And...

The Mueller Report is finally here! Now we find out what has been lurking in the shadows! Now we uncover the truth!
Or...
Maybe we don't.  Maybe we won't even get to see the thing. Maybe all we're going to get is the summary that Attorney General Barr gave us: it doesn't prove anything criminal, but it doesn't exonerate either. So vis-a-vis the whole Russian thing we're still back at ground zero.  They clearly wanted Trump in the White House, but possibly only because they hated Hillary (there were a lot of people in that boat), or maybe they figured he was a useful asset, a demagogue to bring a little Putin panache to the American people, an easily flattered fool that they could play like a harp from hell. Very few of the shenanigans that took place during the election required Trump's active participation or even knowledge, which is pretty much what I expected the Mueller report to say.
Where does Trump's daily rants and gas-lighting cross the line into obstruction of justice?  Mueller, being a serious man and serious about the law, was about as likely to jump into that as he would be to jump into a ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese.  It seems that Trump's ultimate defense against most things is simply that he is Trump and he has always been Trump, and people knew he was Trump when they voted for him.  But being a mendacious braggart and a boor is not illegal in general, and the specifics of when it might become illegal are not simple to prove or even understand, and so it would seem as though we are stuck, at least until January 2021, with a stooge at the helm.
So be it. We need to talk about how we get rid of him. I think what is left of the Republican Party and the genuine conservatives in the country need to primary him.  I know, you probably won't win, but if you want to be considered serious leaders in the wake of the catastrophe, just trying would make moral and practical sense.
Even if Trump didn't break the law, he is a wretched excuse for a leader.  He lacks empathy, he is primarily concerned with self-aggrandizing and self-dealing. It's hard to imagine that he even knows what the word commonwealth actually means. He wants to write TRUMP in big gold letters on everything, the country, your Bible, everything. World leaders have stopped taking him seriously, and many are openly derisive, and honestly he pretty much deserves what he gets. If you stick with him, you're going to end up in the same boat as Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.
But really, the people we need to talk to the most are the Democrats, because bless their hearts, they're the ones that have to stop him.  As much as I wanted Bernie in 2016, I'm not sanguine that he is what the country needs right now. The tag of Socialism still carries too much baggage, and honestly the sorts of big sweeping changes that the most progressive candidates are now proposing are probably a bridge too far.  Yes, Trump did win an electoral victory over a dyed in the wool centrist, but that doesn't mean centrism has failed, it means Hillary Clinton failed.  I just wished she had failed against Mitt Romney or John Kasich.  I think that progressives in this country are in a bad place right now, we're a little too obsessed with call outs and being offended, which is exactly what Trump loves.  He is entirely at home in the Sean Hannity sewer where he gets endless props for "owning the libs." His vulgarity seems like a refreshing bit of honesty to many people.
I would have thought that our collective sense of decency would have kicked in by now, but maybe we have lost more of our manners than I realized. The point is, it does no good lamenting the fact that a stubborn 40 percent of people still think Trump is doing okay.  It doesn't pay to try and launch Alexandria Occasio Cortez and Ilhan Omar against the Cracker Barrel crowd, it will backfire, it is backfiring.
The best thing I have seen candidate-wise from my Democrats thus far is Corey Booker from my one-time home state of New Jersey.  He's actually trying to be positive and talk about the things that hold us together, he's also about fourth or fifth in a crowded field. Republican or Democrat something better needs to come next, one thing I think we should all be pretty clear about, no matter what Mueller says or does not say, is that Trump is not what we actually need, and after over two years, I don't think he ever can be.  If we have a hope as a nation, not just Democrats, it is learning to grab a hold of those uniting factors and hold on for dear life.

Response

When I watch the Lord of the Rings movies I very much want to go to New Zealand to see firsthand those landscapes that Peter Jackson took so much time to show us in the films.  Over the last few days I feel like I want to go to New Zealand just to give the folks there a hug. What they are going through in the wake of the mosque shootings is unfortunately not unique in the world these days.  Too many places have faced similar violence, and I suppose there is nothing particularly new under the sun.  Still, I think it is important for us not to lose our sense of outrage and grief at these eruptions of senseless violence.  It is also crucial for us to express, and to keep expressing our firm conviction that, even if such evil has been with us forever, it is never to be accepted and brushed over.

