Traditional Worship | June 13, 2026 | Traditional Worship

30:42 Well, I feel the need to begin my message with a bit of a confession. And that is, I've never played a game of soccer in my entire life. Now, I know that you're looking at me and saying, but you're here to talk about soccer and how it relates to my life of faith. What do you have to share? Well, I can tell you that this is not only the first. It will be one of many and certainly will not be the last time that my kids know more than I do. because you see, my kids have played a lot of soccer. I thought it might be actually fun to share a couple of pictures of them. First you'll see, this is a picture of my son, Freddie. This is when he was a little guy. He was playing soccer at the field across from our house. And then maybe my favorite soccer picture of all, this is my daughter, Poppy. And she is dressed in a cat costume because why not? Why not wear a cat costume when you are at soccer practice? And I will let you know, I have seen a lot of soccer. I mean, I've watched them at practices.

31:36 I've been on the sidelines, and I've even been to a few games. Here's a picture of our family as we were watching a sporting Kansas City game. And I've watched enough and learned at least a little bit enough to know when to cheer and when something's off. And yet, I began to ask myself as I was preparing for this message, if I don't know how to play the game, does it mean that I can't enjoy it? What I began to see as I started to look a lot more into what soccer's all about, and I began to learn some of the rules and the things behind what's happening in soccer, what I realized is it's not that I can't enjoy the game if I don't know a lot about it. It's just that once I learned more, it was a whole lot more fun because the things that didn't seem to make sense to me, all of a sudden they began to make sense because these rules helped me not only to understand what was happening, but more importantly, why it was happening and what was going on underneath it.

32:33 Now, I'm not telling you I'm any expert, but I will tell you that I have learned a few things, and I'm not the only one who has some things to be able to learn about the game of soccer. I thought I might introduce you to someone you likely already know, and that is Ted Lasso. If you've not seen Ted Lasso, I have to tell you it's a pretty phenomenal show. And the lead is Jason Sudeikis, who is our very own Kansas Citian. And in this show, he is made a soccer coach. Only the catch is he has never actually coached a soccer team because he's coming from America, and he has been an American football coach. So all of a sudden, he is coaching an English Premier League soccer team, and he doesn't know anything about the game. And so I thought you might be interested in seeing what happens at his very first press conference.

33:27 Take a look. Now, it's safe to say that the rest of the press conference continues to go in a downward spiral. And at one point in time, Ted describes the goalie as the guy who's wearing the Mickey Mouse gloves on the other end of the net. And so, as you can probably imagine, not only the people in the press conference room, but everyone watching on TV is wondering, why in the world did they hire this guy? Now, you probably wouldn't have blamed him if he would have said, I'm out. I certainly don't know enough to be doing this. But he sticks around. And over the course of the season, you begin to see that something shifts and changes. He learns more about the game. Yes, indeed. He still can't quite figure out what offsides means. And I will be honest and say, I have no idea either. But what he begins to find is that something changes not only within him, but within the team.

34:25 because they learn more not just about the game of soccer, but they learn more about why it matters and what it's really all about. And so today we are doing a sermon series, and we are beginning today to talk about what does it look like to understand the rules behind the game. We're talking about what does it mean to know what soccer is really all about, and not just the rules of the game, but the reasons why they are there. And my hope is that as we begin to open our eyes to see all of the ways that these rules make soccer such a great game, that we might also see the same thing about our life of faith. And so I thought I would start with what are some of the rules in soccer and where did they come from? And probably one of the most fascinating things that I found out as I was doing some research is that for years there were no actual rules for soccer that were the same across people playing them. What they found is depending on whether you were at a specific club or you were at a different school or you were in a different town, you would play by different rules. Some people said, sure, you can pick up the ball, and other people said, no, you can't. There were different rules for offside. Some people said you could be a little rougher than other people said, And what ended up happening is if you went to play the game of soccer, or football as they would call it, in another town, it was almost as if you were playing a totally different game.

35:53 And so somewhere in the mid-1800s, they decided, we've got to find some sort of standardized rule, not to try and exclude people from playing, but instead to try and make it so that everybody could play the game together. You see, the rules weren't set in place and set in motion to try and make things more difficult or to keep people out, the rules leveled the playing field. Eventually, they added other rules like red cards and yellow cards in order to make sure that not only were people following the rules, but they were staying within rules that would allow people to stay safe. And so each and every one of these rules was set for a reason, a reason to be able to make the game not more frustrating, but possible. because can you imagine a game that didn't have any rules? It would be completely chaos because no one would know what to do and they'd be wondering where they needed to go.

