Faith and Football

In a national poll conducted last week, the following question was asked.  “Do you believe that any of Tim Tebow’s success can be attributed to Divine intervention?”  Tim Tebow, for those of you who don’t follow football and who missed Rabbi Jonathan’s sermon a few weeks ago, is the quarterback of the Denver Broncos who is known for his public displays of religious devotion, known as “Tebowing,” and for his unlikely winning streak.  In response to the poll (which was conducted before the Patriots crushed the Broncos last weekend), 43 % answered “yes,” while 42 % said “no” and 14 % expressed no opinion or, as I suspect, answered, “Why are you asking me this question?”  43 % of Americans believe that God had a hand in Tim Tebow’s team winning their football games.

Although I am a professional person of faith, and as much as I appreciate how important football is to some people, including some of my favorite people, I have a confession to make: I am not among the 43 % who see God’s hand in the outcome of the games on any given Sunday.  I don’t think God works that way.  I don’t think God helps teams win games or students pass tests or drivers find the perfect parking spot on a crowded street.  It seems to me that to believe in a God who does those things is to trivialize God and God’s role in the world.

I suspect that many of you agree with me.  For those who believe in God but have trouble conceiving of a force in the world that cannot be measured by science or proven by logic, it is reasonable to conclude that God exists, but is not directly involved in the world.  The Deists of the 17th and 18th centuries, for instance, believed that a “Supreme Architect” created the world, but since then has not interfered with the laws of nature or of human beings.  There are also those like Rabbi Harold Kushner, who cannot accept the idea that a loving, omnipotent God can allow so much human suffering, and so argue that “[God] is limited in what He can do by laws of nature and by the evolution of human nature and human moral freedom.”  Kushner explains, “I no longer hold God responsible for illnesses, accidents, and natural disasters, because I realize that I gain little and I lose so much when I blame God for those things.  I can worship a God who hates suffering but cannot eliminate it, more easily than I can worship a God who chooses to make children suffer and die, for whatever exalted reason.”  It seems that on both rational and moral grounds, we must reject the notion that God is an active agent in determining what happens to us and to our world.

The problem is that if we limit our definitions of God too much by confining our concept of God to the bounds of logic or human comprehension, God becomes less relevant and less real.  The Christian thinker M. Graham Standish explains that then, “God becomes an abstract notion, not a presence whom we can experience, form a relationship with, and love…. [We] don't know what to do with God.”   A notion of God as an abstract idea may be the most rational, but it isn’t enough.  How do you have a meaningful relationship with an idea?

Both Jewish tradition and personal experience tell me that God does in fact play an active role in the world.  This week’s parashah, Va’era, contains the beginning of the 10 plagues in Egypt, one of the prime examples of God intervening in history.  Even without believing that this story happened exactly the way it is told, it is clear that the overarching truth, the concept of y’tziat mitzrayim, the exodus from Egypt, is fundamental to our identity as Jews.  Without God’s acting in the world, there is no exodus, no revelation at Mount Sinai, and no Judaism.  The whole concept of the covenant between the Jewish People and God is meaningless unless you believe in a God who has the power to affect us and our world.

In addition, I myself have felt the real presence of God.  These experiences are, of course, almost impossible to describe, but throughout my life, there have been moments when I have known that God was with me.  They have been times of deep gratitude and joy and also moments of pain and loneliness.  I can’t predict when these encounters will happen or explain why they occur.  But when they do, I feel God’s love and care for me as surely as I feel the love and care of those dearest to me.

I’m not sure what these encounters say about God’s role in my life.  If I know that God cares about me, then should I attribute all of my good fortune to God?  Is God keeping me healthy?  Did God get me the job here at Beth Am?  And if I believe the answer is yes, does that mean I also have to accept that God is responsible for all the bad things that happen as well?  I admit that I’m not sure.  But even if God is not acting directly in our lives, God does act upon our lives.  My experience of God’s loving presence makes me the person I am and motivates me to act in the world in certain ways, hopefully with more compassion, more justice, more love.  And it isn’t some abstract notion of God that has such an effect on me; only a real encounter, as Martin Buber would say, an I-Thou moment, between me and a present, living God, could have the power to transform me.

A person’s faith or experience of God cannot be willed into being; we are not all wired to be Tim Tebows.  But belonging to a religious community should help each of us deepen our spiritual lives and increase our awareness of the sacred.  As individuals, our choice to participate in the life of this congregation should mean that we are open to encounters with the Divine, even if we’re not sure what we believe about God, and open to exploring what effect those encounters might have on our lives.  As a community, we can be the kind of place that feeds the intellect as well as the soul, to become the Jewish equivalent of what Standish calls a “blessed [congregation].”  “In blessed [congregations],” he writes, “people not only expect to experience God; they do experience God. Their expectations open the door to God, who stands knocking. They expect to hear the Creator's voice guiding the [congregation] to what it is called to be and do.”  Or in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, God is “in search of man,” and we need only allow ourselves to be found. 

This weekend, I won’t be expecting any divine intervention in the football games (although if God wanted to make an exception, I’m sure many of us here would appreciate a 49ers win).  But that doesn’t mean that God is absent.  In the wilderness or the stadium or the synagogue or our house, God might just be revealed to us, if we are able and willing to see it.  And then, like our ancestor Jacob, we shall say, “Surely the Eternal is present in this place and I, I did not know it.”