The Church vs. The Super Bowl

February 5, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, here we are again sitting in the house that speaks of mystery, but does not define it. May we be glad to be a part of a tradition that allows us to think for ourselves, may we remember that it is the rich tradition of these churches, both Unitarian and Universalist, that came together that each would be stronger and each would survive.

And when we remember let us remember that Christianity was a big part of the Universalist movement. That the universalism spoken about in its name was a universalism of grace – a rebellion against the Calvinistic notion that there were only a select few who would be saved and a statement that grace was for everyone in all places, in all times. And these precursors of our tradition go all the way back to the middle ages when there was a hue and cry for the Holy scriptures to be translated into the vernacular. Yet, those who so protested and changed things did not do so to dissipate faith, but rather to deepen it.

Now we would remember all those who have come here today in search of answers, in search of questions, in search of comfort. Let their very presence in this assembly be the balm they need, let the communal energy of this sanctuary bask them in love, understanding and companionship.

Let us now remember that there is a world much larger than this community. A world so torn by strife, war, famine and disease that it hardly seems fair for us to be in despair over anything.

Yet the human spirit is one that continually strives for better and more. May we, this morning, consider our blessings, consider our wealth – monetary, spiritual and emotional – and let us find the space to rejoice.

Rejoice that we have enough, rejoice that enough is enough and finally rejoice for the sheer sake of rejoicing. We pray all this in the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

The Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, David Mamet, says, (quote) “Only two legitimate national holidays remain. By “legitimate” holidays, I mean this: holidays with a specific, naturally evolved meaning, the celebration of which we find refreshing and correct, and in the celebration of which we, as a people, are united. Those holidays are the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl.”

Our Middle English word, sacred, comes from the Old French, sacer, which means; dedicated, holy, sacred – set apart – pertaining to religious rites or practices – devoted to a single use.”

Dr. Loehr got an email from a colleague shortly before the Rose Bowl. The colleague wrote, “Now let me get this straight, you’re going to show a football game on the large screen at your church?” Dr. Loehr wrote back, “What is it about the sacred that you don’t understand?

I’m seeing similarities between church and football. The mega churches have noticed this already – why do you think that Fellowhip.com in Dallas is built like a stadium and has a large screen that projects the pastor’s face in 30 foot close-ups? What church will never duplicate is the originality and complexity of how football passes the plate. Heck, I’ve watched Super Bowls just to see the commercials. And halfway through the service we have our centering ceremony, but at a Super Bowl game we are likely to see a portion of the anatomy of a vestal virgin, or what passes as one. Perhaps if the stadium churches get big enough they’ll bring back the lions. That was a big hit at the Roman Coliseum.

But I’ll give the evangelicals their due they do play by the rulebook, that is, the game of religion, the game of church that they are playing has rules. If you’re saved, you win. If you’re not saved – you lose. And it’s not just any old game. Here is probably the only place the evangelicals outdo the NFL. The evangelicals are playing the game of eternity. The saying, “It’s only a game!” hardly applies here. You lose this game, – the game of salvation – you lose forever. The logic of the eternity game turns ordinary folks into people who want to save your soul now that they found peace with Jesus. They become bean counters for Christ. When you say you’re saved, when you say you’ve found Jesus, their score increases. And the rules of the game have been written down in a book, the author of whom just happens to be The Lord God Almighty!

Believe me, they know how the game is played and they know who wins and who loses.

But today we, all of us the evangelicals and liberal religious folks alike, get to practice our religious freedom in this country when we gather around our television sets, put out the sacramental chips and salsa, pop open that beer, near-beer, soda or pop the cork on that fine wine. Yes, we celebrate this naturally evolved meaningful game with bread and wine.

And the church – what does the church have to offer? I am cognizant of the fact that number one: you know what cognizant means and number two: I know that I am addressing the refugees of all the world’s great religions, refugees from all of what the great religious traditions have had to offer are gathered right here in this sanctuary.

So – let’s not kid ourselves – I hate to mix my football and baseball analogies, but hey – the churches struck out hundreds of years ago, but they refuse to leave the plate. Bat in hand the church waits for someone – anyone to play her churchy games.

Football is American. I mean by that, that we in the USA know exactly what we mean when we say American. Americans made this sport. From the Knute to the Gipper to the Super athletes of today, we have molded this sport, we have injected this sport to make it bigger, we have dreamed this sport into being. In a world that seems to fight us at every play we needed a concrete model – a game – in which we could choose clearly delineated sides, and then participate either directly, or by watching the two clearly delineated sides fight for the control over and general misuse of a strangely shaped cylindrical ball filled with air and covered originally by the skin of a pig. This sport was definitely not designed by Jews.

