Thomas J Parlette
“But Not”- The New Normal”
2nd Cor. 4:5-12
6/2/24
He’s the unlikeliest of folk heroes. Khaki pants. Team jersey. A whistle dangling from his neck. A Ned Flanders mustache and a sun visor covering his receding hairline.
He is, of course, Ted Lasso, the character created by Jason Sudeikis that became a runaway hit for Apple TV during the pandemic years. Ted is an American college football coach, who goes viral for his enthusiastic dancing after he leads his team to a Division 2 championship. He is plucked from obscurity by a wealthy English divorcee, who recruits him to coach her Premier League football team – which in America, we call soccer of course. The problem is, Ted has never coached that kind of football – he knows virtually nothing about soccer. On his way over to England on the plane, Ted and his assistant coach, Beard, try to learn as much as they can about this new kind of football.
Not too surprisingly, the British sportswriters are underwhelmed by Ted and his folksy ways at his first press conference. They think Ted’s boss, Rebecca is crazy. And it turns out, she is – she is crazy like a fox. Her secret goal is to run her football franchise into the ground to punish her ex-husband, a thoroughly unlikeable man named Rupert. She recently won the team from him in their divorce settlement, and she knows how much he loves it, the pet project of his life. Rebecca doesn’t care how many millions it will cost her; she just wants to stick it to Rupert and destroy what he loves most. And how better to do it than to hire a coach who is clearly unqualified and certain to become a laughingstock as his team flounders. The bottom line is that the bitter team owner is setting Ted up to fail. He’s the sacrificial lamb she needs to take her revenge.
Much hilarity ensues, with too many heart-warming moments to mention, I won’t ruin it for you. But what’s truly surprising about the series is the character of Ted Lasso himself. He is truly likeable, despite all the ridicule he faces. He never lets it get to him. As he says to one of his players when he makes a bad play…
“What animal has the shortest memory? A goldfish. A gold fish has a memory of about 10 seconds. Be a goldfish.” In other words, forget about those mistakes and move on. Live in the now.
An unflappable optimist, Ted never seems to notice how the odds are stacked against him. Instead, he remains a decent human being, reliably doing the right thing, while flashing his trademark ear-to-ear grin. As he says to Rebecca’s ex-husband during a game of darts – “Be curious, not judgmental.”
One of Ted’s earliest actions is to tape up a homemade, crudely lettered sign over the door of the team’s locker room. The crooked sign displays just one word – “Believe.” That’s the essence of Ted Lasso. He is a true believer.
What Ted believes in is his team’s potential for victory. The question for us is, if we taped the word “Believe” to our bathroom mirror, what exactly would we be reminding ourselves that we believe in?
Life has a way of testing and revealing what we truly believe. With illness, suffering and grief, no human life – not even the life of a Christian – is free of soul-shaking experiences. Some of life’s crises arise quite suddenly. When faced with looming spiritual obstacles, how do we respond?
Ted Lasso has a little advice to offer on that score. One of his many memorable sayings is “There’s two buttons I never like to hit – panic and snooze.”
Think about that for a second. If you were to receive some terrible news tomorrow – a bad medical diagnosis, the death of a loved one, or the loss of a job – would you be inclined to hit the panic button and drop into a deep despair. Or would you hit the snooze button and pull the covers up over your head, and hope the problem just goes away?
I can understand both responses – depending on the situation, I’ve hit both those buttons in my life. But maybe there’s an alternative. We can choose to hit another button, somewhere between panic and snooze. We can decide, in faith, to hit the “accept” button, and live into the new normal. Sure, there may be grief for the old normal that is no more – but we know those days are not coming back, not how we remember them, anyway. The hard truth is, the Lord has picked us up and dropped us off right into the middle of a new normal. So, what is there to do but unpack, arrange our clothes in the dresser drawer and make ourselves as comfortable as we can.
In our passage for today from 2nd Corinthians, Paul talks about this new normal, without ever using that phrase exactly. He says
“We are afflicted in every way – but not crushed.
Perplexed – but not driven to despair.
Persecuted – but not forsaken.
Struck down – but not destroyed, always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be visible in our bodies. For we who are living are always being handed over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our mortal flesh.”
