Wake Up, Look Up

Hello everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, who will you blame? Now, I read about this on The Athletic, the New York Times sports website, but the truth is, I didn't need to. This one is I'm feeling in my heart because it's about my beloved Cleveland Browns. If you're not a sports fan, let me set the scene for you. Years ago, the Browns traded for a quarterback, Deshaun Watson, who had been wildly successful in the National Football League. But he was available not because of his poor performance, but because of his off the field issues. A number of women were accusing him of the kinds of things you might imagine they would be accusing him of. He had become such a pariah in his original city of Houston that they were now looking to do the unthinkable trade a franchise quarterback. The Browns offered more than had ever been offered for a player, gave him a guaranteed maximum contract, which had never been done in the history of the sport. And in the last four or five years it's been a disaster. Deshaun has missed time due to off-the-field issues. he has missed a number of seasons, whole seasons due to injury, and when he has played, he hasn't played anything like a franchise quarterback. This situation culminated recently in the Browns second preseason game against the Buffalo Bills, when DeSean Watson came in for the third quarter to play against the Buffalo Bills third string and performed once again miserably, completing 5 out of 12 passes, throwing an interception, and just in general not looking very good. Now, Browns fans have reached their end with this and so they soundly did what fans do when they're unhappy, they booed. They booed desean Watson early. They booed him often. They booed him loudly. In fact, they booed him so much that in his post game press conference, desean basically said, that he realized, he didn't care for Brown's fans and would never care for them and they don't like him. It was basically desean saying, look, I have one year left and then I'm out of here and they don't like me and I don't like them. And what was interesting when I listened to deshaun's press conference though, because this is really not going to be about sports, is I noticed in him a pattern that I have seen now for 20 years as a pastor. I've seen it in the people that I've met for counseling, and I've seen it, unfortunately, in my own heart. And that is this in any broken relationship. And certainly deshaun Watson's relationship with Cleveland Browns fans is broken. you can think about responsibility as though it is a pie chart and everybody has a piece. It is almost never true that one person is singularly responsible for a broken relationship. There's fault all the way around. Not always equally, not always proportionally, but there's always fault. But because of our sinful tendency towards self deception, what we tend to do is focus on the piece that belongs to someone else. in 20 years of ministry, I've never sat with a married couple that thought about this any differently. Every time I meet with a couple in crisis, the wife comes in focused on the part of the pie that is the responsibility of the husband. If he would stop doing this, if he would start doing that, the husband focused on what he thinks is the wife's responsibility. In both their minds, the problem is entirely the other person's. that was desean Watson. Deshaun pointed back to years ago when he ruptured his Achilles in a game and some fans in the stadium cheered his injury, which, by the way, is horrific and an awful thing to do. But because of that, desean said he had already decided that he didn't care about Brown's fans. DeSean in his press conference, didn't acknowledge his off the field allegations, the time he's missed, the injuries he's had, or the poor performance. In his mind, none of that mattered. What fans had done, that's what mattered. Jesus said it this way. Why do you deal with the speck in your brother's eye and ignore the log in your own? What Jesus is saying is, how could you possibly think you could help the other person in a broken relationship deal with their slice of the pie if you can't deal with your own? M. The truth is, is that we like to focus on the other person's problem, the other person's guilt, as a way of avoiding our own. But in any broken relationship, the only thing I can actually change is what I'm doing wrong, what I got wrong. desean in his press conference, probably irreparably ruptured his relationship with Cleveland sports fans, but can you imagine what would have happened if he had done the opposite? If he had taken the podium and said, look, I don't like being booed, but the truth is I have embarrassed the city with my off field allegations. I've been hurt more than I've played, and when I've played, I haven't played well. I don't like where things are in my relationship with the fans, but I'm going to focus on doing better my part to earn their trust and rebuild this relationship. I think the response to that would have been overwhelming. I know as a Browns fan I would have been ready to move on and support him, but instead he did what I tend to do, blame everybody else instead of dealing with my own sin. Listen, I don't know what broken relationships you're currently dealing with, but can I encourage you to take your eyes off of what other people are doing wrong? Not because it doesn't matter, but because you can't change it and, instead focus on your slice of the pie, no matter how small or how big. I think what you're going to find is as you take ownership of that, you begin to inject the hope of restoration into that relationship. Maybe it's too late for Deshaun Watson and the city of Cleveland, but it's not too late for the broken relationship God has put on your mind right now. Hey, thanks for checking out Wake Up, Look Up. For more content, be sure to visit the Christ Community Chapel app or website cccchapel.com.

Have an article you’d like Pastor Zach to discuss? Email us at podcast@ccchapel.com!