The Gospel of Baseball: The Big Inning

There’s an old joke:

Q: What is the first sport mentioned in the Bible?
A: Baseball. Genesis 1:1: "In the big inning, God created the heavens and the earth."

Over the next couple of months, I will be preaching sermons with a baseball flavor. There is nothing mystical about baseball.[1] Baseball is not a metaphysical pathway to any great truths. However, when Jesus spoke in parables, he used common, everyday objects to illustrate heavenly truths. I’m sure when he preached there were people who said, "Oh, he just talked about sowing seed" (or pearls, lost sheep, etc.). Jesus said to them, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Mark 4:9,23). My parables may involve baseball, but for those with ears to hear, let them hear about the kingdom of God at work in our lives, and mercy, and grace.

Luke 12:54-56

commentary

v56: A better interpretation of the last sentence is perhaps, "But this opportune time you cannot interpret?" This account is reported by Matthew a bit differently:

The contexts of the two accounts are different. In Matthew, Jesus is responding to the Pharisees’ request for a sign (16:1). In Luke, the account comes near the end of warnings to seek God’s kingdom, to be watchful, and to live ethically (read chapter 12). A prophetic sign is usually a miraculous confirmation of what a prophet has said. [2]

Luke does not use the code word "sign." There’s no request for a sign here. [3] The implication is that the discernment (or lack of it) that Jesus refers to is something else—something going on in their midst which they had missed. Read Luke 12 & decide for yourself.

What Makes Somebody Knowledgeable about the Weather a Hypocrite?

Is a weatherman really such a bad guy?

Not really, but recall the saying in Maine, "If you don’t like the weather, wait a few minutes & it will change." To be an authority on the weather is to be an expert on something right this minute that will be of no consequence an hour from now, or a day from now. Knowing the weather right now will be of little or no use planning for a year from now. (You’re planning a birthday party for next summer. Should you plan an indoor party or an outdoor party?) In the long-term, knowing today’s weather is of no importance.

As I said earlier, the implication for Luke in 12:56 is that there something fundamental going on which the crowd (not Pharisees—that’s Matthew’s version!) should not be missing. It’s right in front of them! It should be as obvious as a storm cloud and as easy to interpret as the wind from the south ... and they’re missing it! The Sunday School answer would be, "Jesus!" More apropos for us—and probably more what Jesus had in mind anyway—is, "the kingdom of God." The kingdom of God is coming, Jesus says, it’s near, it’s within your grasp, and you’re missing it ... because you’re experts on things which only last as long as a summer storm.

Baseball Time vs Football Time

The New Testament has two different perspectives on time: one is like football and one is like baseball.

In football, everything seems to run by a clock: the 60-minute game is divided into four 15-minute periods; we have a halftime and time outs; the ball must be snapped (starting a new play) every 40 seconds; near the end of each half, teams may resort to their two-minute drills; TV broadcasters know that an NFL game is going to run almost exactly three hours.

The clock is inexorable. It dominates the game. Veteran quarterbacks are said to have used the clock well when they either drive the length of the field within two minutes and score or move the ball up the field slowly, thereby running large amounts of time off the clock.

In the same way, clocks can dominate our lives. We use appointment books & PDAs to keep us on time; we hurry from place to place, trying to fit everything in. Drive kids here; run into a convenience store (it’s convenient because it’s quick!); a few calls on the cell phone, (maybe to reorder our schedule); some fast food; caffeine to keep us going; an hour for church (!!!); hurry across town for the children’s sports (curse the traffic); fit in the unexpected emergency (which was only a problem because our schedule was so tight); crawl into bed for all-too-few hours of sleep. [4] And somehow we pride ourselves on all that we are able to cram into our schedule.

Manage the Clock: The Greek word for this kind of time is chronos, or clock time, from which we get words like chronology. Chronos time is concerned with dates, hours, and durations.

In baseball, very few actions are governed by a clock: a 9-inning game may take anywhere from 1 to 4 hours; [5] extra inning games are common and may seem to take forever (although an official game may be called after just five innings due to weather); a plate appearance may consist of a single pitch or a dozen.

To the uninitiated, for most of a baseball game, it looks like there’s nothing going on. The manager lumbers on and off the field, talking to his pitcher. The pitcher throws a dozen times to first to hold the runner close to the bag. He fiddles with the rosin bag and shakes off the catcher before delivering a pitch. The batter, not to be outdone, calls time (a malapropism if ever there was one), steps out of the batter’s box, and stares at the third base coach (who appears to either have OCD or lice, given how he’s touching himself). Even the plate umpire gets into the act, swapping balls or sweeping off home plate.

