Summer is the season of beach trips, family vacations, of fireworks and poolside afternoons, of strawberries, peaches and tomatoes. Summer is the season of afternoon thunderstorms, freshly mowed grass, of BBQs and campfires, or chasing fireflies as the daylight fades. So much life is caught up in summer. Since life is always teaching us and since our faith affirms God permeates every part of living world, then the stuff of summer is an incubator for lessons of faith.
Baseball is summer’s game. I know baseball’s season begins in the spring and continues through October. I know the Olympics have captivated us for the past two weeks. I know the Ravens have already played a preseason game. But the summer belongs to baseball. The crack of the bat. The roar of the fans. The outfielder racing toward the fences. The hotdogs, pretzels, crackerjacks and lemonade. It’s all part of the game, woven into the season. Games involving balls, wooden sticks, and running bases trace across the continents all the way back into the Middle Ages. Only in the latter half of the 1800’s did the game we know – with its diamond shape and path rounding the bases to home – emerge, with the Cincinnati Red Stockings were the first official professional team, who soon relocated to Boston. And over the decades thousands of games have been played – in alley ways, empty lots, playgrounds and manicured fields – and the playing, moving teams, and figuring out the game’s intricacies has continued ever since.
I have been the parent of a baseball playing kid. In the hours spent on the field, I’ve been intrigued by the logic of the game and the intensity of emotion it can evoke. Some who study baseball note the religious overtones its most devoted fans. Ballparks are referred to as cathedrals and fans make pilgrimages to Wrigley Field, Fenway or Dodger Stadium. We have witnessed miraculous, game-winning home runs as well as teams suffering under decades-long curses. Sacrifice is built into the game; with pop-up fly balls that score another runner at the expense of the batter’s hitting average. John Sexton suggests “baseball can show us more about our world and ourselves that we might have thought . . . “ This morning I want to suggest baseball, like life, can teach us about grace, that unmerited, inexhaustible love of God, which sustains our days and guides us along the basepath as we run toward home.
How does baseball reveal grace? First, baseball operates on a particular clock and by doing so offers us a different relationship to time. Football is structed into four, 15-minute quarters. Soccer has two, 45-minute halves. In both games one watches the clock. Baseball, governed by innings and outs, has no such clock. To enjoy baseball one needs to throw the watch away. While the shortest baseball game recorded was 51 minutes, the longest, happening in the minor leagues, lasted 33 innings and took two days to complete. A baseball game takes as long as it takes. To know what time it is one pays attention to the field. In fact in the best games you get caught up in the drama of strikes, balls, stealing bases and making amazing catches, such that you are transported to that mysterious space of time outside of time. Christians identify such time outside of time is called Kairos time, or God’s time, the space where God shows up.
Paul spoke of such moments when he writes of heaven being revealed to him. In those moments the ordinary stuff of life fades into the background and what really matters – Jesus calling him, others needing to hear good news – stands front and center. Jesus asks something similar of his disciples, sending them out two by two, with little provisions except the clothes they are wearing and the courage to seek hospitality from strangers. Given a singular mission, the disciples learn to exist on a different timetable. They are not to plan too far ahead, or become too weighed down by luggage, but are to trust each day will bring its own blessings; each day they will find their needs provided, the base path cleared.
Baseball has been criticized as a slow game. We, who live so deeply by the clock, are often in such a hurry. But to enjoy baseball, one must slow down, be attentive to present moment and accept the grace-filled rhythm of pitch, swing, out and inning. Faith also needs such a rhythm; trusting day by day, sometimes moment by moment, always alert for signs of God’s hospitality, ever-ready to step into God’s time.
Now the skill needed to play baseball is immense. Players must be able to throw, catch, and hit. The game involves technique, strategy and adjusting to the moment. So one would expect the sport to be filled with stories of prodigious talent or superhuman skills. But the stories I’ve noticed this season are about players who encountered failure, went through rebuilding phases, and shown resilience amid the struggle. Gunner Henderson, the Oriole star, struggled with his swing as a younger player in high school and college. Corbin Burnes, who started the All-Star game for the American League, was ranked one of the worst pitchers in the MLB in 2019. Jackson Holliday got sent back down to the minors after his first attempt at the major leagues. It is not unusual for players to be forced back to the drawing board, in order to retool their mechanics or relearn a skill. To follow the game is to appreciate the courage it takes to fail, and try again, to embrace the gospel truth that there is always another chance.
The apostle Paul’s faith journey held such successes and failures. He is given a miracle – a conversion initiated by God. Combined with his innate leadership skills, this passionate faith spurs missionary journeys, births churches, and pens theology we rely upon today. And, amid the successes, he endures shipwrecks, imprisonments and hostility from communities he helped form. He has to retool his message, start anew, and hold on to hope. This paradoxical place of failure and victory, of glimpses of heaven and persistent struggle, Paul proclaims, defines the Christian journey. The failures do not mean you’ve failed forever, or somehow you have been pushed out of the game. Instead it demonstrates how in our weakness becomes God’s strength. The cross looked like abject failure; instead it was the space in which God could most mightily act. When we are at our weakest, grace moved in.
Lastly, baseball reveals God’s grace by the way the game accounts for human error. It is one of the only games in which errors – mistakes made in the field – are accounted for as an official statistic. Add to that fact the stories of officials making bad calls that alter final outcomes and pitchers who must adjust to the unique strike zone the home plate umpire as well as the fact that a .300 batting average is considered very good. Baseball is a game that accounts for human vulnerability. It expects failure. In this sense, baseball reflects life. People make mistakes and some mistakes are life-changing. But you keep playing the game.
Jesus, fresh off of a successful missionary journey, comes into his hometown and the neighborhood is suspicious, unmoved by his authority. When instructing his disciples, Jesus tells them to be prepared to wipe the dust off their feet when they encounter a town inhospitable to the good news. Jesus experienced failure. Jesus anticipates the disciples also will fail. Paul, despite all of his skill, success, and revelations from God, has a thorn, an error, in his side. Despite prayers asking for its removal, despite, his own efforts to remove it, the impediment remains. Failure is part of his journey. The longest streak of games without an error is held by the Yankees who went 18 games without an error. What happened in the 19th game? They made a mistake. The 2013 Orioles hold the record for the fewest errors in a season – but they still made 54 errors. Failure is part of the game.
What does God say when Paul pleas for the thorn’s removal. My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in your weakness. God’s grace is more than enough, a truth we learn best when facing moments of failure, struggle or defeat.
What can baseball teach us?
To step away from the clock into God’s time.
To keep relearning the lessons of our lives, for the paradox of victory in failure is the heart of faith.
To accept God’s intervention in the moment we error, for messing up is part of the game and God’s grace is sufficient and will see us through. Amen.