Trademark Infringement and March Madness

So what event do you know that can weave together so many great myths, like: Cinderella; David and Goliath; and, Shootout at the OK Corral? By the way, Dan Rather had it wrong. Myth doesn't mean "baloney," or worse. It's a technical word that defines a story as one which tells a peoples' shared truth in such a compelling way, those people make their meaning by living inside that story.

For many people, the NCAA's March Madness is such a story. Though half-time episode or time-out interlude might be more accurate words, the NCAA believes enough of us choose to live inside their March Madness they've trademarked that name! Many of us recall a time when people shared common language, experiences, customs and traditions. Often these were ethnic, and sometimes religious. Whatever their roots, we were introduced into them by our elders. We wove them together with our own interpretations. Then we passed these "latest and greatest" versions, as the shared stories we lived by, to our children.

Those stories seemed huge: large enough to hold onto the most long ago past; enormous enough to embrace each energizing and enervating present; and, expansive enough to encompass the most enormous dreams for every far distant future. It's truly a smaller, greedier, more selfish world that breeds a three-week myth, involving only sixty-five teams made up of 15 players, each - one winner 64 losers.

There is another March Madness story (which this year we celebrate in early April) that still speaks to our fiercest memories, our deepest fears in the present, our worst nightmares for the future, and our shared anxieties about death. Some folks still claim to live inside this story. Others, exclusive marketers, have trademarked the Gospel's liberating declarations and compelling claims about the meaning of Christ. They pirate the story of Jesus’ breaking-open passion and rename it “possibility.” They curtail the story of Jesus’ pouring-out cross and call it “prosperity.”

Why else would the world drink in stories that don't end our thirst for meaning, and dine on stories that can't nourish the next generation's present or sustain any future?

We'll spend some time of a Sunday, as well as a Thursday and Friday evening, then another Sunday re-membering, re-telling, re-entering and re-living a maddeningly, captivating story, and asking God to reposition us right into the middle of its still unfolding, life-giving plot.

It's the mythic story of one apparent loser who, by God’s grace-filled “for us,” makes winners of us all. That's no baloney. And it won't infringe on any trademark if we share the march toward its inclusive madness with you, too!