park our posteriors on the sofa to cheer the sublime spirals, miraculous catches, and riveting runs down the side-lines.”  (Time Magazine; Feb 8, 2010)

There is no question that ritual is a part of both devotion to the Divine and devotion to football. And I have experienced Christian worship as sublime, miraculous and riveting.  But metaphors have their limits – and no two things can be compared without noticing both how they are alike and how they are different.

The cash economy of pro football is in the tens of billions of dollars through fan magazines, websites, merchandisers, fantasy leagues, player salaries and team revenues.  It’s not like religion in that way.  At least not like this one!

The Time magazine article to which I referred is about what is wrong with football.  One writer described is as “increasingly engorged with unholy violence at all levels.”

Noting the tradition of using Roman numerals to count Super Bowls, another writer said, “Although football hasn’t quite reached the bloodlust status achieved at the ancient coliseum, the path to Super Bowl XLIV is strewn with the broken bodies and damaged brains that result when highly motivated, superbly conditioned athletes collide violently in pursuit of glory.”

The glorification of the hard, grinding hit that is part of the culture of the NFL means that this style of play is emulated at every level of the game, down to elementary school pee-wee leagues.  The possibility of permanent damage due to repeated brain injury (concussion) is high for football players, and the risk begins at a young age.  In Texas, there is an average of two paralyzing spinal cord injuries to high school football players every year.

As someone who enjoys football, and considers myself an advocate of non violence, I want to go on record saying that I support the rules changes, the equipment improvements, new rules for youth football, and an end to the culture that encourages players to hide the symptoms of injury lest they be judged as “weak.”  I do not want to enjoy a game that is unnecessarily dangerous to those who play it – and especially if the culture of the game is “caught” by kids and encouraged by those who coach kids.

While the violence in football can be described as “unholy,” the sad truth is that sometimes violence masquerades as holiness.  While I wish that religion was “unlike” football in the ways of violence, we need to acknowledge that in nearly every religious tradition, including ours, plenty of violence gets done in the name of holiness.

There were Crusades, Inquisitions, and witch hunts.  There were violations of indigenous cultures.  And there was segregation of African Americans institutionalized in the Methodist Church until 1968, and practiced far longer. Sadly, we still have the capacity to do violence to one another in the name of belief or truth.  But violence, physical or verbal, explicit or implicit is not the life to which we are called by Jesus.

Jesus life and death is, in fact, a commentary on the futility of violence.  The violence done to Jesus could not defeat the love incarnate in Jesus.

Today, when the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints take the field for the Super bowl Game, the players on the field will be there because they have learned the game.  They have played the game.  They have excelled at the game.  And at some point, they became so good at the game that they got drafted – chosen by a team from the best of the best to play the game professionally.  They are rewarded financially for this success, and sometimes they gain both fortune and fame.

Church is not like that.  God’s work of assembling the Body of Christ does not depend on the skill, the luck or the determination of the players so much as it depends on God’s desire to give everyone a place to belong.

But we are competitive people.  And we like glory.  And we like to win.  But this is not the pathway of the Christian life.  We do not get into this game through achievement.  We get into this game through obedience and submission. The truth is that God is calling every single one of us to some kind of participation in God’s work in the world.  Jesus is calling every single one of us to a place in the community of faith.  The Spirit moves with purpose all around us. The question is not whether or not God calls.  The question is why so few of us hear or respond to God’s inviting grace.

The Bible is full of stories about the call of God coming to ordinary people doing ordinary things.  We can learn from these stories how to be attentive to the Divine invitation.

Moses is watching his father in law’s flock; David is herding sheep; Isaiah is living among his people in exile.  Peter is a fisherman in Galilee.  And every time there is a call story, the one being called feels inadequate to the job. Because every time there is a call, the one being called is overwhelmed by the holiness of God.  Alongside the holiness of God, the faithfulness of Jesus to his mission, and the power of the Spirit, any mere human is bound to feel overwhelmed.

