By tonight, the endless hoopla, the frenzied advertising and, almost incidentally, the football game itself will be over. Super Bowl Sunday will have come and gone for another year.
One more observation: The Super Bowl wouldn't be a true sporting event without an endless string of both pre-game and post-game interviews. Fair or not, we have come to expect our sports professionals to be as articulate as they are athletic. There are probably only about three different interviews available to any athlete. We've all heard them, and we've heard them all.
First there is the "I'm the greatest; nothing can stop me" interview. This is usually, but not always, a pre-game display ... as players psyche themselves up
and hope to psyche out the competition. These are big guys, in the big leagues, earning big bucks, and they have big egos to match. At their worst, these pre-game boasting contests are the ones we cringe at and hope our kids don't hear.
The second type of interview is usually a post-game display. Typically the star player praises his teammates, his coaches, throws a gnawed-bone compliment to the opposition, and then admits that, "Yes, I played a great game. I was able to do what I do best." These interviews are really about giving a star more
on-camera time.
The third type of interview is increasingly rare and makes a lot of people uncomfortable. This is the Christian-athlete interview. In it the athlete uses his player-podium to offer a bit of Christian witnessing. With humility and sincerity, these Christian-athletes praise God and thank Jesus for their game performance. They don't boast or brag; they know they're good, but they point to a different source of power for their abilities than the coaching staff, or the weight-training regimen, or their individual determination.
These Christian-athlete interviews seem to be getting less frequent because these muscular witnesses often find themselves censured by both believers
and nonbelievers alike. Nonbelievers first laugh and then get huffy ... claiming these Christian-athletes are not appreciative enough of their coaches or fellow team mates.
NBC reporter Jim Gray, who holds the mike after many sports events, says: "If they want to talk about God initially, that's fine. But I do think we should be leading the conversation to other things ... I did the [first] Holyfield-Tyson fight, and Ferdie Pacheco had Evander [for an interview], and he started talking about his faith and everything else. Ferdie just said to him, as only he can, 'All right, Evander, enough about God, what about the fight?'"
Another network reporter, who asked not to be identified, said, "I think it's a disgrace. I don't think it's the right time or the right place. I believe in God, but I'm going to save my prayers for something I consider much more important than a football game." --- Quoted by Leonard Shapiro, "In God They Trust," Washington Post staff writer, Washington Post, D-1.
Notice how it's okay for high-ego athletes to yell and say, "I'm number one; I'm the best; am I good or what?" They can dance and strut their stuff all they want.
But if high-character athletes give glory to God rather than to themselves, if they thank God rather than their genes, they get criticized.
Amazingly, believers are often the most uncomfortable with this kind of post-game confession of faith. We back off and button our lips or look embarrassed.
Perhaps we believers don't want Jesus to take the blame the next time this guy plays lousy, or drops the winning touchdown pass. But it is probably more likely that we are turned off by the notion that the Lord of the universe, the Savior of all creation, is sitting down this Sunday watching a football game.
Does God have a favorite NFL team? Does Jesus root for special players? What do we do and say when a big, burly football player claims that Christ helped him win the big game or make the big play? Is there a Christian way to celebrate Super Bowl Sunday?
Right up front, let's agree that no, God does not have a favorite team and that Jesus really doesn't care who wins the big game today. But our Lord and Savior does care about how the game is played; even more importantly, about how all of our seemingly so important life-games are played. At all times, in all places, in all our "game," Christians are to play like Christians ... win or lose.
This brings us to our text for this morning.
Here Jesus reveals the four essential plays He is going to use as He competes in the real super bowl of life. How is Jesus playing the game?
First, Jesus declares that He brings good news to "the poor." Second, He seeks the release of those bound in all types of captivity. Third, He offers new vision to those who have been living blind, healing for those who are wounded and diseased. Finally, He gives freedom to those who are oppressed.
