Romans 3:20-26
Will you pray with me? Startle us, O God, with your truth. Open our hearts and minds to your Word so each of us may be transformed by the renewing of our hearts and minds by your amazing grace. Amen.
Baseball is a great game, one of the greatest! From neighborhood pick-up games to playing catch with my dad in the backyard; from gym class in school to several years of Little League, baseball is a part of the fabric of my life.
Growing up in New Jersey, there were the Mets and the Yankees. And my family pulls for the Yankees! My grandmother told me stories of my Uncle Larry as a young boy sitting with my great-grandfather watching the Yankees on TV. As a boy myself, I watched the Yankees every chance I could. I spent many a Friday night watching the game on TV in my parent’s bedroom with Phil Rizzuto announcing the game. I can still hear him say, “Holy Cow!” Whether I was at the beach or the park, I had my radio with me listening intently to the play-by-play. And now as an adult, I still love going to the ballpark, walking through the tunnel that opens up into these massive stadiums built like cathedrals. It’s a multi-sensory experience: the smell of the grass, the anticipation hanging on every pitch, the sound of the ball in the catcher’s mitt, the crack of the bat echoing through the stands, and the cheers of the hometown fans. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? In short, our culture views baseball as a part of Americana, an ideal America, a place of perfection and standing for all that is good in our country. In baseball, players strive to be perfect and are measured against the legendary figures who have gone before. Perfection is not easily ascertained.
In our scripture passage this morning, Paul is writing in an attempt to answer the question, “How do we get into a right relationship with God?” Before Jesus came along, the relationship between God and God’s people was through the Law of Moses. The purpose of the law was to show us that we are not perfect creatures, we are sinful. Under the law, we become aware of our shortcomings, our inadequacies and our imperfections. Under the law, we are made aware of our failure to achieve what is required in the law. Under the law, we realize we’ve missed the mark. Unless I’ve missed my guess, there is someone here today who has tried to be perfect and missed the mark. Is there someone here today who has lived with the expectation of perfection and felt like a failure and a disappointment?
There is no way we can make the mark on our own because of our sinful nature. We are unable to be perfect, for “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God...” And we are left separated from God. So following the law, striving under our own strength and smarts to meet all its requirements and perfect standards, does not bring us into a close relationship with God. So what do we do?
One of my heroes growing up was Cheltenham’s own Reggie Jackson. Nicknamed “Mr. October”, Reggie had a knack for the dramatic. Nobody was more amazingly consistent in World Series hitting than Reggie Jackson. He hit 563 career home runs (HR) and 1702 runs batted in (RBI). He was the World Series Most Valuable Player in 1973 and 1977, the American League Most Valuable Player in 1973, the American League Home Run Champion in 1973, 1975, 1980, and 1982. Reggie was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993 in his first year of eligibility. But did you know he set the American League record for the most errors in one game (5). In his career, Reggie struck out 2,597 times, more than any other player in baseball history. His twenty-one year career batting average was .262.
Baseball is an interesting game in that a player who fails to get a hit seven times out of ten times at the plate is considered one of the game’s greatest heroes, a Hall of Famer. To put it another way, a major league batter who gets three hits in ever ten at-bats is in the running to be the batting champion that year. Three out of ten…Far from perfect; far from getting a passing grade on an exam in school; far from earning the big raise or the big promotion at work. Three out of ten and you are a hero, an icon, a superstar, a Hall of famer in the sport of baseball.
The Good News for us is that we don’t have to be perfect. Working and striving to meet the requirements and standards set for us by the law is fruitless and pointless. As hard as we may try, we can not be perfect. The only way for us to be perfect is through the acceptance of the gift: the gift that we are justified by the grace of Jesus Christ. Paul writes, “they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” To be justified is to be made whole, to be made perfect in the eyes of God, to be reconciled to God by His grace. Jesus came to tell us how much God loves us no matter how bad or sinful we may be. And even though we are sinners, we are still dear to God. Our sins are wiped clean. We are acquitted of all wrongdoing, our sins have been atoned for, and we are freed and liberated from sin through the incredible and miraculous grace that Jesus came to bring. And when we begin to really discover what this means for us, it changes everything. It transforms our whole relationship to God. We are brought into a right relationship with God when we believe this to be true.
If we don’t have to be perfect to be loved by God, then why do we have to be perfect to be loved and accepted by our peers, our society, our family, our church?
