I have commented in a previous post on Tim Tebow’s noteworthy decision, in the middle of last season, to display biblical verses on the field of black paint under his eyes. I was struck, at the time, by his decision to begin changing the verse each week. Throughout most of the 2008 season, the verse was always the same: Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” If this seems a bit theologically brazen, then so be it.
Tebow changed the verse, to the more familiar John 3:16, for the 2008 title game and since then he has selected a new verse for each contest. These verses began receiving attention from commentators by mid-season, prompting brief, and sometimes unintentionally comic, Bible readings to go along with game analysis and game summaries. I puzzled at the time over why I was troubled by this practice since, in fairness, it seems an entirely proper way for this deeply committed evangelical Christian to get people to read, and to discuss, portions of the Bible each week. In short, if this represents Tebow’s attempt to marry his professional practice to his Christian practice, then what is wrong with that?
My answer at the time had something to do with an all-too-common Protestant predisposition: taking one verse out of context, and then citing it as a proof-text for whatever point one wishes to make. There’s still something to that, but my broader concern—less with Tebow’s own practice, and more with the way it is represented by modern media—came into sharper focus last Friday night.
The University of Florida trounced the University of Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl, by a score of 51-24. Tebow’s biblical choice was an interesting one, selected for this, his final appearance in a “Gator” uniform. It was Ephesians 2:8-10:
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his work, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
This was an intriguing scriptural choice, in many ways.
For starters, it lacks the boastfulness of last seasons’s standard: “I can do all things.” No one can do all things, as the Florida team discovered to its great dismay in the last regular season game when they were trounced by the currently number one ranked University of Alabama’s “Crimson Tide.” No one can do all things, and certainly faith in God does not guarantee victory, neither in battle nor on the gridiron. That is as central aspect of the Christian story—embodied in a “suffering servant” and a crucified Christ—as any. It bears recalling that Paul was apparently in prison when he composed this letter to his fellow Christians at Ephesus.
To that degree, the verse may be read as a deeply personal reminder by a clearly reflective and thoughtful young man. What we do is not our own doing, so there is no reason to boast about it. We are created as works in progress, and we are designed to progress in our work.
In fact, the word Paul uses to describe humanity here is poiema, a Greek word that connotes both a poem, as well as anything else that has been made through creativity and executed with craft. “We are God’s poems,” Paul says, beings who have been crafted with care, like a crystal clear and memorable line of poetry, or a flawlessly executed game-plan. This passage is a plea for spiritual creativity and this-worldly maturity, all at once. Really quite fitting, for a graduating college senior.
But what was striking on Friday night—especially given Tebow’s nearly flawless performance, and his deserved recognition as the game’s MVP—was the compete lack of commentary on this verse. It seemed almost as if this aspect of Tebow’s story, at least the charm of it, has faded.
In fact, most of the discussion while the game was still in progress, concerned whether Tim Tebow would be able to make the transition to professional football. Most expressed their doubts about that.
How can a college athlete who has been so dominant for so long not have a clear path to the NFL? Many reasons were enunciated. He has grown used to being dominant in a way that no athlete in the NFL can be (in other words, we cannot “do all things”). His passing delivery has always been slow to develop and easy to read, so defenders will find him easy to disarm and to intercept (in other words, his passing is more prose than poetry). And so on.
I could not help but wonder if a subtle sub-text in this Friday night commentary about Tebow’s dubious potential for the future also had something to do with a suspicion of his deeply Pauline theology. Clearly, this is a man who is in the world of professional athletics, but is not of it.
That became very clear when he was handed his trophy at the end of the contest and asked to reflect on his performance and his career. He first thanked “[his] Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is the reason we all are here.” The interviewer clearly didn’t know quite what to do with a television pronouncement like that, so he simply moved things along, preferring to focus on the more predictable expressions of love and care for his teammates and his coach.
I was struck by that somewhat jarring juxtaposition: my Lord and savior… the reason we all are here.”
Is this what makes me nervous, the subtlety and ease with which a personal faith can become a faith imposed upon others by repeated invocation and media amplification? Surely Tim Tebow must know that there were many non-Christians in the stadium on Friday night, and many more watching the game on television. So what in the world did he mean by that?
He likely meant something like what Paul meant, sharing with the apostle what seems to be one of the most profound contradictions in Paul’s theological impulses.
Paul begins most of his letters by identifying himself as “an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God” (Ephesians 1:1 starts just that way). What he means in claiming this title for himself is two-fold.
First, he is an apostle, with authority equal to the followers of Jesus who actually knew the man, as Paul did not. That is why it is important for Paul to acknowledge that he is an apostle in a different way, one who is preaching to a different community.
Most of Jesus’s immediate followers and family-members talked about Jesus to their fellow Jews. Paul’s revolutionary decision was to speak about Jesus to non-Jewish “Greeks.” And to everyone’s shock, or dismay, or simple amazement, “the Greeks” seemed far more eager to hear about Jesus than most first century Jews were.
The letter, Paul says, is addressed “to the pure [often translated as “the saints,” whether in Ephesus or elsewhere] who are also faithful to Christ Jesus.”
And here’s the thing: from Paul’s perspective, that could be anybody. Since all the standard Jewish practices—like circumcision and dietary regulations and temple sacrifices—no longer mattered, in his opinion, then anybody could be a part of the movement: through faith, not through anything they did or had to do. It was all as easy as a snap of the spiritual finger, an act of the desiring will and of submitting to the community of the pure. If the old boundaries separating people had really faded away, as Paul clearly seemed to believe they had, then there were no more outsiders, precisely because the line that separated inside from outside had been erased.
Paul could never quite live true to that expansive and radical universalism. It’s an old story, this exasperating and persistent human need to keep someone out. Who wants to be in a club where membership is really open to everybody and therefore universal? Somebody needs to go to hell…
That paradox, or contradiction, or what have you, is what made it so hard to hear what Tim Tebow had in mind when he was invited to speak about his career on Friday night. Should the emphasis lay on his personal journey, and a potentially narcissistic sense of his own salvation? Or should it fall on the broad and universal appeal, his conviction that Jesus was the reason everyone is here all, whether they confessed the need for him or not? We are all verses of divine poetry, whether we see ourselves in lyrical terms or no.
It probably was neither. And in any case, a television screen after midnight does not provide the venue in which to discuss such theological niceties and nuance. Which brings me back to my original question. What is the purpose of inscribing Bible verses on one’s cheeks each week? Who is the intended audience for such a thing? One’s self, a television audience, or God?
When Mother Theresa was asked what she prayed when she prayed, she a had a startling answer: “mostly, I just listen.” It is the noisiness of the new televised religious machinery, blasting one verse at a time, that makes it very difficult to listen, very difficult to hear, and thus very difficult to think clearly about complicated questions of faith, of inclusion, and of the future.
