Reaction

Last night was the Super Bowl, though honestly there wasn't much super about it.  The Patriots beat the Rams 13-3 in a game that mostly gave punters their moment in the sun. The one thing most people could find even a little compelling was drinking the hater-ade in honor of Tom Brady, Bill Bellichick and the Patriot dynasty.  Los Angeles doesn't even seem to have noticed much that they actually have two teams now and one of them was contending for a championship.  The halftime show was described as "self-erasing" by one reviewer and indeed Maroon 5 is pretty forgettable.  There was a Sponge Bob Squarepants sighting in the commercials that have become many a non-football fan's survival kit for the big game, but mostly, even the mad men ad men came out pretty flat for this one.
Once again the Patriots won, I think, at least as much as anyone won that lousy excuse for a football game.  And yet, we still watched.  I see all the tweets and facebook posts this morning that narrate a whole bunch of people sitting around feeling collectively disappointed, and I say to them, as much as to myself: "you have a choice, you don't have to watch this."  We don't really, honestly, I feel like most of us watch the Super Bowl because we want to have something to complain about.
Last year I experienced the agony and eventual delight of actually caring about the game.  My long-suffering Philadelphia Iggles finally made it to and won the big game, for the first time.  They beat Tom Terrific and Bill Bellicheat with a back up quarterback who is now known as St. Nick in the Philly area.  It was glorious and reminded me of why sports are great.  This year reminded me of why sports can be such a grand waste of time, money and devotion.
If you're like me you slogged through watching that game out of sheer habit.  Hoping that maybe there would be a play or at least a commercial that was worth talking about. And it felt pretty forgettable in the end, and it was for everyone except Patriots fans, they now have 6 championships and they will remember that, obnoxiously.
As you may have come to expect, I have a slant on this that relates to a rather more vital aspect of our lives.  Sports, for better or worse, have become a sort of de-facto secular religion.  Many of the same dynamics apply, people feel loyal to their particular sport and will despise others, even though there is no really essential conflict. At times people get fed up with the league, the officials, the commissioner and the players, just like they get frustrated with the pastor, the denomination or the idea of organized religion in general.  This Super Bowl was definitely a confluence of many of those frustrations, just as people's malaise with the church  has so many different facets.
It would be easy to say I told you so, to point out that perhaps being so devoted to a game, a form of entertainment was probably going to lead to a predictable emptiness, I'm actually challenged to say something more constructive, because I'm wrestling with how the Church can try to reverse the damage that has been done to our collective body by consistently flopping down clunkers when we have a chance to present the best of who we are.
It occurs to me that while, at our best we could provide people with the kind of connection they need, to provide a source of strength and solidarity and purpose, we so often find ourselves engaged in a defensive struggle, where we mostly end up just punting... a lot.  We have become too busy trying not to lose and we end up looking a lot like the Rams did last night... helpless and hapless.
I'm not suggesting that there isn't a place for solid, even boring, defensive play, if that's the thing that you're really good at (it worked for the Patriots last night and has worked for the Ravens and the Steelers in the not too distant past).  Nor am I suggesting that entertainment is the most important thing, but tentative and timid are not the ingredients of success at anything.  Last night showed me that even a pseudo-religion like sports can suffer the same soul-killing disconnection if it's all about the show.
Have we made it all about the show?  If so why did we do that? Our goal is not to make money, or even to get big ratings, our goal is to make disciples of Jesus Christ, and I am fairly certain that approaching that the way we approach sports is going to be counter-productive, maybe bordering on toxic. Eventually all those fans are going to lose interest and there will be a heck of a let down, like Super Bowl LIII.