June 1, 2014 Is the Christian Life Like a Baseball Game?

June 1, 2014 Is the Christian Life like a Baseball Game?

John 10:9-15 Preface to the Word (Play a verse of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” as I step up to preach).

Ah, baseball. While it can no longer claim to be “America’s favorite pastime,” I bet we still have a lot of baseball fans here today. Am I right? The two Division 1 Oregon teams have done pretty well this year, with the Beavers ranked number 2 by most of the polls and the Ducks 19 out of the 64 teams in the running. It will be interesting to see how far they go in the playoffs. And I know that there are many here itching for the Doc Stewarts season to start on June 12, with their first game against the Mid Valley Rockets and their first home game against the Portland Barbers on June 13.

During my recovery from surgery I had some rare time to read non-churchy books and one of the books I thoroughly enjoyed was Bill Bryson’s One Summer: America 1927. What an interesting time in our nation’s history. In 1927, as the United States continued its return to normalcy after our involvement in the Great War almost a decade earlier, it was a time when President Calvin Coolidge was trying to run the country very quietly, literally. Business, rather than politics, dominated the headlines, as corporations were making enormous profits, the economy was booming, the stock market was soaring, and America was as prosperous as ever. On top of it all, Prohibition was the law of the land, an amendment introduced to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages. Instead of control, the law actually had the opposite effect, as it proliferated the illegal production and distribution of liquor and created a booming black market. Soon after Prohibition had gone into effect women gained the right to vote, and armed with a carefree lifestyle and attitude, and as the “Jazz Age” engulfed the nation, the “flappers” were born. People also yearned for that little audio box which was still relatively in its infancy, the newest national rage called the radio. Tying it all together, the “Roaring ‘20s” were in full swing.

Another characterization also surfaced that would accurately describe the era, “The Golden Age of Sports.” The nation was truly embracing athletics on an epic scale. After the awfulness of the Great War the nation was hungry for heroes and almost just as suddenly, they had stars to worship in almost every sport. Fans were even infatuated with a thoroughbred named Man o’ War, a horse many considered to be the greatest ever. Boxing could boast of heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, one of the most popular athletes in the country, while golf countered with Walter Hagen and the brilliant, young Bobby Jones. Tennis had the court dominance of a personally controversial Bill Tilden. College football was the nation’s second favorite team sport and featured Notre Dame with legendary coach Knute Rockne.

But baseball was king. It was truly the national game and there was no team better than the ’27 Yankees, considered by many to be the best team in baseball history. The starting lineup of batters was known as Murderers Row. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were hitting home runs like crazy. Crowds were anxious to see if Ruth would break his old record of 59 home runs and Lou Gehrig was trying hard to out-do his team mate. The Yanks easily took the pennant that year. The closest team behind them was the Philadelphia Athletics, and they were eleven games back! People were wild about baseball. By now, you may be wondering what all this talk about baseball has to do with our life as Christians. It’s a fair question! Jesus never referenced baseball in any of his parables, sermons, or conversations. But, according to the Gospel of John, he used plenty of other metaphors when referring to himself.

Let’s listen to a passage from John 10…

Scripture Reading: John 10:9-15

Sermon I.

A. Our Bible reading for today from John 10 includes some of Jesus’ so-called “I am” sayings.

“I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture… I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

B. The “abundant life” in Christ. “To come in and go out in Christ.” To enter through the gate and “be saved.” How are we to understand these things?

C. Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, interprets Jesus’ words this way:

I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.

D. To have a “real and eternal life,” to live a life that is “more and better than we ever dreamed of” means many things to many Christians. For some, perhaps for many, the Christian life means living life in obedience to certain rules laid down by God, or Jesus, or the Bible, or the Church, or the denomination. Like keeping the rules of a game we are trying to win…

E. Reading Bryson’s book about America’s love affair with baseball in the 1920’s reminded me of another book I read long ago. It was a humorous book written in 1971 by a former Methodist minister, Charles Merrill Smith, and went by the title: How To Talk With God When You Aren’t Feeling Religious. Funny thing; there is a chapter in his book called, “Is the Christian Life Like a Baseball Game?”

F. Remembering that this was written in 1971, I invite you to listen carefully to Smith’s witty words as he talks about the meaning of the Christian life in a humorous, yet very insightful way…

Omniscient Sir… You may not be very well acquainted with Leo Durocher, although he frequently utters Your name (as well as the name of Jesus Christ), but not, I’m afraid, in the context of prayer or theological discussion. Leo is the highly successful manager of professional baseball teams. [His nickname is Leo the Lip]. He is noted for his acerbic and profane dialogues with umpires, and for his thorough grasp of the game. Leo once said, ‘baseball is a game of inches.’

Now Sir, if You don’t happen to be a baseball fan, that doesn’t mean much. But what he meant was that the difference between an easy out and a sharp single is often whether the shortstop can get his glove on the ball or whether it is an inch or so beyond his frantic grasp; the difference between safely stealing second base (stealing is not considered unethical in baseball) or being tagged out is getting your foot on the bag a split second before the ball arrives; the difference between a home run or a long foul depends on which side of the foul pole it landed.

In short, it is a very fine line that separates failure from success.

