Pastor Lee
October 16, 2021
Football and Faith
During my ninth-grade year in high school I played football for the Ruffin High Patriots. We began the season not knowing if we were going to continue the tradition of a perfect record, which had been achieved, or maybe I should say underachieved, by losing every single game of the season. As best as I can recollect, it seems that when our season began it had been three years, maybe longer, since we had won a football game. Well, our team of twenty players did not break the tradition that year. Most of our games were lost by at least forty to fifty points. Our best game we played was one in which our school was paid by Bennettsville High School to play against them. This was before there ever was a Marlboro County High School. Bennettsville was a large 3A high school and it appeared they had at least fifty players or more on their football team. We, however, came from a small 1A high school. As we were warming up and stretching before the game, a couple of Bennettsville students walked by and asked where the rest of our team was. A friend and I lied to them. (Yes, I know what some of you are thinking, “I can’t believe the preacher lied.”) We told them that we had left the rest of the team back home because they were not needed for us to beat them. I don’t know why we lied (and talked trash) except that what we told them was less embarrassing than the truth, that we only had twenty players on the team. As it turns out, it was our best game of the season as we only lost by eighteen points that night. In fact, just before halftime, it was tied up, zero to zero, and our principal, Mr. Leonard, was so excited that he promised to take the whole team out to eat if we could keep Bennettsville from scoring before halftime. Well, they scored a touchdown just before the half.
Most of us like to hear and tell or retell stories. I once had a man in the church I was serving who didn’t mind hearing stories. However, he didn’t believe that sports stories should be used in preaching and teaching within the church. No, he wasn’t against sports. His reason was that he believed that sports were not comparable to the Christian faith. Sports are about effort, skill, or execution. Being a Christian doesn’t mean we give no effort in utilizing the skills and gifts God has blessed us with, and it certainly doesn’t mean we sit around doing noth-ing. In Luke 17:6, Jesus said, “If you have the faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” In other words, Jesus is saying that all we need is just enough faith to make a difference in the way we live in relation to God so that we actively participate in the life of the church. For most of us we will probably never be a stalwart of faith, never reach the point when we never doubt and struggle. In fact, because of our insecurity we may even lie to ourselves just as I lied about not needing the rest of our team, which didn’t even exist. Yes, we can convince ourselves at times that we don’t need God because we think we can succeed at life without Him, or at least get by without Him. However, Jesus tells us in John 14:6, that “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Yes, we need Him and just enough faith, so that we understand that we need Him and each other.
Pastor Lee
