Ancient Men's Liturgy

A Men's Liturgy

How did this get left out of our prayer book? Seems historic enough. 

{I am not sure where I got this so I cannot give credit, but it is not mine. Wayne.}

Gathered around a low table covered with a newspaper, a bowl of guacamole (or other suitable dip), one or more bags of chips, a pizza, a six-pack of beer, and a TV remote.

When all are seated comfortably one man, while turning on the TV with the remote, prays,

Father, Giver of Football, let this game illumine our hearts and minds. May touchdowns and field goals fill us with the love by which you You embrace us all. We thank You, Father, for football.

Placing both hands on a recliner one man says,

We thank you, Father, for the creation of recliners; in them we sit back, relax, and enjoy the game. We thank you for the wisdom of the carpenter's and upholsterer's art and the glory of rest.

Gathering the bags of chips another man says,

Blessed are You, Father, for potatoes, corn, wheat, and any other grains used to make these chips, and the one blessed bowl of guacamole (or other suitable dip), all representing diversity and unity.

Dipping an appropriate chip into the bowl of holy guacamole, one of the men says,

Dear Brothers, thus it is. The time of testing and pre-season are over. It is down to the team, the coaches, and the game. In this new season of life, we hope for victory on the field. We lift up our chips and dip looking forward to an exciting next couple of hours.

The next man lifts up the six-pack of beer and says,

Father, let these suds warm our hearts and enlighten our minds. We thank you for this fermented grain of the field, and the brewer's craft which we are soon to enjoy. May its warmth remind us of the greatest of all paradoxes: that beer can at once taste great and yet be less filling. We thank You, Father, for beer.

Then the six-pack is passed around and each man taking one says,

BEER!

Straightway each man consumes the entire contents of his can then raises the empty into the air and crushes it on his forehead. Another six-pack is passed around.

The pizza is then raised and broken into slices and a man says,

We thank You, Father, for the gift of pizza, whose roundness demonstrates perfection. Through the circle of this pizza all humanity is united. We know this is from above.

Then each man takes a slice and eats.

When all have eaten, they say together,

We thank You, Father, for the gift of Sport; through it your reveal Yourself to us in the profound mystery of our manhood. We thank You for those great ones who have gone before: Vince Lombardi, Jim Brown, Dick Butkus, N. and N. May we cherish this game and ourselves always and may we dwell in Your peace, providing our team wins.

Thus ends the pre-game liturgy.

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Scholarly Commentary on the Football Liturgy (Liturgia Footballum) by an Anglican Presbyter.

Brothers,

I am afraid that this liturgy, like others, has fallen victim to the the spirit of the age. It is quite clear that in redaction through the ages modernists have taken control and moved us away from our primitive worship.

It has been demonstrated with great clarity that our Liturgia Footballum (LF) has roots in two sources. I point you first, of course, to the “T” source (the Testostronic School of original development and historical record) and the “E” source (Estrogenical Author of later influence and interpretation.) It is interesting to note from all extant E writings that E has been redacted in a foremost position in LF due to the slowly eroding influence of T. Please note verbiage clearly from E in the prayers below:

“Love” - clearly this is an insertion or replacement, as T would never admit such a thing and this change is compounded by being coupled with “embrace,” which clearly was never a part of LF until recent times.

“Art” has been used in relation to a carpenter, clearly the E influence attempting to impose a meaning on the T understanding that carpenters build things.

“Diversity” - also clearly an insertion in an attempt by E to occlude the T School's emphasis on unity and the element of “team” in the LF.

“Next couple of hours” - a most egregious twisting of the meaning of the original T prayer. E has limited the time that T may celebrate the LF, when it is quite clear that T intended the worship to last all week long and not be limited to a mere “couple of hours.”

The original Prayer of the Hops and Barley has been substantially retained from the original corpus, but there is again the E factor removing an essential portion of the LF. If we turn to the fragment Flatulatorum (F), we find that the burpous clause has been removed in the E redaction. F, in concert with the historical T tradition, completes the liturgical action by including the the burpous clause (“belching loudly”) for the draining of a can certainly produces such a reaction. And, as we know from T, reality is what matters in that tradition.

In the oblatum pizzarum, we find a subtle change that E has redacted into the text, that of roundness equating to perfection. Roundness suggests a softness which was never the intent of T. Recent archaeological evidence sheds this light on things suggesting that pizza, considering the Mappa Della Provincial di Palermo, (the Map, for short), comes from Palermo, a Province of Sicily. In modernity it is known as 'Sicilian pizza', but in the time of T it was simply the 'Pie of Sicily' which was Rectangular in shape, precisely the shape of a football field. This yields the most logical conclusion that the original oblatum pizzarum intended to denote sharpness and straight forwardness from the rectangle's sharp corners and straight sides. This would be right out of T's play-book, if you will.

In the closing prayer, we find a rather overt attempt of the E to change the final focus in the LF liturgy. We lose the T emphasis on manly football with the E concept of “sport.” Sport would include such things as bowling and curling which were clearly never a part of the T school of thought on the “mystery of manhood.” Our extant T tradition uses football for the expression of the mystery, with possible liturgical changes of season for baseball, basketball, and hockey.

And finally, we see a lack of expression of submitting (a word that is 'anathema' in the E Author's thought) to the will of the Father in the modern LF with the nearly Marcionite excision of that final phrase that has always been an part of our worship after, “providing our teams wins....if it be your will, for we acknowledge that the 'G' on Green Bay's helmet stands for you, O God, Almighty! Amen.”