These are the "plays" in Jesus' playbook, and they represent a radical departure from the conventional approach to the game. I like a positive approach to problems. So often we look only to the problem and we want to play the blame game. But defense is only half of the game.
Paul's admonitions, advice and arguments before the Corinthian church serve not only to reveal what was wrong in that community, but also to celebrate what was right. By straightforwardly dealing with the contentious claims and competing camps, Paul can give us the impression that he was frantically involved in just keeping this church from self-destructing. We forget what the Corinthians were doing right ... especially as detailed by today's text. This community was experiencing vital manifestations of God's love through the living gifts of the Spirit in a stunning variety of powerful and purposeful ways. Instead of focusing on how Paul deals with believers who have been too inclined to celebrate one spiritual gift over another, consider the remarkable number and variety of these spiritually empowered expressions of God's presence that the apostle could easily identify and list for his readers. Not only is this list of spiritual gifts itemized in 1 Corinthians 12 impressive, but match this list against that provided by Paul beginning in Romans 12:6. Only the gift of prophecy is noted as being in common between these two. Despite the theological missteps, the mutually destructive squabbling and the egoistic arguments that fractured the peace of the Corinthian church, it is evident that this was a vibrant community, rich with experiences of divine love.
Paul begins with a well-known analogy between the human body and the body of Christ. Paul, of course, was not the first to make this comparison. It can be found in the works of many different ancient writers.
But it is a uniquely remarkable and powerful comparison in Paul's hands. Paul uses body imagery to affirm both the diversity and the unity inherent in Christ, without ever wholly leading us to believe that one carries more weight than the other. Unlike some other pagan political writers who compared the parts with the whole in order to repress individual expression and personal freedoms for the sake of an overall community good, Paul celebrates the diverse gifts present in the body of Christ in general and in this Corinthian church in particular. Paul is not interested in transforming the wildly, richly diverse Corinthians into some bland homogenized conglomerate.
The underlying common root out of which all of these gifts and graces grow is from verse 13: "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body ..." This common experience overrides all else. Even the most basic social separations such as race (Jew or Greek) and status (slave or free) wash away in the waters of this baptism. The "water" image is stressed yet again in verse 13. Instead of using the images of spirit more common in either Greek or Hebrew ("wind" or "breath"), Paul emphasizes that "...we were all made to drink of one Spirit."
In his central portion of chapter 12, Paul develops the body analogy, delicately balancing the genuine uniqueness of each part against the organic result these parts produce ... the miracle of a functioning, unified body.
Variety is affirmed as a God-given gift (v. 18), but variations in function and design are wholly attributed to God ... not to any inherent superiority of one body part over another. While Paul knows that part of the Corinthians' problems lay in assigning a hierarchy to spiritual gifts ... a "charismata" pecking order ... the body analogies of foot, eye, ear, etc.( vv. 14-16), should be read without trying to assign a figurative meaning to each body part. The gist of Paul's point is made clear in verses 24-25. There are no humble parts, only God-given functions. All must be celebrated.
In the final section of chapter 12, Paul moves his readers from this general body imagery to their own body-of-Christ experience. As I mentioned earlier, he spouts off an impressive list of spiritual gifts that are apparently known and recognized in the midst of this congregation. His list here differs from other lists of spiritual gifts in that Paul appears to create his own hierarchy by claiming a "first" place, a "second" place and a "third." While such arguments may at first appear to fly in the face of his earlier assertions that all the diverse gifts are equally from God and thus equal within the community, in the context of this letter from Paul and his developing argument, these particular designations seem purposefully pointed at the Corinthian situation.
Paul is acting as an authority for the Corinthian Christians, and thus he places his role ... that of an apostle ... in a position of undisputable authority: "[in the] first [place] apostles" (v. 28).
Likewise, he sets the stage for his assertion in chapter 14 that the gift of prophecy should be viewed as more valuable to the health of the community than the continued expression of tongues ... especially if it is present without the accompanying gift of interpretation. Paul intends a less important view of the gift of tongues than some of these Corinthians by relegating that particular gift to the last on the list he gives in verse 28.
