It is known simply as “The Play.”
“The Play” is the name of the greatest game of football ever played--anywhere, anytime.
Can anyone here this morning tell me who played in “The Play?”
Right: California vs. Stanford.
Can anyone tell me the year of “The Play.?”
Right: 1982.
Can anyone tell me what was so special about “The Play?”
Right: With 53 seconds left in the game, Stanford was down 17-19, stuck in their own backfield. It was fourth down, 17 yards to go. But miraculously the Stanford QB (anyone? . . . John Elway) rallied, got the first down, and Stanford marched down the field. In four plays they got to the 18 yard line. With eight seconds to go, the field goal kick was up . .. And good. Stanford had won the game, 20-19, and the crowds went crazy.
Or had they?
Only four seconds remained on the clock, so Stanford had to kick off, even as their fans started crashing the sidelines and the band walked onto the field.
But this is where the game became The Game.
[If you can show the YouTube clip of the game at this point, super. If you can’t or choose not to, continue to get people to imagine the game or recall it from memory.]
California picked up Stanford’s kicked ball on the 39 yard line. As the last second clicked off the clock Cal started running upfield. The first runner was grabbed and started to go down. At the last moment before he hit the ground he managed to pitch the ball to a second runner, who ran down-field until he hit a brick wall of Stanford linebackers.
Once again, just before he hit the ground at the 10 yard line he pitched the ball to a teammate, who carried the football through a field flooded with Stanford fans already celebrating the victory that was not to be. As California crossed the goal line, the crowd dissolved into hysteria. California had won the game, 25-20, on a play that would never be repeated. “The Play” is still unbelievable.
Just as the NBA is winding down, and baseball is starting up, there is huge football weekend. It is known as “The Draft,” and a whole cottage industry of magazines and radio/tv shows are dedicated to explaining the mix of cagey strategizing and a dumb-luck drawing that will determine the faces on next year’s teams. Who knows what decisions made “The Draft” weekend will result in a Superbowl ring next January?
Norman Mailer has been called one of the 20th century’s greatest writers. His last book—-it was, in fact, published posthumously-- is entitled, On God: An Uncommon Conversation (New York: Random House, 2007). In other words, the last recorded thoughts of Mailer’s life were about God and the meaning of life.
And guess what metaphor Mailer chose to bring together God, humans and the meaning of life? In this “uncommon conversation” with Michael Lennon, Mailer proposed the football metaphor of astroturf to describe the cosmic struggle between good and evil, between God and Satan (17, 19ff.)
In Mailer’s description Creation itself is the playing field, the gridiron. On this field God and the Devil engage in fierce competition, each one trying to move in directions the other one doesn’t want to go, each one trying to score touchdowns (the Devil is especially adept at the systematic, actuarial, technological, says Mailer). In Mailer’s game of life both combatants, God and the Devil, have limited power, and the outcome is uncertain.
Unfortunately, also according to Mailer’s score-board, the Devil is winning big-time. In fact, the Devil is racking up the points. The game continues on, God keeps on playing, trying to score. But you suspect at times that Mailer has already written off the final victory as “in the bag” for the Devil.
It is hard not to agree with Mailer’s score-keeping, even though his take on history’s final score is another story. The Devil’s team has made a lot of “touchdowns” in the last couple of decades.
*The Devil started a flurry of touchdowns on 08 April 1994, the day genocide began in Rwanda and almost a million Tutsis were slaughtered by their Hutu brothers and sisters.
*The Devil scored big on 9-11.
*The Devil racked up more points in Dafur and the Sudan and Afghanistan.
*The Devil is dancing in the end zone not only in Bagdad and Jerusalem, but in the shanties of Soweto, the dump-site slums of Malaysia, and in the hate-filled, gang-patrolled streets of Chicago, Detroit, Los Angles, New York, Philadelphia, Houston, and Miami.
But from the standpoint of the 1st century, it looked even bleaker. When 1Peter talked about the Devil as a “roaring lion,” a lion on the “prowl” looking for someone to “devour,” it was not just a graphic metaphor. These were Christians being thrown to the lions, literally. They knew up close and personal the meaning of that word “devour.” And from 54 to 68 AD the “Devil” even had a name: Nero.
“Once upon a time there was a little boy who was told that he would be a god when he grew up, or maybe sooner. As things turned out, it was sooner. When he was seventeen, his father died and he acquired the world, a package deal that at the time included divinity. So he murdered his little brother and his mother, turned over the busywork to some old politicians, and got on with the business of playing god. The time was A.D. 54. The place was Rome. The boy’s name was Nero.” (Thomas Schmidt, A Scandalous Beauty: The Artistry of God and the Way of the Cross [Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002], 31.)
Emperor Nero’s palace was called “Golden House,” and for Nero his palace wasn’t “golden” enough until it had taken over a substantial part of the center of the city of Rome. Some estimates put it at more than 300 acres. One reason Nero fiddled while Rome burned in the Great Fire of 64 was because he could use the burned out land to make his palace bigger. Nero’s favorite thing to do with Christians, besides the lion thing, was to use us as torches to illuminate his drunken orgies. Before the guests arrived, he would tie selected Christians to posts throughout his gardens, douse these ancestors of ours with oil, and then when it got dark, set our bodies on fire.
