March Madness

The NCAA tournament is in full swing. There is bracket mania out there. For those of you who are not college basketball fans I am sorry to bring it up again. Sports bars are packed with fans. I was in the airport in Atlanta Sunday night and saw two Davidson College jerseys. Davidson is a tiny little school in North Carolina that happens to be my brother Brian's alma mater. In the past 25 years I have never seen anyone wearing a Davidson basketball jersey anywhere and then on Sunday I saw two and the reason is they have made it to the Sweet Sixteen. I heard that the loss to American businesses is in the billions during the NCAA tournament because of people sneaking out to watch. It is fascinating to see what our culture gets excited about. All this has me thinking about the March Madness that went on 2000 years ago. Can you imagine? Every sports bar in Jerusalem was buzzing with the rumor that Jesus the prophet from Nazareth was alive 3 days after the Romans had crucified him. People in every corner of the city must have been talking about it. Within a month you could be walking along the streets of Caperneum and hear about it. Inside of a year you would hear it whispered in the streets of Rome. By May of this year no one will be talking about the NCAA. Our attention will be on the Cavs or maybe baseball or maybe even something more important. But if you listen closely you will still hear people talking about Jesus. You will hear it in Hudson or in Cleveland. I will be traveling later on this year to Indonesia and then to Uganda and there will be people there who will be talking about Jesus. Davidson is in the Sweet Sixteen so people are talking about them. It is good news for those alum from Davidson. But that news is only good enough to last a few weeks. How good does the news have to be to last 2000 years and spread throughout the whole world? It is news that is still the best news I have ever heard. It is news that brought a smile to my face just this morning. The resurrection of Jesus Christ created the original March Madness and it hasn't come close to ending.