They’re waiting for the big inning, the defining moment of the game. The botch of a routine out; the miscue; the seeing-eye grounder; the unexpected gust of wind; the ball lost in the sun; the split-second decision to go for an extra base; the surprise gamble. It doesn’t happen on demand; it doesn’t occur when most expected (after all, the best hitter on the team is expected to fail more often than not). When it happens, it can come via the most unlikely people. [6]

The Big Inning: The Greek word for this kind of time is kairos, or season. It’s a passing instant which must be grasped. The moment is ripe; the opportunity is here. Blink & you might miss it!

In the same way, our lives may look mundane. It may look like we’re doing nothing. But beneath the surface, the God’s Spirit is at work. In our ordinary and everyday lives there are moments of opportunity we must grasp in order to live life completely. There is no telling when the opportunity may come—there is no two-minute drill for life—but when the moment comes, when the crisis hits, when the situation has come to a head, will we recognize it for what it is? Will we recognize that God is at work in our lives? In the movie Evan Almighty, [8] God says to Evan’s wife:

If you pray for patience, do you think God just gives you patience ... or does he give you opportunities to be patient? If you pray for courage, do you think he just gives you courage ... or opportunities to be courageous? And say a person had prayed that her family would draw closer together, do you think God would just magically make that happen or would he put that family in circumstances that gave them the opportunity to be closer?

When the time is ripe for God to move in our lives, clocks will not be important!

Points to Ponder

Go back and re-read Luke 12:54-56. When Jesus refers to "the present time," is he referring to a clock time or an opportunity?

Go back and read all of Luke 12. Which of the stories in this chapter are about missed opportunities?

What is your situation? Where do you need God to move in your life? Would you characterize yourself as "ready & waiting" or "busy with nonessentials"? "Do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. (Luke 12:29-31)

My suggestion for this week: pay less attention to your schedule, your timetable, and your agenda, and pay more attention to the people around you. Chances are when God begins to work in your life, it’s going to have something to do with the people you’re with!

End Notes:

1 - Although many have tried to attach deep significance to baseball. For Philip Roth in The Great American Novel, it is the national religion. For Bernard Malamud in The Natural, it is the arena in which good and evil compete. In John Kinsella’s Shoeless Shoe (made into the movie Field of Dreams) baseball, "reminds us of all that what was once good and it could be again." Kinsella returns to baseball in The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, a mythological story of a 2,614-inning baseball game that tries to define what America is, or was. Perhaps nowhere is religion more strangely tied to baseball than in the movie Bull Durham, wherein a middle-aged baseball groupie and an aging minor-league catcher team up to mentor a young pitching prospect on his way to the major leagues in a metaphor of Christians mentoring disciples on their way to heaven. The movie opens with the groupie saying:

I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions & most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance ... It's a long season and you gotta trust. I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.

Organ music is playing in the background; she appears to be going to church. However, she walks up a flight of stairs and—instead of a cathedral—she enters into her holy place: the Durham Bulls’ baseball stadium.

Although many have tried to attach deep spiritual significance to baseball, I will not. In my parables of baseball, baseball has no more metaphysical significance than a mustard seed had for Jesus. (But can we have fun with it?)

(Warning: Most of the books and movies I’ve mentioned have some pretty crude parts to them. Read or watch them at your own risk, but then you see and hear some pretty crude stuff at most games, don’t you? That’s our world.)

2 - POP QUIZ: So then, what is the "sign of Jonah" in Jesus’ life? That is, what is the miraculous event that confirms the teachings of Jesus? (Don’t read the notes in your study Bible; you can figure this out on your own!)

3 - The request for a prophetic sign in Luke happens at Luke 11:29—a very different context and far from today’s text!

4 - Sleep scientists say the best sleep—the sleep which really restores your energy—is the deep sleep at the end of about 8 hours of sleep. You’re not coping when you deprive yourself of your very best sleep.

5 - The quickest 9-inning game in major league history was September 28, 1919 when the Giants beat the Phillies 6-1 in just 51 minutes. The Giants needed to catch a train, and both teams agreed to throw strikes in order to speed up the game. The slowest 9-inning game was at Fenway last year on August 18th; the Yankees tortured the Red Sox for 4:45 before winning 14-11. (http://www.baseball-almanac.com/recbooks/rb_gmlg.shtml)

6 - Like Bucky Dent hitting a 3-run homer to propel the Yankees to a 5-4 victory over the Red Sox for the 1978 division title. On a team that featured All-Stars Ron Guidry, Goose Gossage, Reggie Jackson, Graig Nettles, and Thurmon Munson, Dent—who only hit 40 home runs in his career—became the scourge of Boston.

7 - The movie is rated PG and is generally clean, except for a few double entendres, some potty humor (Evan is a latter-day Noah—with that many animals, some potty humor is probably inevitable), and a biological fact about the Argentine Lake Duck that added nothing to the movie. (For some reason, this fact appears twice in the movie!) The movie does raise some good issues in interesting ways, e.g.: how does God reveal himself to us; what does it mean to fear God; how does God answer prayer; what challenges would one face in trying to obey an unpopular command from God; and how can one person make a difference in the world?