Let
Us Pray
Recently,
I read an article from Rick Reilly, lead columnist for Sports Illustrated, that
sheds light on a growing trend in our culture. Being a big sports fan, it caught my
attention. If that’s true for you, I’m
sure you’ll appreciate it as well.
“ANOTHER
EASTER Sunday in the Cathedral. Hushed voices,
amen’s, people holding hands and praying. At the end, all of them rising as one and screaming,
“My Lord, it’s a miracle!” Church? No. Augusta
National. It was Phil Mickelson’s win at
the Masters.
Sports
has nearly swallowed Sunday whole. Every
pro sport plays on Sunday. The big
day in pro golf and tennis is Sunday.
College football started playing bowl games on Sunday. Here’s March Madness: 10 NCAA Tournament Games were played on
Sunday. Now more and more youth sports
teams are playing on Sunday, when the fields are easier to get and parents are
available to drive.
It’s
that kind of stuff that has really torqued off Pope John Paul II lately. In March he decried the fact that Sundays are
losing the “fundamental meaning” to “such things as entertainment and sports.” It’s not as if he’s anti-jock. The Pope was a goalkeeper, skier, and kayaker
in his day. Hey, he just blessed New
England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s right arm. He’s just hacked at the way sports are
crowding God right off the list of Sunday passions.
The
first people he might want to crack down on are the Christians themselves. Think he knows that the Santa Clarita
(California) YMCA has youth hoops on Sundays?
Think the Pope would be down on Notre Dame if he knew its softball team
will play more games on Sundays in May, than on any other day of the week?
He’s
not the only one who’s chapped about sports becoming this country’s main
religion. Priests and pastors across
the country have noticed something lately:
God is competing more and more with Sunday sports—and losing, especially
with youth sports. “It’s only happened
the last two years,” says Rich Cizik of the National Association of
Evangelicals. “Coaches never used to
schedule games on Sunday.” Says the
Reverend Julie Yarborough, of Summit, N.J. Christ Church, “You see kids coming
to Sunday school late and their parents coming early to get them for games-if
they come at all. Sports are really
eating into our time.” Her colleague at
Christ Church, the Reverend Charles Rush, knew there was a problem the other
day when his 12-year-old acolyte lit the candles at the front of the church
wearing his soccer cleats.
I’ll
tell you exactly what’s going on here:
the upping of American youth sports.
For some reason over caffeinated parents feel they have to keep
up with the Joneses. They used
to do it with their cars, now they do it with their kids. Upping means putting little Justin into not
one soccer league, but three; not one soccer camp, but four. Upping also means playing up, forcing a kid
to play one even two levels above his age-group, so that little Benjamin, age
eight, can sit on the 10-year-old’s bench, play three minutes a game and whiff
in his only at bat. But, hey, he is
playing up! And upping means moving
up. The local team isn’t
high-profile, so little Amber has to switch to an elite team, usually in
another town. That means extended drives
to and from practice plus traveling three or four or six hours to play in Tony
Invitational Tournaments on weekends. This way parents from far-flung towns can
flaunt the status symbol of spending beautiful warm weekends in a freezing ice rink
watching 14 mind numbing hockey games.
“I
admit, we’re guilty from time to time,” John Burrill, head of the Massachusetts
Youth Soccer Association, says of playing on Sundays. “We don’t feel particularly good about it,
but with today’s busy schedules Sunday is the only time some of us have to do
these things. And if you’re going to
travel two states away, it doesn’t make sense to not play Sunday, too.”
Well,
religion bosses have decided that they’re not going to take it anymore. Spiritual leaders in Summit got together
recently and appealed for sports leagues to stop scheduling games before noon
on Sunday. A meeting between them and
area youth coaches is set for May. We’ll
see who kneels first. Don’t bet on
coaches doing the right thing. If they
could, they’d have your kids running stairs on Christmas morning. What has to happen is… the parents have to
start saying no. Not to their kids – to
their kids’ coaches. “I told my boys
coach he wouldn’t be playing on Sundays,” says Cizik, “He looked shocked. I said, ‘You act like nobody’s ever said that
to you before.’ And he said, ‘Honestly,
they haven’t.’”
I’m
with the holy men. Not that I’m the
Reverend Lovejoy, but I just feel sorry for these kids who get nothing but organized sports
crammed down their gullets 24/7.
Even God took a day off. Kids might weep with joy to get a day off from
sports. Hey, you do what you want. Just remember, “When little Shaniqua has two
free throws to win or lose a game on some Sunday morning, good luck finding
somebody who’ll answer your prayers.”
Terry Risser
Consider reading the Word today:
Copyright 2014 – Terry Risser
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