One of the most important functions of a leader in this world of ours is to be a part of that expression of our collective non-acceptance of the status quo.  For all his many shortcomings as President, I will never forget the image of George W. Bush in his windbreaker walking amid the rubble of the twin towers, talking to survivors and firefighters and hugging people. The pictures of New Zealand's Prime minister (who is not Muslim) donning a hijab and going to be with the families of the slain and the people who were near the shootings show a leader who obviously has a deep sense of empathy for the suffering that has occurred in Christchurch.  Then there is the response of our Tweeter in Chief... sigh, well I mean he did tweet out his condolences, and then proceeded to move right on to bashing John McCain (who BTW is deceased) over something that happened years ago.

Look, I get it, even Trump can do the "I care about you" routine for a minute, he was in Alabama last week hugging up on some people who lost their homes to a tornado.  He just doesn't seem to have any ability or inclination to stick to it.  There may be moments where he displays empathy, but they flash by so quickly, and he returns to his petulant bullying of his perceived enemies that it's hard for us to register that care has been expressed.  It's like if I were to conduct a funeral with all the appropriate emotional mien, but as I'm leaving the sanctuary I break into some sort of celebratory touchdown dance, and immediately begin laughing it up as the funeral director and I head out to a bar for a beer.  I doubt that the grieving family would take my prior performance seriously.

What I expect a good leader to do would be to spend at least some time contemplating the nature of a tragedy like the one in New Zealand or Pittsburgh, and perhaps even reflecting on the ways that he or she might exercise the power of their position to heal and perhaps even prevent future eruptions like this. I'm not saying that Trump, or any other leader, has the ability to prevent the explosion of a deranged person into violence, but it seems incumbent upon them to help us try to wrestle with such events with more than just a "thoughts and prayers" tweet.

I suppose this is just another data point in an already extensive collection of things that tell us that Trump is a horrible President on the one hand and pretty shabby human being on the other, but there is something about his dodging of any accountability in situations like this that seem like failures that amount to more than just disagreeable policy decisions.  His insistence, for instance, on downplaying the threat of white supremacy, nationalism and various right wing movements that have erupted in violence a bit too frequently of late, does not make me think he has our best interest at heart.  With a few exceptions (the guy who shot the Republicans playing softball), too many of the recent eruptions of mass violence have been perpetrated by folks who have stewed a bit too much in the racism and xenophobia that Trump gleefully stokes. This time it was against Muslims, in Pittsburgh it was Jews, in Charlotte it was (black) Christians, in Orlando it was gays, the exact pathology of the shooters was different, but it boils down to hatred of those who are different, which ultimately goes back to fear.

So much of what Trump says and does circles around telling his base what to be afraid of; outsiders and enemies are always seeking to do him/America harm.  The toxicity of that message effects all of us, because, like it or not, he is our leader for the time being. The character of a leader does matter, it was true when Bill Clinton was abusing women, and it is true now. It is an indictment of our national integrity that we often accept such malodorous character in the name of economic success.

I'm not blaming Trump for this, but I am suggesting his actively divisive rhetoric is a contributing factor in many of the recent "tribal" identity-based violent incidents. Even in the wake of something like what happened last week, he doesn't acknowledge that or repent of his complicity in the atmosphere of hatred.  He cannot help us mourn or heal, maybe it's just not in his character. We need to learn this lesson as a nation, it's not just policy, and it's not just legislation and judicial appointments that we need from our elected officials, we need them to actually be decent human beings too.  I know, it's a big ask, but people are dying, and we need some better ideas.

Who Can We Trust?

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

-Luke 12: 34

I've been reading all about this college admissions scandal involving celebrities and rich people buying their kids way into Yale and other prestigious schools, and I have to say, I'm not really shocked.  Actually I'm not even mildly surprised.  The only surprise in the whole thing is that our legal system is actually doing something about it.  I have known for a long time that you can't trust rich people, because "love of money is the root of all kinds of evil," (1 Timothy 6:10).  For the same reasons, unfettered corporations, also pretty dangerous.  If you scan through the Acts of the Apostles and pastoral letters of the New Testament, you will get the distinct impression that money caused even those blessed early believers no end of trouble.

