They Were Like Giants

When I was a kid the Green Bay Packers came to Sandy’s (a local fast food restaurant, the home of the plaid beret.) It wasn’t exactly all of the Green Bay Packers, it was Boyd Dowler (wide receiver) and Fuzzy Thurston (guard) but that was enough for me. They were like giants.

Most people came a lot more prepared than I did. There were people with footballs and jerseys and autograph books all waiting in line for signatures from these two sports idols. All I had was what I was wearing so I asked them if they would sign my shirt and they did; felt tip pen on polo.

After Boyd Dowler and Fuzzy Thurston left the area (you can bet that I wasn’t going to leave while they were hanging around) I ran all the way home, took off my shirt, had my Mom help me frame it and hung it up above my bed. It was there for years. This was one of those Kodak moments that I thought would never change. After all, I had some of it in writing, but what I ended up learning was that nothing in this life is forever.

Some years ago I saw Fuzzy Thurston interviewed on TV. Of course, this was forty years later; he’d had some kind of throat surgery at some point in the intervening years and spoke with a prosthetic device. He looked old. He wasn’t a giant anymore.

I don’t exactly remember when my Mom threw out my shirt. I think it was the same time she got rid of my comic books. They obviously didn’t mean as much to her and they did to me and so they ended up in a landfill somewhere.

I think that this is why when Jesus talks about life that is beyond this life he speaks to an emptiness in our souls that we are always trying to fill up with special moments and special people. I know that the critics of the faith (and even some who work within the faith) will say that we Christians made up a messiah specifically because we recognize that our lives are momentary. This theological approach makes our “faith” a fable on par with Little Red Riding Hood. When we are afraid that it isn’t working for us anymore we just change it.

I come at this from a different place. Jesus changed my life when I was feeling lost and alone. There was a transformational moment when I surrendered my pain to this living God and I have never been the same. So, I prefer to believe (what I think the Bible claims) that God saw the emptiness in our lives and came to give us hope that isn’t dependent on how much money we make or on how many awards we’ve been given. We don’t need “things” to make us special. God declares it so.

What I have always wanted people to understand is that this faith we proclaim is more than just an intellectual proposition and more than just a series of Kodak Christmases. This Jesus (the one we give ourselves to) is more than simply an emotional foxhole to hide in when real life wars around us. Jesus is our reality, the world we try so desperately to shape around us is the dream.

In a little more than a week the most current version of the Green Bay Packers will play in another Super Bowl and we will have another crop of heroes. There will be souvenirs and signatures hanging in little kid’s rooms all over the country but we need to remember that this will be simply one more moment in time and soon this too will be gone and when it does, Jesus will still remain.