36:49 See, rules don't make the game more limited. In fact, they expand it and they make it possible to actually play the game. And so as we think about what it means to experience and to see the beautiful game, I want to invite us to see what might that look like in our Christian life, what we call the beautiful life. If we see the importance of rules being set in place for the game of soccer, as we look at our Christian faith, what might rules do for us? And not only just helping us to understand what they are, but why they matter and what they're all about. So in order to help us take this leap and to look at what these might be, I want to take us straight to what Jesus says is the most important rule of all. And so he's asked by religious leaders, teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

37:44 Now, there were about 613 laws. And so as the Pharisees are asking this question, they may have been proposing whether or not it was something like a positive one, like love God or practice the Sabbath or treat workers fairly. Or it could have been that Jesus could have answered something negatively, like don't murder or don't embarrass someone. Don't hold a grudge, all of which are good things. But Jesus didn't answer in the way that they had expected. Because he didn't just give one answer. He gave an answer that encompassed something in a way that maybe they weren't expecting. Here's what he says. He says, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. You see, Jesus isn't throwing away any of the laws.

38:39 Instead, he's doing something even bigger. He's explaining why they all matter in the first place. You see, he's inviting us to consider the fact that each and every one of these laws are all pointing towards the same thing. They're inviting us to live a life of love, a life of justice, a life of kindness and compassion. he's saying the most important thing for us to do is to love. Now some people might think rules are restrictive or commandments are things that are going to limit our lives. But what Jesus is doing here is he's reminding us that no, that's not the case. That the rules are actually opening us up to experience a beautiful life. They're creating conditions where we're all working in the same direction and longing to grow in the same capacity. That we can be people who forgive.

39:32 That we can be people who show mercy. People who show love and show kindness. Who live with integrity. Because Jesus isn't just inviting us to check off whether or not we know what the rules are. Or why they matter. Or even to do them. But he's saying, I want you to understand them so deeply that you live them out in a way. That invites you not to just know the rules but to live into them. and the Pharisees, maybe not all of them, but many of them were really focused on all the rules. They wanted to get them just right, which is why they asked the question of them because the rules were incredibly important to them. But somewhere along the way, some of them had missed it. They were following all the rules and yet they were missing the reason underneath them. You see, they studied them, they protected them, they knew why they were important. And it wasn't that the rules were bad. Clearly, these were things that were good and helpful and honoring for us to do.

40:36 But they began to say that following the rules was more important than anything else. They forgot why God gave them in the first place. Here's what Jesus says as he's addressing and challenging the Pharisees. He said, this people honors me with their lips, but with their hearts they are far from me. In vain do they worship, teaching human precepts as doctrines.

41:01 He's calling them out. And as I was reading that, I found myself saying, there are times when I might need to be called out for that as well. Like how many times in our life have we found that everything looks great on the outside, and I feel like I'm doing all the things that I'm supposed to be doing. I'm following all the rules and yet on the inside, I don't really feel it.

41:26 And I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna be quite honest. In my family, I am the rule enforcer and I love a good rule, especially maybe when I'm not the one who has to do it. And with my kids, I'm the one who's reminding them to say, okay, you have to brush your teeth before you go to bed. You've got to take out the trash. You have to clean your room. And in the morning when you wake up, I have a whole list of all the things that have to be done before you can do all the other things. And yes, these are all really good rules. They're good things to follow. It's important that they can learn, they can take care of their bodies, that they can learn responsibility. But then there are times that I get so stuck in following the rules that I miss out on the reason behind them. So when bedtime comes and I'm telling the kids, okay, you got to get in bed, you got to get in bed, you got to put on your pajamas, you got to, and I'm saying it over and over and over again, and I'm getting so frustrated because they're not doing the things that I told them to do, and they're not staying in their room like I've asked them to, I find myself getting frustrated.

42:26 And honestly, on more than one occasion, bedtime ends in lots of tears. And what I found myself realizing, not always in the moment, sometimes with my husband reminding me of what's happening, is that I'm so focused on the rules that I've forgotten what's going on. It's not that they're trying to fight against the rules. It's just that they want to connect.

42:53 And what happens when you begin to choose principles over people is that you make the rules more important than what they're actually about. And what Jesus is inviting them to consider is that the rules, however beautiful they are and however they might change us and help us, if you miss the point for why they're happening in the first place, you're missing out on what they're called to do. I wonder if I'm not alone and if you've ever found one of those moments when you are pushing so hard, when you're doing the right thing, but for the wrong reason, insisting on something for insistence sake. If you hold the rules up at whatever cost, I wonder what you might be losing.