I have been feeling a bit like a man without a country lately, because as much as I detest the Trump phenomenon, which I believe to be cynical greed masked with a reactionary form of populism, I am also rather unimpressed with the left handed counter-punch.  My firm belief is that for a society to flourish the center must hold.  This is true of empires and democracies alike, but it is especially true of this American experiment of ours. I have come to something of a realization that our government is now functioning entirely too much like a business to be trusted (see above money, root of evil).  Thus the hybrid socialist-capitalism that Bernie Sanders and the left wing of the Democratic party envision is a disaster waiting to happen, because it doesn't actually solve the problem that pure socialism (in theory, it never actually worked in practice) was meant to solve: the unequal and/or inefficient distribution of resources.  Income inequality is the reason why some people can pay $40K for a "college consultant" for their teenagers and other people send their kids to schools with metal detectors and armed guards.  That's not a problem that can be fixed via the tax code, it would take basically the installation of an authoritarian state, and I don't think any of the Bernie Bros really want to go there.  That's kind of why I'm not at all as tuned up about Sanders 2020 as I was about 2016.  We need the center to hold and start to function again.

I had a conversation with my Doctor yesterday, in which we discussed that pretty much all the solutions to the rather broken state of healthcare in our country rest upon a rather flawed assumption: that healthcare should be a business, whether it is run by the state or by insurance companies (because let's face it, they're the ones in charge right now).  Either way the near fatal flaw is that health should be governed by the economic assumption of scarcity, which means, in short, there is not enough of it to go around, just like there are not enough enrollments at Yale.  Even in countries with socialized medicine, it is still rather common for people with the cash to be able to purchase better, faster, more advanced care, and from a certain perspective people, most people, figure that this is just the way it should be.

The college admission thing has actually helped me clarify some of my emotions about this.  Ink has been spilled in outrage, and ink has been spilled in the direction of "duh, of course it's not fair, open your eyes you stooge."  Indeed, education in another one of those things that sits on the line between a good that should be available for purchase and a right that should be available to all.  In an ideal world (even according to ancient Greeks) education would be available to all as they have need and aptitude.  Our public school system (Socialism!) uses our taxes to fund the education of children, but even something with very egalitarian roots still favors wealthy neighborhoods with better resources than poorer ones.  So obviously even a highly socialist premise doesn't exactly condemn the well off to Stalin's Gulags. Let's face it Lori Laughlin's daughter always stood a better chance of getting into USC than the average kid from Watts, even if she scored poorly on the SATs. She had a better (probably private school) primary and secondary education, she has money to pay tuition regardless of scholarship offers, and she has the resources and connections of Aunt Becky from Full House.  The fact that these folks still had to resort to extra-legal activity to earn admission just seems strange, how dumb are these kids?

Now take out the idea that you should have to earn healthcare, because you shouldn't.  If you're sick, you should be able to get better.  For all of our sake, everyone should have access to decent preventive care like I had with my Doctor (along with a philosophical discussion) yesterday.  Does making education available to all mean everyone gets to go to Yale? No.  Does making healthcare a right mean everyone get's to see Dr. James Andrews (NFL knee guy) for their arthritis? No. That's a stupid straw man argument, in other words a thing that is not ever going to happen in the real world.

If the center is going to hold, we're going to have to start dealing with reality.  The Green New Deal is a ridiculous thing, but it doesn't mean that we don't need to take drastic measures to reduce climate change.  The Wall is an abomination to everything America stands for, but that does not magically fix our very broken immigration system.  I would maintain that the extremists have nothing to offer us but stupid ideas that are only going to allow more crooked folks to get rich enough to buy their kids a spot at Yale.

They say money cannot buy love or happiness, but right now it can buy healthcare, education and political influence, all three of which are things that we need to struggle against as we seek to become a more perfect union. The increasing polarization and the formation of informational ghettos is not helpful in this difficult evolution.  We need to be more skeptical of money, rich people, corporations and the place it occupies in politics.  We also need to remember that we cannot serve two masters and that... nevermind just go read the New Testament, you'll get the idea.