And by picking sides, dressing up and showing up we participate in an all out hour battle for control of this pig’s skin!

If your team brings home the bacon more times than theirs – yours wins. Life is good. But if your team loses – it’s the end of the world, as you know it.

David Mamet again, “The Super Bowl, it seems to me, is a celebration of our national love of invidious comparison.” “Invidious comparison? Are you still with me, Unitarian Universalists?

Invidious – tending to cause ill will or animosity; offensive, yes, yes, the Super Bowl is doubly invidious – it is offensive as well as defensive.

When and if you watch the game this evening you will be participating in a celebration of union – yes, union over diversity, but still union – you will be setting aside, making sacred – you will be practicing religion because you will be answering, or trying to answer the two big religious questions; Who am I? And what am I doing here?

I am a Dallas Cowboy’s fan and what I’m doing here is celebrating the quite human and obvious world-weary fact that the more powerful dominate and that sometimes, but only sometimes, wily, sly and creative can substitute for strength – I will celebrate the clear cut delineations of a game and I will see life, mine and yours, reflected there.

And as I look into the game and see our lives mirrored there what do I see? I see conflict, fear, rage, tumult, but also I see strength, fearlessness, hope, camaraderie, the end of fighting, peace, stillness, brother and sisterhood and finally the exaltation of the most high.

Yet – there is more to this game than meets the eye. This game is classic in a purer sense.

Aristotle supposedly wrote two books on drama. The first is the book of Poetics. It is a study of tragedy. The second book dealt with comedy, and it has been subsequently lost.

No wonder it was lost Aristotle himself says of comedy – and I quote – “Its early stages passed unnoticed, because it was not as yet taken up in a serious manner.” Comedy wasn’t taken seriously; I hate that when that happens.

Aristotle turns around and says this about tragedy and he might as well have been talking about football.

“Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear.” Listen the next time a good hit is laid upon a player – the crowd expels air involuntarily (make the sound). It isn’t something they rehearse like a cheer, its visceral – it’s a gut reaction (make the sound again). Aristotle continues, “Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly.” A punt returned 80 yards for a touchdown – a tipped pass bobbled and then pull in by our side – Vince Young glibly side stepping his way into the end zone winning the Rose Bowl with 18 seconds left – hook “em horns! Again, Aristotle, “Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another.” First down followed by second down followed by third down followed by touchdown.

The Super Bowl is not only theatrically tragic – it is great theatrical tragedy. Some would like to say that football is comedic since it is, in fact, a celebration of the winners. But this is not the Greek definition of tragedy and certainly not Aristotle’s. In the Poetics Aristotle says “comedy aims at representing men as worse than in real life, and tragedy better than in actual life.” It doesn’t matter that we celebrate the winner, what matters is that these men are bigger, faster, stronger, meaner and more talented than men in actual life. Do yourself a favor the next time you see a football player in person – collegiate or professional – go and stand beside them. Your spouse, those standing around and yourself will automatically make the necessary invidious comparisons.

In some ways it can be said that football surpasses the actual theatre. In a play there is usually only one protagonist.

In a football game we have each team playing the protagonist and the antagonist simultaneously. In a play such as King Lear who ever roots for Goneril or Regan, the gold digging daughters of King Lear? Compared to football the theatre is two-dimensional.

Aristotle again; “the story – must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole.”

In football each action has a direct and irrevocable reaction. Cause is followed neatly by effect and each effect engenders a new cause and subsequent effect – provided there is no indisputable video evidence. Each game is perfect unto itself and taking any play from the game would be tantamount to Emperor Franz Joseph’s suggestion to Mozart that the opera was fine, but there were simply too many notes.

No part of the game is irrelevant which is a perfect segue to the church.

The evangelicals – even with their “game of eternity? cannot out spectacle the tragic theatre of the NFL. But where do we stand in all this invidious comparison? Where are we UU’s?

The evangelicals have a saying, “I need a witness!” Are we their witnesses? Is our part of the religious game nothing more than skeptical, talking mirrors? Are all our put downs both explicit and implicit, all our education and degrees but spiteful pedigrees for the judgment game at hand? Is our game of religion just a game of the superiority of intellect? Are we doing something besides looking at the world of evangelical religion and finding it wanting, not satisfactory for our high intellectual, sarcastic and totally invidious tastes? And I realize all my earlier quips concerning the evangelicals fit into this category.

So – the question boils down to this: Does the Unitarian Universalist Association have a game plan? Does the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin do we have game plan? And if we do have game – what are the rules? How do we win? What would constitute losing this game?

