Just
a few more playoff games to be played as the clock ticks toward the start of
Super Bowl LIII in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. This marks the end of a
season spreading out from the heat and humidity of the summer to the snow
flurries of February. It is the culmination for football teams of intense
physical training, intricate game strategies, impassioned competition, innumerable
injuries, and impressive offensive and defensive plans. These combine with
miracle plays and finishes, some would characterize as luck or fate. The end
result of the season is two teams facing one another to play one final game
where winner takes all and walks away with the bragging rights that last until
the next Super Bowl.
What will happen in a season is unknown as
it begins. Football experts prognosticate what they expect will happen by
season’s end, but at most they are giving their best opinion based upon
information they have at the time. In football, like many other sports, there
are variables unknown as a season begins. Injuries are always a wild card in
the outcome of a season. The Philadelphia Eagles could attest to this in 2017
when they were plagued by injuries that benched many of their key players and
finally their quarterback, Carson Wentz. The sportscasters predicted that the
Eagles were done. They were out of the hunt for the Super Bowl. But football
history reveals a different outcome.
Doug Peterson, head coach of the Eagles,
writes in his book, Fearless, how the team felt after Wentz’s injury.
“When I walked into the team meeting on Tuesday [after Wentz’s injury], I could
feel the room was down. The team was defeated, as if a family member had just
passed away… I had a special message. They had to understand something and
remember it: ‘One man can make a difference, but a team can make a miracle.’”
Peterson indicated that his oldest son, Drew, saw those words on the background
of a family photo in the basement of their home. The family never noticed it
before. In the midst of the disappointment a son saw words his Dad needed to
hear; words a coach believed a team needed to embrace. Peterson indicated that
those words became the theme for the team the rest of the season. When Nick
Foles stepped into the role of lead quarterback, he was playing with a group of
men who embraced the belief that “a team can make a miracle.” The outcome was the
team becoming Super Bowl LII champions.
Our culture is infected with such
individualistic attitudes that many have forgotten the necessity of operating
as team – a unit. On one occasion a basketball team paid lots of money for
superstars but they were not winning many games. A sportscaster wondered what
was wrong. Another sportscaster suggested that they had lots of star players
but no team.
The sports arena is not the only place
where this malady of individualism exists. In politics we see political parties
not unifying to find solutions to national dilemmas. Instead they try to score
victories for their individual parties. The result is political gridlock and
national disgust as citizenry chafe under such ineptitude. In our culture we
see people vying for individual rights and wants with little regard for the
overall impact of such actions upon society in general. Even in the mundane
functions of life i.e. how one drives a car, we see individualism rule over the
wellbeing of others. Impatience controls driving decisions as one perceives
another’s driving hindering their individual desire of getting home a few
minutes sooner. Thus a person is passed unsafely, enhancing the potential for
an accident.
One place where individualism is most disappointingly
apparent is in the operation of churches. This divine institution is described
in the Bible with unifying terms like a body, a building, an army, a family,
and other such pictures. Christ prayed for the disciples before he was
crucified that, “They may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in
you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have
sent me…” (John 17:21-23). The emphasis of Christ was oneness, unity, a team of
brothers and sisters united in love, functioning in unity, and moving toward a
common purpose of glorifying God. Individualism promotes division as personal
desires rule. What a violation of the biblical mandate, “Do nothing out of
selfish ambition or empty pride, but in humility consider others more important
than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also
to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4). How different churches might
be – fewer wars and divisions, more humility and mutual appreciation for
another’s need, value, and contribution.
If it is true that “a team makes a
miracle,” then we need less emphasis upon our individual wants and desires and
more upon our contribution that may enable our culture to successfully address
the challenges of our age. We certainly could use a miracle!