Enemy

Two weeks ago I preached about Jesus saying, "But I say to you that listen, 'love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.'" Usually I manage to get things out of my system when I preach a sermon on them, but this one is really bugging me.  The gist of my sermon was that we don't take Jesus seriously on this point, and I was challenging the congregation to do just that.  In the name of not being a hypocrite, I have been noticing all the people I hold in those categories.
Honestly, very few of them are people I actually know.  I guess it's a good thing that I just don't have many people in my life that I consider enemies.  I can not think of too many people I actually know hate me or curse me or abuse me.  I found myself having to stretch a bit, to people I disagree with, or people I think are generally bad folks, but who haven't really hurt me personally. I mean, I can imagine all sorts of enemies and I can create them around every corner if I want, but I have a very real chance that on most days I will not encounter anyone who is seriously my enemy.
I think also, that some people may hate me, or at least the idea of me.  They may hate me because I'm American (sometimes I figure we deserve it), they may hate me because I'm a white male, because I'm educated, because I'm Christian (meaning that I bear that religious label not because of my mystical identity as one who is "in Christ," but I will get to that), because I'm a pastor, because I'm liberal, because... well you get the idea, but none of those things is really me.  I hope the number of people that I have actually hurt or offended, at least since I left my adolescence, is rather small, and so I don't think I have many enemies in any real sense.
That's a luxury that very few in the history of the world could really claim.  Which is why I think we are getting so carried away with trying to make or just imagine enemies.  Because I think we don't really understand what it's like to live in peril.  The closest we come is when some lunatic decides to commit a so called "random" act of violence, or we become the victim of a crime of some sort, then maybe we have a chance to see our enemy clearly.  Jesus had serious enemies all around him.  He had the religious authorities who really didn't smell what he was cooking, he had the Romans who would just as soon put him to a brutal death as look at him, he even had a friend who was ready to betray him.
Am I living too safe? Should I be making more people angry at me? I mean so that I can love them?
Look, we've all had people hurt us, and forgiving is hard to say the least, but what I've been thinking about for the past two weeks is why I seem to want enemies in the first place.  Yes, people irritate me, sometimes very prominent people.  I really dislike Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, I can't help it, the sight of them makes me irritated, but I don't hate them.  If they were in a ditch bleeding I would help them.  I disagree profoundly with most of the things that come out of their mouths, but I don't want to see them come to harm, I just want them to lose their jobs (I don't think Trump even wants his job anyway).
Maybe if I believed that there really was a border crisis and our actual enemies were at this moment streaming across the border to come rape and pillage our world, I would feel differently about the hawks and white nationalists (I hope not, but maybe I would) who are vainly offering to keep us safe.
But the thing is that I am growing in this awareness that I am "In Christ," not just a Christian in the sense that I go to church (that I preach in a church), but that I am a part of this creation which is made according to the pattern of Christ, the Word, who was in the beginning.  As I get more and more towards that understanding (and it's not always a slam dunk) I am becoming aware that not only must I love my enemies, I really just need to stop inventing them in the first place.  I am so very fortunate that I live in a time and a place where the Vikings, the Huns or the Visigoths are not about to appear on the horizon and kill me and enslave my children.  That lowers the stakes on loving my enemy, makes it rather easy comparably speaking.
It may seem less dramatic to say, "love people who disagree with you," or "pray for those who make you cringe," but the challenge is the same,

All Her Children

Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.

-Jesus of Nazareth, Luke 7:35

This is, I guess, for my United Methodist colleagues and friends, who may not be so united for very much longer.  I have watched what you folks have been going through over the past few days and I have great sympathy for what it feels like, because Presbyterians have been there fairly recently.  In fact, most of the duration of my 18 years of training and ordained ministry have had some sort of decision about our denominational stance regarding LGBTQI+ folk on the horizon or in the background.  That our denominations came to different conclusions is not surprising.  After all Arminians and Calvinists have a long history of unresolved differences.  Theologically speaking we have always been frenemies, because we're both reformed, but from different branches of the tree.  I will always enjoy referring to you as the "Baptists who could read," and you will always get a little glint in your eye whenever you ask me, "So what is the deal with predestination anyway?" I actually don't mind arguing about that, because I've got a secret: it's called universal salvation through Christ, and I stole it from Karl Barth, C.S. Lewis and George McDonald. I have also become much more comfortable with being labeled a heretic or an apostate than I was 15 years ago.

Once upon a time, I read Chesterton's Orthodoxy, as a sort of creed for conservative types, I liked his self-assured logic and witty slams on relativism and lazy liberalism.  I hearkened to highly rationalist forms of exegesis that tried to explain how the "clear moral instructions" contained in Scripture were supposed to push back our ability to love and accept folks who were different from us.  Then I started doing this thing called pastoral work, which involves actual people and their actual problems, but more importantly puts me in constant contact with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and trying to figure out how to present that "Good News," to hurting people around 50 different ways a year.  In the beginning I was always trying to pass a test, to be orthodox, to be intellectually sound, to be convincing and winsome; sometimes I was, sometimes I wasn't.

Then another thing happened, I started to encounter real suffering and evil.  I watched a drug addiction rip my brother out of our family and eventually off of this mortal coil.  I counseled a couple in an abusive relationship that ended in a triple homicide.  I served churches full of people who have all kinds of flaws.  I have been personally wounded by people who questioned my integrity because they disagree with me on various issues.  I have lost people that I dearly loved. I have been welcomed into sacred places and I have walked a very long way (not just on the Camino).

