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Two Sundays ago, and I don’t want to be judgy about this, but two Sundays ago, some of you skipped Evensong to stay home and watch the Seattle Seahawks play the Los Angeles Rams.
I’m not sure who you are, because I wasn’t here, but I do know that the Holy Spirit still found a way to reach you if you watched the post game interviews.
Because after that game, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who had a performance that reminded everyone why he’s one of the most gifted wide receivers in the league, in an interview instead of talking about himself, instead of talking about stats or effort or grind, he gave thanks to God. He pointed upward. He named a power beyond himself that made what we had just witnessed into reality.
And I imagine that moment landed differently for different people. Some were inspired. Some were puzzled. Some were uncomfortable. And there even may have been some who rolled their eyes.
Because whenever athletes do that, whenever they cross themselves, or point to the sky, or give thanks to God after an amazing play or big win, we tend to ask the same questions: Does God really care who wins the game? Does that mean God was on one side and not the other?
Those are reasonable questions. But I think they may distract us from a deeper theological insight. Because what we are witnessing is not magical thinking, but mystical faith.
That is what I want to talk about today, how mystical faith sets us at the center of the Kingdom of God; how it grounds us in God’s presence so we can meet both joy and struggle with grace.
Paul, in our reading from First Corinthians this morning, helps us understand the difference between magical thinking and mystical faith.
Paul is writing to a community obsessed with power. This being the case, given Paul’s contrarian nature, we might expect a soliloquy slamming anything to do with power… weak good, strong bad.
But, instead, Paul does not reject power. He redefines it. He writes: “We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed upon us by God.”
Power, for Paul, is not domination. It is not control. It is not advantage, or victory, in the most transactional sense. Rather power is gift. Power is presence. Power is something uniquely received, and when trusted and lived out inspires awe and wonder.
That distinction matters, because it gets at the heart of what we have been talking about lately – church at the center.
To be a church at the center, I’ll remind you, is not to occupy the middle ground. It is not to soften conviction. It is not to seek compromise.
The center is not neutrality. The center is a person. The center is Jesus Christ.
The center is where what Jesus wants to have happen, happens the way Jesus wants it to happen through you and through me – together. Gentle. Vulnerable. Non-coercive. And yet bearing a power, a real power, a power that the world does not recognize. It is a power that holds together what the world seeks to pull apart. A power capable of carrying both boldness and humility, strength and gentleness, conviction and compassion – and everything in between. This is not vacillation or confusion. It is comprehensiveness and stability.
And this is where the clarity of mystical faith separates itself from magical thinking. Magical thinking says: If I do the right thing, God will make me win. Mystical faith says: There is a power at work beyond me, within me, and through me, that I trust. Magical thinking wants God on the scoreboard. Mystical faith knows God is present on the field – right here, right now.
And Jesus gives us an image to clarify.
He says, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it under a bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.”
Notice Jesus’s assumption here. The light is already lit. The power is already present.
The question is not whether God has given light. The question is what do we do with the light we already have?
Magical thinking puts the light under a basket. It hides the light behind fear. It smothers it with control. It treats it like a lever you pull to get a particular outcome, like a gumball.
Mystical faith, on the other hand, places the lamp on a stand. It lets the light be seen without trying to own it. It allows good works to be visible, not so we get credit, but so that glory passes through us and returns to God.
That’s why Jesus says, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to God in heaven.” Not for my glory. Not for your glory. Not for proof of who is right, or best, or God loves most, but simply for the glory of God.
That’s the center. And it exists wherever someone recognizes that there is a power at work beyond themselves, within themselves, through themselves – which means the center can be located anywhere, even on a football field.
Which brings me back to the Super Bowl. Every player you will see today has spent a lifetime training their body and their mind. They have disciplined themselves to move faster than thought, to react without calculation, to act instinctively.
When everything aligns: training, plan, passion, prayer, and people; what we see is power. Not magic. Power.
And when someone like Jaxon Smith-Njigba points upward after an amazing catch, they are not claiming divine favoritism in fact (whether they recognize the theology or not); rather they are refusing to claim ownership, saying: This power is real, but it is not mine to possess. That is mystical faith.
So let me ask you a question Paul might ask: What is your playing field? Where, in the ordinary patterns of your life, are you invited to express the power of God? In your work. In your parenting. In your friendships. In your hobbies. In your worship. In your prayers.
Your life is not less awe-inspiring than the life of someone on a football field today. It is simply lived out on a different field. The center travels. It follows mystical faith. It exists whenever people recognize that there is a power at work beyond them, within them, and through them.
And because that center is comprehensive it is present when we win and when we lose; when we hit our number and when we miss the mark; when we get a promotion and when we get fired. The power is always present.
Christian maturity, the kind Paul is calling the Corinthians into, is the ability to glorify God without needing the outcome to validate us.
The center is the place where we refuse the lie that life can be reduced to winners and losers. The center is the place where we trust God enough not to hide our light when things don’t go our way. The center is where love remains love remains love, no matter the outcome. The center is where we live the Jesus lifestyle from whatever life we have.
This reminds me of watching my daughter Margaret when she was a little kid on the playgrounds of Los Angeles. Running. Running. Running as fast as she could – like the wind – convinced that she was the fastest person in the world, and maybe in that moment she was. I loved that… the joy, the awe, the glory.
And then, you know the moment, she gets going too fast, and trips, and wipes out and comes up wailing with a bloody knee and tears streaming down her face.
And I’d scoop her up, hug her, and say she’d be okay. That’s comprehensiveness in the Kingdom of God: the running and the wiping out; the joy and the tears. The power at the center beyond me, within me, through me. Awe. Glory. Touchdown. All held together for a moment on my particular playing field.
That moment is the center. Not a midpoint. A place where opposites do not cancel each other, but coexist because the Kingdom of God is that big. There is no limit to the light.
That’s the power Paul is talking about. That’s the light Jesus tells us not to hide. That’s the mission of the church.
History teaches us that when the Church relocates Jesus, when the church seeks accommodation, when it bends the cross toward nation and ideology, towards cultural relevance and political power, it loses the center as it spins to the edges.
But faithfulness looks different. Faithfulness looks like steadiness. Like patience. Like love that does not need to win in order to be true. And it is this spiritual stability that Epiphany offers to an unstable world. Rootedness; endurance, presence.. Jesus.
Epiphany is a community that refuses to put a basket over the light God has given us, together. And that “together light” can even include (and I hope it does) a touchdown grab by Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
So don’t roll your eyes if he points to the skies, but wonder what playing field you are going to find yourself on where you can tap into the power of the God that is beyond us, within us, and through us as a people, as a bright light, living out the mystical faith at the center where the Kingdom of God is located.