Without A Horse in the Race--November 4, 2021

Without a Horse in the Race--November 4, 2021

"For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come." [Hebrews 13:14]

In my entire lifetime, my hometown pro football team has never been in the Super Bowl.  Now, you might think that I would never care to watch the Super Bowl because my own team wasn't in the game. But in actuality, the opposite happened.  I have learned how to watch the annual championship game just for the sake of wanting to watch good football being played well (and hopefully some funny commercials, too).  I don't watch with bitterness, hoping that the opposing team will make bad mistakes or have their star player get injured. I don't have to wish for bad calls from the referees to benefit my favored team.  And I don't have to get so swept up in mindless support of my team that I'll overlook it if they cheat to win.  And you know what?  I actually end up enjoying the game better when I don't have a "home team" I'm obligated to cheer for.  I can simply be glad when the best athletes do their best job and play a good game.

There really is a certain surprising freedom to not having a home team you have to take sides with.  It frees you to see truthfully when a bad call is made, or when either or both teams do something shady or suspicious.  It also frees you to applaud no matter who plays well, because you don't have to be intentionally biased to see everything "your" team does as good while you see everything the "bad guys" do as wrong. It gives you a longer view of perspective, too--you know that you're going to have to live your life long after the fourth quarter ends and the trophy is handed out; you are free to look beyond the last whistle to the people around you who you'll still be interacting with after everyone has cleared the field.  And maybe above all, it frees you from being a jerk when the person on one side of you is rooting for a different team than the person on the other. 

That piece of perspective there is key: when you can look into the future far enough to see that you will need to get along with people who rooted for each team, it has a way of putting the game itself into perspective.  It is not worth being a petty or mean-spirited fan for your team, ridiculing the other team and their fans, because there will soon enough come a point where even the Big Game itself will no longer matter, and all that will remain is how you have treated the other people watching the Super Bowl at the party or the sports bar.  And when you have that kind of perspective--that the way you treat the actual people in the room with you who are watching the game with you is a lot more important than which team moved the ball into the end zone more than the other--you discover you are free even while the game is being played.  When you aren't entangled in a partiality over things that won't last, you can be focused on the things--and people!--that really do matter, the ones that will still be a part of your life after the Gatorade has been poured on the winning coach's head.

I think the writer of Hebrews sees the Christian life in similar terms: we aren't meant to give our allegiances or loyalty to temporary institutions, identities, parties, agendas, or nations. We are meant to keep our view toward something that will outlast every empire's rise and fall, every nation's span of history, and every party's moment in power.  We are meant to keep our focus on what will last, and how we have regarded and loved people from every vantage point, every social location, every hometown, and every perspective.  We are meant to keep our focus on the New City of God, which frees us from bitter and childish fussing over the places we come from here.  And when you have pledged your allegiance to the Reign of God, the flags and anthems of the world's bickering countries and parties just lose their luster.  You come to realize that giving your love and loyalty to one piece of geography over another sets you up to focus on what is temporary rather than the Really Real in God's new creation.  And we need to be prepared for the Really Real eventuality that God's new creation will include people of "every tribe and nation, of ever folk and tongue," as the writer of Revelation puts it.  

That means if I succumb to the thinking of "My country, right or wrong," or "Me and My Group First!" or "Whatever my party/partisan group does is OK if it helps them get ahead, but not if the other side does it!" I've gone horribly astray.  It's like focusing on who wins the Super Bowl and ruining every friendship with the folks in the room who are cheering for different teams because you are so obsessed with the winner of the moment.  If I can't see beyond the short-term victory of the moment to recognize the people I will have to share the future with, it's a terrible shame.  The writer of Hebrews is calling us then not to give our allegiances to any city, state, nation, or empire when we are meant to be citizens of God's New City and the new creation that comes with it.

In the first century, that meant seeing yourself no longer as a Roman or a Greek or a Parthian or a Visigoth or a Samaritan or a Judean, or at least that you didn't let that become an "us" versus "them" kind of identity.  It meant that the Jewish Christians were called no longer to look down on the Gentile Christians, or vice versa, because they were all bound up in their new identity in Christ.  It meant that people in Corinth didn't get to say, "Why should we care about the troubles they're having in Jerusalem, and why should we be expected to give some of our resources to help feed them?" because they understood they all belonged to God's New City rather than being beholden to the old boundaries and borders.

Like the lyrics of the Switchfoot song put it, "I pledge allegiance to a country without borders, without politicians, watching for my sky to get torn apart..." We are called to look for God's new creation, where the imaginary lines we draw on maps have been erased once and for all, and where I look out for the interests of others who are different from me simply because they exist, rather than for how it helps me or benefits my group or nation.  We can be free, even now, to be people who say, "I don't have a horse in this race," when it comes to the petty gamesmanship of one group versus another, one party versus another, one country versus another.  In the new creation, we'll have to get used to having neighbors whose outlook, politics, culture, language, and skin color are different from our own.  The writer of Hebrews simply wants Christians to be ahead of the curve and to live with love for all of those people now.

What if we were free to face this day without making everything into a contest for "my side" to win, but rather sought for justice to be done, even when that doesn't immediately benefit me or my group? What if we sought mercy, not just for people who are "like me," but for everybody, because we dare to believe that everybody is beloved of God?  What if we walked humbly everywhere we went, rather than gloating over the people who are feeling a loss today or thinking that God is only on the side of those who are chalking up wins right now? 

I'll tell you what it would feel like--it would feel like freedom: the freedom of not having to selectively see only the good of your "side" and only the bad of "the other side." It would feel like the freedom to love in every direction. We can be the ones who seek justice and practice love for all, because we can be the ones without a horse in the race.

Lord God, let us give our hearts and allegiances to you, so that we may love all now, and in your new creation.