Quote from Forum Archives on January 27, 2003, 10:14 am

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

ANY GIVEN SUNDAY
January 26, 2003

Text: 2 Corinthians 5:11-6:2

Here we are again on the brink of another titanic struggle between the
two professional football teams that have withstood the challenges of the
season and have come out the champions of their league. Tonight, the
world will see who this year’s champion will be.

Well, it may be a titanic struggle… or it may not. That remains to be
seen. No one knows in advance how the contest will turn out - whether it
will be a close squeaker or a blowout. Which team will show up hungriest
for the championship? Which team will leave disappointed? No matter how
much work has gone into the season and no matter how many games have
already been won, the season will be a disappointment for the losing team
tonight. It makes me so glad that there is no “second place” with God. He
loves each and everyone of us so much that no one who accepts His
salvation will be left out.

Even though we do not yet know what the game’s results will be, we do
know this: this event will be the most-watched show of the year. Amazing,
isn’t it, that this fairly simple sporting event receives so much
attention? Tickets have been sold and bought for hundreds of dollars,
probably some of them for thousands of dollars. Commercial space has been
sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. No doubt a few new TVs have
been bought just for this evening’s game. The Superbowl, and football in
general, is important in America.

There is a recent movie about football called Any Given Sunday. The movie
about bone-crunching NFL football captures in lifestyle, in the locker
room, and in the personal life of these professional athletes a picture
of what it is like on any given Sunday. This sport, regardless of how
innocently it may have started, is a religion in America. In fact, one
article from a USA Today last year was titled “Sport as a Religion?” with
the subtitle, “This Sunday, Praise the Lord and Pass the Chips.”
Christmas may be over, but America has still been in an advent season
gearing up for that great religious festival today - the Superbowl.

Instead of worshiping a sporting event, which lasts only a moment - for
example, who won last year? Who did they play? What were the Superbowl
teams in 1996? - we need to worship the true and living God. Who is our
Savior? We have no problem remembering that. “And [Christ] died for all,
that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who
died for them and was raised again.” This is what we need to celebrate
any given Sunday.

On any given Sunday, we need to celebrate that Jesus Christ is Lord. We
need to celebrate that he is the victorious Lord. In the Superbowl
contest between Jesus and satan, the outcome is no mystery. Jesus wins!
Turn to Matthew 4. This is the well known Scripture describing Jesus’
forty day retreat into the wilderness. We read in verse 1 that “Jesus was
led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” Here was a
contest of epic proportions. It had eternal consequences, for what if
satan could overpower Jesus? So, satan tempted Jesus to give in to him by
offering Jesus physical comfort and all the power in the world. Satan
went so far as to invite Jesus to worship him. Verse 9, “‘All this I will
give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’” To this,
Jesus replied firmly, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship
the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Jesus won! And because he won,
we can receive the gift of salvation. We need to celebrate that.

On any given Sunday, Christians gather to celebrate reconciliation.
What’s that, and why is it significant? Let me share one Bible dictionary
definition and explanation: “[Reconciliation is] the coming to agreement
of two or more persons after misunderstanding or estrangement. There are
many instances of this in the Bible, but the dominant theme is the
reconciliation of man to God. Man’s condition is diagnosed as one of
alienation from God his Maker. But the Bible affirms that God has taken
steps to overcome this alienation, and has in Christ provided the means
of reconciliation.” (E. C. Blackman, “Reconciliation, Reconcile,” The
Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962,
p. 16)

This is the good news the Bible delivers. This is what it is all about.
Christ died for our sins. Look again at 2 Corinthians 5:17-19.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has
gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to
himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that
God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s
sins against them.” I’ll get to the last sentence of verse 19 in a
moment.

Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, death, burial, and resurrection, anyone who
believes in him is saved and is reconciled with God. God removes all the
barriers that exist between His holy nature and our sinful ways. On any
given Sunday, God should find His people celebrating this.

In a letter to First Baptist Church from the correspondence volunteer of
Our Father’s Library in Peru, Bobbie Sease writes that her magnifying
glass reminds her of our human nature. “The purpose of my magnifying
glass is to make things bigger than they really are. That’s a common
human tendency, too. For example, this morning I worried about what I was
going to wear to church. I didn’t dare wear the same outfit I’d worn last
Sunday (what would people think?), but I needed to find something to go
with my winter boots - and why hadn’t I thought of this sooner? I fretted
a good five minutes about that, magnifying my predicament. Later, the
worship team urged us to praise and magnify the name of the Lord. In this
sense, magnify means to extol, to make great, to enlarge in scope. As the
voices of the congregation resounded all around me, as I was swept into
wonderful communion with God and my fellow believers, I was momentarily
pierced with this thought: What if I had stayed home? I might have missed
this wonderful opportunity to worship God (who most certainly wasn’t
worried about what I was wearing). That thought led to another: Was
someone missing from worship this morning, someone who felt he/she didn’t
‘fit in… wasn’t good enough… couldn’t be forgiven… didn’t have the right
clothes’? Did this person magnify something small into something bigger
than it really was…?” (Bobbie Sease, Our Father’s Library letter to First
Baptist Church, Bunker Hill, January 2003)

