OK, I know it's Holy Week. I love Holy Week more than you can possibly imagine. But it's all I can do to live in Holy Week this year without writing about it, if that makes any sense. I need a little more space between me and Last Suppers and Good Fridays before I can write about their shapes and contours. Tonight, I want to write about something I particularly love about my job...and my particular post at Covenant Point-Lakeside Cooperative Parish. See, I love "Wing-Walking Ministry." (My term--or at least I think I made it up).
My dad taught me at an early age that it pays to be sort of outrageous in your vocation, because that's where the fun of it is, and because, if it's your vocation, you need to be doing it in 5th gear with your hair on fire. (John Wesley was in agreement--in preaching he said, "I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn" or something along those comforting lines). Dad was an outrageous Navy lawyer, and he's currently an outrageous retiree....He used to say to the folks that worked for him "Look, we're not making a lot of money, there's no fame in it, or glory, so we might as well be having fun at it." He's courageously audacious in a way that makes your jaw drop. And he is an amazing lawyer because of it. He wanted judges and opposing counsel to say going into a trial, "Oh, it's HIM. We're going to have a heck of a good time today!" (Or words to that effect). Now, if that is so for lawyerin', and it most certainly is...how much more is it so for a pastor, a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ? The mind boggles.
I am my own father's daughter I guess, because I want to be an audacious, outrageous, pastor. I want to be faithful and discerning and all those other things, but I also want to take some holy risks in this job. I want our laity to say "At the end of the day, I'm proud you're my pastor." And "I never know what you're going to say or do next." And "I am excited to be a disciple of Jesus Christ in this place." I am utterly thrilled to go to work every day in part because I believe anything is possible with God (and on the odd Monday morning I lose a bounce in my step, Pastor Love reminds me 'bout the outrageous Easter people we are called to be. It makes for a pretty darn fun and exciting work environment. "Yeah, Mandy, that'll be hard but we can do it. And how about THIS?" and he comes up with something more outrageous and more exciting. It's like trading jazz riffs with someone who loves the music as much as you do). I want to be a wing-walker of a pastor, you know, trying stuff, making mistakes, proclaiming the audacious, outrageous gospel and God has put me square with the folks who will make me the best wing-walker I can be.
In this line of work, there are a lot of dire predictions (ask Lovett Weems about the year 2018 if you don't believe me--the demographics for the mainline church are particularly bad in 2018). I take them seriously, I really do. I am particularly concerned about big expensive buildings that we have to pay to heat and cool and insure that we can't fill, and I'm concerned about declining numbers. But here's the thing. We serve a risen savior, who has endured a whole lot more than a bad Church Council meeting. It is a lovely and precious way to spend the gift of our time, being Church together and thinking about how we can be present in our neighborhoods in a new way. My DS a few years ago asked at Charge Conference, "What difference would it make if your church were to close its doors today?" I want the answer to be, "A whole heck of a lot of difference." Or words to that effect.
Our people, well, they're wing walkers for Christ too. They don't give up easy, and they mean to praise God and work until Jesus comes for the sake of the Kingdom. They inspire and encourage me on an hourly basis to see and work for what's really important, for what really matters. It's Holy Week, of course...but in this job, most all the weeks are holy, with crucifixions and resurrections and tears and joy. There's Lazarus and Judas and water and wine and that's Church. At the end of the day, God says "Yes and Amen" in Jesus Christ. And that's enough to keep me hangin' out on the wing, goggles and all, with a big grin on my face.
Good Friday? The Infamous 2018? Challenges? Looping loops at high speeds through the cloudy firmament of change and uncertainty? Pastor Love, our crazy brothers and sisters in Christ, and me...We're gonna do a little wing-walking in the name of the One who walked on water, the One who was raised from the dead. It's havoc on the hairdo but the view is spectacular, in a "He's not here, he is risen" sort of way.
I reckon I was writing about Holy Week after all. Be encouraged! Meet me on the wing and let's have some fun!
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
Play Ball!: A bit about the theology of baseball and the baseball of theology
I have often thought of the considerable overlap between the joys of Easter and the joys of baseball season. Baseball, you see, is a game about faith and hope and love, where faith is "the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." It is all about shaking off the mortal coils of last season, and the Good Fridays of being out of the running or losing at the very end, in favor of a brand new beginning and the start of a brand new life.
Spring training begins in Florida, where men stretch out tired muscles and wake up arms and bats to play a boy's game, at a time when most of us are glaring out ice covered windows with 'nary a bud (on branches or in bottles) in sight. As we crunch though snowbanks or turn a collar to the chill, we know that somewhere the sunlight has already turned up its heat and is glowing down, full of promise, on the backs of some spectators in Sarasota or Cocoa Beach or West Palm. We can hear the thwack of fastball on leather and the promising crack of the bat, even from where we sit in Maryland, Michigan or Massachusetts. We don't begrudge those Floridians their time in the sun--it is coming this way, like a royal procession, like Easter morning. We are in Lent, but Easter is coming.
