In response
to the team he coached winning the college football national championship, Dabo
Swinney, in an on-camera interview, said first, “Only God does this!”
It was a
lie, of course. I’m pretty sure God
doesn’t play college football; yet, if Swinney were being honest, surely he
wouldn’t have accepted the trophy!
Rather, wouldn’t the trophy belong in God’s trophy case—since “God did
it.” (I’m pretty confident, however,
that the trophy will only be seen in the trophy case at the University of
Clemson—(whether God did it or not!).
It was a
lie, of course—God doing it. Anyone
familiar with the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments knows that “God
doesn’t work like that.” God shows a
preference for the extreme, radical underdog.
If God had orchestrated the college football national championship,
wouldn’t God have done it with the team holding the longest losing streak going
into the game? Or, at least another
team, not quite with the obvious talented abilities of the players of the two
teams picked to play for the title two years in a row, now! If the God of Bethlehem had done this, people
know, it would have been different.
A lot different!
I hope! I hope people recognize just HOW
different. With all the “improbable
choices of God—Moses, who didn’t want to have to go back to Egypt to lead God’s
people; David, who was the tender-est man-child of Jesse’s sons, tending the
sheep in the field, not considered a capable candidate by human eyes; the
infant Jesus born into the realm of Herod, the tyrannical leader of the empire
crushing the world.
This is the
danger of the “prosperity gospel’s” prominence—the gospel of so-called “good
news” that promises us if we put in the work, God will reward us—for we deserve
it because of our faithfulness.
But it
seems like we’re going to start hearing more and more of this. “Public religion,” expressed in supposed
Christian values, by public figures and well-meaning people. It always sounds like it’s something that’s “out
of the Bible, but it isn’t. Contrary to
Coach Swinney’s observation, God doesn’t play college football; and even if God
were in that business, it wouldn’t be for national championships. Coach Swinney’s not the chief purveyor of
these things; he’s actually a victim, having learned it from other
well-polished speakers, from political hopefuls to supposed clerics televising
the need not only to pray but to send in our “investments” toward the good life
we deserve and God is just waiting to provide.
It’s
worrisome, this supposed “good news,” the admonishment “not to worry” because a
politician or a group of politicians is going to “take care of it,” or that
even “God will take care of it” when the solution involves the dis-enfranchisement
of whole groups of people in the form of God’s favor for some and disfavor for
others. Which is, of course, the promise
of “prosperity people”—God will love you if you follow; or curse you if you don’t. Heads, I win; tails, you lose. Either way the system is rigged.
The “rigged
system” is what God seeks to break—pursuing special relationship with human
beings demonstrated in the story of Christmas that we just celebrated. Or, as the prophet Isaiah declares:
For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, [God has] broken…
What God
does FOR US is send us Jesus. Not to
ensure our health and wealth and any kind of worldly salvation, but to break us
from our oppression to sin.
The
promises of God come with opportunities for us to live out the promises of God’s
vision as lived in the person of Christ.
In particular, his ministry of care for the disenfranchised. The “prosperity people” so easily separate
the good things that happen to the most deserving, suggesting that it’s a world
where we all get what’s coming to us in the end. Like a western where the black hats get what’s
coming to them!
But I can’t
find a good Biblical story where someone gets what is really deserved. God is so invested in the counter-instinctual
work defined not by what someone deserves but by forgiveness, freedom, and love—instead.
I’m afraid
the voices of entitlement are just going to become louder and more obnoxious.
“It’s our
turn.”
“We won.”
“We worked
harder.”
“We deserve
….”
To the
victor go the spoils—is the old saying.
The Bible
teaches this isn’t how it is at all. The
one with the “most” doesn’t win.
The practitioners
of this public religion of prosperity seem to be enjoying their time of
entitlement. But as Seth Godin writes inhis blog,
“Entitlement gets us nothing but heartache. It blinds us to what’s possible. It insulates us from the magic of gratitude. And most of all, it lets us off the hook, pushing us away from taking responsibility (and action) and toward apportioning blame and anger instead.”
There’s
enough blame and anger to go around these days.
On the
other hand, the Bible teaches me that if those who are publicly dishing blame
and anger (intentionally or by accident) were in fact, more familiar with the
sacred writings of Christianity, there would be something else to say.
The real
work, the counter-intuitive work that Jesus teaches is hard work. It’s much harder than the prosperity promises
of this public—so-called “Christian”—religion.
But those of us who take the Bible seriously are called to keep at it—counter-cultural,
counter-intuitive, counter-instinctual.
Doing what is least expected.
That’s what
God does!
So if you’re
looking for something to say; or needing to say something—say that you’re
grateful for all the opportunities God has given you. Not because you deserve them, but because you
don’t. And God chooses you anyway.
That’s what
God does.
© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder
and Pastor, The First Presbyterian Church of El Dorado, Arkansas
