A Word Before We Begin
If you’ve been reading Message from the Margins for a while, you already know that this space tries to resist the speed and noise of the moment. We’re not interested in reacting faster than everyone else. We’re interested in staying faithful in a world that makes that harder by the day.
Right now, in the paid space of this newsletter, we’re in the middle of an ongoing series on resilience in a loud world. It’s a sustained reflection on how to remain grounded, compassionate, and spiritually awake when outrage is rewarded, fear is constant, and exhaustion feels normal. Not tips. Not slogans. Just the slow work of learning how to live faithfully without burning out or hardening our hearts. Those who are already participating have told me they are really benefitting from it, which makes me thrilled.
In just over a week, we’ll be transitioning into Lent, and I want to name this clearly: this year’s Lenten programming is something I’ve been designing very intentionally for the moment we’re in. It’s a multipronged course meant to meet the times honestly, deepening faith, strengthening our relationship with Christ, and cultivating a real-world devotion that can actually be lived when life feels unstable or overwhelming. Prayer, reflection, and practice woven together, not to escape the world, but to engage it more faithfully.
Subscribing to the paid tier doesn’t promise answers or certainty. What it does offer is a steady place to walk together, to integrate faith into real life, and to let formation happen at a human pace. Your support makes this kind of ministry sustainable, and it allows the work to be done with care rather than urgency.
If this reflection resonates with you, and you’re looking for a place to stay with the questions instead of scrolling past them, you’d be very welcome in the paid space. And if not, I’m still grateful you’re here, reading along.
Either way, I’m glad we’re walking through this moment together.
In Christ, Jesus,
Fr Rich
I watched the reactions long before I watched the performance.
That, I think, is the tell.
Before a note was sung or a lyric was translated, before symbolism could be interpreted or dismissed, people had already chosen sides. Cheers or outrage. Pride or disgust. “This is for us” or “this is an attack on us.”
It used to be that a Super Bowl halftime show, or any large cultural moment, was at least a shared pause. A collective breath. Even when we disagreed, we were watching the same thing together, arguing about the same music around the same table.
Now we barely watch the performance. We watch how our tribe reacts to the performance. And then we react to that.
This year, two artists ended up functioning as mirrors. Not because they shared a stage, but because they shared the same cultural moment. Bad Bunny and Kid Rock offered radically different visions of America. What mattered most was not which one you preferred. It was how quickly you decided which one belonged to you.
And what that says about the state of our souls.
A Necessary Admission
Now I’ll offer this up right away, because honesty matters here.
Bad Bunny’s music isn’t for me.
I rarely listen to music written less than 500 years ago. Gregorian chant will always have a stronger claim on my soul than anything with a beat drop. And while I possess serviceable, journeyman-level Spanish, it has an unfortunate habit of collapsing entirely once the language is sung. Lyrics I can parse in conversation suddenly turn into glossolalia the moment they’re set to music.
So no, this wasn’t a performance I was ever going to put on repeat.
But adulthood, especially Christian adulthood, requires something more than taste-making. It requires perspective.
As an adult, and as a priest, I’m able to step back and remember a simple, humbling truth: not everything needs to be about me. Some moments are not invitations to comfort, but invitations to learn. They are windows into what matters deeply to other people, into histories, wounds, pride, joy, resistance, and hope that are not my own.
And faith, if it is real, does not demand that the world constantly reflect my preferences back at me. It asks whether I am willing to listen anyway.
When we confuse ‘this isn’t for me’ with ‘this shouldn’t exist,’ we stop being disciples and start being gatekeepers. And the Gospel has very little patience for that.
Two Messages, Two Visions of America
Kid Rock’s message has been consistent for years. Flags. Guns. Beer. A loud, aggressive patriotism that frames America as something already complete and perpetually under threat. His performances trade in grievance and defiance. There is always an enemy in the room. Someone to blame. Someone to shout down.
It is a vision of America that believes love is finite and belonging must be guarded.
Bad Bunny’s message moves in the opposite direction. His work centers visibility, language, bodies, and stories that America has often told to stay quiet or stay grateful. The message is not that America is perfect, but that it is unfinished. That there is room at the table that has been deliberately withheld.
One message says: protect what is mine.
The other says: expand who counts.
From a Christian perspective, that distinction matters.
Watching Again, With Different Eyes
I’ve now watched both performances in full.
Neither of them was for me.
But the experiences could not have been more different.
As I sat watching Kid Rock’s performance, with its decidedly amateur-looking lip sync, something that felt more suited for a small-time country fair than one of the biggest performance opportunities of the year, I found myself searching for meaning and coming up empty. The spectacle was loud but hollow. Defiant without depth. A posture of anger offered as substance.
