For several years a member of the congregation we were serving signed up to serve as lay reader or liturgist on the Sunday of the Super Bowl. He liked to exercise his sense of humor when serving and tried to have some joke that would provoke a response from the congregation. He asked me to help him make some statement about the teams playing in the Super Bowl and I wrote some scripts for him to read about how the names of the teams might have been interpreted in biblical times. In my scripts I was careful not to predict a particular outcome or to make it appear that God was somehow favoring one team over the other. They were written tongue-in-cheek and the congregation enjoyed the bit enough to encourage repeats for several years.

I’ve never been much of a sports fan, however. I pay attention to major sports events because I want to bring a bit of intelligence to conversations with the people I serve and sports are important to many of those people. Long before the years when I wrote scripts for Super Bowl Sunday, there was a time when some of the playoff games were held on Sunday Mornings. On one of those mornings, I used a radio to check the score of a playoff game just before the opening of worship. A while later, during the announcements in worship, I told the congregation the score of the game. A member of the congregation corrected me stating that one of the teams had just scored a touchdown and the lead had changed hands compared to the score I had noted. It got a laugh out of the congregation and reminded me of how serious some spots fans can be. The only way he could have known the updated information was if he had been listening to the game through a headphone during the worship service.

Chances are pretty good that there are a lot of things going through the minds of congregational members of which the pastor is unaware.

Those years are now passed. The gentleman who enjoyed reading Super Bowl scripts is a bit older than I and probably doesn’t sign up to be a lay reader any more. I am not the pastor of a congregation and no one is asking me to prepare scripts of any kind. It is a bit of relief for me because I think I would be hard pressed to come up with biblical references to this week’s game. It takes a bit of twisting to find the word chief in the Bible. Some English translations do use the word when translating κεφαλή (kephalé), which is more commonly translated head, ruler, or lord. There may be something that could be used to refer to the Kansas City team. Because of the use of alphabetic letters to represent numbers in Biblical Hebrew, the number 49 usually appears as “7 times 7,” and there are numerous references to that number that could be interpreted as either “perfection” or as the end of time. There are quite a few references to multiples of 7 in the Book of Revelation.

I suppose I could come up with something were I pressed.

In our congregation, however, this Sunday is the day of the Annual Meeting of the congregation and that meeting could be challenging because of projected income shortfalls and a proposal for large budget cuts which, for the second year in a row, call for reductions in church staff. I suspect that ardent sports fans in the congregation are likely to simply wish that the meeting doesn’t go too long so that they can get to planned game day activities. They are probably glad that the site of this year’s big game is Las Vegas, which is in the same time zone as our congregation meaning that the game will air later in the day than would be the case if the venue were in other time zones. We’re three hours behind Eastern Standard Time. Generally however, game organizers are sensitive to the various time zones. Kickoff this year will be at 3:30 pm, meaning the game will conclude before it is too late in Eastern time.

Over the years, I’ve probably paid almost as much attention to the advertising on the Super Bowl as I have to the game itself. At a cost of $7 million to air a single advertisement during the game, companies who view the advertisements as a good investment usually are willing to spend a significant amount on the production of their ads. They get a significant amount of extra visibility from purchasing ad time during the game. It has become popular for the ads to be released in advance of the game and media pundits often comment on the ads before and after the game.

I don’t watch television and I haven’t paid much attention to the game, but at least I know the names of the teams and I also know that one of the ads is causing quite a bit of controversy. An attempt to make a joke about nut allergies appears to have fallen short in one ad. Food allergies can be serious and life-threatening. People die from anaphylaxis, the sudden and severe reaction to food, medicine or insect stings. As one who witnessed a severe reaction to a medicine in a loved one, I am in no mood to think that jokes about such reactions are funny. I’m pretty sure that those who are allergic to peanuts and their loved ones aren’t going to want to do business with a company that makes fun of their situation. The joke includes a stereotypical portrayal of a food allergy and words that are displayed at the bottom of the screen make the allergy sufferer to be stupid and not know that peanut butter contains peanuts.

On the other hand, the controversy over the ad that has already arisen is likely to increase the visibility of the company that has shelled out big bucks to place the ad. Plenty of critics will bring attention to the ad and the company that paid for it.

I can’t help but think that the amount of money paid to air the ad would be sufficient to endow all of our congregation’s staff positions in perpetuity. If we had just a portion of that amount, we wouldn’t be facing tough decisions. Then again, we’ve no interest in promoting any of the companies who have purchased ads for the game this year.