43:43 There were times even that they began to use the rules as a way of excluding people. Because if you didn't know all the rules, if you didn't follow all of them, then you didn't belong because you didn't measure up to their standards. But Jesus wasn't doing that. He wasn't trying to find people who had it all figured out. Instead, he was doing quite the opposite and he was finding people who didn't understand all the rules and he were on the outside, on the sidelines, you might say, watching in and wanting to know. Which is why when he calls Matthew, the Pharisees are so confused. As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. Follow me, he told him. And Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

44:42 Now, he wasn't a religious scholar. He wasn't anyone that would have been on their radar to invite them to be a follower. And so the fact that Jesus is invited Matthew makes absolutely no sense to them. I'm imagining the Pharisees are kind of like all of the reporters peppering questions at Tad Lasso. Like, why in the world are you inviting him to come and to be a part of this? Clearly you're eating with sinners. This doesn't make any sense. And they're attacking his reasons behind doing this. But that's because Jesus is a different kind of teacher. You know, we often think about prophets and priests as teachers, but there was also a way in which Jesus was teaching that was called a wisdom teacher. And as a wisdom teacher, he wasn't just focused on trying to make sure that people were learning the actual rules or learning what it is that they needed to know, but was much more focused on how they lived their life. You see, a wisdom teacher is someone who, by their very nature, was more concerned with what was happening on the inside rather than the outside. And so for a wisdom teacher, they would invite you not by saying something to you and sending you on your merry way, but would instead invite you to come and join them, which is precisely what Jesus does. He invited tax collectors and fishermen and doubters and ordinary people because he wanted them to come and to follow him to learn what it means to live this way of love. He surrounded himself with people who were curious. He surrounded himself with people who didn't have all the answers, but had this desire to want to know more.

46:25 And there was something pretty profound about that because they didn't have it all figured out. They didn't have a preconceived notion about what it was supposed to look like. They simply stepped in line with Jesus and began to follow him. And they expanded their hearts and their heads and their minds about what their life of faith could look like because they didn't have any limits. And I don't know where you might be on your walk of faith, but I can tell you that some of the most beautiful conversations that I have with people is when somebody is new in their faith. It's like you can see a little sparkle in their eye because the world around them is something so incredibly beautiful and they can't even imagine all that is yet to be. And if you found yourself in a place where you need a little more sparkle in your eye, just imagine what did it feel like when I first began to live my life of faith.

47:22 Because that which might be seen as naivete is something beautiful that invites us to imagine what could be. And that kind of dreaming, that kind of imagining, that kind of hope is precisely the thing that made the World Cup able to come to Kansas City. Now, if you live in Kansas City, some of you might be living elsewhere, where, but what I want you to know is that in Kansas City, we are really excited about the World Cup coming, and our first game is going to be next Tuesday. But this isn't something that just happened over the past couple of years. It's actually been 10 years in the making. I thought you would appreciate seeing where all of the cities are. So you can see here are the host cities. Kansas City is right in the middle. Now, I love Kansas City, but what I'm going to tell you is that we're kind of an underdog when you look at the other cities that are here. There's Boston and Dallas and LA and Miami and New York and San Francisco, just to name a few. And these are pretty well-known cities. And Kansas City is kind of an unknown. So this week, I had a chance to talk with Kathy Nelson. And she would not tell you this, but most other people around her would say she is one of the driving forces behind getting the World Cup to come to Kansas City.

48:44 So she's the CEO of Visit Kansas City and the Greater Kansas City Sports Commission. And I talked with her this week about what it was like to come in and to use creativity and courage to inspire and to find an opportunity and a way to bid to have the World Cup come to Kansas City. So when I asked her about what it felt like for her and her team, here's what she shared. The bid books in my office are, you know, inches and inches thick of documents and rules that we had to follow to submit our bid. But then we knew we had to be creative because we were the underdog of all the cities that were bidding. And it was, you know, what do we do to stand out? Because not many of the decision makers at that time from FIFA who were based in Zurich, Switzerland, knew of Kansas City. They often referred to us and still do at times the city of Kansas. and they know Miami, they knew New York, of course, they know Los Angeles, but we had to prove a point and had to prove our passion and our ability and our strength to pull this off.

49:49 We know our city and we love our city and we wear our hearts on our shirts and on our socks and everything, but to prove that, it was very nerve-wracking. And again, we knew we had to follow the rules and do everything the right way, but we knew we had to be creative and kind of wow them and blow their minds at times. So as they came into the airport, surprising them with soccer fanatics and people walking around who they believe maybe were travelers at the airport, at the old airport. This is back when we had the old airport, but showing that our city shows up and that we care and that we can do big things and think differently about it. And that's where really the whole heart came into it. You know, I just found myself so grateful for the ways that she was describing what was happening. Because she was talking about, yes, there was a whole list, a book of rules that they had to follow.