Then I watched Bad Bunny’s performance again.
And something shifted.
Now, before I go further, I want to be honest about something that struck me immediately this time through. There were moments in Bad Bunny’s show where I found myself agreeing with a critique that came from President Trump himself. The dancing and some of the outfits were, at times, a bit too spicy for an audience that included children. That kind of critique could be applied to many recent halftime shows; it is not unique to this artist, but it’s a valid concern rooted in common sense: little eyes were watching, and adults have a responsibility not to forget that.
But even with that editorial concern in mind, something about the imagery of the performance stayed with me in a way that went deeper than surface aesthetics.
As I struggled to understand the words of the songs, my ear lagging behind my eyes, I began to notice the imagery. What unfolded felt strangely familiar, almost biblical. I saw echoes of the Good Samaritan, not as a parable spoken, but as a reality lived. I saw farm workers. Food stands. Nail salons. Jewelry shops. Athletes. Electrical workers. The quiet, constant labor of people who build communities while rarely being thanked for it.
It struck me that so much of what we rely on for comfort and sustenance, so much of our daily bread, comes from the very people the politicized world insists are here to harm us.
That contradiction landed hard.
The performance was not asking for pity. It was not begging for permission. It was simply reminding us of a truth we have trained ourselves to forget.
These are our helpers.
These are our neighbors.
And Jesus, frustratingly consistent as ever, has already told us what faithfulness looks like in their presence.
The Gospel We Are Choosing
Scripture is painfully clear about what happens when identity hardens into exclusion. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,” the prophet Isaiah warns (Isaiah 5:20). Jesus goes further, telling us that we will be judged not by our symbols or slogans, but by how we treated the most vulnerable among us, the stranger, the hungry, the imprisoned (Matthew 25:35–40).
Here is the uncomfortable truth I have to sit with myself. I am tempted by tribalism too. It feels good to know where I belong. It feels safe to cheer when my side wins the culture war.
But the Gospel keeps interrupting that comfort.
Jesus never asks which crowd I’m standing with. He asks whom I am willing to love when it costs me something (Luke 10:33–35).
One message leaned toward love, even when it unsettled. The other leaned toward fear, even when it wrapped itself in patriotism. And our reactions revealed which gospel we are listening to.
A Call to Faithful Attention
This is not about music taste. It is about formation.
We need to slow down enough to ask honest questions the next time a cultural moment sparks outrage or applause in us. What am I defending right now? Who do I feel threatened by? Who am I refusing to listen to because they are not “for me”?
Christian faith was never meant to be tribal branding. It is a discipline of love that dismantles false gods, especially the god of fear dressed up as righteousness. When patriotism demands contempt, when identity requires exclusion, we are no longer following Christ. We are following a substitute.
Faithful action often looks quieter than outrage. It looks like curiosity instead of mockery. It looks like resisting the urge to turn art into a loyalty test. It looks like choosing love when fear would be easier.
A Prayer for a Widened Heart
God of all peoples and all nations,
you formed us from the same dust and breathed into us the same breath of life.
When we grow small and frightened, when we cling to flags or slogans or tribes as if they could save us, gently loosen our grip.
Heal the places in us that confuse power with strength and anger with courage.
Teach us to recognize your image in the faces we are tempted to dismiss, mock, or silence.
Where our hearts have hardened, soften them.
Where our faith has shrunk into ideology, stretch it wide again.
Jesus, you crossed every boundary we still try to defend.
You ate with the rejected, spoke with the despised, and loved without asking for permission.
Give us the grace to follow you there.
May our words build bridges instead of walls.
May our patriotism never outrank our compassion.
May our worship make us more human, not less.
And when the noise grows loud, remind us that love is still the truest song we can sing.
Amen.
Questions for Reflection and Conversation
Before you scroll on, I want to invite you to pause for a moment and take inventory. Not to debate or defend, but simply to notice what stirred in you.
Did you watch the Super Bowl this year?
How did the halftime show make you feel, not what did you think you were supposed to feel, but what actually rose up in you?
Did you notice yourself reacting quickly, defensively, or tribally?
Where do you see tribalism shaping your responses in daily life, in politics, in faith, in family conversations, or even in what you allow yourself to enjoy?
What do you think the significance of moments like this is for us as a society, and for us as people trying to follow Jesus in a fractured world?
I genuinely want to hear your thoughts.
Your comments, likes, and restacks don’t just boost an algorithm, they help this ministry reach people who are quietly searching for a faith that still knows how to love. If this reflection resonated with you, please consider commenting below, restacking it so others can find it, or even publishing a Substack Note with your own reflections and tagging Message from the Margins.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for thinking deeply. And thank you for helping this small but faithful ministry continue to do its work in the world.