Cybercolumn by John Duncan: Thinking baseball

Posted: 9/14/07

CYBER COLUMN:
Thinking baseball

By John Duncan

I’m sitting here under the old tree, thinking baseball of all things. John Grisham, in his book about baseball, Bleachers, says: “Football was king and that would never change. It brought the glory and paid the bills.” I am under this old oak tree, thinking baseball in the start of football season and realizing that Friday night lights and football is king in Texas while thinking baseball and the game of life. Or in the words of the poet Langston Hughes, “Jesus ain’t you tired yet?”

My life as pastor is a wonderful life. Never mind that preaching, as they say, is “between two worlds,” the temporal and the spiritual, and on some Sundays, since I preach three times on Sunday morning, I hit a single, a double, a triple or a home run. And, yes, while on some Sundays I strike out, at least I have the privilege of walking up to the preaching plate to take my swings again on the next Sunday.

My life as a pastor is a wonderful life. Not long ago, one of our church members asked me, “What do they call you around here?” I replied, “Call me whatever: pastor, preacher; hey you—and call me to dinner anytime!” The man looked at me rather seriously and said, “No, really, what do they call you?” I searched for the right words and tried to figure out simultaneously as my mind churned like a computer who “they” was and said, “I guess if I have to be called something I prefer ‘pastor.’” He replied, “Well, son, all that education, I think you deserve respect and a little formality. They should call you doctor.” I smiled as we shook hands, and about that time, because God’s timing is always perfect, a 7-year-old church member, a boy who was also my neighbor, yelled, “Hi John!” Ah, first base laughter after a Texas League single.

My life as a pastor is a wonderful life. One guy called the church one day and asked the receptionist a question. I love the questions and have a few for the Lord when I get to heaven, like “Why could the Dallas Cowboys not keep Coach Tom Landry longer? Why did the Mavericks not win a championship? And, in baseball, Lord, why could the Texas Rangers not climb out of the cellar most seasons? Why did you not give them Nolan Ryan from the start?” The guy calls the church with the question, “Is it OK if I jog when the pastor preaches?” Now “preaches” rhymes with “peaches,” and if I were from Georgia, I would eat a peach for every time people called with questions, but that was one question I had never been asked nor have heard since.

“Jog?” I asked. “Yes,” the receptionist said. “He says that he likes a church that inspires him, and when he gets inspired by the preaching, he fills with the Holy Spirit and likes to jog around the worship center while the pastor preaches.” Football is king in Texas, and I told the receptionist to tell him he is welcome, but please do not jog. I told the staff, football is king in Texas, if he jogs, tackle him, pray with him, but by all means no jogging while I preach. The guy never showed up, and I do not like peaches, but the ministry is interesting place, and you can see and hear a lot on second base.

My life as a pastor is a wonderful life. I must tell you, I am never bored and ministry is the most exhilarating, creative, energizing and exhausting place a person could ever be. I find people who live with pain and uncertainty and anxiety and misery and happiness and joy and laughter and sadness all thrown into the same heart and put on a smile like a clown when the inside feels a frown. Cheslaw Milosz once said, “There are days when people seem to me a festival of marionettes dancing at the edge of nothingness.” There is hopelessness out there, and in my life as pastor, I encourage them to run to Jesus and find hope in him and keep running amid the their marionette lives of clown and frown and find meaning, not in the madness of it all, but in the mercy and Master of all. I am at third base. Jesus ain’t you tired yet?  Will we make it home?

My life a pastor is a wonderful life, but sometimes you enter into the unknown and the cloud of the unknowing, and you gasp for breath and ask the Lord for Holy Spirit inspiration that will keep you jogging, and you pray like mad that he does not forget your name, and the Lord longs for you to call him by name, and you do, and you realize how much you need God and Christ and the Holy Spirit to jog your heart and how important life, in its spirituality and simplicity, really is. Are you following me? We’re talking baseball, life and making it home.

Josh Fant lived in our community, and I served as his pastor. He played baseball in our town and wore number 19 on his jersey and died of a heat stroke at 18. Yes, he wore 19 and died at 18. I love being a pastor, but when a young person die,s you double the grief and silence the tongue on explanations. God’s grace is sufficient, and the Presbyterian preacher George Buttrick was right, “Life is essentially a series of events to be borne and lived through, rather than a series of intellectual riddle to be played with and solved.” When Josh passed away, life hurt, events seemed like a blur, and I wanted to solve riddles: Why this? Why now? Why? Why? Why?

C.S. Lewis says in A Grief Observed that he wanted to escape the pain of grief. “If I knew any way to escape, I would crawl through the sewers to find it.” I have discovered in life’s riddles and in life’s grief that the only thing a person can really do is live through it and hang onto Jesus like a rock climber might cling to a rope.

Oh, Josh wore number 19 and lived to be 18 and loved baseball. He had a good sense of humor, and from all I can tell, followed Jesus and tried to get others to turn to him. Life, when it ends, can be summed up as time, place and people. He lived from 1989 to 2007; spent time on the baseball diamond and had a 90 mile an hour fastball, so I am told; and he touched people’s lives. At Josh’s funeral, his fellow teammates wore their baseball jerseys, and many of the people who attended the funeral wore white wristbands with a purple number 19 printed on it. Pictures and a video of Josh told stories—at birthdays, by the pond at his house, with friends, at baseball games and one at his high school graduation. It’s the text message generation, so I am sure students in the crowd had pictures of Josh on their cell phones and memories of Josh in their hearts. He was 18 and wore number 19, and if I knew any way to erase the pain, I would crawl through the sewers to find it. I guess we can all be thankful that Jesus ain’t tired yet and that he never sleeps nor slumbers nor faints nor is weary and that in the exhaustion of grief his love and comfort are real and refreshing, and his grace is sufficient even when our words are not.

One picture stands out when I remember Josh—a home-plate celebration after an exciting victory. Life is like baseball—strikeouts and home runs, errors and game-saving catches, and the agony of defeat and the euphoria of victory. Still, the point is to make it home, to home plate where Jesus lives. On the first base of life, look in, look out and look up to God because life is short. On second base, make the most of every single day. On third base, be long of the things that matter in life—love and forgiveness and kindness and friendship and encouragement. Ultimately though, we can only find our way home by knowing Christ and playing the game of life for an audience of one: Jesus Christ.

So here I am under his old oak tree, knowing football is king and thinking baseball. The crisp fall air has arrived, and reminds me that Jesus is king and that my life as a pastor is a wonderful life. Life hurts. Riddles come. And even in as the shadows lean dark and dreary over life like shadows on the field of a baseball stadium, still hope springs eternal, and Jesus never wearies of loving us in the pain or greeting us when we make it home. Or in the words of Jesus, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy hearted.”

John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines. You can respond to his column by e-mailing him at jduncan@lakesidebc.org.