Playing the Long Game

Do you remember Sawyer in Lost? He was the bad boy hot guy in the show. You were intentionally never quite sure if he was good or bad. I think of him often, mostly for the phrase "long con." He had been a con artist before the island, and the long cons were the ones that really paid off. You built relationships, won trust, waited a lot, and the payoff was months maybe years later. When the payoff came, it was a big one.

While I'm not aiming to be a con artist, I am incredibly intrigued by the idea of a long game.

I readily confess that delayed gratification is not one of my gifts, patience is not one of my virtues, things like that. I've been annoyed by lack of instant downloads of books for nearly ten years. Actually, my list of annoyances stemming from this one larger issue is pretty long, so we'll skip it. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.

In fact, I'm pretty sure our culture is creating more and more instant gratification expectations every day. One of my friends booked her entire wedding on her phone in under five minutes. It's just how we work now. I can even get most things I need delivered to my house in under two hours if I don't want to leave. Two hours sometimes seems like a very long time. Yes, I'm the reason Amazon is testing drones. We're taught to play the short games.

Faith is about playing the long game. I think that's true no matter what religion you practice, but am certain it's true about Christianity. This is the long game. I'm preaching on Hebrews this week. Every once in a while I decide I'm going to memorize the entire book because it's just that amazing--one of the most eloquent sermons ever. There's more Jesus as sacrifice than I'd like, but I can even deal with that.

My sermons taking a different turn this week, but here's the line I'm not preaching on that I kind of wish I was, "All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them." (Hebrews 11:13) Before and after that sentence, there are descriptions of acts of faith from patriarchs and judges--people whose stories are deeply embedded into the Christian tradition. It's this disturbing and awesome reminder: you might die before this thing you worked for bears fruit.

I've had conversations with plenty of frustrated people about why on earth everything Jesus promised hasn't happened. "It's been two thousand years! How aren't we there yet!" Hearing the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote seems to inspire more doubt than not lately, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Maybe the most frustrating and hopeful confession I make as a pastor and a person of faith is, "I'm playing the long game." We're playing the long game.

Just because something can't be completed today, doesn't mean it doesn't get done. I'll feed this person today, while working toward families being able to afford their basic needs on their own. Or I'll feed this person today, while working toward a less individualized community where we all share needs and resources. I won't sit by and do nothing, but the little something is never the end. The sandwich or the hot shower or the place to sleep is never the end thing.

We're playing the long game. The long game plants seeds and waits. The long game gives water when it's needed. The long game knows that there's another season coming. The long game is sometimes a very long game.

And somehow, the long game is the one that matters even when it's overshadows by the short games in between. We make promises. We stand firm. We do the holy work that so many before us have done. We're playing the long game.