When I was a kid, I heard a lot of sermons that tried to guilt me for being a sports fan. The basic idea was that if people will pack stadiums and scream and yell and cheer for (name your team), then how much more should we be excited about church. No kidding - this was a frequently spoken sermon in the small church I was in for the majority of my childhood. Even then, I was thinking, "this is just stupid".
When the Hawks went down in shockingly quick flames yesterday, I thought about the pursuit of the idol. I've been reading Peter Rollins' new book, "The Idolatry of God - Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction" (actually on my second run through in two weeks - it's that good) and the endless pursuit of a championship winning team in Seattle (in any sport) fit nicely into my thought processes. I asked some friends, "What if we won the Superbowl? What we do then?" I asked them, and later posted a video I found on Youtube about this, "What if the Coyote caught the Roadrunner? The illusion that it ever had any meaning at all would be gone. And so it would be with the Hawks. The movie would end, the credits would roll with Seattle in a dizzy blur of ecstacy, and then two days later, we would be left with the immediate need for next season to start - please, oh please let the illusion of meaning ensue again.
I say this as a sports fan - meaningless, meaningless.....it's all so friggin meaningless. Is it any wonder that Football and Church compete for the same time slot? Are they not addressing the same thing? And are we not seeking to fulfill the exact same desire in the pursuit of them both? This is why most of us, if we're honest, can identify with Homer Simpson's never-ending struggle to not have that radio headphone in his ear while sitting in the pews. It feels so dang similar. Just my two cents....
Seth
The thing that football offers is a sense of movement, of momentum that carries you along with it. Where is that in our churches?
ReplyDeleteFootball offers a level of suspense - will (name your team) play their best? Will they win? Which team really is the best? There is not a direct comparison available in faith, but where is that sense of anticipation in our churches? When was the last time you walked into a church with a sense of excitement to see what God would do next?
When was the last time you walked into a worship service with the expectation that you would meet God?
If our churches were really about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and if we walked in with anticipation that we would meet GOD... imagine how beautiful and exciting worship would be then.
I agree Mona - except that I think there is a direct comparison to faith. The pursuit of that which we think will fulfill us - we have come to believe that the pursuit is the "faith". The pursuit of the championship, in other words. It would actually take real faith to stop the pursuit. Let it all go in an understanding that it is all meaningless. And then to be still and wait for God, or in other words - wait for the emptiness to be illuminated by the God that renders all things meaningful. It would be an act of faith to cease going to church in search of meaning. Then we could be still with all things, and know that it is ALL meaningful. (-:
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