Since God has taken the initiative to remove every barrier that separates
us from Him, we should be diligent to keep the kinds of false barriers
that Bobbie writes about from popping up in our lives. There are a lot of
people we know who would do whatever it takes to get to the Superbowl if
they were given free tickets. Can you imagine someone saying, “Well, a
friend gave me a Superbowl ticket, but I didn’t go because I didn’t have
anything to wear? Or, because I wasn’t gonna like the guy next to me
yelling for the other team? Or, because I couldn’t get up in time? Or,
because it might go into overtime, and I would have to stay longer?” Can
you imagine the typical person’s response to someone who would let those
valuable tickets go unused because of some lame excuse? We have something
much more valuable than Superbowl tickets; are we gonna let God’s
compassion for us go wasted because of some lame excuse? I hope not.

On any given Sunday, Christians celebrate the responsibilities that God
has given us. Look at that last sentence of verse 19 now: “And he has
committed to us the message of reconciliation.” Paul goes on, then,
saying, “We are therefore God’s ambassadors, as though God were making
his appeal through us.” Paul set this thought up back in verse 16: “So
from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.”

This is the responsibility that God has given us. It is our privilege to
be God’s ambassadors. We are to be messengers of God’s reconciliation by
being reconciled to one another. I have reflected in Bible studies a few
times on the nature of the first century church Paul wrote to. The
members represented the variety of their culture. There were slaves;
there were slaveholders. There were Roman citizens; there were conquered
people with no citizenship. There were wealthy merchants; there were
poverty-stricken widows. When they met together in someone’s home for
worship and communion, they were none of those. As Christians, they were
brothers and sisters in Christ. It is mind-boggling to me the cultural
habits and traditions that were overcome by the willingness of believers
to be ambassadors for Christ. They celebrated this!

The religion portrayed by the movie, Any Given Sunday, and by
professional football in general, is that you can’t make it if you’re not
mean and strong and tough and super-macho. The world of player and fan
alike is caught up in the whirlwind values of play to win. Championships
are what matter, and you do what it takes to get there. Now I’m not
saying that some football players don’t have wonderful Christian
testimonies; I’m merely observing that the attitudes portrayed by
professional football and the cult of sports as religion do not readily
create images of Christian ambassadorship and reconciliation.

There is a story about a sporting that does portray the spirit of
reconciliation. It is a story that has been shared frequently since it
happened, so you may have heard it before. “A few years ago, at the
Seattle Special Olympics, nine contestants, all physically or mentally
disabled, assembled at the starting line for the 100-yard dash. At the
gun, they all started out, not exactly in a dash, but with a relish to
run the race to the finish and win. All, that is, except one little boy
who stumbled on the asphalt, tumbled over a couple of times, and began to
cry. The other eight heard the boy cry. They slowed down and looked back.
Then they all turned around and went back. Every one of them. One girl
with Down's Syndrome bent down and kissed him and said: "This will make
it better." Then all nine linked arms and walked together to the finish
line. Everyone in the stadium stood, and the cheering went on for several
minutes. People who were there are still telling the story. Why? Because
deep down we know this one thing: What matters in this life is more than
winning for ourselves. What matters in this life is helping others win,
even if it means slowing down and changing our course.” (Original Source
Unknown, this version shared by Diane Berke in the May-June 1998 edition
of On Course magazine)

Now I know that we’re not going to transform professional football into a
Special Olympics event. It wouldn’t be football. But we don’t have to
treat it like a religion and worship it. We shouldn’t worship it. God is
our object of worship. God is the person we are to obey. Willingly obey.
Don’t you think this is what Paul meant in chapter 6 verse 1? He wrote,
“As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain.”

On any given Sunday, Christians have this choice: they can be like every
non-Christian around them and forsake celebrating what God has done for
them. They can replace the worship of God with a worship of something
else. Or, they can celebrate God’s reconciliation and His call to be
ambassadors. On any given Sunday, what will you be doing? “I tell you,
now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.”

Rev. Charles A. Layne, pastor, First Baptist Church, Bunker Hill, IN

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