Pastor's Corner: Cat vs. Griz vs. God

When my husband and I moved to Havre in 2020, we often asked people what we should know about living in Montana. People told us a wide range of information, but they often joked, "Are you gonna be Cat or Griz?" That's when we first learned about this historic Montana rivalry. Suddenly, the bumper stickers and specialty license plates I saw around town made a lot more sense! The upcoming Cat-Griz game has me thinking about rivalries.

The world encourages us to pick sides, often about things far more serious than what color we'll wear to a friendly tailgate. The world wants us to make hard distinctions between friends and enemies, between neighbors and strangers, between those who deserve the good life and those who might deserve death.

The history we read in the Bible does contain a record of rivalries between and among God's people: Jacob vs. Esau, the Israelites vs. the Egyptians (and the Assyrians, the Babylonians, etc.), Jesus's disciples vs. those of other religious factions, the early church vs. Roman opposition. Even Peter and Paul had their differences, and rival "teams" sprang up around each man.

But the biblical witness also contains visions of redemption when all such rivalries and divisions are overcome in God. When Paul talks in Colossians 3 about the new life Christ makes possible, he reminds the church that in their new selves, their new nature, "there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all!" (Colossians 3:11 NRSV).

This teaching of the early church is found also in Galatians 3:28 and 1 Corinthians 12:13 and has resonances elsewhere in the New Testament writings, making it perhaps one of if not the most important refrains from Paul's teachings about the Gospel, about what Christ's redemption of the world means for us creatures. Those divisions which seem so powerful now are already and will someday fully be resolved in Christ, who "is all and in all."

Even the rivalries in the animal kingdom will eventually settle down with the advent of God's peaceable kingdom. We see it in Isaiah's prophecy about God's coming rule, when "the wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat; the calf and the young lion will feed together, and a little child will lead them. The cow and the bear will graze. Their young will lie down together, and a lion will eat straw like an ox. A nursing child will play over the snake's hole; toddlers will reach right over the serpent's den" (Isaiah 11:6-8 CEB). No more bobcats vs. grizzly bears - they're on the same team in God's kingdom!

Whether you'll be wearing blue and gold or maroon and silver or not paying attention to the Brawl of the Wild at all this weekend, through Christ you are not God's enemy: You are made a friend of God. And because we have been made friends of God, then we are called to look at both our friends and enemies in this world and pray that we can see how they are included in God's redemptive plan, too.

(Go, Lights and Skylights!)

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Pastor Megan Hoewisch

First Lutheran Church