“TEACHING OLD DOGS NEW TRICKS”

(A Super Bowl Sermon)

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, February 7, 2010

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

I imagine some of you may want to run me out on a rail by the time I’m half way through this sermon. I implore you to wait until the end.

I have never been much of a sports fan, of any kind, for most of my life. Perhaps it began in third grade when my teacher, Mr. Baer, arranged to coach an after-school football game. Even before this event I’m about to describe happened, I knew – in fact everyone in school knew – that Mr. Baer was the meanest man ever to walk the halls of that elementary school. I was not one of his favorites, but I thought I’d give the football thing a try. Here’s the good news: in the first game, I caught the ball and ran, and no one tackled me before I crossed the goal. Here’s the bad news: I ran the wrong way and crossed the goal line behind me.

From the sidelines, I could hear the nasty laugh of Mr. Baer. After which, he spared no opportunity to ridicule me in front of my classmates.

I don’t know if that experience scarred me for life, but I do know that from that day forward, I never developed an passion for sports. Though I’m literate enough to understand the games and know most of the basic rules, I doubt I have ever voluntarily watched a game on TV unless it was to be sociable to those in the room who were interested in watching. I confess, though, that I can get excited about watching the last five minutes of a close game. It’s the two hours leading up to that five minutes that sometimes loses my interest.

Another memory from my high school years is when there was all this excitement about the upcoming high school basketball tournament. The first round, of course, was the sectionals. My high school had a lousy basketball team, and we were picked to play in the first game against one of the best teams in the state. Everyone knew we would lose.

If they sold tickets to individual games, I would have gone. But I discovered that the only option was to buy a “sectional” tournament ticket, and pay for seven or eight games in the tournament. I decided not to go. Why spend all that money when you know your team would be out the first game. So I didn’t go.

The good news: we lost the first game, and I was vindicated. And the bad news: I was class president that year and had to face threats of impeachment because I chose not to attend and show school spirit. That was probably the end of my political career anyway.

My college experiences oddly reinforced my indifference toward sports. As a freshman, I did attend one basketball game. The passions were high. The voices were loud. I could hear both the cheers and the jeers all around me. At one point, when a referee made a call that did not please the home team, someone behind me called out, “Kill the ref.” Kill the ref.!” It wasn’t right at that moment, but not much longer into the game, the referee collapsed into unconsciousness on the floor and had to be taken out in an ambulance. I never attended another college basketball game.

My first round of graduate school was at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Many years after graduating, I came to learn that Georgetown had a stunning reputation as basketball champs. In my two years there, the thought of basketball never crossed my mind.

And then my second round of graduate school was at the University of Chicago. The school is somewhat famous for its lack of interest in collegiate sports. In the 1930s or so, the school’s most renowned president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, eliminated the school’s football team. He had the curious notion that the school was about education, and the intercollegiate sports teams were a distraction. I once had a T-shirt that said something like this:

“University of Chicago. College conference football champs,” and then it listed the years: 1896, 1902, 1916, 1922.” And then it stopped. Nothing after that.

The school is somewhat curiously proud of itself in this regard – in much the same way other schools are proud of their teams. When I first received the school catalogue, it told the story of eliminating intercollegiate sports, and then it quoted President Hutchins as saying, “Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until the urge goes away.”

In my early years as a minister, I competed with another minister for the status of being the least enlightened about sports events. We had a bet each year to see who could go the longest without knowing what teams are playing in the World Series. As my son grew older – about seven or eight – I would inevitably lose the bet because he was all about sports. My colleague had two daughters who at that time were under the age of five. It’s not that I’m afraid of competition, but the sides need to be even, after all.

I don’t want to leave the impression that I am anti-sports --- not at all. In my younger years I loved pick-up games in the neighborhood: basketball, football, and so forth. At Georgetown, I regularly played handball and for a short while tennis with friends. I have no animosity toward sports, but I never could quite grasp the concept of team loyalty. I’m confused about the arbitrariness of who is on what team.

In any given professional sport, how many of the players were actually from the state or city they represent? Hardly any, I would say. Peyton Manning – who, trust me, I have absolutely nothing critical to say about, and have only admiration – but Peyton Manning, as I understand it, grew up in New Orleans! Wouldn’t it make sense that the citizens of New Orleans would be cheering him on rather than one of their team members who grew up in, say, Brooklyn? If the Saints’ star player were from Indianapolis, why wouldn’t we be cheering him on? I have had a hard time grasping that idea of team loyalty over the years.

