"THAT'S WHY THEY PLAY THE GAME "

Rev. Jim Petersen

First CongregationalUCC-Great Falls, MT

10-26-08

Text: Psalm 139:1-10, 23-24--Romans 5:1-11

Who would have thunk it?  It's Tampa Bay vs. Philadelphia. Tampa Bay, prior to this season the losingest team in baseball in their ten year existence, finishing in last place in nine of their 10 years, including last year when they had the worst record in baseball, vs. Philadelphia, the losingest team in baseball history, in fact, the losingest franchise in all of professional sports, winner of one World Series in 125 years, that back in 1983, these two losers playing this year in the World Series. Who would have thunk it?

Tampa Bay, with 150 to 1 odds at the beginning of the season to make it to the World Series, and Philadelphia with about 10 to 1 odds, making it about 1500 to 1 odds these two teams would meet, now playing.  If you were betting baseball rather than the stock market, this could have been a banner year instead of a bummer year.

For those of us who like to root for the Cinderella teams, this one is kind of a hard to choose.  Do you root for the lousiest team over their ten year history or the lousiest team in all of history?  I wish they both could win!

Especially inasmuch as Tampa Bay has just this year dropped the "devil" out of their Devil Rays nickname, and bingo, they go from worst to first. Making this also a banner year for Bible thumpers.

Abner Doubleday would be delighted. Born June 26, 1819, in Saratoga, New York, Abner Doubleday was a career military man.   He fought in the Mexican-American War, the Seminole Indian War in Florida, and the Civil War. 

It is said he fired the first gun in defense of Fort Sumter to begin the Civil War, and fought with particular distinction at Gettysburg.  A West Point graduate, Doubleday retired a colonel in 1867.  He settled in New Jersey, wrote a couple books, and died in 1893.

In 1906, a commission headed by A.G. Spalding to ascertain the origin of baseball, credited baseball's beginning to Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1839.

That Colonel Doubleday was not in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1839, cast doubt on this claim.  Nevertheless the claim persists, as have the Phillies in Philadelphia since 1866, the "oldest, continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional sports history."

But let's back up a bit, to the Bible, which might be argued is the original book of baseball inasmuch as it begins, as you know, "In the big inning..."

Today is Reformation Sunday. You can tell by the red paraments.  If there is one text that is right for the Reformation, it is Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter five, as read by Linda this morning, which says, in short, "We are saved by God's grace and not through our own righteousness." These few verses summarize Paul's understanding of the Christian faith.  No one has done it any better.

This was personal for Paul, not abstract theology. He discovered in his own life that in Christ, he had freely received what he was unable to achieve by his own efforts.  You see, Paul was a good Jew.  A Pharisee, no less, meaning he was among the elite in his Hebrew society.  He was among the high achievers, born of affluence and blessed education.  He had been taught since he was a little lad that if he lived by the rules, he would be rewarded. 

In religious terms this meant if he were obedient to Torah, he would be declared "righteous" by God.

However, to his disappointment Paul discovered following a religious system of rules did not deliver what it promised.  As a Pharisee, he did not feel "righteous" before God.  What he experienced measuring himself against a law, a strict set of rules, which was actually a standard of perfection, made him feel like a failure. 

No matter how well he did, his superiors could always say, "Well now, Paulie, you know you could have done better."  So little Paul would slink away muttering, "Maybe next time, if I just try a little harder..."

I imagine it was something like this, for Paul wrote, "the more you obey the Law, the more the Law condemns you."  That is, the closer you get to the law, the more aware you are of how short of the law you are.  Therefore, Paul professed we are not saved by the Law, as preached by the Jews, but by God's grace which we know about, indeed receive, through Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, grace is given us not because of anything we have done to deserve it, but because God is God and we are God's children.

To mix my sports metaphors, the God in Jesus Christ does not slam dunk us through the rim of perfection. This God saves us, knowing that at best we are a rim shot, and all too often, an air ball. 

So Paul preaches, it is on the Cross Jesus reveals how much God loves us, blemishes and all.  God's love is given to us not after we passed the test, but in the midst of our failing the test.  Or as Paul puts it,  "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us."  Paul considered this amazing and unmerited grace.

Martin Luther, 1500 years after Paul, had a religious pilgrimage similar to Paul's.  Luther, too, lived by the law, trying to be righteous before the Lord. Only for Luther the law was not the Jewish Law,  but the rules of his Augustinian monastic order. 

Monk Martin poured his life into his religious order, trying as hard as he could to live a life of perfect obedience.  What he experienced was the more he tried, the more he felt like a failure. 

Finally - get this - reading Paul's Letter to the Romans,  as you heard read this morning, where Paul writes we are saved by grace, not by our works, Luther experiences God's grace in his own life and realizes it is a gift given him quite apart from his monkhood's path of perfection.

Out of this revelation began what we call the Protestant Reformation, which like a glacier, has carved the religious valley of grace in which we live today.

So it goes.  Two hundred years later than Luther, John Wesley, founder of Methodism, trying to be righteous, now not in relation to Jewish Law, nor in relation to monastic rule, but in keeping with the strict moralism of Protestant piety as preached by his Mother Church, found himself to be unworthy, unhappy and unpopular as an Anglican clergy.

Then one night at Aldersgate Street, London, visiting a Moravian brethren worship service, Wesley heard a man - get this - read from Martin Luther's Preface to Paul's Letter to the Romans.  In the preface Luther summarizes Paul's 5th chapter, writing, "We are saved by grace and not by our works."