In fact, this experience can be so overwhelming that we go to great lengths not to have it.  We construct elaborate defense mechanisms against the experience of call.  We engage worship with our mind, but not our heart; or with our heart but not our minds.  We bargain with God for a little of our time and a few of our resources, but are reluctant to make our whole lives available.  I know these things, because I used to be very skilled at this…and can recall that skill at will whenever God gets a little too close for my comfort.

Isaiah made himself radically available to God.  Living in a turbulent time, full of despair for the plight of the unfaithful Israel and aware of his own participation in that unfaithfulness, unsettled about the present and fearful for the future, he went anyway to worship.  The truth is, worship, when engaged with an open heart and mind can be risky.  We need to come to worship prepared for the ride of our lives, because God might show up.  God showed up for Isaiah.  His world was rocked with the awareness that “The whole earth is full of God’s glory.”  Isaiah’s call to prophetic leadership is received in the midst of awe and mystery; his life will become something far more than he imagined.  He is immediately aware of his own inadequacy.  But that does not disqualify him from his call.  God makes him able.

Peter’s call shows yet another context.  He is doing what he does.  He is fishing.  And he is failing at that.  There is a scarcity of fish.  It is in the midst of his failure that Jesus comes to him, and gives him a vision of abundance.  He too falls down before the vision of God’s abundance that Jesus reveals to him.  I love the way his call is articulated by Jesus in this story.  Jesus does not ask Peter to become something that he is not.  He asks him to do what he has always done, but with a new purpose.  “Follow me, and I will make you a fisher for people.”

So, here are two clues to getting in the game.  Show up, like Isaiah, ready to be awed.  And pay attention, like Peter, to where God shows up in the midst of ordinary, daily activities.  Perhaps God desires to take your life in a whole new direction.  Or perhaps God desires to make a subtle shift in your life.

One purpose of church is, in fact, to support people in discovering the presence of God in the midst of life.  Worship is about the holiness and presence of God.  And many of the “calendar items” that are listed in the weekly are opportunities to discover holy purpose in ordinary activities.  Can you drive?  You can volunteer at CRC or drive the bus on Sunday mornings?  Can you cook?  You can cook as a chore, or you can cook because you are gifted for a ministry of hospitality and nurture.  Can you use the phone?  You can telephone home bound persons and offer them the care and nurture of the church.

We sometimes mistake God’s call as only being something for those who have highly visible positions in the life of the church.  You remember that “body of Christ” treatise by Paul, where he describes that the lowlier parts are honored.  Football has something to say about that, too.

Today, not only players will take the field in the electric atmosphere of the Super Bowl.  There will be some guy whose job it is to fill all the water bottles.  There will be some guy who takes care of dirty towels.  There is the guy whose job is to carry around the wires connected to the coach’s headset – where the coach goes, he follows.  He is never consulted.  But he better keep up.  I’ll bet those guys are just as excited to be in the game as the quarterbacks. And their jobs are just as important to the overall effort.

God fills our lives with divine presence even when we are unaware of it.  Getting in the game begins with awareness. Once we open ourselves to God through prayer, meditation, and mindfulness, the Spirit of God moves.  The spirit moves in response to less resistance.  We are asked only this:  to be hospitable to the Spirit of God; to trust that God will never take us to a place where God cannot sustain us.

It doesn’t take much to get drafted into this game.  All we have to do is leave behind our sinful desires to compete and achieve and sincerely say to God, “not my will, not my way, but your will, your way.”  And then be prepared to obey.

The disciplines of this game are not running, kicking, and passing.  The disciplines of this game are submission and obedience.  And it is my experience that you can obey your way into submission or submit your way into obedience. Begin where you can.  Lent is coming, and Lent is the perfect time to trade ambition and achievement for obedience and submission.  I hope you’ll devote increased time to prayer, meditation and mindfulness.

The rewards are not trophies and money and fancy rings.  The rewards are purpose and meaning and a deep satisfaction with one’s life.

Game on.  I’m in.
Are you?