I'm searching for God's perfection....

seen it?

It's Sunday.

The Sabbath.

Day of rest.

The Lord's Day.

Time for war!

You know the drill.

This is Super Bowl Sunday,

the high holy day for whole legions of armchair athletes,

the most sacred sporting event of a nationwide army of faithful NFL fans.

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?!

Tonight is the battle of the titans,

the bone-crushing championship conflict between our country's greatest gridiron gods.

the Tennessee Titans and

the St. Louis Cardinals....

wait...Rams

will come together in a testosterone bathed orgy of

hitting, kicking, running, tackling,

passing, catching, punting and praising God...

Wait a minute ...

"Praising God"?

Yes, WAY.

It's getting to the point where

the NFL is starting to sound like a wholly owned subsidiary of a

Christian television station.

Consider this instant replay from a recent playoff game:

First, a Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback informs a sideline reporter

that God is responsible for the Jags' victory.

Not coaches, players, recruiters, trainers or owners ...

no, GOD is responsible.

And how does this QB account for his team's success?

"Thanks be to God," he says.

"There's a bunch of guys on this team who really love the Lord."

Then the New England Patriots' Keith Byars begins his post-game recap with

"Thanks be to God from whom all blessings flow."

From this doxology he drifts seamlessly,

as if it were a standard feature of the football format,

into a detailed analysis of passes, tackles and punts.

At the same time, Patriots' owner Bob Kraft reveals that

his coach has given him a chai pendant,

containing the Hebrew word for "life" --

a pendant the coach kept pocketed

during the Patriots' lopsided 28 to 3 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers.

When asked whether God would favor one side or the other

in a matchup of passionately religious players,

Coach Bill Parcells (then with the Patriots) replies judiciously:

"No disrespect to anyone,

but it usually works better when the players

are good and fast."

(Marge Garber, "Two-Point Conversion," Symptoms of Culture [New York: Routledge, 1998], 45-46).

Teammates, you know the score:

There's a lot of holiness in the huddle these days,

and some of the players on the winning team in today's Super Bowl

will no doubt give God the glory.

And I gotta tell you...

this is nothing new,

and not unique to the NFL.

In today's lesson from Mark, there is another huddle,

and it takes place in the synagogue in Capernaum,

where Jesus is providing the Game Plan for his players.

Suddenly, a psychotic stranger jumps on the playing field ...

a possessed, raving fan ...

a fan-a-tic frothing like a Cleveland Browns dawg.

Getting right in Jesus' face, he screeches,

"What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?"

Hey buddy, it's the Sabbath.

"Have you come to destroy us?"

Chill out, friend.

This is our day of rest.

"I know who you are," he thunders,

"the Holy One of God."

Okay. Time for war.

Jesus reprimands and rebukes the demon, saying,

"Be silent, and come out of him!"

And the unclean spirit,

convulsing the man and crying with a loud voice,

comes popping out like a fumbled football.

Jesus exudes such authority

that even demons obey instantly.

that even evil forces know that

he is the Holy One of God.

that even unclean spirits know

that his arrival on the field marks the end of the Super Bowl for them,

the end of their season of domination over men and women.

Jesus, in another words,

takes control of the chaos.

Commercials are costing a million a pop.

The Super Bowl hype has been on for weeks.

trying to get into their heads,

if not their hearts.

There's chaos in the synagogue, too.
A man of uncertain comportment staggers into the synagogue

like a streaker running across midfield.

In the center of the huddle, Jesus calls the play:

a two-point conversion designed to give victory to this demented fan.

Point one:

Be silent.

Come out of him.

This is a solid strategy for any player in any huddle,

on or off the field.

A conversion is a life-changing and game-winning event,

and whether you are talking

about that conversion which first crafts you into a follower of Jesus Christ,

or the conversion which later calls you to reorder your priorities,

you probably need to do two things.

First, be quiet --

and listen to the authoritative voice of God.

Second, "Come out of him" --

that is, break free, let go, get rid of something.

Be silent, and come out of him.

Two-point conversion.

So how do we execute what the playbook lays out for us?

The command to be silent and listen

is no bush-league challenge.

So often in prayer we ask for what we want --

whether it's victory on the gridiron or vision for a business plan.

