Lectionary Year B
July 27, 2003
Ephesians 3:14-21
Step VI: Contemporary Address
(DH) C. CONTEMPORARY ADDRESS
STRIKE!
Last week as I was driving down I35 toward Georgetown, I listened to
NPR--National Public Radio--because I was bored with all the other music
stations, or better yet, "commercial" stations. Every time I turn on the
radio in the car, I never hear any music but rather am bombarded with some
sort of advertising. Anyway, NPR was broadcasting a feature report on the
resurgence of minor league baseball in the United States. Not the kind of
baseball that is played in the Majors these days, which is focused on the
cult of personality and big money, but the kind of baseball like it used to
be played in the good ol' days. The kind of baseball that used to be a
family affair, to which you could take your kids on a Sunday afternoon.
The kind of baseball that allowed you to bring your own food to the
ballpark, to have a picnic, talk to your wife, your kids, neighbors and
friends, and watch some ball on the side, so to speak. In short, the kind
of baseball that was affordable for the whole family and fun at the same
time. According to the NPR report, this is the kind of baseball that is
making a huge come-back right now.
Having grown up in Germany, I really cannot say much that is very profound
about this favorite American pastime. Unlike any other popular
professional sport, such as hockey, basketball or football, baseball seems
to be less focused on action and more on accuracy and communication. This
is really fascinating. There is the pitcher, standing on the mound, his
cap pulled deeply into his poker face, staring intently at the catcher
behind home plate. The catcher, kneeling down, communicates with the
pitcher as to how he should throw the ball by signaling various patterns
with his fingers against his thigh. The pitcher nods, looks down, rolls
the ball that is hidden in his glove into the right position, looks up,
takes position and aim, and puts all of his body weight into the throw as
he hurls the tiny ball toward home plate.
Strike! Or ball, for that matter. Watching these guys throw, I wonder how
much of their success is accuracy and how much plain luck. More often than
hearing the umpire's desired yell "Strike!," it seems to me they get to
hear the bummer word - ball. Hours and hours of practice, sore arms and
shoulders amount to a mere mixture between having a great day with a "no
hitter" or simply being the goat. All knowledge about curve-balls and
fast-balls might be no saving grace if the pitcher just has a bad day. The
batter has to dodge stray balls in order not to get hit in the head, the
catcher must eat loads of dust as the ball hits the dirt right in front of
him, and even the audience is not entirely safe behind home plate. But as
success in baseball is not only dependent on the pitcher but on team effort
as well, even a bad day for the guy with the great arm can turn into a
triumph.
At least for the team. The statistics are not quite as kind. Every
strike, every ball, is recorded meticulously in the annals of sports
history. There, every devoted fan can read everything about ERAs, batting
averages and what not. And according to these statistics, written down in
black and white, the cash value and net worth of every player is determined
down to the penny. If you have a bad season and overthrow a few balls too
many, your bank account will decrease accordingly.
It seems to me, however, that the most important aspect of being a good
pitcher, a good professional athlete, a good professional--be it lawyer,
doctor, baker, student or home-maker-- is being gifted. Hundreds and
thousands of hours of practice do not amount to much of anything if one is
not gifted. And even luck will only get you so far if you are not gifted.
Now, living the Christian life has quite a few things in common with being
a good pitcher or being a good professional. One has to practice it
hundreds and thousands of hours, day by day, month by month, year after
year. One has to be "lucky," or in Christian terms "under the providence
of God." And most important of all, one has to be gifted, as the writer of
Ephesians already reminded us in chapter 2:8: "For by grace you have been
saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of
God."
What kind of gift, though, is it that God bestows upon the Christ people,
those who believe in Jesus Christ and confess Him as Savior and Lord? The
apostle Paul tells us that he received the good news by the grace of God,
which was God's gift to him. He knows that he does not deserve this gift,
as he perceives himself to be the "very least of the saints." And he also
appears to know that he is not supposed to keep this gift for himself but
to hand it on, to "bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches
of Christ." And as he hands this gift on, eyes that were shut are opened
and the plan of the Creator for all creation that was hidden for a long
time is now revealed. How all of this works, precisely, even the gifted
Paul does not know. Even by practicing this gift over and over again, even
under the assurance of God's providence, the gifted apostle Paul does not
fully understand his gift. It is a mystery. A mystery that he handed on
to the church and that the church--you and I--as paradoxical as it is, must
now hand on in order to make God's wisdom known to all generations in the
name of Jesus Christ. And the goal of the tradition of the mystery is to
glorify God as a servant of God's people.
This almost reads like spiritual stretching exercises, don't you think?
Like a pitcher who has to train his arm in strength, accuracy and
endurance, we, as followers of Christ, as the gifted ones of God, must do
something that is very similar. However, we don't practice like a pitcher
in a standing-up position, but by prostrating ourselves. If we do our
spiritual stretching and practice exercises right, if we live our Christian
life "professionally" so to speak, we continually bow our knees before the
Father for receiving the gifts of creation, reconciliation, and redemption.
This is pretty exciting stuff. God has equipped each and every one of us
with a special gift. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12, some of us are
gifted with uttering wisdom, others with knowledge, others with faith, with
healing, with discernment, with hospitality, etc. But no gift is worth
more than another, for all gifts come from God. The purpose of the variety
of the gifts that we have, that Louise has, that Jim, Joe, Peggy, Sue, Res,
Toothie, Bob, all of us have who are assembled here this morning, is one
purpose only: "It is the power to comprehend with all the saints what is
the breadth, the length, the height and the depth" of this mystery that we
have received. Perhaps it was a personal experience that led most of us to
Christ, but it is the communal experience as church, as the congregation of
Sunrise Beach, that helps us grow in our understanding of what it means to
follow the One who has called us by name.
