Watching Penn State play Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl

There are nearly nine hundred college football teams in the US (apparently no one knows the precise number) spread across five divisions. California has the most (fifty-six); Vermont has the fewest (three).

The highest level is NCAA Division 1 FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision), of which there are 128 teams. Of these, four made it to this year’s playoff semifinals. I watched two of them compete last night’s Orange Bowl as Penn State played Notre Dame.

As I watched the game, I thought about all the subjects that could be occupying my thoughts, from the terrible wildfires in California to the funeral of Jimmy Carter to the presidential transition and all it entails. I did not attend either of these universities and have never visited either campus. To my knowledge, I do not know personally a single person who teaches, studies, or works at them.

But I’m trying to learn from the theologian and novelist Frederick Buechner to attend to  “the remarkable ordinary.” In his book of the same title, he points to the depth of meaning available to us in the events of our daily lives if we are willing to put a “frame” around them and see them in “a way we would never have seen [them] under the normal circumstances of living.”

So, as the game continues, what “remarkable” meaning can I discover in the “ordinary” before me?

Uniforms with no names

I find it interesting that Penn State’s uniforms do not include the players’ names. Nor do their helmets display the team’s logo. Their team colors are dark blue and white. I cannot imagine a more anodyne or monochrome design. 

I presume this is by design. The individuals are anonymous and thus part of the whole. Nothing they wear distracts from what they do. They embody the trite but true aphorism that there is no “i” in team.

Notre Dame’s players, by contrast, wear bright gold helmets. I understand these are in reference to the Golden Dome atop the campus’s Main Building. But like Penn State, they have no logos to distract from their purpose.

Interestingly, they are like Penn State in that, during the regular season, their uniforms do not display the players’ names, signifying that they are parts of a larger whole. But the university does put names on jerseys in postseason bowl or playoff games. I’m not sure what to make of this.

Players who never touch the ball

This anonymity seems to me to be especially appropriate for college football teams. In every other sport I can think of, every player on the team is in regular contact with the ball. They have different roles, from pitching vs. hitting in baseball to playing center or guard in basketball, and so on. But they all do relatively the same things from their various positions on the field.

In football, four of the offensive players (the guards and tackles) will likely never touch the ball during the game. None on defense will handle it unless they recover a fumble or make an interception. The players range from massive (offensive linemen) to thin and lithe (cornerbacks). Someone new to the game would never guess that these very disparate players all play the same sport for the same team.

In professional football, many players are celebrities known off the field as well as on it. The least prominent can make millions of dollars across their careers. Not so for most college players, only a small number of whom will ever make it to the NFL.

And so, the athletes I am watching compete are part of a much larger whole whose mission transcends their individual roles and performances. They are competing for their schools, an affiliation that they will carry with them as alumni for the rest of their lives.

Their team’s success is their personal success. That’s a lesson all team sports are intended to teach, a principle that far transcends the contest I am watching tonight.

“You are the body of Christ”

The obvious biblical referent to this reflection is Paul’s metaphor: “You are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27). The apostle then lists various offices and gifts within the church (v. 28), noting that each does what others do not (vv. 29–30).

Like a physical body with hands and feet, eyes and ears, the church is a unity composed of a diversity. Only when the parts cooperate with each other does the body succeed.

Here’s the problem: our culture’s existential individualism and materialistic consumerism condition us to make this spiritual body a means to our personal ends. We go to church to “get something out of it.” We pray so that God will meet our needs and give money in hopes that he will bless us with a return greater than our investment.

Two problems result.

One is that such a church can never be what it is intended to be and needs to be in our broken world. Consumers don’t make good disciples or ministers. Sacrificial service is an unlikely result of transactional consumerism.

Jesus came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10) and commissioned us to do the same (Matthew 28:18–20). Accordingly, he intends the church to measure success less by what its members receive on Sunday than by what they give to others on Monday.

The other is that engaging God as a product to be consumed or a service to be purchased ignores his true identity as the King of the universe and Lord of all of life. A marriage in which spouses treat each other as employees rather than as lovers and life partners is less a marriage than a business arrangement. A faith in which God is a means to our ends is a transactional religion rather than a transformational relationship.

The blunt truth is that God cannot honor anyone or anything above himself lest he commit idolatry. He calls us to seek his glory rather than our own (1 Corinthians 10:31), not because he is an egotist but because he knows that we live our best lives when we are rightly related to our Creator and Father.

“The highest form of worship”

So, I’m going to take a page from Penn State and Notre Dame by removing my “name” from my “jersey” and my “logo” from my “helmet.” I’m going to ask of everything I say and do, “How will this glorify God and serve others well?”

I’m going to remember J. I. Packer’s dictum that it is impossible at the same time to convince you that I am a great preacher and that Jesus is a great Savior. In writing this article, I’m going to measure success by the degree to which I sought to serve you rather than to impress you. And I’m going to do the same with the next article I write and the next day I live.

Billy Graham observed,

“The highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service. The greatest form of praise is the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless.”

What “form of worship” will you offer your Lord today?