Culture Week - Part 4: March Madness

I love sports. I watch a wide variety of sports, but there are two that I really like: NASCAR and college basketball. I will rarely watch an NBA game. It cannot hold my interest. But a college game, now that is a different story. That being said, this month is March. March is college basketball heaven. It is four weekends of basketball ending up with one legitimately crowned champion. You can argue whether they were the best team or not, but you cannot argue that they are the champion. It is such a spectacle that culturally we have coined a special name for it. We call it March Madness.

This year has had its share of madness in the tourney. I hope there is one less tomorrow. I have been a fan of Duke Basketball literally my entire life. I jokingly say that my father laid me in front of the black and white television when I was born in 1954 and said, “You see that team in the dark blue. They are the ones you are to pull for.” If he did that it worked.

It is important that I mention that I have been a Duke fan a long time. The reason is that their success in recent years has a lot of fans on the band wagon. I was on the wagon, faithfully so, in times like the early 1970s when they were really bad.

It is interesting now to hear fans not only support their team, but also cheer for the team that it playing against Duke. The idea is that folks do not like the team that is on top. It does not matter how they got there, it is that they are on top. Fans get on board for the underdog quite easily. Duke is no underdog.

This year, the Easter season is as early as it can come. It is in March. Since I am in church work (see Personal Profile) that means it is an extremely busy season. This year I am calling it my own special version of March Madness. My church will have seven worship services in seven days. That is a lot of message prep for me. To make it worse, I do not get to choose the topic! It starts with Palm Sunday and ends on Easter Sunday. It is a season where everyone knows what you will speak on and would not be very pleased if you chose something else.

Easter is a season where we really celebrate the underdog. Now I agree it does appear that Jesus should never be called a true underdog, after all, being God does bring certain advantages. But let’s not forget that Jesus was also human. That means that when the religious leaders of the day attacked him, he was the underdog. When Jesus conquered death, He lived out conquering the odds.

This year Easter is indeed March Madness. In human terms, Easter morning is all about the victory of the underdog. It is about life conquering death. Talk about coming through in the clutch.