The series of rhetorical questions Paul cites in verses 29-30 again reinforce that the church's diversity of gifts is to be noted and celebrated ... not quarreled over. Paul's final caution is that zealousness for spiritual gifts is to be directed not at practicing some particularly paraded gift ... as was the gift of tongues among the Corinthians ... but at "the greater gifts." Paul's surprise here, however, is not to return to one of the gifts detailed in his earlier list, but to devote the next chapter to praising the quality he views as the truly "higher gift" ... the gift of love.
But, the basic statement in 1 Corinthians 12:7, "...to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit..." is reinformed by every other discussion of spiritual gifts in the New Testament.
In Ephesians 4:7 the Bible says, "But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ's gift." First Peter 4:10 says that each has received a gift. In 1 Corinthians 7:7, the Bible says, "But each has his own special gift from God ..."
The gifts of the Spirit have been distributed to every believer. These gifts are given by God, given irrespective of our spiritual maturity, and given to every believer.
That rules out self-depreciation and self-pity in the body of Christ ... for it means that every single Christian is important. Don't tell me that you don't have a gift. The Bible says you do. Don't crawl back into some corner and pout and say there is nothing you can do for God's kingdom. The Bible says there is.
The gifts of the Spirit are distributed to every member of the body of Christ.
Do you know what that means?
It means that God can use all kinds of people in His work: the well educated like Elton Trueblood and the poorly educated like John Bunyan; the married like Billy Graham and the single like Phillips Brooks; those with marvelous bodies like Chad Hennings and Deion Sanders and those with disfigured bodies like George Whitfield who was so cross-eyed that whenever he looked at a congregation and said, "God is dealing with the man I am looking at right now," two people always came under conviction. He use the public figures like Charles Colson and the obscure figure like the unnamed preacher who won Charles Spurgeon to the Lord.
God can use each of us in His work because: He has given to each of us a charismata ... a gift; He has chosen for each of us a ministry in which to use that gift; and He has provided a power by which that ministry can be carried out. The gifts of the Spirit are distributed to every believer. The key to this discussion is, "What will we do with what we have been given?"
In one of his last speeches, delivered at the University of Richmond commencement exercises in 1997, where he picked up his 57th honorary doctorate,
Dr. Samual Proctor (pastor, professor and author), tells of how they distinguish boats in the Florida channels. There are what they call the "privileged boats"
and the "burden boats." The privileged boats are those powerboats which can basically do whatever they want to do. The burden boats are the sailboats and other small crafts which must depend on the care and consideration of the privileged boats. Will the privileged boats help the burden boats make it safely into harbor?
After watching the big game tonight, those of us who are not on one of the two opposing teams will go back to our normal Monday morning routines filled with work, school, family, and all of the activities of our lives. In each encounter we make with someone else during the day, we, too, will be coming face to face with the poor ... those who have little of the world's goods, and those who are poor in spirit.
Or we will face the captive ... someone bound by habits, prejudice, guilt or despair. We will encounter the blind ... those who are physically blind
as well as those who are spiritually unsighted. We will also find the oppressed ... those who are used and abused and those who are marginalized and forgotten.
This is the genuine "big game" we are all engaged in every day ... the test of our Christian witness and spirit.
God is not keeping score to see if we "win" or "lose" the small skirmishes that we think occupy so much of our time and energy at work and at home. There is no divine score-board keeping track of the number of customers we brought in, the number of A's we've received, the amount of money we've accumulated, or the skill with which we've managed to get through so much busy-ness at business.
But God is concerned with how we conduct ourselves in all our endeavors and in each encounter. Are we focused on the final score, on perfecting our own performance? Or are we able to shift our vision away from ourselves, open our playbook, and connect with the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed?
This is the real Super Bowl ... the Super Bowl of life. And Yes, Jesus does care desperately who wins this game.