The New York Giants used to kneel and pray

as an opposing kicker tried for a last-second field goal,

raising the question of whether it's really very Christian

to pray for somebody to blow a kick.

When the University of Oklahoma football team

beat arch-rival Texas in overtime,

the Oklahoma coach declared on ABC-TV

"This was Jesus Christ working through my players" (Garber, 52-53) .

Say, what?

You mean the Lord Jesus turned his back on Texas?
That God's ears were tuned only

to the pious petitions of the people of Oklahoma?

That's whack.

Better to shut our mouths

and listen to the authoritative voice of God.

Author Kathleen Norris used to play a game with elementary-school children

in which she would make a deal with them.

"First you get to make noise," she would bargain,

"and then you'll make silence."

The time of noise was always predictably chaotic --

shouting, pounding and stomping,

like a football team exploding out of a locker room.

But the period of silence that followed

was unexpectedly passionate and creative.

When the children were asked to write about it, reflects Norris,

"their images often had a depth and maturity

that was unlike anything else they wrote."

One boy discovered that

"Silence is a tree spreading its branches to the sun."

One third-grader's poem turned into a prayer:

"Silence is spiders spinning their webs;

it's like a silkworm making its silk.

Lord, help me to know when to be silent."

And a little girl offered a gem of spiritual wisdom

that Norris finds herself returning to

when her life becomes too noisy and distracting:

"Silence reminds me to take my soul with me wherever I go"

(Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith [New York: Riverhead Books, 1998], 16-17) .

When we follow the command of Jesus to be silent,

we spread our branches to the sun

and soak up the light of God's love, forgiveness and peace.

When we hear God's still, small voice,

we are like silkworms spinning the silk of a sanctified life.

When we listen for the guidance of the Lord --

really listen, instead of telling the Almighty

all about what we are convinced we need to achieve --

we rediscover that our most precious treasure

is the God-breathed soul that each of us has from the very beginning of life,

a soul that we need to consult in all the splendid surprises of each day.

You won't hear this kind of wisdom

during the cacophony of the color commentary at tonight's Super Bowl.

and silence.

But hey,

don't quit after you've found quiet.

Jesus goes on to say,

"Come out of him!" --

meaning break free, let go, get rid of something.

if you're going to get to where Jesus wants you to go.

What is it in your life?

One thing we should dump

is the aggressiveness that we feel toward people outside our faith,

people unlike ourselves,

people on "other teams."

There's a lot of love within this congregation,

and that's a wonderful thing,

but if we're really honest with ourselves,

we'll discover that what makes a group a group,

and what makes a team a team,

is rarely love alone --

there's also aggression.

Think about it.

What is motivating today's NFC champion

is more than just brotherly love between teammates who

respect each other,

work well together,

and believe in the same game plan.

There is also a deep, desperate, driving desire

once again to dominate the AFC

and end the two-year reign of the Denver Broncos.

What binds a group is both love and aggression.

"It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love,"

wrote Sigmund Freud in his book Civilization and Its Discontents,

"so long as there are other people left over

to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness" (70) .

You don't have to be Freudian to see that

the cigar-chomping Austrian analyst was on to something.

Just look around at Serbs who love one another

and kill Kosovars,

and hate the University of North Carolina, and

but also by aggression toward anyone

who doesn't have religion the way they do....

Our blood starts rushing,

our wrath starts rising,

and our passion starts to push us

into a rampage of righteousness.

it doesn't seem to be terribly Christ-centered.

We have our team,

we have our coach,

we have our quarterback...

and we'd like to think we're the only team

on our way to God...

What I'm bucking on one side

is religious self-ism toward God...

Christians so sure that

we're the ones who will be in the front of the line to get into heaven

and that other faiths are either damned
or if they do get a taste of the afterlife,

it will be after we, the chosen.

These are folks we might call ball-hogs.

I think this is extreme disrespect,

and is not what Jesus is about at all.

I'm also bucking the other side...

those who bob along using different pieces of different faith traditions

to keep from moving deep into any of them.

They bounce along at surface level,

say deep things they've heard

and forward trite little write-ups they receive via e-mail...

but have no depth understanding of the

spiritual traditions, history or practices of any faith.