When I think back to my teenage years, I remember how important, how vital it was for me to feel accepted. The desire to be accepted is a strong one in the heart of an adolescent. We begin to feel the expectations hovering over us of our parents, our church, our teachers, our friends, and our culture. I remember how important it was to wear the right clothes and the right shoes. With sneakers, first of all, they had to be white and either Nike or Adidas. Second, it was cool to lace up our white sneakers with thick, colorful shoelaces. Third, you laced these thick laces so most of the laces were exposed on the outside of the shoes rather than inside. And fourth, with the extra thick laces, you made your shoes loose enough so you didn’t have to tie them yet tight enough that they wouldn’t fall off your feet. I had a pair of Nike leather tennis shoes that were completely white, even the swoosh trademark. I begged and begged my mom for these thick maroon and grey laces. I finally got ‘em and I knew that I was going to fit in perfectly with my friends and not look like a dork. I laced up my shoes with my new laces, but I had the worst time keeping my shoes on my feet when I walked. No matter what I did with the laces, I couldn’t quite get them right. In gym class, every time I kicked the ball my shoe would go flying across the gym. I lost a shoe when I was running to catch the bus. I barely made it! All this trouble and drama just to fit in and not look like a dork was stressful and annoying: I just wanted to fit in and be accepted by my peers and still be able to wear sneakers that stay on my feet!
For many of us this need for acceptance carries over into adulthood: the need for acceptance from our co-workers, our peers, members of the opposite sex, and our parents to name a few. I’m reading a book entitled, “Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith” by Pastor Rob Bell of the Mars Hill Church in Grandville, Michigan. He writes about grappling with issues that had negative affects on his ministry. One of them was the need to gain the acceptance of others, mainly his congregation. Despite the success of his ministry and the growth of the church he served, he felt empty and dried up inside. His soul was parched. He came to realize that no amount of success can heal a person’s soul and that success doesn’t fix anything. He began to ask himself, “Why is that person’s approval so important to me? Why do I find it so hard to say no?” Yes, he believed in Jesus as his Lord and Savior and, yes, he considered himself “redeemed” and “reborn”, but there were areas of his life that were unaffected by his faith in Jesus. These areas needed to healed by the hand of Jesus, for he discovered in his efforts to seek approval from others that he tried to measure up to the image in his head of the perfect person, the perfect pastor. He had this idea of the “Super Pastor”: always available, accomplishes great things, always has time to stop and talk, visits everyone in the hospital, loves attending meetings and spends hours studying and praying and yet can be interrupted if you need something…and always puts their family first before everything!
Through a lot of searching, Rob gained this profound insight: we are not defined by what we are not. We are not defined by what we are not. We are not defined by the seven hitless at-bats, but rather the three at-bats that were base hits. We are accepted and loved by God for who we are, for who he created us to be, despite our sins, faults, shortcomings. There is nothing we can do to earn God’s acceptance or His love to be perfect and blameless in his eyes. It is by the grace of God in Jesus Christ that we are made whole, made perfect in the eyes of God, reconciled to God by His grace, and able to be in a right relationship with Him.
I believe when we accept Jesus Christ into our whole life, we stop living in reaction to everything around us and begin to let a vision for what lies ahead pull us forward. When we accept Jesus Christ into our whole life, we stop worrying about winning and losing and instead focus on how we play the game. We stop depending on other people to make us happy and give us self-worth and instead draw strength and confidence for living from God’s Word and prayer. We stop trying to please everybody all the time and instead strive to please and honor God in Christ Jesus through study, worship and fellowship. We stop worrying about how many members we have in our church and instead focus our attention on growing in the spirit, on our relationship with God, both as individuals and as members of this community of faith.
The Bible says, “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and love and of self-discipline.” We are justified by the grace of Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ was a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. Our sins, our imperfections, our shortcomings are wiped away so we may live in a spirit of faith, a spirit of freedom in the awesome grace of God.
How do we get into a right relationship with God? It’s not through the law and it’s not through works. Rather it is through two precious gifts from God: faith and grace.
In baseball, three out of ten is not perfect, but it will make you a superstar! A baseball player can get three hits for every ten at-bats and be inducted into the Hall of Fame. We are not perfect, but by the grace of God alone we are redeemed and inducted into God’s Hall of Fame.
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