Football is Definitely a Collision Sport

Let’s get the part of this post that is about Tim Tebow out of the way first.  Here’s a paragraph from an article in The New York Times that appeared back in the fall:

At the intersection of faith and football, the fervor that surrounds both Tebow’s beliefs and his struggles in his second season for the Denver Broncos has escalated into a full-blown national debate over religion and its place in sports. (“In Tebow Debate, a Clash of Faith and Football” by Greg Bishop, 11/7/2011)

Some intersections are more raucous than others, I guess.  The article goes on to state that Tebow has prompted nothing short of a “religious feud” and that “he has become the most discussed and most polarizing figure in sports.”

Putting aside the differences of opinion about his skills as a football player or his use of “the option,” (I’m doing my homework) people are sharply divided about whether it’s OK to use his very public platform as a professional athlete to express, just about any chance he gets, how he owes everything to God.   Those persistent individuals in the stands who hold up signs saying “John 3:16” (a verse Martin Luther called “the Gospel in miniature” –did my homework there, too) would clearly understand why he wants to broadcast his faith.   Others don’t think it belongs in a football stadium.

Of course, it’s not like this is the first time we’ve ever see an athlete be so blatant about his religion, and it’s not always Christianity that gets center stage; Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar made their Muslim faith up close and personal for sports fans, too.  Indeed, many people feel that Tebow has been unduly criticized simply because he represents the country’s dominant kind of religion.  Until the Broncos were most definitely trounced by the Patriots in the playoffs, the combination of his apparently leading his team to one unlikely victory after another and his reminding us again and again about his connection to a higher power evoked strong reactions: enthusiasm, repulsion, and just plain amusement.

My husband the Episcopal priest has mixed feelings about this kind of evangelizing on the field.  On the one hand, he supports Tebow’s interest in bringing his faith to work with him.  Over the course of the past year, Rob has organized a series of Sunday forums after church at which parishioners in various occupational clusters, from philosophers to plumbers, talk about how they seek to integrate a work life with a religious life.  You can tell from the feeling in the room how interested people are in this topic – after all, doesn’t faith need to be exercised on a daily basis to be real?  He also showed me a website, www.thehighcalling.org, that seeks to help anyone “find God in your work, family and the broader culture.”   On the other hand, he’s skeptical that Tebowing (a website with that name shows pictures of countless people doing the down-on-one-knee thing) is an effective means of bringing people to a richer spiritual life.  In support of this, he pointed me to Matthew 6:1-6 — “Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”  Grandstanding may, but also may not, indicate deep beliefs that are actually lived out.

In a related thought, he and his preaching colleagues have wondered what the reaction might be, in church, if they took to pumping their fists or doing a salsa dance after delivering a particularly sock-it-to-‘em sermon.

But I said that we’d get Tebow out of the way, and that’s taken too long.  The fact is, in our house the “intersection of faith and football” is about something else entirely.  While Rob acknowledges that many pro players and fans alike find their faith to be harmonious with their football, it is not that way for him.  He objects to the violence of it, which can bring serious physical costs to players, and almost even more to the sheer excess that imbues professional football…and the other main line pro sports as well.  What’s troubling is the huge amount of money involved, the aggrandizement of the athlete, and—in his view—the almost obscene use of resources.  He puts a very high priority on being in top physical condition through exercise, but this does not translate into an interest in watching sports on TV.  I, on the other hand, grew up with brothers who regularly gathered in front of games with their friends;  this was good relaxation. So long as I have had a chance to get in my own workout, I don’t want to miss whatever The Big Game might be.

This, together with the fact that it’s hard to know ahead of time who is going to play who on which night in January, explains why we had a very nice group of people from church over to our house last Sunday evening during the Patriots/ Ravens game.  And we also had a dilemma:  dinner in a football-free zone?   Here is the kind of sports and religion collision that I am most familiar with — the scheduling kind.  You can’t hear the crunch of the pads or the clash of the helmets, but it’s not pretty.

Throughout the past decade, when I have tried to be both a good clergy spouse and a good sports mom, I have been smack dab in the middle of this kind of thing countless times.  Do we go to the early morning hockey game or do we go to Sunday school?  During some spring seasons, the difficulty of the soccer team/baseball team collision was added to the mix – as IF we needed a conflict within the sports world as well as the accustomed one between a sport and church.  It’s ridiculous, and it’s not uncommon.   I have nowhere near enough space here to do justice to the topic;  it’s a whole chapter in the making.

Suffice it to say that it didn’t surprise me in the least that Rob and I had to figure out how to handle this most recent football-collides-with-faith-in-our-own-home situation amicably.  He was not about to postpone the long-planned event, and I was seeking a way not to miss the crucial end of the game while being a good hostess at the same time.  Solution?  The kids who came wanted to be in the basement; so the game was turned on there, and a few of us were able to go up and downstairs, a bit sheepishly perhaps, during the crucial and very exciting final quarter.  It all worked out fine  –including the Patriots’ victory.  In retrospect, I could have even done the Tebow to celebrate.