God's Cheerleaders

I was thinking about cheerleaders.  Leaders of cheers.  Which implies that there is something to cheer about, that there is someone to be cheered on, and that there is an audience who would cheer more effectively if only they had someone to lead them.  When I was in high school, now more than forty years ago (ouch!), cheerleaders were a well-recognized, small and somewhat exclusive group of girls. Some of them knew that and acted accordingly. Some of them just were really enthusiastic and genuinely liked to rally the team and lead the cheering crowd.  Cheerleading has undergone quite a transformation in the last forty years.  It is now a televised team sport.  Many girls who would have been cheerleaders are now the athletes for whom others cheer.  And now there are girls and boys who lead cheers, performing complex acrobatic feats.  So, I was thinking, what in the world would make cheerleaders controversial enough to make the national news.  And then, there it was, a story that comes straight from the home of Friday Night Football in Texas.  Texas, where God, high school football and cheering all go together as naturally as Sunday morning praise choruses anywhere else.

The cheerleaders of Kountze High School hand painted some banners that quoted the Bible, proclaiming, for example, “If God is for us who can be against us”.  Some of the banners are called “run-throughs”, because, oddly enough, the team runs through them as they enter the field to, you guessed it, loud cheers.  Setting aside the question of whether Paul ever envisioned that his Spirit-inspired words would be used to encourage high school football players to try harder, this seems to be an innocent event. Unless of course the Freedom From Religion Foundation gets wind of this activity, which it does. The FFRF folks then demand the banners which quote God must stop since this is government activity. The school, fearful of an expensive lawsuit, directs the cheerleaders to stop using the banners. The Kountze cheerleaders go to court and draw a judge up for re-election. And, before you can say “Go Team” the judge decides that the banners are the free speech of the cheerleaders  who made them, not the public school.

Which all reminds me of the time Jesus was entering town and the local cheerleaders were shouting cheers and waving branches. The authorities were offended and told Jesus to tell the crowd to stop cheering for him, to which Jesus replied, “I tell you, if they keep quiet the rocks will cry out”, invoking the prophecy of Habakkuk, who goes on to say that the “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters covers the seas.”  God’s Cheerleaders. Everywhere. Just try to stop them.