March Madness

 Easter is a tough holiday to preach, because it is like no other in the Christian year. We understand Christmas. We get babies, refugees, and bloodthirsty tyrants. We get Epiphany, when even people from foreign lands recognize Jesus as the savior. But Easter? We have no touchstone with resurrection! My Easter sermon this year compares Easter to -- of all things -- the yearly basketball tournament that is nicknamed "March Madness." Before that tournament begins, many of us try to pick the winners. Who would have thought that a nobody rabbi from Galilee would defeat the might of the Roman empire and the religious establishment of the Pharisees? You can read my sermon to find out more about the comparison, and why I think that it is spot on!

It’s time again for March Madness. For those of you who may not care about sports, March Madness is the yearly NCAA Division I college basketball tournament. Every year in mid-March, the best 68 teams in college basketball are chosen, and then they set off to decide who will be this year’s best team. Let me explain very briefly how that works. Each team is paired up with another one. If you lose, you’re out. If you win, you go on to the next round. Finally, there are only two teams left, and they contend for the championship. March Madness is 67 basketball games played over a time period of about three weeks. If you don’t care for basketball, you can watch Netflix movies; but if you DO like college basketball, it’s the highlight of the sports year! And the very best part isn’t even watching the games: it’s filling out your bracket. The bracket, for those of you who don’t know, is the match-up between teams, all 68 of them. Filling your bracket is deciding who will win each of the 67 games before anyone has even begun to play. You decide who will win, and who will be eliminated; and you do that for every single game, including the national championship game. You then get points for each winning team that you picked correctly. Countless brackets are completed prior to the beginning of the tournament! This year, on ESPN alone, over 15 million brackets were submitted. Worried that you don’t know who to choose? Then you can watch experts discuss “bracketology” right up to the first game of the tournament! If your bracket does well, you celebrate; and if you don’t do well, you console yourself by saying, “Just wait until next year!”

Why is March Madness so popular? Why do people fill out brackets like their life depended on it? Why, because we like to pick winners, of course; and we all think that we can predict who is going to win and who is going to lose. It sounds easy enough. After all, each team in the tournament is ranked as to their probability of winning. The #1 ranked teams have a greater chance of winning than the #16 ranked teams; so why not just pick all the #1 teams? Well, because a high ranking doesn’t guarantee a win! A team from a small, unrecognized school might just play knock off one of the big guys! That happened a couple of years ago when tiny University of Maryland Baltimore Campus upended the mighty University of Virginia in the first round of the tournament. Picking a winner isn’t as obvious as going with a team that has a big budget and a lot of recognition. Winners come out of nowhere and defy our expectations.

The original March Madness began over 2,000 years ago in Israel; and it had nothing to do with basketball. It was an unlikely conflict between the Roman Empire, the Jewish Pharisees, the Jerusalem Temple priests, and an unknown rabbi from Galilee named Jesus of Nazareth. The Roman Empire held all the cards. They had a standing army of trained soldiers, control of the money, and a thirst to keep it that way. The Jewish Pharisees had quite a bit of power, too. They controlled the religious behavior of the people in Israel, and together with the Temple priests, they kept the Roman Empire happy by keeping the people quiet. Jesus of Nazareth had no power at all. At least, he had no political power. He had no soldiers, no money, and no desire to sit on an earthly throne. He was a threat, though, because people liked him; and why not? He didn’t demand their money by taxing them or threaten them with punishment if they didn’t behave in a certain way. Instead, he loved them – all of them – and he didn’t even ignore poor people. As a matter of fact, he told the poor that God loved them most of all. He healed anyone who asked, and he taught that love was the most important force in the universe. When too many people started to like this rabbi Jesus because of all the good things that he did, the Romans, the Pharisees, and the Temple priests decided that he needed to be silenced.

Jesus began the competition when he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Game on! Jesus versus the Romans, the Pharisees, and the priests. Who would win in YOUR bracket? Surely it would be the Romans. They were ranked #1 in all the areas that counted! They had the best generals, the most fighting men, the biggest bankroll. They were also bloodthirsty, not above using poison, beheading, or crucifixion to take out their enemies. If the Romans chose to sit out the first game, then surely the Temple priests would come out on top. They controlled worship in the Temple through the sacrifices that the people believed were necessary to please God. If you control the Temple, you control God’s favor. That should have been a slam-dunk. In the first match-up, though, Jesus came out on top. He stormed into the Temple courts and cleaned them out. He got rid of all the moneychangers and the vendors who were selling sacrificial animals at a huge mark-up, and he invited all the people in. He said that the Temple was God’s house, not a flea market, and that everyone should be able to worship there. Jesus 1, Temple priests 0.

That’s when the Pharisees decided that they had better join forces with the Romans. The Romans were already suspicious of this Jesus who had caused a demonstration by riding into Jerusalem at the very same time that Pontius Pilate did. Oh, Jesus rode a donkey, and his followers were ordinary nobodies; but it was a direct challenge to the authority of Rome. When the Pharisees came to them to ask for their help, they decided that it would be smart to comply. Now the game has changed: it’s Jesus versus Rome AND the Pharisees. Jesus was bound to lose that round. And it certainly looked as though he had. You all know what happened. Jesus was arrested on a Thursday night, tried on a trumped-up charge by the high court of the Pharisees, convicted by Pontius Pilate on Friday, and crucified on a Roman cross. Tournament over, with the Pharisees and Rome coming out on top.

But… the Pharisees weren’t so sure that their victory was certain. They sealed the stone that closed Jesus’ tomb, and asked the Romans to post a guard just in case the disciples tried any funny business. Funny business was the last thing on the minds of the disciples. They were in hiding, mourning Jesus’ death and afraid for their own lives. No, the disciples didn’t do anything. But God did. Early on Easter morning, God – who is, after all, the ultimate referee – declared that the game was over and that Jesus had won! The great stone covering the tomb, the seal on that stone, the Roman guards at the tomb, and even death itself didn’t make a bit of difference! God’s own angel rolled away the stone from the mouth of the tomb and announced to the startled women that Jesus had been raised from the dead. And sure enough, Jesus himself met them in what could only be described as a victory celebration!

That original March Madness is still going on. In fact, it has expanded considerably! It now begins on Ash Wednesday, as we face the fact that we are all in a conflict with death. “From dust we came,” we affirm, “and to dust we will return.” And then, over a span of forty days, we examine our lives and recognize all the conflicts that we fight with death’s agents. We contend with greed, with illness, with suffering, with violence, with hatred, and with despair. We train for the day when we will gain the victory! Of course, we’re not playing basketball. Our March Madness is the madness claiming that humility is stronger that hatred; that violence is doomed to failure; and that love will ultimately prevail. Many people say that our faith IS madness! What sane person would believe that love is stronger than hatred, that crucifixion would lead to life, or that death is not the end? Long ago, St. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth: “The message of the cross is foolishness – madness – to those who are perishing; but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God.” (I Corinthians 1:18) On Easter morning, the stone is rolled away, and Rome, the Pharisees, the Temple priests, and even Death realize that they have lost the game. A rabbi from Galilee has come out of nowhere and won the game for all of us! He has upset all the powers that thought they were invincible! What can we do but adore the God whose power is love and whose trophy is new life? On this Easter day, as we strive to understand the resurrection – as some of us even struggle to believe it – let us praise the God whose power is in humility, and whose victory is in love! Thanks be to God that the end of our March Madness is a victory celebration, not on a basketball court, but at an empty tomb!