Thursday, March 20, 2014

The Uninvited: March Madness and the Church


Is your bracket filled out? My bracket is completed and looks nice until I have to start marking out my failed picks. My wife and I do a little bit of wagering on who can fill out the best bracket and this year was a little more exciting making our picks when the NCAA bracket was released. As I have mentioned before, my wife and I are celebrating 10 years of marriage this month and so we will be enjoying an Elite 8 game in Indianapolis as a fun way to celebrate. We are both fans of college basketball and both of our favorite teams (Duke and the University of Kentucky) happen to be in the Midwest Region which will be played in Indy. Hopefully one or both of us will get to see our teams play live for the first time!

The big first step for our teams was getting the invitation to the ‘big dance’ as it is so often called. Sports analysts often make comments about getting their dancing shoes ready or about whether Cinderella’s shoes will fit the particular team hoping to be in the tournament. Since Lori and I cheer for a couple of the top programs in the history of the game we rarely have to worry about getting an invitation. Each year there are teams on the ‘bubble’, unsure of whether they will get an invitation or not. Analysts give their list of the last 4 making it in and the last 4 who missed the dance altogether.

There are 351 Division 1 NCAA teams but only 68 get the chance to play in this tournament. There is, however, another tournament that the rejected teams have a chance to play in called the National Invitational Tournament, or just NIT. As you can probably already guess, even if you’re not a sports enthusiast, this isn’t the tournament that teams were hoping to play in at the end of the year and NIT gets a negative connotation added to it. Fans who want to let an opponent know they are a step down from ‘their beloved team’ need only chant ‘NIT, NIT, NIT’ to get in a cheap shot. Fans also have their own names for that tournament using the NIT initials. This is an excerpt from wikipedia:

"
Because the post-season NIT consists of teams that failed to receive a berth in the NCAA Tournament, the NIT has been nicknamed the "Not Invited Tournament", "Never Important Tournament", "Nobody's Interested Tournament", "Needs Improvement Tournament", "No Important Team", "National Insignificant Tournament," or simply "Not In Tournament". It has also been called a tournament to see who the "69th best team" in the country is (since there are now 68 teams in the NCAA Tournament)."

Not Invited. Nobody’s Interested. Needs Improvement. You get the feeling. Have you been that team? Have you been that person who is left out? It hurts to be uninvited and unchosen. There is something special happening and you don’t get to be a part. I had this happen to me recently which is why the topic of being uninvited is on my mind in the context of March Madness and Easter.

Prior to the bracket being released, analysts critique the resume of teams on the bubble. They use criteria such as a teams Rating Percentage Index (RPI) so you know how tough of a schedule they had. They look at wins against ranked opponents, losses to bad opponents, non-conference schedule, and on down the line as they evaluate whether a team has earned an invitation. The apostle Paul gives us his tourney resume in Philippians 3:

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.—Philippians 3:4-6


There is no question that this guy falls into the ‘Invited’ column if you’re looking for the most qualified Israelite, and by the looks of things he’s getting a #1 seed. In Genesis we see an invitation given to Abraham and his offspring to be God’s chosen people. Paul comes from a long line of invited people and his pedigree is spotless.

But what about the rest of us? What about us Gentiles (non-Jews) with no pedigree whatsoever? What about the uninvited?

I don’t want to jump ahead past Easter. It’s easy to do and there are many, like my wife, who prefer to do just that. Skip past the solemn Good Friday service so we can celebrate resurrection morning. I get that. No one wants to remember what it was like to be uninvited prior to the invitation that comes through Jesus Christ. Two thousand years ago a huge proportion of today’s church folk would have been the ones on the outside. We would have been the uninvited. The early church started with a bunch of Jewish followers of Christ trying to figure out what to do about these previously uninvited Gentiles that were coming to faith in Christ. There were some that thought Gentiles needed to get circumcised and give up bacon so they would better fit the profile of an invited Jew. "If you want to be ‘in’ the church then you have to go through these hoops." There were others, like Paul, who opposed putting barriers in the way of unbelieving Gentiles. He even opposed Peter to his face! (Galatians 2:11-14)

Peter, the Rock, had trouble figuring out how to interact with people who had previously been uninvited and unclean and so he found himself acting one way with his invited buddies and another with his newly invited buddies. It was awkward to say the least. Circumcision conversations generally are. Despite the difficulties, the early church managed to plow on through toward unity in the power of the Spirit.

We still have a few weeks until Easter and reconnecting with church history means reconnecting with what it means to be uninvited. That’s where the story for a majority of us starts. We were not God’s people. He was not our God. And along comes Jesus proclaiming good news to the uninvited.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Bless the Lord O My Throat.....

Here in a couple weeks my wife and I will be celebrating 10 years of marriage. Over the course of our marriage I have ruined countless songs by changing the original words in my attempt to be funny or flirty. And so, when a song that I have altered comes on the radio or is being sung in church, my wife immediately looks at me and shakes her head with a smirk on her face.

Anybody else do this sort of thing? There are plenty of people who make horrible mistakes because it may be difficult to pick up on the actual lyrics when listening to a song on the radio. I recently saw an episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon where he shared failed lyrics to popular songs and it got me reflecting on my adaptations. While most of mine are intended to be funny or flirty there is one lyrical change that I do for the ‘soul’ purpose of it being helpful imagery as I sing.

The lyrical switch that I make is to sing the word ‘throat’ in place of the word ‘soul’. One of the more popular and recurring songs in worship services for the past year has been Matt Redman’s "10,000 Reasons". This song is a perfect place for such an exchange of words because it conveys one of the specific purposes of a throat and soul.

Bless the Lord, O my throat
O my throat
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before
O my throat
I’ll worship Your holy name

 

Our throat is an important organ of communication. While our throat is not the only way in which we communicate with others it is by all means the first one that we use as little babies crying out. And while our throat is the organ that we use to cry out in our need it is simultaneously the organ by which we receive the very things that we need. Our throat cries out and our throat is the way in which our bodies receive what it needs. This dual purpose of crying out and being filled are two purposes we see connected to an Old Testament understanding of a human ‘soul’. Time and again in scripture we see our souls, our throats, as the vessels crying out to God in our emptiness and singing praise to the God who fills these earthen vessels.

We are thirsty and cry out through our throat. 

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.--Psalm 42:1


My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.--Psalm 84:2

It is the Lord who fills, refreshes and strengthens this throat.
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.--Psalm 23:1-3


 
Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him.--Psalm 62:5


Our throats sing praise to the Lord who filled us.
Praise the Lord, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

Praise the Lord, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s--Psalm 103:1-5



Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord, my soul.
I will praise the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.--Psalm 146:1-2


 
My heart, O God, is steadfast; I will sing and make music with all my soul.--Psalm 108:1

 
What I find most interesting about the use of the word ‘soul’ in the Old Testament is how consistently it is used in the context of weakness and frailty. The soul is in anguish. It is downtrodden and thirsty. It is weary and sorrowful. That is the state of our souls apart from the God who fills us. The sorry and weak nature of our souls is the reason we cry out to God in our emptiness. All praise be to the God who hears those cries and fills us, but he doesn’t just fill us to the brim. He fills us to the point of overflowing and it is out of the abundance of God’s grace that our cries of anguish turn into cries of praise.

Bless the Lord
O my throat
And all that is within me
Bless his holy name