No, it didn’t look like God was winning in the first century either. But these ancestors of ours knew something that Nero didn’t, and what they knew gave them such hope that nothing could separate them from the love of Christ: that the victory had already been won.
But that hope, based on the victory that has already been won, is not a license for passivity. In no uncertain terms the Scriptures make it clear that we are not to sit and wait, but we are to move and act, moving the gospel forward down the field while tackling the forces of evil and oppression that are still wrecking havoc with our world.
“The Play’s” Playbook for Life is very simple
a. Leave the Bleachers and Benches and Get in the Game.
b. The Huddle is Not the Game.
c. Always Keep the Ball “In Play”
d. Never, Never, Never Give Up
1) Leave the Bleachers and Benches and Get in the Game
Disciples of Jesus are not spectators in the stands, or sitters in the pews, but players on the field. We have an active role to play. We are not passive observers of some cosmic contest. We are active participants, real live players.
Disciples of Jesus do not sit on the bench or park in the pews. Disciples of Jesus are players. “Discipline yourselves, keep alert” (v.8), 1Peter urges, for that is the only way to be beat back the moves and maneuvers of the Adversary.
For twenty-first century Christians to be “in the game” means to be “disciplined” and “alert.” Mark Batterson, lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, D. C., says that “irrelevance is irreverence.” We are to be actively IN the world but not “OF” the world—--but not OUT-OF-IT either.
If Jesus could rise from the dead, we can at least rise from our seats and get in the game. “Resist him” asserts 1Peter. Be “steadfast in your faith.” To be steadfast is not to be static. It is to push against the flow, tackle evil when it hits you hard, struggle against the odds.
2) The Huddle is Not The Game.
Huddles are not bad. You need huddles to make sure everyone is on the same page, all signals are clear. Huddles insure there is unity of purpose without uniformity of function. We need to draw strength from each other, and to make sure each other’s needs are being met.
After all, 1Peter reminded these first-century Christians that they were not alone in their struggle: “know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering” (5:9). Even Jesus traveled and huddled with a “team.”
Disciples of Jesus today must also be team players. The only way California’s last ditch effort worked was because of team play. When one player could no longer make forward progress he trusted and tossed the ball to a teammate who was prepared for the unexpected, ready to take the ball and run with it. The power of a community of faith can move the presence of Christ into places a singleton could not.
But the game is not the huddle. In fact, spend too long taking care of each other’s needs, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes, and you will be penalized for “delay of game.” You will find yourself moving the wrong way down the field.
In any contest victory is gained through a combination of strength, skill, and good timing. Good timing comes from knowing when to huddle, and when to break and run a play. Sometimes the situation demands a hurry-up offense where there is no huddle.
Huddlephilia is one of the greatest failures of the church today. We are spending way too much time in these “holy huddles” and not nearly enough time running missional plays. In fact, there are some churches that never get out of the huddle, spending all their energy on meeting each other’s needs and taking care of each other that they never move the gospel forward in mission and ministry.
Christian life is not the huddle. Christian life uses “the huddle,” the Sunday morning service, the Wednesday evening prayer group, as a place to check in, keep signals straight, and confirm the “play.” Christian life is not found in the huddle, but in mission and ministry in the world. We huddle up on Sunday morning in order to hike out into a Monday world.
Martin Luther (who borrowed the phrase “incurvatus in se” from Augustine) proclaimed that the worst sin was for one to curve in upon oneself. The Russian saint Theophan the Recluse compared the unredeemed self to a long, thin shaving of wood that hopelessly and continuously curves inward on itself. That is an image for too much of the church.
3) Always Keep the Ball in Play.
Whatever you do, don’t drop the ball. Keep the ball in play.
Norman Mailer described the Devil’s technique as more “left brain,” moving down the field by plowing right through the middle of everything and everyone, beating down his opponents with overwhelming and systematic destructive, technological power.
To keep the ball in play you need both left-brained the right-brained plays. The right brain is the location of imagination, music, mathematics, creativity. In “The Big Game” of Stanford vs. California, Stanford seemed to have won the game with their left-brain, logical, straight-ahead, plow down the field, take the field goal strategy. But it was the . . .
right-brain,
fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants,
make it up as you go along,
respond to ever-changing situations,
keep the ball in play,
always move forward,
and never, never, never give up trying
LACK of strategy that enabled California to pull out a victory despite all the odds.
Even when your mission is tackled by one or more of the seven deadly sins, you can keep the gospel in play by pitching it to others alongside you or passing it to those in front of you. Sometimes even a “Hail Mary” is in order.
4) Never, Never, Never Give Up
Our text this morning warns the first century Christians of Asian Minor that they were going to experience genuine hardships, endure real suffering, and face life-threatening dangers because of their faith.
At the same time, our text this morning assured them, and us, that it was precisely because of our faith that we had no cause to fear.
Let Norman Mailer have his doubts about the final score in the struggle between God’s power and the forces of evil. 1Peter has no such qualms. Can you hear his words afresh this morning: “the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you” (5:10).
The lions may be licking their chops. Nero may be fiddling while Rome burns. But the lion is not the ultimate power and the Neros of our world do not have the final word.
God does. We play this game of life under the providence and protection of “the mighty hand of God.”
Time to score some touchdowns in eternity for God.v