Postgame Interview Christianity

Psalm 40

 If you continue reading Psalm 40 to its conclusion, which I recommend you actually do if you’re looking for something Bible-y to read in the coming week, one thing you’ll discover is that the Psalm finishes with this declaration, “As for me I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought of me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God.” This got me thinking… on this business of being poor and needy versus rich and blessed, how often do we prefer to label ourselves as the ones in need rather than the ones with power, and what does that say about us?

            There is one place where this shows up again and again, and that is when athletes are interviewed after a game. Some of you have undoubtedly had the pleasure of being that person with a microphone shoved in your face thirty seconds after an emotional high, dripping in sweat, and with muscles drenched in lactic acid, so you know it is exactly in that moment that you want to explain how you are feeling. We all know there is nothing more pointless than athletes being interviewed after a sporting event.
            In that moment, has any anybody ever said anything the least bit enlightening? It’s always “I’m just glad the team won” and “I just want to thank God for this opportunity” or “We left it all on the field/court/diamond/pitch today” or “We’ll get them next time.” Real enlightening stuff. But the funny thing about this is that if an athlete answers in any non-approved way; in essence, if they say anything that doesn’t stick to this boring, repetitive, pointless script that tells us absolutely nothing original; we bring out the pitchforks and insist that they get hanged from the nearest pole. This is all very stupid, but it’s also very interesting because we insist that our heroes stick to what is often an outright lie in their faux humility. We want them to downplay their success and to lift up how good the other teams are; we want them to play the underdog card, the “nobody believed in us” card, even sometimes when the vast majority of people believed in them. We don’t want the truth; we want a narrative that makes us feel good.

            It’s the same with sports as it is with life. So I want to be clear: I don’t have a problem with the athletes who spout the same clichés. What are they supposed to say? I’m great; you suck; nanner-nanner? Of course not! The problem isn’t even with the people asking the questions, though I often wonder if they shouldn’t rethink their profession when their purpose in life is to stand next to a sweaty, amped up, oversized man or woman and go through the same dance of political correctness. No, my problem is not with any of these people, but it is with us—the audience—who expects a certain answer in a certain situation, who expects a shallow kind of humility and then assumes that’s the only kind of humility there is.

            I love, on the rare occasion, when that athlete turns the question around on the interviewer, when they say something like this: “You know, honestly, your question is setting up a false dichotomy. Why do you insist on a metanarrative of qualitative effort vis-à-vis the relative successes and failures of our athletic endeavors? Isn't it at least possible that both of us gave a great effort and I won because today I was just a little bit better, and maybe tomorrow it will be different?” I’m still waiting on somebody to say that… or for that matter to explain what it means.

            But my point is this—and here’s where I’m going to bring this back around, finally, to today’s scripture—we have certain expectations of our authors, just as we do of our athletes, and all the more when they are authors of sacred literature. The Psalmist is expected to be poor and lowly and we expect that God will guard and protect them, making them thankful, turning their weeping into joy. This is our baseline narrative that must be followed to make us feel secure, but I wonder if our expectations set us up for a fall, because this 40^th Psalm betrays a more complicated world if we look just a little closer.

Happy are those who make
   the Lord their trust,
who do not turn to the proud,
   to those who go astray after false gods. (verse 4)

Happy they are, indeed, though if we read this Psalm assuming that this happiness means the Psalmist will be blessed with a good long life and many things we may be disappointed. It seems he or she is after mercy and salvation rather than comfort and relationships and time. Is that what we’re after? 
Then there’s verse 9:  

I have told the glad news of deliverance
   in the great congregation;
see, I have not restrained my lips,
   as you know, O Lord.

            The Psalmist has told everyone about deliverance, but he or she seems to not as yet have received it. It’s like the athlete interviewed pregame. He or she can say a lot of good things about their preparation but reality may show all of that to be only words.

            If I am to take this to the next level and conflate life with a sporting event, then the game is only about winning and losing if we make it that way, and the Psalmist refuses to go there. What most people see as winning and losing is not remotely equivalent with God’s blessing. Sure, if you receive nice things it is good to see them as a blessing from God, but that doesn’t mean that those things are evidence of God’s blessing any more than another person’s addiction or poverty or disease is evidence that God does not bless them. That’s the glory-narrative that appears in sports but infiltrates many other areas of our lives. And the Psalms hate this kind of bologna; actually, the Bible hates it. Over and over a new narrative pops up in scripture; where God’s blessing results in pain and heartache and loss, and it is only through that loss that we find hope.

Verses 1 and 2:  

¹ I waited patiently for the Lord;
   he inclined to me and heard my cry.
² He drew me up from the desolate pit,
   out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
   making my steps secure.

            “Making my steps secure” is not hoisting a trophy. It’s really a pretty simple joy, and that’s mostly what a life in God looks like: simple joys. The Psalms suggest something radical about the good life, something that our world is unwilling to buy into, which is that the good life is not success—it is not winning. The good life is one with hope for a better world, and assurance that such a world is coming.

            If we look at news there is little assurance that such a world lies in the wings. For all of our progress we are still killing people because of their skin color and unwilling to look inside of ourselves to see our guilt in it. We’re still arguing about semantics and particulars of the law while our friends and neighbors cry out in pain. We’re still self-centered, narcissistic, and, as many of you remind me about my generation, smart phones really haven’t helped us with that. But even for those of us with “stupid phones” or no phones at all, being “incuravatus in se” (or “curved in on one self) as Augustine and Martin Luther called it, we are in need of a gentle reminder—no, a kick in the butt—that we are part of the problem and, on some level, we will always be, which means that our hope has to rest in something other than ourselves. It has to rest on something more than politics and progress in general, where every so-called victory is met by a dozen further defeats. We need more than postgame interview Christianity. We need a faith that points to something further ahead—that is vibrant and hope-full and alive, that admits our faults and our inadequacy, and that points beyond us.

            We need thankfulness like the Psalms do thankfulness, which is to say we need thankfulness in despair and loss, and we need humility that is honest and earnest; not mere political correctness. We need to change utterly from creatures turned in on ourselves, obsessed with our fortune and misfortune, to human beings open to the needs of the world. Then we will be honestly thankful; then we will discover real and lasting hope. Then we will be changed.