50:46 And they used a lot of time trying to understand and know why they needed to follow those. But there was something bigger that was happening underneath it. As I was talking with her about the rules, she said, you know, part of the reason the rules were so helpful is that it made it possible for us to be able to give a bid. Because easily people could have said, no, you can't meet all the requirements. And so therefore you can't do it. Because they were an underdog. They'd never had an event like this. So it was been easily for them to have been discounted. But because they said, no, we can do this. We can follow all the rules. We can do all the things that need to be done. it leveled the playing field and it made it possible. But even more than that, when it came to finding out and deciding what they needed to do to make themselves stand above and beyond, they didn't say, hey, we're going to do something that sets us apart in a way that makes others look less than. But they said, we're going to set ourselves up so that people and see and know our heart. And they said, we're going to do everything that we possibly can to show that though we might be small, though we might be an outlier, we have incredible heart and passion for the game. You see, they didn't win the bid because maybe they were seen as the most qualified or the biggest city or the biggest place, but they qualified and they got the bid because of heart.

52:16 I just love this quote from Victor Montengali. He says this as he was awarding the host city bid. He said, the beauty of football is not about your size. It's about the size of your heart. The bid wasn't about following the rules. Getting the bid was about showing how much they loved. I think that's precisely what Jesus is inviting us to as well. It's not that we ignore all the rules, but it's that we understand why they matter and why we have to do them and how we can live our lives in such a way that allows others to see that we care deeply about God and we care deeply about the people who are around us. Because showing our heart and allowing it to be out as something present that others see in a beautiful and profound way, that's what the rules are all about.

53:12 So I want to close with one final picture of what it looks like when you do live these out in an amazing way. So I want to share a picture. This is Ronaldinho and Messi. Messi's on the right-hand side. You might know Messi because he is arguably one of the very best players in soccer, and he's going to be here in Kansas City next week. But when he was 16 years old, he had joined Barcelona's team. And at that time, there were things set up in the soccer, I mean, in the locker rooms in such a way that said the new players had one area and the veteran players had another area. And there was a bit of a hierarchy and a place where if you are younger, newer player like Messi, you might not have felt like you fit in or you belonged.

54:01 But I was watching a documentary for Ronaldinho and in it, Messi starts describing what happened when he first came. He said this. He said when they were entering into the locker room, Messi said that Ronaldinho called me over to the side where everyone was and there was an empty space and he made me sit there. He gave me the locker next to him. You see, if you're thinking about protocols and you're thinking about standards and the way things are always been done, Ronaldinho said, we're not going to do it that way because this kid needs to make a space with all of us. And suddenly he signaled to everyone else in the soccer club that this kid belonged and he wanted to make a space for him. And when the time came for him to play in his first game, Messi likely was a little bit nervous and scared.

54:55 And so Ronaldinho looked at him and he said, today you will score. And in that show that I was sharing that I watched, you get a chance to see the video of Messi scoring his first goal and how it was possible. Take a look. I just love that. He had a lot of options, but he wanted to pass the ball to Messi. And I think, isn't that like Jesus? Jesus says, come and follow me. Come join me on the field. And he passes us the ball, lets us score, and celebrates with us when we do. Because it's not about just doing things the way they've always been done. Because Ronaldinho, he was a veteran and he could have had the glory all to himself, but instead he wanted to offer it to someone else.

55:52 He wanted to offer it to Messi. He wanted to show and choose love to lift someone else up. And that's what we're called to do in this life of faith is that Jesus invites us to come and be in part of this incredible game, this amazing life of faith. He invites us to consider not only what these rules are, what it means to love God and to love our neighbor, but reminds us that these aren't things that are going to restrict us, but they're gonna expand us. As I think about the picture of those two soccer players and the joy that they both had as they were celebrating together the difference that they could have made,

56:35 that's the kind of joy we feel when we allow these rules not to constrict us, but to inspire us. To see that there's an opportunity for us to live our life for those who are around us and to allow love to be the thing that leads the way. Because Jesus doesn't just invite us to come and play the game. He comes right along with us. He gives us these rules, but more so he invites us to remember why they matter. And it's not about a question like I asked in the beginning of whether or not I knew enough to be able to play or to enjoy the game. But instead it's, will you come and join me and play the game together so that others might see and know who I am? Let us pray.

57:27 Gracious God, we give you thanks that that you invite us on this incredible journey together and that when we understand not just the rules but the purpose behind them that we live our lives differently that we love differently and that when we accept the invitation to say yes, we will follow you that you allow us to live a more beautiful life.

57:57 And so, God, we trust that as we seek to live in this life in this way, that you allow your love to pour forth from us. We give you thanks in Christ's name. Amen.