In the Wizard of Oz we were warned, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

As Unitarian Universalists we have paid a great deal of attention to the man behind the screen and some of us have gone behind the curtain into the holy of holies. And what have we found besides our insatiable desire to know?

Dr. Loehr this past Senior Luncheon decried the UUA’s lack of center, their lack of anything that smacks of a truly religious center. As Dr. Loehr is fond of saying, “There is no there, there.” In other words the UUA has no game.

Paradoxically, in the UUA’s efforts to be hip, left of center and politically correct, paradoxically and ironically those who wished to save us by introducing us to ourselves, via the seven principles and a leftist political agenda, ironically and ultimately we have been left in the position of having to define ourselves – who are we? What are we doing here? These are the two great religious questions.

What is holy is the process of life itself. And the process cannot be made into a game because it has no beginning and no perceptible end. Any interruption in the process – any freezing of a stage of the process – any product from the process is itself not holy. One cannot be said to win a process – one can only be two things to the process. We can resist and suffer or we can accept and suffer. Suffering is our lot, but acceptance is like manna from heaven. Acceptance of the ontological process exudes a sacramental value often described as grace. But the question remains how would one, could one, pay homage to a process, celebrate a mystery, participate in the ultimate?

The cathedral is gone and ex cathedra we are free to see all of life as sacred. The task before us is impossible – the tools we have are at best primitive, our swords keep outnumbering our pruning hooks, yet it is we, us – all of us – who are called upon to play the game, to expect grace/manna, to expect nothing else and that gladly, remembering, as Aristotle states in t he Poetics, character may determine the quality of our life but only our actions can prove whether that life is finally happy or wretched.

On my walks with my dogs I often find beautiful shells of varied colors and some with stripes. They were the home of something once – a snail – a slug – life – but that life is no longer occupying that edifice and I can’t help but think of the great cathedrals, temples, synagogues and mosques of the world. The Spirit, the one called Holy, lived there once, or perhaps it was only a magnificent home built to entice the god’s inside?

My father, Jack Sr., felt uncomfortable with the idea of God inside a building – any building.

My father found God in a stubbled field on a crisp November morning with a Browning Over and Under resting easily on his shoulder. No, God didn’t have the Browning that was my dad. There was more grace in Dad’s easy swing to aim and shoot than I’ve ever seen in any preacher. My dad would have liked the cowboy’s prayer.

Lord, I’ve never lived where churches grow,

I love Creation better as it stood

That day You finished it so long ago

And looked upon Your work, and called it good.

I know that others find You in the light

That’s sifted down through tinted window panes,

And yet I seem to feel You near tonight

In this dim, quiet starlight on the plains.

In the dim, quiet starlight of the hill country we at FUUCA, we refugees from the world’s major religions, are asked to celebrate something that has no perceptible beginning and no perceptible end – we are asked to celebrate the process of life itself – life as something sacred, holy and most high.

We love games, the theatre, movies and novels because limits are set, structure us present and we can hold the magnitude of life in our hand, our head and our hearts.

And yet even refugees must make a camp at the border. And this camp we have chosen to call camp UUA. In order not to be lost in the magnitude we have carved out our corner and declared it a safe zone.

Within this safe zone we are free to believe or not to believe, free to suspend judgment, free to honor life, free to care for those on the margins of society, free to agree to disagree.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Harvard Divinity School Address of 1838 said, “Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give bread of life.”

So – if you’ve been wondering amidst the football analogies and the laying of Aristotle over the game where the bread of life comes in, or what the good news is, then I will go beyond inductive reasoning, beyond inference and simply tell you.

The game played well within UU campuses like this one is a game of teamwork. The first definition of team is still the harnessing of draft animals to do work. Yes, we can agree to disagree and laugh about it, but at the same time as teammates we must agree to be harnessed to what we see to be the truth. And this truth is not heaven sent. It is rather a truth wrought from life. And this truth that we together as team members, harnessed to one another in a common effort, this truth is nothing more or less than our lives passed through the fires of thought.

We live this game of UUism by never forgetting that what is best gives us to ourselves. The sublime is excited by the great stoical doctrine, know thyself and obey thyself. That, which shows God in us, fortifies us. That, which shows God out of us, makes of us merely receivers of the divine instead of its very source.

Yes, we have game – we are the gamest – we are ready and willing – resolute and brave. We are all children of chance. What we believe may be unexpected, random and unpredictable, but we must never forget that our hearts and minds are open, open to the revelations of life, open to opportunity, open to change, open to life, itself.

There’s only one-way to know process – realize your part in it – that’s what covenant is about – that’s what union is about – that’s what love is about and hopefully, that’s what we at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin are all about.