No team wants a fan like me.

I’ve never meant much to any team I’ve rooted for.

Once, when LSU was running toward the national championship in college football, someone asked if I had a school t-shirt. I didn’t, but went out and bought one.

That school makes no money from me. They do not know I exist. I’m on no mailing list for alumni or anyone else.  I just watch them on TV. I cheer when they win and hurt when they lose.

One evening this fall, LSU was playing Alabama and it was a huge game.  I cut off the television and went to bed at halftime.  Sunday morning, I got up and left home to travel to the church where I ministered all morning, and did not learn the outcome of the game until the afternoon.  Some fan, right?

Personally, I’m good with that. It does not bother me one iota that I no longer live and die by the fortunes of our New Orleans Saints. (If I did, I’d have died several times this season.)

Sports are not reality . Not football or baseball, not soccer and basketball. Not the NFL, not college playoffs, not MLB or the NCAA, and not the SEC.  Games are just games. (Granted, the fortunes of teams affect the livelihood of a lot of people and the economies of their host cities.  But that would be true of t-shirt factories if the city invested its hopes in them.)

I have a few preacher friends who are delighted no longer to be pastoring churches in the heart of football-land where a large segment of their church members have lost the dividing line between fantasy and reality and bring their school loyalties and animosities into the fellowship.  And frankly, I’ve said to more than a few preachers they need to take down all the fan stuff hanging on the walls of their offices and put up something about Jesus.

There are church members with a deeper loyalty to a college team than to the Lord Jesus Christ.

If that does not frighten you, well…it should.

We were living in New Orleans when the city got the NFL franchise for a football team which became the Saints. We were living in Charlotte when the NBA awarded them a basketball franchise which became the Hornets.  In both cases, and I’ll go so far as to say in every major sports city in America, the fortunes of their professional teams has been a diversion.  And an expensive one at that.

Nearly 40 years ago, Psychology Today magazine ran an article titled “Winning isn’t everything; it’s nothing.”  I was so taken by some of the points the author made that I preached them on Super Bowl Sunday, 1975.  And was lambasted by several die-hard sports fans as unAmerican.

The article pointed out that a football player who is hated by the fans of Atlanta, let’s say, can suddenly be traded to that city and put on the uniform of the Braves or the Hawks or the Falcons and presto, he’s a good guy.  Your star player leaves your team and signs on with your hated rivals and suddenly, you despise him and the fans boo him.

You’re rooting for the uniform, said the article.  And in most cases, the players know this, which is why they don’t take fan loyalty to heart. They know you’re only as good as your last game.

And, according to the article, even if your team wins the Super Bowl, as our Saints did a few years back, almost immediately the question on everyone’s mind is “Can they repeat?”  The coaches and players hardly get a moment to savor the achievement before they have to begin planning the next year.  The primary thing they have achieved by their winning season is to send the expectations of the fans through the roof.  Some coaches with outstanding records have been fired after one or two poor seasons.  Fans have a short memory.

When I die, please do not say in the obituary that I was a devoted fan of this team or that one.  While I love a good ball game–and will sometimes watch one when I have no favorite and could not care less who wins–that in no way defines who I am.

Now, church, that’s another matter.

I grieve when I hear of churches fighting and self-destructing, even though I know no one there. I happen to know the Owner and consider the members my brothers and sisters.

When told of a church running off a good preacher because he refused to play the games of a handful of leaders who consider the church their family property, my pain is genuine.  Likewise, when I hear of a congregation honoring their shepherd in a significant way, I know they are blessing the Lord and I rejoice with them as well as for them.

I wear the uniform of my church team all the time, day and night. I do live and die by the fortunes of my spiritual family .

You could say I buy tickets to all our doings.  A full one-tenth of my income goes for the upkeep and ministries and programs of my church.

The maturity of an individual is revealed by their ability to make a distinction in what is for fun and what is for keeps, what is genuine and what is fantasy.  When your child knows that certain aspects of the Christmas story are pretend but that Joseph and Mary and Jesus, the Magi and the shepherds and the star, are “for real,” you know they’re growing up.

All games of all sports is fantasy football, fantasy baseball, etc.  They are all based on the premise: “Pretend this matters.”

Reality is what happens in life.

Reality is what happens on Sunday morning when you kneel in church to pray and stand to praise.  Reality intervenes when you open the Scriptures and read what a Holy God has said about life and eternity.

God help us to get this straight. And Heaven help us to never leave a confusing record behind as to our loyalties and our priorities.

 

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