Reading Francis

“Really, you should throw free t-shirts into the crowd for 40 minutes, and only stop for  brief interludes of basketball.” — Al

My first “real” job was as the director of media relations for the Atlanta Glory of the startup (and short-lived) American Basketball League, which showcased many of the world’s finest professional women’s basketball players immediately after the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. If I recall correctly, two-thirds of the dominant US Olympic team played in the league, as did a host of other players who were former All-American college players and accomplished professionals overseas. Our team featured four-time Olympian Teresa Edwards and former NCAA player of the year Saudia Roundtree in the backcourt, both former stars at the nearby University of Georgia.

Though the news of another league’s launch, the WNBA, overshadowed our debut, we were taken seriously by the media outlets who covered women’s sports, as well as by the fans who knew the game. That meant, as the media relations person, I had the opportunity to work with two reporters at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; one covered women’s basketball nationally, while the other, Al, was assigned to cover the Glory’s home games.

Al was a nice enough guy and a decent writer. He wasn’t a women’s basketball afficianado, and he frankly preferred his assignments covering SEC football, where the press feasted on Outback Steakhouse Bloomin’ Onions instead of the cookies from Kroger that my wife arranged on plastic trays. But he covered the team like a pro and saved his snarky comments, like the one above, for our conversations.

Al’s suggestion stemmed from the fact that, while our games were highly competitive showcases of world class talent, they lacked the glitz and glamor of major league sports. We played in smaller college gyms, to crowds that counted scores of diehard women’s hoops fans, surrounded on our best days by hundreds of other people who had found their way in the door in search of a little family friendly fun. The loudest of the fans were the kids, which is always the case in settings that don’t serve alcohol, and for the most part, we learned, pre-teens cared much less about a well-executed pick-and-roll than they did the opportunity to get a free t-shirt.

So, yeah, when our game ops crew went out on the court during timeouts to fling free t-shirts into the crowd, the noise level rose exponentially in ways that the play never could replicate, no matter how quick Saudia was on a fast break or how majestic Teresa Edwards’ three-pointer arced. If they had to choose between more basketball or more free t-shirts, the majority of the crowd would have agreed with Al.

This Sunday of Lent, the readings at most masses included the Ten Commandments from Exodus and Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple from John. I’ve written on that Gospel before, but what struck me this week was a new connection between the two readings. Someone once noted that nobody is 100% sure why Jesus throws the moneychangers out of the Temple, since what they were doing, selling animals for people to sacrifice, was necessary if people were going to be able to fulfill their requirements under Jewish Law. Most scholars believe that the problem Jesus had was the way the merchants charged exorbitant prices, leveraging their monopoly to extort the poor. Others suggest that the merchants had spread their footprint into the part of the Temple reserved for worship and that Jesus objected to the intrusion of commercial trade into the sphere of worship. Pope Francis noted that the marketplace tends to make us pay attention to ourselves, as buyers and sellers, while the Temple makes us pay attention to God.

I think there’s a way to read what Jesus did in the Temple as a Biblical manifestation of the Glory’s problem (I want to call it “the Al problem,” but, really, he was just observing the facts, albeit sarcastically). Maybe Jesus’ objection was that people had gotten their priorities reversed, and there was more focus on the trade show outside the Temple than the God who was inside it. Perhaps part of the message is that even things that are good and necessary can still get in our way when they take priority over their Creator in our focus.

That’s what the First Commandment is all about. We don’t do a lot of actual little-g god worshipping as a society, but we can focus on a lot of different things to the exclusion of big-G God. It’s a good examination of conscience, especially during Lent, to look at our lives and identify where we’re letting the t-shirts overshadow the game, and ask for help in reestablishing first things as truly first.