And then there's Opening Day--when it's usually still bitter cold or raining, as here in our nation's capital, where a heavy cold mist falls on defiant cherry blossoms. Opening Day, where green fields and freshly painted baselines chart a new course, and make us feel young again and full of the promise of knowing our best days are yet to come. There's something about baseball that puts us back in touch with all our passions, commitments and dreams. I feel 20 years old every time I go to a game, whether it's A-ball or the Big Leagues, and my husband and I are suddenly dating again, holding hands, laughing, shouting at the players. It is a reminder of God's joy and a throwback to those days when all we ever wanted was Friday night and a full tank of gas in the car, before babies and budgets and biopsies and belly fat. We have our best conversations about our hopes and dreams at the ballpark between pitches. The ballpark is a place to dream outrageously, to speak the impossible, to make bold claims about our future, and to remember our past. Church on Sunday morning, when it's at its best, is also that kind of hallowed ground. And Easter Sunday, is of course, the ultimate "Opening Day."
Baseball is very religious--it's Trinitarian (witness the 6-4-3 double play), it takes patience, and the season is long--carrying us from the Easter joys of April through the endurance contest of the "Season After Pentecost." Prayers are lifted up for teams and players and individual at bats and pop-flies. "Miss it, miss it, miss it," or "Get him, get him, get him..." It is about community and the shared joys and sorrows of our common life. John Fogerty sings about baseball in "Center Field": "Beat the drum, and hold the phone, the sun came out today! We're born again, there's new grass on the field."
As I write this, the Braves (my beloved, beloved Braves, who I have loved as long as I have lived) are 1 and 0, and I have a sermon to write for Sunday, about how Jesus took dirt and spit and worked a miracle, making a blind man see. It's the season for miracles, where new leaves grow on old branches, and the scrappy second baseman turns an "ofer" into a walk-off game-winner, and where Jesus is at work in the ordinary "stuff" of our life, doing extraordinary things. When it comes to discipleship, it's the season for getting the uniform dirty in the name of loving service, and swinging hard and level, and running all the way through the play, in the name of the gameplan of the One who makes all things new.
Easter's a'comin'! Until then, "Play ball!!"
Spring training begins in Florida, where men stretch out tired muscles and wake up arms and bats to play a boy's game, at a time when most of us are glaring out ice covered windows with 'nary a bud (on branches or in bottles) in sight. As we crunch though snowbanks or turn a collar to the chill, we know that somewhere the sunlight has already turned up its heat and is glowing down, full of promise, on the backs of some spectators in Sarasota or Cocoa Beach or West Palm. We can hear the thwack of fastball on leather and the promising crack of the bat, even from where we sit in Maryland, Michigan or Massachusetts. We don't begrudge those Floridians their time in the sun--it is coming this way, like a royal procession, like Easter morning. We are in Lent, but Easter is coming.
And then there's Opening Day--when it's usually still bitter cold or raining, as here in our nation's capital, where a heavy cold mist falls on defiant cherry blossoms. Opening Day, where green fields and freshly painted baselines chart a new course, and make us feel young again and full of the promise of knowing our best days are yet to come. There's something about baseball that puts us back in touch with all our passions, commitments and dreams. I feel 20 years old every time I go to a game, whether it's A-ball or the Big Leagues, and my husband and I are suddenly dating again, holding hands, laughing, shouting at the players. It is a reminder of God's joy and a throwback to those days when all we ever wanted was Friday night and a full tank of gas in the car, before babies and budgets and biopsies and belly fat. We have our best conversations about our hopes and dreams at the ballpark between pitches. The ballpark is a place to dream outrageously, to speak the impossible, to make bold claims about our future, and to remember our past. Church on Sunday morning, when it's at its best, is also that kind of hallowed ground. And Easter Sunday, is of course, the ultimate "Opening Day."
Baseball is very religious--it's Trinitarian (witness the 6-4-3 double play), it takes patience, and the season is long--carrying us from the Easter joys of April through the endurance contest of the "Season After Pentecost." Prayers are lifted up for teams and players and individual at bats and pop-flies. "Miss it, miss it, miss it," or "Get him, get him, get him..." It is about community and the shared joys and sorrows of our common life. John Fogerty sings about baseball in "Center Field": "Beat the drum, and hold the phone, the sun came out today! We're born again, there's new grass on the field."
As I write this, the Braves (my beloved, beloved Braves, who I have loved as long as I have lived) are 1 and 0, and I have a sermon to write for Sunday, about how Jesus took dirt and spit and worked a miracle, making a blind man see. It's the season for miracles, where new leaves grow on old branches, and the scrappy second baseman turns an "ofer" into a walk-off game-winner, and where Jesus is at work in the ordinary "stuff" of our life, doing extraordinary things. When it comes to discipleship, it's the season for getting the uniform dirty in the name of loving service, and swinging hard and level, and running all the way through the play, in the name of the gameplan of the One who makes all things new.
Easter's a'comin'! Until then, "Play ball!!"
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