Wesley records, "I felt my heart strangely warmed.  I knew God had forgiven my sins, even mine."

What an influence this Roman's passage has rightly had through the ages, redeeming and renewing those of us in every age who get screwed up and think we are going to get to heaven by our own merits, or if not that far,  we are at least going to be rewarded here on earth in an amount equal to or greater than our good works.

It occurred to me during this past World Series week that Abner Doubleday must have been influenced by this Roman's passage as well.  For if he did not invent baseball, he was at least one of the first to formulate the basic rules of baseball.  Which, if you stop and think about it, is set up kind of as a morality play based on the doctrine of justification by grace, not good works. 

How else could we explain a World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays?

Baseball acts out the human drama of living under a law, playing by the rules, and always falling short. It should have been the Chicago Cubs and the Los Angeles Angels, who have always been angels, never devils, in the World Series.  They played by the rules and after a season of 162 games had the most wins.  But baseball is a game where grace rules.  So you never know. It's Phillies vs. Rays.

Let's look closer. Baseball, more than any other sport, is a game of numbers.  It is a game of statistics, each governed by laws.  Baseball is merciless this way.

Every strike is counted.  Every ball is counted.  Every pitch and put out is recorded.  There are RBI's, ERA's, and batting averages; there are fielding percentages, slugging percentages, and on base percentages; everything is recorded and remembered, saves and blown saves.

I cannot think of any other field of endeavor where a person's performance is so mercilessly measured and recorded as in baseball.  Both the achievements and the errors, they are all there, in the book of statistics; a permanent record of performance that is put on the back of the baseball playing card bearing your picture on the front.

What is more, every day your batting average is printed in the newspapers for the whole world to see.  The averages, mind you, are figured out to three  decimal points, which I point out to you, is to the 1/1000 percentile.  They don't just say, "Well, he's getting a hit about three times out of ten."  No, they say, "He's batting "(point)317," or ".284" which is 84/1000.

Why, these aren't averages at all.  These are exact figures.

Furthermore, they can figure your "average" relative to every minutiae, what you are batting against this pitcher or that pitcher, right handers or left handers, at home games or on the road, during the day or at night, in the spring or in the fall.  All of which determines whether you get a chance to play or not, because your manager has all these statistics written down on a card he carries in the palm of his hand.  It's tough, I tell you.  Nothing is overlooked.

In baseball your performance is quantified in absolute terms, held up to a standard of perfection, and then recorded forever.  Pitcher John Coleman lost 48 games for the 1883 Philadelphia Phillies. No one has done worse.   This is living under the law.  Better to be a monk.

Now the amazing theological point about this is nobody does very well.  The point of going up to the plate is to get a hit.  But even the best players only get one hit out of every three at bats.  How would that do for you in your job?   If you only did what you were supposed to do one out of three times?  Gave the correct change, hit the right button, answered the phone, landed the airplane?  I don't think it would be very long before you were looking for a new job.

In baseball, if you succeed one-third of the time, you'll get a multi-million dollar contract.  And if you do it for a career, you'll end up in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., with Abner Doubleday, who did not invent baseball.

Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle used to like to point out that he struck out 1,710 times, and that he walked 1,734 times.  Then he would confess, "I was up to bat 3,444 times without ever hitting the ball."  He would go on, "You figure a baseball player regularly gets about 500 at bats a year.  That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball." And he was one of baseball's best, the highest paid player in his day.

This is my theological point about baseball.  It is a game of statistics measuring how the players do against a standard of perfection.  And all the players fail.  Dramatically.  Foul balls, pop ups, little bleeders.  Pitchers are hammered, giving up on average 4 to 5 runs a game.  Get it down to three and you are an All-Star.  No one is near perfect.  Which means in baseball grace abounds.  Right?

I remember growing up listening to a game.  The Giants against somebody, maybe Cincinnati. I am a Giant fan.  Bob Brenly, who played for the Great Falls Giants, was playing third base.  Bob Brenly was a catcher.  When he played here he was a catcher, when he came up to San Francisco he was a catcher, he played most all his career as a catcher.  But this day he was playing 3rd base. 

It didn't matter, the rules of the game still applied equally to him, which is why he was charged with four errors,  setting a major league record for errors by a third basemen in a game.  He's not a third basement, he's a catcher.  But that's that, he's in the record books as a third basemen.  In his last at bat, in the ninth inning, he hits a home run and the Giants won, 7 to 6.  It's a wonderful game. "It's not over until it's over," as Yogi Berra used to say.

It was not over for Bob Brenly.  Not by a long shot.  He would later manage the Arizona Diamondbacks to their first World Series win in 2001.

Which reminds me of the philosopher-poet, Ugo Betti, who said, "To believe in God means that all the rules are fair, and in the end there are wonderful surprises."  Baseball is like this.   All the rules are fair, and in the end there are wonderful surprises.  Ask the fans in Philly and Florida. "...in the end there are wonderful surprises."

This is because in God's world, where laws matter a lot, and rules do rule, grace still abounds. 

And where there is grace there is new life.

So if we have committed four errors in one game, we still have a chance to come to the plate again, and play as if what's happened in the past no longer rules over the present.  Paul calls this being "saved by God's grace," which is the theological affirmation of the Reformation.   And that's why we play the game.

AMEN