Life Is a Ball Game!

Pastor Milt's Sermon Outline For April 15th 

Series: Living and Loving as Easter People
Part 1:  Life Is a Ball Game

Focus Text:  1 John 1 

[Click on Reference Above to Read This Passage!]

Introduction  -  Quote

·      I know there are those who will accuse me of exaggeration when I say this, but, until baseball appeared, humans were a sad and benighted lot, lost in the labyrinth of matter, dimly and achingly aware of something incandescently beautiful and unattainable, something infinitely desirable shining up above in the empyrean (ie "celestial sphere) of the ideas; but, throughout most of the history of the race, no culture was able to produce more than a shadowy sketch of whatever glorious mystery prompted those nameless longings. . . 

You needn’t smirk. I admit that my rhetoric might seem a bit excessive, but be fair: Something about the game elicits excess. I am hardly the first aficionado of baseball who has felt that somehow it demands a “thick” metaphysical—or even religious—explanation. . . .

Clearly, baseball was always intended in our very essence; without it, our humanity was incomplete. Willie Mays was an avatar of the divine capacities that lie within our animal frames. Bob Feller’s fastball was Jovian lightning at the command of mortal clay.

o      Quote by David P. Hart, in the article A Perfect Game  - The metaphysical meaning of baseball   [Click Here to Read This Article!]

Four Comparisons: Baseball and A Life of Faith

1.  An Eternal Game  - No Time Limit"  - Baseball is "Utterly Saturated by Infinity."

·      "It ain't over till its over."  Yogi Beri

·      Baseball, however, has no clock; rather, terrestrial time is entirely subordinate to its inner intervals and rhythms.

o      Baseball is not chronos, meaning sequential or chronological tim, but karios or event time   It is not a game defined in length by a specific number of ticks or the spinning of digital numbers.  It is event time. Baseball is defined only by events.  Innings are defined by outs not seconds.  By events that happen on the field of play. 

·      Until the final out is recorded, no loss is final. As long as you have one out left, there is hope.  You may even lose a game or two, but a new day will dawn and a new game scheduled.  You may experience a very difficult season but there's always a new season to come when your team may rise from the cellar to win the pennant or even the world series! Even if you don't win, there is the shear joy of being in the game and feeling like you are a part of something much bigger than yourself.

·      God's sense of time is  "karios" or "event time." 'Kairos' in Greek means "the supreme moment" or the appointed time.  It is not defined by any clock.  The movement of time is defined by events God has in mind to accomplish. The movement of the events determines time not the movements in a timepiece.  God moves in our lives to accomplish his purpose.  We are given early, middle and late innings to be apart of God's time . . . God's supreme moments.

2.  Errors and failure are a part of the game! Quote:  "Errors are part of the game -- part of its rigorous truth."

o      Baseball is a game when hitters fail the majority of the time but become winners with a timely hit or two.  If you get a hit 3 our of 10 times you are a good hitter.  If you have a hit 4 our to 10 times you are a great hitter and probably make the all star team! 

o      Baseball and spirituality are forever linked together by this "rigorous truth". Errors are "part of the game".  Sometimes you drop the ball. Sometimes you strike out.

o      Errors and failures along with disappointments are  a daily part of life. They are part of our truth as human beings. To deny our errors is to deny ourselves, for to be human is to be imperfect and, therefore, to err.  Babe Ruth: "Don't let the fear of about striking out hold you  back!"

o      To be human is to ask unanswerable questions, and to be persistent in asking them.

o      To be human is to be broken and ache for wholeness, to hurt down to the very core of our being and to try to find a way to healing through the hurt. To be human is to embody paradox. We are both "saints" and "sinners"; we are not everything, but neither are we nothing; we have to surrender in order to win; we give away in order to keep; we suffer in order to get well; we die in order to live.

o      Spirituality is discovered in that space between the ends of the paradox, for in that space we confront our woundedness. In seeking to understand our limitations, we seek not only an easing of our pain but an understanding of what it means to hurt ... and what it means to be healed. Spirituality begins with the acceptance that our broken hearts and fractured spirits, our imperfection as human beings, simply is. No one is to blame for our "errors" -- neither ourselves, nor anyone nor anything else. Spirituality helps us to see, to understand and eventually to accept the imperfection that is at the very heart of being human...of our human be-ing.  (http://www.eons.com/blogs/entry/265151-Discovering-Spirtuality-Lesson-1-from-Baseball

·       Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller once said, "Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is."    

3.  Baseball is a game defined by individual skills and at the same, remains very much a team game.

·      The pitcher must deliver "strikes" giving the hitter an opportunity to hit the ball.  If he doesn't deliver strikes the batter gets to "walk" to first base!  Now let's say the hitter drives a blistering grounder to third. The 3rd baseman must demonstrate great reflexes and timing to stop that ball from entering the outfield then he must turn and throw quickly and accurately to first base.  Now the guy on first must catch the ball while keeping his foot on the base or tagging the runner before he reaches the base.   Each player demonstrates individual skills yet, 3 people are involved in the play.  The pitcher, the 3rd baseman and the 1st baseman.  As the game goes on each player must demonstrate their skills and yet at the same time, to be successful, all players must play as a team.  They must learn to work together

4.  HOME AND BASEBALL:  In baseball we begin and end at home. Home plate is not fourth base. The goal of the game is to get home and to be safe.

·       In baseball, you score by "driving people home."  Sometimes a hitter will be asked to make a "sacrifice' to advance a runner on base so  that runner can make it home.

·       When you come home, you are greeted by team mates with high fives and "Way to go, Man!"  and sometimes even hugs and slats on the back as everyone's spirits are lifted because you made it base first, 2nd, and third all the way home without getting tagged out.

·       Faith in God is like that.  We are at home with God in the dugout and on base and when we return to "home."  As God as configured his Church, we are never alone.  We are surrounded by those who encourage us even when we strike out, or are thrown out somewhere  on our journey home. 

·       When called out, they let us know we will get another change in anther inning or in yet another game. 

·       In the end, we will make it home!

FAITH

·      Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led.  But it does mean loving the One who is leading.  It is literally a life of faith, not of understanding and reason — a life of knowing Him who calls us to go.  Faith is rooted in the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest traps we fall into is the belief that if we have faith, God will surely lead us to success in the world. [Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, March 19.]