Allegiances

By Jeff Long

For the third consecutive year, the St. Louis Cardinals and their many fans are watching the baseball playoffs from their respective living rooms. I've lived in Cardinal Nation for nearly 30 years, yet my baseball allegiance is elsewhere, with a mediocre team that wears black and gold uniforms and whose city is known for steelmaking and blue-collar sensibilities. Can't help it. Don't want to help it. This favoritism extends beyond baseball.

Years ago, the Pittsburgh Steelers played Arizona in the Super Bowl. At that time, my role was pastoring a church in Cape Girardeau. After the service, in the receiving line, a woman in the congregation who frequently shared her opinions with me wondered aloud how I could root against Kurt Warner, the Arizona quarterback, and a Christian who openly espoused his beliefs. "You say that as if I had a choice in the matter," I responded. "I'm from Pittsburgh. It's in my DNA."

Still, I rooted for St. Louis in the waning days of the 2018 baseball regular season because my preference is to have happy people around me. Folks are generally happier if the Redbirds are winning and particularly, if they make it to postseason. Alas, despite a great effort in August and early September, the Cardinals couldn't overcome a poor April and May.

Allegiances. We are defined by them and how loyal we are to them. Sometimes they choose us. When we're born into a certain geographical area, we usually marinate in the majority juices of the locals. If you were born in Cape County, the overwhelming expectation is that you will be a Cardinals fan. If you hail from Chicago, it's the Cubs or the White Sox. From Pittsburgh, well, you get it.

More important than the actual teams we support, or the foes we root against, is what such zealous fandom says about our capacity to love something beyond ourselves.

Allegiances. We are defined by them and how loyal we are to them. Sometimes we choose them. When we marry, we tie ourselves to another human being, promising to maintain this bond for life. It's a reckless promise -- reckless, because no one knows what's coming. For better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health. I didn't really know what those words meant when I took my wedding vows a month away from my 24th birthday. Now that I'm a month from my 60th, I've got a better idea. My wife and I look different than we did. We live in a part of the world we never imagined we would. We are pursuing occupations that were not even a glimmer in our imaginations back on that fall day in 1982. Yet, a marriage allegiance is about facing all of life's treacherous shoals. They often come up suddenly and without warning. In loyalty and in love, you covenant to navigate them together.

And then there is a kind of allegiance that often chooses us at birth -- yet we choose to renew every single day. Our faith. I can't remember not being a Christian. Before I realized it, I was in the slow cooker of faith formation, guided by a dad who took his religion very seriously and a mom who lived out its principles. Sunday was church. When the time came for me to emerge from the family crockpot, I strayed for awhile in college. Not far but far enough to know I missed the heat.

These days, I'm not much of a fan of church. But my allegiance is to whom the church points -- a living God. When my father was dying of stage four oral cancer, he made his allegiance clear in his waning days. I asked him, "Dad, what's the most important thing you've learned in your life?" His answer did not come immediately because he had such difficulty speaking due to terminal illness. But the reply came soon enough: "That God is real." I'm with Dad. Our ultimate allegiance is the very same.