Q: When you stay up too late watching the Lympics, what’s the next best thing to do?
A: Get up early to show support for your local college football team!
According to the Centre Daily Times, thousands of Penn State Football supporters showed up to let the team know that they are loved and appreciated. Isaac and I added ourselves to the throng, though I thought he put on a PSU tshirt…To say that it’s been an emotional storm in Happy Valley over the past 8 months would be a gross understatement. As Isaac and I walked over from the BJC parking lot, I wondered what the feel would be in the parking lot and area surrounding the football building this morning. Would it be an obnoxious, defiant, in-you-face “We Are…Penn State!” Or would it be a repentant, resilient, humbled “We Are…Penn State!”
There’s a difference.
One tries to stuff the shame and guilt (and there is much of both), that the recently uncovered brokenness of the past and put it away, not dealing with the hurt, not learning the lessons that we need to learn, not changing, not accepting responsibility, not leaning into repentance. The other acknowledges responsibility, pushes back on pride, turns away from old habits that lead to unintended results.
The Penn State University Strategic Plan for 2008-2013 is titled Success With Honor. That document lists their core values as:
Integrity
Honor
Respect
Tradition
Family
It’s one thing to list the right words in a document; it’s another altogether to live by the code created by those words, to create a culture that embodies those values. If you pause to examine those words you’ll probably agree that it’s a pretty good list. What else would you add?
Can we still cheer for the football team? I plan to. Is Success with Honor still viable? Those principle still stand, even if they were voiced by flawed people. Did something go tragically wrong in the football program that we hold in such high esteem? Undeniable. Does cheering for the football team mean that we don’t care about the victims who have recently had their stories told to the world? By no means.
One of the things that I love about Calvary is that we have chosen to be marked by the things that we are FOR rather than the things we are AGAINST. We are for justice, defending the cause of the weak, and fighting for the deliverance of the oppressed. And we are FOR our local university, its students, faculty/staff/employees. Those are not mutually exclusive.
I don’t bleed Blue and White. But I do love my town, and as Jesus works in me, the things that matter to him come to matter to me. I believe that there is a healing coming, a breakthrough in our town, a changing of the culture. We’ve been praying for a breakthrough; maybe this is what breakthrough feels like. A lot of pain, sin & brokenness being publicly revealed, victims being discovered, truth being told, the old way toppling to make way for something new, something better, something right, something healing and restorative.
That’s what I’m asking God to do here in Happy Valley. That’s why we went to the Rise & Rally this morning…
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