NFL: Not For Long

Last night was the last Super Bowl, the last football game I will ever watch.  Football is the first cousin once removed from gun violence.  If you don't agree, think on this:  at least seven NFL players have killed themselves using a handgun:  Jeff Alm, Andre Waters, Dave Duerson, Ray Easterling, Junior Seau, Kurt Crain, OJ Murdock, and Jovan Belcher.  Most, if not all of them, have been posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease which can cause severe headaches and lead to depression, dementia, even symptoms similar to Alzheimer's.  Even if a player has had few concussions, they still can develop this disease from repeated knocks to the head.  From violence done to their bodies in the name of sport and entertainment.

My church sponsored three Super Bowl parties:  junior and senior high youth groups and the adult fellowship group.  I was at the adult gathering.  Many of us bemoaned the outrageous cost of advertising, commenting on how many people could be fed, housed, treated for cancer, receive organ transplants.  These are good people.  I have worked and sweated, studied and struggled, laughed and cried with these folks, many times in the service of others.  And yet we could not talk about the connection between what we were watching and cheering and yelling about and the gun violence in our nation.

Many folks in our congregation are still suffering with and trying to move through the trauma of the Sandy Hook shooting.  One daughter of a family sings in the Sandy Hook Elementary School chorus that performed last night.  Her mother said the kids were treated like royalty, and so they should be.  And yet it was at an event that glorifies violence into entertainment, like the gladiators of the Roman empire.

 


Shoulder pads, chest protection, helmets, a stadium, and roaring crowds.  Money, lots of it.  And the accompanying sex trade.  We are an empire on its way down.  When a tragedy occurs or we cry out against an injustice, we peel back layers of our society and we don't like what we find.  Hence, we try to fix the disturbing problem but we only go so far.  Not nearly far enough, like the Affordable Care Act, getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan but keeping Gitmo open, the upcoming compromises I'm sure we'll see with gun control.  Make your own list. 

I wish I had had the good sense to stay home and watch Downton Abbey, one of its broad themes being the passing of the old world of money, power, and influence and the birth of a new world of equality, justice, and compassion.  What we have been experiencing for about a century are the death throes of the domination system - patriarchy, power, hegemony, empire, competition, the rich few over the multitudinous working class and the poor.  What is being born is a system based on partnership, interdependence, cooperation, enough for everyone, we can only do this together.  And like any birth, transition can be the most difficult, painful phase.

I realize this perspective is not popular.  But as one of the deacons reminded us yesterday in his opening prayer, God calls us to be unusual, inconvenient, unpredictable, and unpopular, often going against the crowd, in order that God's kingdom would be made visible, justice be done and peace made.