Paul doesn’t mince words here. He’s not like one of those prosperity preachers you might see on TV, who promise that if you just give your heart to Jesus, every good thing will come drifting your way – that you’ll never have any pain, difficulty or heartache, ever again.
No, Paul is brutality realistic. Just look at the words he uses: “afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down.” No hint of a prosperity Gospel that I can see – just a frank acknowledgment that is hard, and sometimes very hard, for everyone, Christians included.
But there is some good news. Such affliction is not forever. Eventually, we can grow to accept the new normal . We can learn, in time, how to push that “accept” button between panic and snooze. We can claim the difficult experience as our own. And we can come to realize that, while life may knock us down sometimes, it can never, never, KEEP us down – not if we approach such obstacles with Christ by our side. As the writer Paulo Coehlos once said, “The secret of life is to fall 7 times and get up 8 times.” (1)
Kate Bowler, a professor at Duke Divinity School has become an inspiration to many, not so much for what she has taught and written as an academic – but for her personal story as a survivor of colon cancer. Kate – at the time a young mother – was diagnosed at age 35 and was given just a few months to live.
It turned out she did a lot better than expected and is still very much with us, but the experience changed her life. Ever since then, in addition to her teaching and research, she has spoken about her own experience claiming and owning the new normal.
In an email devotional from 2021, Kate shares something Anthony of the Desert, a monk from Egypt, probably the most famous of the early monastics, once said. Kate was writing in the midst of the pandemic – which certainly forced a new normal on all of us for awhile. Someone asked Brother Anthony what we ought to do to please God.
The ancient replied with a very simple piece of advice: “Wherever you go, keep God in mind. Whatever you do, follow the example of Holy Scripture. Wherever you are, stay there and do not move away in a hurry.”
Kate Bowler commented: “What I hear in those instructions is to try to eliminate double-mindedness. BE WHERE YOU ARE. I know that’s not a favorite choice right now in that we are stuck in isolation behind masks – but it’s also a great permission slip. You don’t have to be extra, extra holy. You simply have to be where you are, and keep God in mind.”(2)
That’s a pretty good motto for getting used to the new normal. Be where you are, and keep God in mind.
There are many stories about Christians who find, amidst their new normal, new strength for living. One such story is about a now retired Episcopal priest from Massachusetts named Paul Bresnahan. Late in life, he found himself undergoing radiation treatments for prostate cancer.
Sitting in the waiting room one day, accompanied by a friend and member of his congregation, Paul heard the technician call out his name. He quipped – for everyone to hear in the glum assembly to hear – “My turn to shine!” And the room erupted in laughter.
“Who is that guy?” somebody asked.
“That’s my parish priest,” answered Paul’s friend.
Here’s what Father Paul wrote later on about that experience:
“Inside the treatment facility, as I lay on the table with a giant metal fork rotating around me and beaming its rays within my body, I saw the hand of God and sensed a healing touch within me. I saw no vision other than the hand of science and medicine ministering to me out of the gifts God so generously bestows upon the caregiving community in my home city. The beaming rays of radiation give me the gift of healing and life, and I am brim full of gratitude.” (3)
Brim full of gratitude. In the radiation suite? How is that possible?
With that sort of faith, Paul articulates that it is indeed possible: “Afflicted, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair.” Battling cancer, but not without hope. It’s the gift of God to all who resolve to be where they are and keep God in mind.
None of us get very far as survivors of one affliction or another by pretending that bad things don’t happen to good people. The reality is bad thing do happen – to anybody. Nor can we claim that God protects Christians from pain and struggle. But one thing most any Christian survivor of hard times learns from tough experiences is that, along with the affliction, God gives us what we need to get through difficult times. All of it is built on awareness and acceptance in faith of the new normal.
Yes, there are losses in life. Accepting a new normal means bidding farewell to the old, knowing it may never really return in the same form. Countless survivors of health challenges, fires, floods and hurricanes had had to say farewell to their old homes and ways of life – but they have also learned to look forward rather than backwards, knowing that the life they are living is still a good life.
We Christians are a resurrection people. We know that out of death comes new life. Out of a shattered, old normal comes a new normal. There’s still joy to be found, hope to be cherished and a resurrection faith that sustains and strengthens us.
And for that, May God be praised. Amen.
1. Inspiringquotes, retrieved 5/23/24
2. Homileticsonline, retrieved 5/2/24
3. Ibid…