In high school the team loyalty thing makes some sense. After all, each player must be a student at that school. But after that, where the person is from is irrelevant. In college, especially big ten schools, players are determined according to who offers them the best deal, not who nurtured them as children, and not even which school the player would choose for an education.

By the way, I do believe in Karma. Nothing in life is immune from consequences. My payback for feeling as I have about sports is that my son, as I mentioned earlier, has been a sports jock from day one. From the moment he first wore the uniform of his kindergarten-age T-ball team, he was hooked. From T-ball to softball to baseball, on soccer teams and basketball teams – I attended all the games. And, I confess, I loved it. I wouldn’t have loved it, though, without knowing someone on the team.

Anyway, his deepest passion has been snow skiing. He first learned to ski at age seven or so, and from then on, every week I would take him and a couple of friends up the mountain near Portland, Oregon for skiing. He and his friends quickly surpassed my mediocre skills, and left me behind in the powder.

And watching him play soccer was nothing compared with standing out in the snow on a mountain for hours and watching him for about three seconds as he swept by me in a flash in race competitions. Today, he’s what you might call semi-pro, I suppose. He still lives in Portland, but in the last month he has competed in ski races in Switzerland, Up-state New York, and Canada and Tahoe. Why am I telling you all this? That’s easy. I don’t get enough opportunities to brag about him.

When I married Nancy almost 14 years ago, Karma hit again. She has five children, two of whom are” jocks” – one that was on the winning high school wrestling team, and another who played football, wrestling, and track in high school. Again I attended all the events, and again, I had a great time.

But that’s my Karma.

In 1993, when I was considering moving to Indiana and serve as minister of All Souls, I would tell people that hey, I’m a Hoosier, and I know the culture, and I’ll feel at home. “So what,” I said, “if Hoosiers tend to be sports fanatics. All I need to do is learn how to say, ‘How ‘bout them Pacers!’ or ‘How ‘bout them Colts!’ and no one would be the wiser.”

So I came here to Indiana and over the last nearly two decades, something happened. I’ve started to get it! It took beating me over the head with everything from television to billboards and people I admire and love, but I think now I get it! I finally get it!

It’s only a game! And games are distracting and fun. They can be entertaining, like going to a movie. Under the right circumstances, they can also be exciting. But more than that, they bring us together in a way nothing else seems to be able to do.

I first saw it clearly three years ago when the Colts went to that Super Bowl, but it’s taken that much time for me to finally get it. I love the way this team and this game bring common cause to the citizens of this town. I love the way it inspires enthusiasm and pride across the board. This is a time when all races, all classes, all religions, rich and poor, young and old, can unite in the spirit of pride.

I think I finally get it! I love seeing all the blue shirts and jerseys, the “Go Colts” signs everywhere, and the shared spirit of plain delight in being from Indianapolis. I love the smiles, I love the sense of anticipation. I love the shared good feeling.

So what if none of the players comes from Indianapolis? That, I now see, is not the point. The point is to discover the spirit of solidarity and camaraderie and have everyone feel that sense of unity. The point is to have fun, and share that fun with your friends and neighbors.

There is an old aphorism that says, “You can’t teach an old dog a new trick!” I’m not so sure. This old dog standing before you has learned a new trick. I have all the makings of becoming a sports fan! Can you teach an old dog a new trick? Just watch!

[I take off my robe to reveal a Colts T-shirt]

My answer is “yes.” And hey! How ‘bout them Colts?

I need to remind you as well as myself that this is a sermon, not a pep rally. And everything I’ve talked about so far leads me toward a real, honest sermon-like message.

There is something revitalizing about being an old dog who has learned a new trick. On the topic of sports, my attitude has not wavered since that fated football game in third grade. I defined my view of sports within narrow boundaries, and wouldn’t consider changing those boundaries. I had my prejudices and stereotypes, and could go to great lengths to justify how I thought and felt about organized sports – and probably other prejudices as well.

