Sermon & Rose's Ramblings
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HEROES
Deuteronomy 5:7 April 27, 2008 John 15:8-11
Great God, we bow in Your presence. May Your Word be our rule,
Your Spirit our Teacher and Your greater glory our supreme concern. Amen!
++++++++++++
Dorothy Rose and I were enjoying a wedding rehearsal dinner last December at a really good restaurant in Richmond, VA, The Hard Shell. We were there so I could conduct a wedding for long time friends from Western Pennsylvania. Conversation around our end of the table turned, for a few minutes, to college basketball, especially Georgetown University’s team. I don’t recall why Georgetown, except that for one man, it was his favorite men’s team. He said that the head coach, J. T. Thompson (son of recently retired and very successful Georgetown coach, John Thompson) kept on his desk a partially deflated basketball. You’re not surprised that I asked why? The coach tells all the recruits,
Someday your basketball career will end. If you enroll at Georgetown, my job is to
help you develop your skills on the court and, more importantly, get an education that
will help prepare you for life in the real world, because someday your athletic career
will be deflated like this basketball.
When we returned to our hotel room at the Marriott, I said to Dorothy,
I hope what that man said at dinner tonight about Georgetown’s coach is true. It’s
the reason I spend nearly ten years coaching high school football in W. PA while
serving a Church. I really believe athletics and education, at any level, can help
prepare young people for life in the real world.
I know,” she responded, with a smile. “That’s why I never complained about the hours your football coaching consumed in our lives."
But there is a dangerous downside to athletics, especially at the professional level. Glenn McDonald serves our Presbyterian Church in Zionsville, Indiana. Writing in The Presbyterian Outlook (Jan. 29, 2007),
Sports stars aren’t only performers. They are “heroes.” The average salary for Major
League Baseball players is greater then the lifetime earnings of tens of millions of
American workers. Has our national sports fixation become a form of mental illness?
It’s hard to overlook the symbiosis of major sports with gambling, alcohol, sexual images
and violence. We live in a culture of distraction. Our fascination with Hollywood, escapist
vacations, political scandals, and the trivial details of the lives of celebrities – do Brad and
Angelina truly love each other? – is symptomatic of the fact that many of those in our pews
are not even acquainted with life’s great questions.
Addiction to sports can be a serious challenge to spiritual formation – that lifelong
endeavor that requires relentless seeking of God’s Kingdom through such disciplines
as silence, solitude, and study. Manic attention to spectator events steals irreplaceable
time from marriages, friendships and parenting. Is it normal for dads to know more
about the struggles of their fantasy players than the stresses faced by their own kids?
With God’s help I will spend fewer hours in front of the TV and more time attending to
the precious people in my home. As a pastor I will not dodge the issue of sports
addiction as a major spiritual compromise for many of my members.
God deserves my attention above all.
Glenn McDonald doesn’t say so, but I believe he is writing a commentary on commandment Number 1, “You shall have no other gods before Me." No one, nothing, is to occupy first place in our lives. God deserves our attention above all false gods.
On my desk when Dorothy and I returned to McDonough from Richmond was an e-mail from Corey North, Beth’s husband, Jack and Kim’s son, a State Farm Insurance Agent in Peoria, IL. It was titled, “Ben Stein’s Last Column." I take it he is a newspaper columnist who retired from his trade. Ben Stein also writes about our national fascination, our pre-occupation, with celebrities.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury
really be a star in today’s world, if by a “star" we mean someone bright and powerful
and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of
limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw
fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice
people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star, the kind who haunts my
memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with
a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He
pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in
California and a little girl alive in Baghdad. I am no longer comfortable being part of a
system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament…the policemen and women
who go off on patrol and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics
who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery;
the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children;
the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards. I have come to
realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and
best use as a human. I also realize I could never be a celebrity, but I could be a
devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and a good son to the parents who had
done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well
with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister’s
help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my
father as he got sick, went into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister
and me reading the Psalms. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only
one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has given me,
to help others He has placed in my path.
Of late I’ve become a fan (in the healthiest sense of that word!) of Max Lucado’s books. He has a wonderful way with words. It ‘s not hard for me to like a guy who has his editor put, on a book’s jacket, this kind of modest advertisement,
Max Lucado is a minister (doesn’t say he is the big shot Senior Minister)of the
Oak Hill Church in San Antonio, TX. He is the husband of Denalyn and father
of Jenna, Andrea and Sara. He has authored multiple bestsellers. (At last
count, 80…I’d say that’s “multiple.”) He also has an insatiable appetite for
strawberry sundaes. Visit his website at www.maxlucado.com
In his book of 2007, 3:16, The Numbers of Hope, referring to the twelve year old Jesus’ visit to the Temple in Jerusalem, he writes,
As a young boy, Jesus already senses the call of God. But what does He do?
Recruit apostles and preach sermons and perform miracles? No, He goes home
from the Temple with His folks and learns the family business. That is exactly
what you should do. Want to bring focus to your life? Do what Jesus did. Go
home, love your family, take care of business. “But Max, I want to be a missionary."
Your first mission field is under your roof. What makes you think they’ll believe you
overseas if they don’t believe you across the hall?
Be Jesus’ hero, a genuine star for Christ, by focusing on what matters most in life: serving God by serving others…at home, on the job, in the community.
Doing so is a powerful way of obeying Christ’s promise,
God will be glorified if you bear much fruit by abiding in My love…and by
keeping My commandment to deal in loving ways with others…doing so
will prove you are My follower. (John 15:8-22, paraphrased)
More opportunities may follow. But first things first – God’s Kingdom work where you are planted.
If necessary, keep a deflated basketball in sight.
