The Eubarist: Super lol Punday

Today's the day! It's the biggest day in American sports. It might be the biggest day in America.There are a lot of sassy comments I could make about how sports have replaced religion in this country. Instead, I would like to recount a conversation that I had with a foreigner while we were at a Red Sox game.

My grad school Christian fellowship went to the Red Sox for a game last year. One of our members is from the Ukraine. He is an evangelical Christian, an intellectual, and a total foreigner. During a break in the game, some American soldiers came out on the field to sing God Bless America. After this, my friend turned over to me and said "Ryan... we are in Church." I thought I knew where he was going but I had never taken it this far. "We have heard hymns" he said, referring to the national anthem and the singing of other patriotic songs. "There is the priest, who directs the service" he said pointing to the umpire. "And there are all of the Gods" he said broadly gesturing to all of the players. "There is even an organ." This last one killed me.

Stadiums so often have organs. Dang it! I was actually getting a little defensive. I was like "Yea, we love sports in America but it's not like Church." The organ was a knockout though. It is crazy how similar professional sporting events are to Church. Later on, we started to do the wave and I realized that we were all standing and sitting, standing and sitting, like good Catholics. It just got creepier and creepier as the game went on and I got sucked in to the accuracy of his critique. I soon realized that a "fan" is short for "fanatic" as in a zealous follower of a religious sect. Hot dogs and beer are a strange communion meal. Just as bread and wine represent Christ, certain foods have come to represent America. It got out of hand when I started theologizing the "sacrifice" bunt as some kind of imitation of Christ on the cross.

Reflecting on this, I am now starting to think that professional sports are not so much a new religion as they are a pun on religion. The great French philosopher Henri Bergson observed that a pun is when "two different sets of ideas are expressed, and we are confronted with only one series of words." In this case, sports use many of the same actions, words, and attitudes as religion, but express a different set of ideas. This is ok as long as we remember which one is the pun. We must also remember that puns are funny and cannot be taken completely seriously. We love sports enough to show our love in the same ways we show that we love God. Cool. Just remember which is which.