Playoffs, Drama, and Jesus

by Ben Howard

I’m going to say something really controversial. I mean this will be more controversial than anything I’ve said about any topic since I started writing this blog. Prepare yourself.

I think playoffs are stupid.

*watches a beer bottle flash by his head and crash against the wall*

Yeah, I know, pretty shocking. That’s the kind of thing you might hear on an ESPN show that was being needlessly provocative, but unlike Stephen A. Smith, I actually believe it.

You tell which of these options sounds like a more reasonable way of determining a champion. A team plays each other team in the league, once at home and once away, at the end of the season the team with the best record wins the league.

Or, a team plays 162 games a season, most of them against teams in the same division, the rest against teams in the same league, except for 12 scattered around to random teams in a different league. Then the best teams, provided they win their division, or win a wildcard spot which includes another one off game, play in a 4 week tournament in which they have to win 11 games in order to be champion.

Pure simplicity and reason points towards option one, European club soccer, over option two, Major League Baseball.

So why do playoffs persist? Why are sports fans adamant about adding playoffs to college football? Why is the college basketball tournament a billion dollar enterprise?

I have a theory.

Playoffs exist for the same reason that romantic comedies and action movies exist. We don’t just want champions, we don’t just want heroes, we want dramatic champions and dramatic heroes. We want champions who go the very brink of defeat only to stare defeat in the face and laugh at it.

We thrive on the drama that shapes the event even if its manufactured.

Since the church is made up of people, it operates the same way. Conversion stories are dramatic, being raised in the church is boring. Soaring emotional ballads where we tell Jesus we love him are dramatic, hymns are old and boring.

In manufacturing the drama we miss the point that while there are certainly ecstatic highs and lows in life, they are not the thing that defines our existence. Beauty and peace and contentment are things we find in the everyday, not in the so-called “mountain top experience.”

We are not a people in search of a faith and a tradition that provides us with thrills, but instead a faith that shapes us into humans the way we were created to be human.

We focus so often on the drama of Christ, the violence of the crucifixion the crescendo of the resurrection, that I wonder if we miss the deeply profound simplicity of Jesus as human. The Word made flesh who dwelt among us.

There is nothing wrong with the soaring heights of a dramatic story, but it does not define the story. The story is the whole, not just the ending. Jesus is the entirety of his life, the incarnation, the teaching, the parables, the prophecies, the love, the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension. None of those is a microcosm of the story, they all work together.

The story of the church is the same. It is every bit and every piece. Not just the big moments, but the little ones and the average ones as well. Every bit is part of the story, not just the memorable parts.

A season makes a champion, not just a game.

Peace,

Ben

When he isn’t railing against the implications of playoffs and drama, Ben likes to watch playoffs and drama. I mean, seriously, its exhilarating. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87 or email him at benjamin.howard87 [at] gmail.com.

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