By practicing our individual gifts and the gift of togetherness over and
over again, we will strengthen and hone our particular gifts like a pitcher
will strengthen his arm and hone his accuracy. And as every good pitcher
is proud of his achievements, we too take pleasure in flexing our Christian
muscles and are pleased with the progress that our Christian life is taking
as we continue to grow in Christ. But this is only part of the story.
Getting better and better at what one does has a trap door built in that
opens and pulls the rug out from underneath our feet when it is least
expected. Getting better and better at how we handle our gifts, and to be
exceedingly proud of our achievements, has a theological name that is
almost forgotten in our day and age: it is called the sin of pride. To be
proud is fashionable these days: we are Austin proud, gay proud, proud
parents of our honor students, and on and on. And to sin is more
associated with eating one sugar cookie too many, thus committing the
unforgivable sin of the nineties: high-calorie-intake. But to sin is to
miss the mark, to throw curve-balls and 90 mile an hour fast-balls and miss
the catcher behind home plate.
I am sure you have seen many a person in your lifetime who was proud in a
similar fashion, or "full of it" as they say, who was full of him or
herself. And I am sure that you can also remember a time in your life, as
I can in mine, when we joined the ranks of the "full-of themselves-ones."
Teenagers in general have a tendency to think that they are invincible,
that they will live forever. Grown-ups in our society have learned that it
is necessary to work themselves half to death in order to provide for
themselves and their families. Work-out schedules demand the daily trips
to the fitness studio in order to stay in shape and shape the body. People
read the Bible feverishly and with such devotion that they end up
worshipping Scripture instead of the One who gave us the good news as a
gift. We are all "full of it." And all the time that we spend in
practice, hundreds and thousands of hours, we do it with pride, we do it
standing up. And not as Paul advised us in the first verse of the passage
that we read today, on our knees before the Father.
As much as we try to perfect the gifts that have been given to us, we still
miss the mark. We might become semi-professional pitchers, but we will
still hit others with the balls we throw, we will still throw balls in the
dirt or throw it into the stands. We are simply not capable of throwing
the perfect pitch. Not with all the practice in the world, and not even on
an extremely lucky day. This is why we need to be continually on our knees
before God the Father and before nobody else. If Bill Clinton, and with
him our society in general, were our judge, we would be thoroughly out of
luck. Three strikes, you're out! This is today's motto of our political
leaders when it comes to judging criminal actions. I bet--and I wager that
it is a safe bet--that all of us have committed more than three sinful acts
in our lives, and I am not talking about eating too many "sinful" cookies
either. Three strikes against us on our spiritual account and we're out!
Boy, if that were God's policy, we'd all be in big trouble. How good it is
to hear God's good news and to receive it as a gift that we are forgiven in
Jesus Christ: not seven times, not seventy times seven times--with God
there are no ERAs or batting average statistics. We are forgiven, period.
"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own
doing; it is a gift of God." What a gift this is. It is a gift of
"immeasurable greatness of God's power" according to the "immeasurable
riches of God's grace." The writer of Ephesians does not seem to be able
to find any words big enough to even come remotely close in describing this
gift. For this reason, on account of this gift, Paul is continuously on
his knees and implores us to be on ours with him and all the saints of all
times and places. To know about God's great gift given to us in Jesus
Christ, to know that through Him we have received our name, should be
enough. We do not need to surpass anything for Christ has already
surpassed everything for us. It is Christ who strengthens us in our inner
being. It is Christ who dwells in our hearts and in whom we are grounded
and rooted in love. And it is this love that is the perfect pitch, which
never misses the mark of our hearts. It is this love that is thrown over
us so as to cover all our pretentiousness, all our highly esteemed human
knowledge so that we are not full of ourselves anymore, but in order that
we may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Perhaps this is a thought or a feeling that disturbs us so deeply. To be
filled with all the fullness of God. How can God, who is so holy, so pure,
so good, so anything unlike us, desire to fill us with this fullness, we,
who are so unholy, so impure, so unlike God? Most of us are pretty inept
when it comes to receiving a gift graciously. We like to give presents
because giving presents is under our control. But we do not like to
receive gifts because we cannot reciprocate, because receiving is beyond
our control. But that is exactly what God's love is: a gift for which we
cannot reciprocate, a gift beyond our control.
A few years ago my grandmother on my father's side died at the blessed age
of 85. The last two or three months before her death we spent a lot of
time talking together. She told me that she missed her husband, that she
was looking forward to seeing her parents again, that she talked to them
occasionally. At first, this kind of talk made me a little uneasy. But
the more we talked, the more I knew that she was not just fantasizing.
This expectation of reunion with her loved ones was a reality for her, as
it is for each one of us. Death was not a scary thing for her, she had
welcomed it as a friend. As strange as this seemed to me at first, looking
back it now makes perfect sense. I remember one conversation most of all
in which she said: "Now, when I'm gone, I want you to have my down
comforters. They are good comforters. I know you always have cold hands
and feet, and they will keep you warm." Strange again. "Yes, grandma," I
said. I do sleep with her comforters now. They are good comforters and
they keep my cold hands and feet warm (at least in the few days of winter
that we have here in Texas). Like a blanket of grandmotherly love, they
wrap me every night. How can I thank her for this precious gift? I can't,
she is gone. But perhaps I can remember her in my prayers before I go to
bed at night. Perhaps our prayers of thanksgiving are the only way we have
to acknowledge all the gifts that we have received from our Lord, for which we can give
nothing in return.
Let us pray!
Gracious and ever-loving God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ, now to You who by Your power at work within us are able to
accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to You be
the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and
ever. AMEN.
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