But as the anticipation has grown toward this game, as the city feels excitement like electricity running from this person to that person, as we celebrate that Indianapolis is enjoying the fruits of a widespread reputation as winners, there is something absolutely liberating in learning to think differently than before, and overcome so many deep-seeded preconceptions that I have carried. It feels good for an old dog to learn new tricks.

This is something I recommend highly. All of us carry prejudices about life that have grown from some long-forgotten experience, like a third-grade football game. There is something liberating about first, identifying, and then second, letting go of those prejudices.

There’s an exercise that is used in one of Nancy’s R.E. curricula, but can also be fun for adults as a kind of ice-breaker at a gathering of people. It’s called “I used to think.” All of us had, as children, ideas that we later discovered to be mistaken. A common one is when children thought that all the music on radios was performed live by the band in that studio. Or that parents have eyes in the back of their heads. Or that Mother Nature is God’s wife. I hear that in more recent generations, children sometimes believe that very long ago, in the 1950s for example, the whole word was in black and white instead of color – after all, every picture and movie and TV show from that time proves it!

“I used to think” is a universal phenomenon, but it doesn’t always end when childhood ends. Racial prejudices begin, but don’t end, with childhood’s ideas. So are prejudices again certain nationalities, or sexual orientations. Many of these things are ideas that need to be “unlearned.” They are just as wrong as thinking the world was once flat.

But my point today isn’t necessarily as profound as something like prejudice against people. I’m just talking about finding a new way to look at things we always took for granted; a different way of experiencing and appreciating the world and the people around us.

I hope I don’t come across as offering some kind of apology or making some kind of confession. I don’t think my preconceptions about professional sports have been ethically questionable. Certainly they are not at all dangerous or sinister. They were more just a matter of taste, and I know others who feel the same way. But for me at least, I’ll admit that these views may have limited my potential for enjoying life.

It is wonderful to hear someone say something like, “I never expected to enjoy books by ‘so-and-so,’ but I’m on my third one and I can’t put it down.” Or, “I always wondered how people could enjoy opera, but that performance I saw last night was exciting.”

This is a call for a conscious, intentional new look at life – not in any major, life-changing way, but more in some minor, life-expanding way. When an old dog learns a new trick, it makes them feel a little bit younger and be a little more understanding toward other dogs. I recommend it.

So I may just gather together my own football team and we’ll call ourselves the “old dogs.” When I do, I can cheer the dogs on. Until then, though, it’s an enthusiastic

“Go Colts!”

READING

From America: Religion and Religions

By Catherine Albanese

There are many ways in which the sports of modern America are like deliberate religious rituals. Both mark out a separate area for their activities – a “playground” or sacred space. . . Both are examples of dramatic actions in which people take on assigned roles, often wearing special symbolic clothing to distinguish them from non-participants. . . In sports and deliberate religious rituals, the goal of the activity is the activity. While there may be good results from the game or rite, there is a reason implicit in the action for performing it. Play or ritual is satisfying for its own sake, for each is an activity in which people may engage because of the pleasure it gives in itself. . . .

If the ball field is a miniature rehearsal for the game of life, it tells us that life is a struggle between contesting forces in which there is a winning and a losing side. It tells us, too, that success depends on teamwork in which members of the winning side conquer the opposing team by pulling together. And in this contest to the end, competition becomes a value in itself and generates a set of accompanying virtues that identify a good team player. Loyalty, fair play, and being a “good sport” in losing are all examples of these virtues. So, too, are self-denial and hard work to achieve the winning play.

We may note that the division into two teams who battle each other in the game resembles the dualistic scheme of the final millennial battle. Like that ultimate war, in the game it is clear that there is a team that is good (our side) and another that is bad (the opposing team). Coaches urge the members of their team to pour all their efforts into winning – as if this were the last game they would play on earth. Each team, in its own understanding, is on the side of righteousness, and so each team stands on its innocence. Preparatory exercises in self-denial and self-purification by team members – diet, calisthenics, sleep requirements – are evidence. To underscore the point, many players, when they are in the midst of a winning streak, indulge in various private rituals to insure that the winning will continue.

Within the field with its opposing teams, competition becomes the ethic of success. Life is a game of winners and losers, and only those who compete are the brave and the true. Rigorously prepared for the fight by their previous exercises in self-denial, those who compete to the end should win the day – or at the very least lose with the grace and dignity demanded by the code (of ethics).