These are people who want to wear the uniform,

but don't want to get on the field.

This isn't what Jesus seeks either.

Jesus commands,

"Come out of him!" --

meaning break free, let go, get rid of something.

Break free of the natural desire

to beat your enemies into submission.

and to let your good works show the world

the awesome power of the Christian life.

Let go of your craving for worldly success,

a hunger for food that can never truly satisfy.

and the still, small voice of God,

and to let yourself be filled by the satisfaction of a sanctified life.

Get rid of the competitive spirit

that forces people to end up as either winners or losers,

the victors or the vanquished.

Better to welcome the Holy Spirit,

who wants everyone to win by discovering and accepting

the salvation of our gracious God.

In Brooklyn, New York, Chush is a school that caters to learning-disabled children.

Some children remain in Chush for their entire school career,

while others can be mainstreamed into conventional Jewish schools.

At a Chush fundraising dinner,

the father of a Chush child delivered a speech

that would never be forgotten by all who attended.

After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out,

"Where is the perfection in my son Shaya?

Everything God does is done with perfection.

But my child cannot understand things as other children do.

My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do.

Where is God's perfection?"

The audience was shocked by the question,

pained by the father's anguish and stilled by the piercing query.

"I believe," the father answered,

"that when God brings a child like this into the world,

the perfection that He seeks

is in the way people react to this child."

He then told the following story about his son Shaya:

One afternoon Shaya and his father walked past a park

where some boys Shaya knew were playing baseball.

Shaya asked,

"Do you think they will let me play?"

Shaya's father knew that his son was not at all athletic

and that most boys would not want him on their team.

But Shaya's father understood that

if his son was chosen to play

it would give him a comfortable sense of belonging.

Shaya's father approached one of the boys in the field

and asked if Shaya could play.

The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates.
Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said,

"We are losing by six runs

and the game is in the eighth inning.

I guess he can be on our team

and we'll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning."

Shaya's father was ecstatic as Shaya smiled broadly.

Shaya was told to put on a glove

and go out to play short center field.

In the bottom of the eighth inning,

Shaya's team scored a few runs

but was still behind by three.

In the bottom of the ninth inning,

Shaya's team scored again

and now with two outs and the bases loaded with the potential winning run on base,

Shaya was scheduled to be up.

Would the team actually let Shaya bat at this juncture

and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly,

Shaya was given the bat.

Everyone knew that it was all but impossible,

because Shaya didn't even know how to hold the bat properly,

let alone hit with it.

However, as Shaya stepped up to the plate,

the pitcher moved a few steps to lob the ball in softly

so Shaya should at least be able to make contact.

The first pitch came in

and Shaya swung clumsily and missed.

One of Shaya's teammates came up to Shaya

and together they held the bat and faced the pitcher

waiting for the next pitch.

The pitcher again took a few steps forward

to toss the ball softly toward Shaya.

As the pitch came in,

Shaya and his teammate swung the bat

and together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher.

The pitcher picked up the soft grounder

and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman.

Shaya would have been out

and that would have ended the game.

Instead, the pitcher took the ball

and threw it on a high arc to right field,

far beyond reach of the first baseman.

Everyone started yelling,

"Shaya, run to first. Run to first!"

Never in his life had Shaya run to first.
He scampered down the baseline,

wide-eyed and startled.

By the time he reached first base,

the right fielder had the ball.

He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman

who would tag out Shaya,

who was still running.

But the right fielder understood what the pitcher's intentions were,

so he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman's head.

Everyone yelled,

"Run to second, run to second."

Shaya ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him

deliriously circled the bases towards home.

As Shaya reached second base,

the opposing short stop ran to him,

turned him in the direction of third base

and shouted, "Run to third."

As Shaya rounded third,

the boys from both teams ran behind him screaming,

"Shaya run home!"

Shaya ran home,

stepped on home plate

and all 18 boys lifted him on their shoulders

and made him the hero,

as he had just hit a "grand slam"

and won the game for his team.

"That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face,

"those 18 boys reached their level of God's perfection."

Something's got to give

if you're going to get to where Jesus wants you to go....

That's heaven, by the way ...

not Super Bowl XXXIV.