My question: is this an apt parable for living the Christian life?

If You should drop in on the services of a big city church some Sunday (which perhaps You do), a church where the congregation considers itself theologically literate and the preacher has a Ph.D. from Edinburgh or maybe Union Theological Seminary, You are likely to hear talk about a ‘lived out faith,’ or ‘confronting society from the stance of faith,’ and similar felicitous phrases.

The village variety of preacher is more likely to speak in less sophisticated theological language about ‘living the Christian life seven days a week instead of just on Sunday.’ As nearly as I can make out, though, they are saying the same thing.

But how do I go about it?

Is there a line that separates Christian living from unchristian living, like the third base line which, if I hit to the right of it (or even plunk on it) I’m in fair territory, and if I hit to the left of it (even by a fraction of an inch) it’s a foul?

Baseball is a game of rules. It has a rule to cover every conceivable situation. You can’t score unless you are scrupulous about observing the rules. Is this analogous to playing the Christian game?

We middle-class, white, Anglo-Saxon Christians have been taught that this is how it is. The sports metaphor for the Christian life is very popular with television preachers and big-name evangelists. We are always being exhorted to ‘hit a home run for Jesus’ or ‘score a touchdown for Christ.’

But some of us – a lot of us, I suspect – are beginning to wonder if we don’t need a new metaphor.

One difficulty with playing the Christian game is that there is no substantial agreement among Christians on the rules. The Baptists play by one set of rules, the Episcopalians by another, the Presbyterians make up Presbyterian rules, etc., ad infinitum.

This can be pretty confusing. You can, for example, keep the Episcopalian rules and be considered a winner, but by Baptist rules you are a loser. What kind of ball game is that?

The Presbyterians, who play by rules laid down by John Calvin… say the game is entirely in the hands of the umpire. For Presbyterians… it’s like that story about the umpire who called a low outside pitch a strike. The batter turned to him in amazement and said, ‘I thought that pitch was pretty low and outside.’

‘It was,’ the umpire replied.

‘Then why is it a strike?’ the batter asked.

‘Because I called it a strike.’ the umpire said – and that ended that.

Another problem is that many of the rules we are supposed to play by are at best petty and at worst downright ridiculous.

Are You upset if I imbibe a martini (very dry – just a whiff of vermouth?) The Methodists and Baptists (Southern) say You are.

Does it make You furious when people practice birth control by artificial devices or chemicals. The Roman Catholic rules assure us that it does.

Will you lock the doors of heaven against me if I haven’t been baptized by a Trinitarian formula or completely submerged? Several sects claim that You will.

Will I lose the game if I fail to affirm the Nicene Creed? Plenty of Christian ball clubs (if I am permitted to expand the metaphor) have that in their bylaws.

It is my observation that Christians who insist you have to play the Christian game by the rules tend to select only those rules they happen to like, call them authentic, then discard the others. …My point is, how can you have much of a ball game if everyone insists on using only the rules he likes?

Actually, I don’t like the metaphor of a game for the Christian life. I’m a hot sports fan, which I hope is O.K. with You, but the Christian life doesn’t appeal to me as a game.

For one thing, a game is played under rigid, carefully controlled conditions, and even then they have trouble making the rules cover every contingency.

Like, for example, the time when someone laid a perfect, slow-rolling bunt down the third base line and Pepper Martin, a third baseman of unsurpassed skills, saw that he didn’t have a prayer (if You will pardon the expression) of throwing the man out. Martin was rather inventive, so he quickly dug a little trench with his spikes right in the path of the ball. The ball trickled into the trench in fair territory and then, as Martin had designed, trickled right into foul territory. The other team screamed bloody murder, but there wasn’t a rule to cover the situation, so Martin got away with it. (There’s a rule now, of course, and anyway you couldn’t dig a trench in the artificial grass infields they use today). So if it is tough to make enough rules fast enough to anticipate every situation in a ball game, how can anyone expect to figure out in advance the endless novel situations that arise in real life?

The ball game, after all, is make-believe. You play it under artificial and circumscribed conditions, and though you pretend the outcome is important, any sensible person knows that it doesn’t make much difference.

If the Christian life is just a game with made-up rules, then I don’t want to play. The agony and the ecstasy of life, the pain and joy and frustration and fun and disappointments and possibilities of living are real, and how it comes out is important. So it isn’t every appropriate, it seems to me, to play it like a baseball game.

Maybe our best metaphor of the Christian life is the one favored by the early Church. They thought of it as a long, perilous sea voyage through uncharted waters, as You know.

I like that. The sea is large, and exciting possibilities await the voyager. He starts with a conviction about his journey, its direction, its ultimate purpose – but no precise map. However, along the way there will be signs and clues (like the floating branch Columbus found) that will indicate either the need for a new direction or confirm the course you’re on.

Is this how it is, Sir?

The way I feel now I am going to ignore the cascade of confusing counsel on the Christian life that is about to engulf me, that wants to hem me in, squeeze me down, narrow my options, force my existence into confining cultural molds – and set sail for some unseen destination of the spirit in the expectation that the voyage as well as the [destination] will be a glorious experience.

I hope You approve, Sir.