The Road to Glory, Paved in the Everyday

If you’re a sports fan, the stretch from mid-February to mid-March is pretty rough. By now, the Super Bowl is a semi-distant memory. The NBA All-Star weekend festivities are over. This week marks the beginning of Spring Training for many pitchers and catchers, but actual MLB games don’t get underway until April. The next closest excitement is March Madness, which is still four weeks off.

At the same time, it’s not as if nothing is going on in the sports world. The NBA season marches on, with the playoffs looming about two months out. Hockey and soccer season are plugging away, but they don’t draw the crowds of football or basketball (in America at least).

Our manner of ascribing glory always falls short. Because of that, we are prone to seek ultimately glory in the wrong place or person and spend our time praising lesser gods.It feels like a dead spot, perhaps because many fans are like me; we really follow sports only when the games carry more weight. Because football season involves once-a-week match-ups for only 12-16 weeks, almost all of the games really matter. Teams routinely miss the playoffs by being only a game or two behind, a much rarer occurrence in baseball or basketball.

Because of that, I find my attention waning, at least until playoff season comes around. August and September are key baseball months. With basketball, the NBA will spark my interest in about six weeks, and the NCAA barely exists for me until March Madness.

On the one hand, this probably diminishes my die-hard fan status outside of football. Since I tend to be more of a sports atheist in baseball and basketball, this is probably a fair assessment. Yet, I don’t think I’m the only one who follows sports in this way. In fact, I think most casual fans tend to fall into this rhythm, with interest increasing in proportion to the outcome’s importance. The reason I think this happens is because of something JR Vassar calls “glory hunger” in his recent book of the same title.

Glory hunger is a phrase that explains how we all are hardwired to seek after glory in one form or another and also praise what we find glorious and impressive in others. In Glory Hunger, Vassar points out that “Giving glory is a natural human response to witnessing greatness, which is why our world is infatuated with celebrities. We are addicted to greatness. And when we see it, we ascribe worth and value to it.”

This “addiction to greatness” primes our attention for moments, like playoffs and championships, when it is most likely to emerge. The regular season will have its moments, but greatness emerges in the postseason. As a recent example, Tom Brady has now inched closer to immortality according to Sports Illustrated by leading his team to four Super Bowl wins. His closest rival, Peyton Manning has only one and is often referred to as “the greatest regular season quarterback” to acknowledge his postseason shortcomings.

Similarly, Lebron James was haunted by a lack of success in the finals for the first seven seasons he was in the NBA. This prompted the infamous Decision and a four year trip to South Beach in order to secure the championships and glory he couldn’t make happen in Cleveland. Now, a big part of his return to Cleveland this year centered on the promise of bringing the glory with him to his hometown.

You may or may not remember this Nike commercial from back in the fall.

Like most commercials, it has little to do with the actual product promoted and more about connecting that product with an abstract ideal, in this case glory. Cleveland is a glory-starved city, and now thanks to an off-season decision that worked in their favor, Lebron is back in town and just as hungry for achieving greatness.

The Nike commercial not only taps into this, but shows how powerful a shared hope for glory can be. Set against the black and white scenes and ethereal background music, the religious overtones of the ad seem rather blatant. You almost can’t help but root for Lebron to bring the title to the town of Cleveland (unless you’re a diehard Bulls fan of course).

All of this illustrates Vassar’s point that “[e]very glory-hunger pain we have for approval, acceptance, or achievement betrays a greater pain that exists in all of us.” We were originally created both to image glory and to ascribe it to the most glorious Being in the universe.

Because of the fall and the curse laid on humanity, we now often fail to do either. And when we do, our manner of ascribing glory always falls short. Because of that, we are prone to ultimately seek glory in the wrong place or person and spend our time praising lesser gods.

Our sudden obsession with sports when the stakes are high ultimately illustrates the glory hunger resident in us all. By following games that are “weightier” we are recognizing their potential for glory (a word that itself means “weighty,” at least in Hebrew). We want to see games played that really matter, and we want to see greatness emerge as these star athletes aim for a title.

In a cosmic sense, none of these individual games really matter, but in the contingent, yet meaningful world of sports, championships mean everything. When there is a stretch of the year when no one is really playing for glory, it’s hard to really get excited about the games unless you’re an uncompromising fan. But, even in that case, you’re probably hoping your favorite team is on the road to glory and you want to be there every step of the way.

As a contingent yet meaningful creature, you are joining together with other contingent, yet meaningful creatures in enjoying a good gift from the triune God. Sports are among the things of the earth, that in their proper perspective are free to be enjoyed and savored. This enjoyment is amplified in community, and when viewed as a journey toward glory, points us to an ultimate journey toward glory where we will find true satisfaction.

By recognizing our drive to pursue glory in community during the mundane parts of the sports season, we can recognize our need for something greater. As Vassar points out, “Our glory hunger can be a gift to lead us to the only one who can satiate it. Jesus is the end of our glory hunger. He restores to us the glory that Adam lost for us.”

This time of year in the sports calendar imperfectly imitates the liturgical Christian calendar that is moving toward Easter through the season of Lent. Not everyone celebrates it, but everyone comes around when the glory of Easter is celebrated. We can’t stay away from glory, and even in our sports calendar, we try to journey toward it a little bit everyday.