After only 15 years, I can no longer recognize that young man who wanted to be Chesterton sure of himself. I'm not that sure of much anymore, but I have come to some peace with the notion that homosexuality is not evil. Promiscuity and infidelity are; sexuality that defies the sacred bond of love between two people is, but given what I know about the actual face of evil, two women who have been together for thirty years finally getting married is not evil.  A gay man wearing a rainbow stole and being ordained to this vocation of ministry is not evil. 

Do we need to recognize our sin and repent? Absolutely, and it's important that we all learn to recognize those places where we sin.  But there isn't a whole lot of Jesus talking about how we need to judge others in the Bible, in fact, it's rather the opposite. I have come to believe that we sin more by condemning others instead of loving them.  That the crowd with the stones were the real sinners. I have come to see, in Jesus of Nazareth, a man who consistently took his place with the broken and hurting people of the world rather than with the "authorities," and the arbiters of right and wrong.

That said, I understand why the folks in the Methodist church did what they did recently.  They are a global church and thus were put in a place where they were either going to offend the LGBTQI+ community and those who affirm them, or they were going to offend the millions of folks from the parts of the world where an older and more conservative morality still carries a lot of weight. Honestly, I would not wish such a global communion to impose western standards on so many parts of the world that have already suffered much from our colonial impulses.

I see the pain and the frustration all around on my social media.  To those on the losing side, take heart, love will win this thing eventually, God is patient, even when we aren't.  To those on the "winning" side try not to be smarmy jerks, you're not as right as you think you are. Remember that God often, if not always, sides with the losers, the last and the least, be humble.

I know you didn't ask for this advice, and depending on where you are now, you may not be able to hear it very well.  I'm offering this up because I know how hurtful this particular moment feels, and how traumatic the aftermath of it is likely to be.  You are a part of this Body of Christ, just as I am, and as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12: "For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body..."  Whatever part of the body you happen to be, and whatever part I happen to be, I feel your pain.

Walls

All around your island,

There's a barricade,

It keeps out the danger,

It holds in the pain.

-Tom Petty, Walls

The Lumineers recently did a cover of Tom Petty's song Walls, and it's one of those instances where I think the cover version actually resonated with me even more than the original.  It might be because I think I heard the lyrics a little more clearly, maybe it's because walls are just sort of on everyone's mind for some reason.  To be clear, the song is not about actual walls, border or otherwise, it's about emotional walls and defense mechanisms, but I have been thinking lately that maybe this border wall fiasco is actually an emotional issue rather than a geopolitical one.

It seems to me that support for this wall largely hinges on the perception of an honest emergency: dangerous people flooding across the southern border.  Some people are predisposed to believe that is the situation, facts are not actually welcome.  The facts are that most of the undocumented people in this country arrived here legally and overstayed their visas, another fact is that illegal immigration is down drastically from where it was 15 years ago, another fact is that the border patrol and people who live and represent the actual geographical area of the southern border do not want the wall, nor do landowners in the area.  On the other side the only real fact is that Trump made a promise, and he has perceived in his charlatan's heart that this is one he cannot dance away from or dodge. There is a wise adage that says you should not persist in a bad decision simply because you put a lot of effort into making it, however, wisdom seems to have gone begging recently.

The bigger question, the spiritual question for us as humans is whether or not we are going to ever be able to tear down the walls for good.  I remember Ronald Reagan's famous "tear down that wall Mr. Gorbachev!" as a pivotal moment in history.  It seems to me that breaking down walls always does more for our collective commonweal than building them.  Walls do protect things, but on some level they also destroy something.  I have seen walls that are objectively useful and beautiful things, and I have seen some that are down right ugly.  Some boundaries are good and necessary, others are just a way to try and soothe uncalled for fear.

In my mind there is not much doubt which sort of wall the Orange Ayatollah wants to build, he wants to build a symbol not a boundary, he wants to keep out all others not just our enemies.  If we, a nation of immigrants, have any inkling of the vision upon which our nation was founded, we would not want this wall, and we would not allow it to be built.  Right now, the wall is still a maybe, right now the "emergency" is being challenged.  Right now, I'm hoping it ends up being another broken campaign promise rather than yet another gut punch to our moral character.

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.

The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you;

you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

I am the Lord your God.

-Leviticus 19: 33-34

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.