The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for October 26, 2008

Texts: Deuteronomy 34:1-12/Matthew 22:34-46

Title: “It’s How We Play the Game”

              The fourth game of World Series will be played in Philadelphia tonight. Though not the popular spectacle it was in a former day, the World Series is a really big deal for the players, coaches and fans of the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies, the two teams vying for World Series crown.

              This oldest and most well-established championship series in professional sport is the culmination of a season of 164 regular season games, a divisional, and a league championship series.  But even before the player’s stepped on the field to play their first game in April, players gathered as early as mid-February for lengthy practices, and a round of spring training games before the actual season began. The ballplayers that will play tonight have nearly eight full months of baseball behind them, a rigorous challenge for even the most fit of the twenty or thirty year olds on the respective team rosters.

              The players, the coaches, front offices of the two clubs, but also the fans in the cities they represent, have a lot riding on the outcome of the games currently being played. For the players, of course, there is a paycheck, but for those players and the fan base they represent, there is the much coveted prize, World Series champion.  Most players will tell you that nothing in their sport, not the individual records they happen to set, not the awards they happen to receive, not even the huge salaries they command for playing their sport, compares with a trip to the World Series, and to win the Series, of course, is the ultimate prize.

              The ball clubs competing tonight committed thousands of man hours and millions of dollars to win their ticket to tonight’s game in Philadelphia. That huge investment was matched or exceeded by the other 28 clubs who did their utmost to qualify for baseball’s grand prize, a prize reserved for one contender alone. 

              Second place, of course, also qualifies for a prize.  We call it the “consolation prize.” The consolation prize, there’s one in every sport, recognizes outstanding accomplishment, though not quite outstanding enough.  “Consolation” is the noun root for the verb “consoling” or “being consoled;” and its synonyms are “comfort” and “solace.” Consolation, of course, is a bitter pill to swallow for a team that saw victory so clearly in its sights, only to see it snatched away.

              No, there is no real consolation for those who finish second, no consolation for the fans who, in many instances, rise higher with wins, and fall farther with defeats, than the members of the team they support.

              We are a culture who in our sports, but also in most other arenas of our common life, place great stock in winning.  Whoever said “second place is for losers,” had a great grasp of our culture.

              Though I was unable to trace the origins of the maxim, its author may well have had the “second place is for losers” sentiment in his or her sights when he or she observed, “It is not whether you will or lose, but it is how you play the game.”  Heard it before? I would offer a caution here.  I would not be inclined to repeat that maxim in the hearing of anyone whose team just lost the big game.

              In our culture the “second place is for losers” mentality trumps the “It is not whether you will or lose, but it is how you play the game” mentality nearly all the time, this despite the fact that in the area of youth sports, at least, there has been an effort in the last twenty years or so to de-emphasize winning.  In fact, many games contested in youth football, basketball, and baseball are played without a score being recorded.  Of course, in those same youth sports we frequently read of parents getting in fights with referees or other parents over bad calls. 

              You live in the same world I do.  Do you seriously envision a day when society stops keeping score, stops regarding second place when the chips are on the line as anything other than “also ran?” 

              No, don’t expect any team or any competitive enterprise to embrace “It is not whether you will or lose, but it is how you play the game” as its team motto or slogan. Most people will agree that how the game is played is an important consideration, but where does that consideration rank next to winning?

              You will not find the maxim “It is not whether you will or lose, but it is how you play the game” in the Bible, but how we play “the game” is certainly a biblical consideration. It wasn’t merely the World Series that set me to thinking about wins and loses, this past week but it was that lesson Judy read from the book of Deuteronomy.

               Chapter 34 of Deuteronomy is not only the closing chapter of Deuteronomy, but literally, as we saw, the closing chapter of the prophet Moses’ life.  His was a long life, no less than one hundred and twenty years, a life whose influence translates into the better part of four entire books of the Bible. No prophet of God rivals the footprint Moses left behind.

               Here was a man installed to lead Israel in her bleakest hour, a man who recorded successive wins against Israel’s enemies. Not only did he persevere and emerge victorious in his face off with the pharaoh of Egypt and his armies, he logged victories against the armies of several other nations who threatened the people of God. God had his back, and it was a good thing, because Moses faced insurrection among the Israelites themselves, even insurrection within his own family.

                No prophet accomplished as much as Moses did, but no prophet bore the relentless burdens of Moses either.

               Yet, Moses, recipient of many, many tributes in scripture, might ultimately be judged a loser. Why? Simply because he was deprived of the prize he most valued.  None of the faithful service he rendered to the Lord over years of service, service that would subject him to about every form of upheaval a person might endure in a life time, earned him entry into the Promised Land, the prize that would crown his life’s work.  

                Moses ran the race only to be deprived of the prize he most valued.  But Moses does not stand alone in that regard. David, the great king of the Jews, and God’s most beloved of all the kings of the Jews, went to his deathbed as controversy swirled as to who would succeed him.  The great prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, lived through setback after setback as they struggled to fulfill God’s commission, exiting the stage in circumstances little different from those existing before they arrived on the scene.

                Peter and James, two of Jesus’ most loyal and influential disciples did great work in bringing the name of Jesus to the world.  They both died martyrs.  The apostle Paul, arguably the most influential contributor to the Christian cause, was also most certainly martyred. If assessed purely on the basis of the fates they ultimately suffered, those agents of God, those disciples of Christ, I have named, fared no better than Moses.  They may have seen the Promised Land, but they were not privileged to enter and enjoy its fruits.  In a very real sense they were losers.

                 Much as our own, the culture in which Jesus lived for his thirty odd years on earth, Jesus’ culture was preoccupied with keeping score.  In the winner’s category were those who were most adept in working the system.  Those who knew the rules and could work them to their advantage. They lived by the maxim, “to get along, go along.” 

                  The winners wanted Jesus, a bright, articulate, up and comer, to join their team.  It maddened them when Jesus repeatedly chose to align himself with the losers, the poor, the marginalized, and the sinner. After all, the synagogue was to be kept unstained by such vileness. What was Jesus thinking by associating with losers?

                  Jesus easily could have been a winner.  He could have leveraged his personal gifts into a comfortable life, a place of honor in the synagogue, a substantial reputation among the community leaders.  Most importantly he wouldn’t have had to die like a common criminal, crucified with criminals. But he kept up with all that “last shall be first, first shall be last business,” that “give away everything you have to gain the world” business. The Promised Land was right there, Jerusalem was his to conquer, but he chose to make common cause with the scorned, with the loser. 

                    Much as our own, the culture in which Jesus lived was preoccupied with keeping score.  Second place was no more highly regarded in Jesus’ day than it is today. No one wanted to lose back then any more than people want to lose today.

                   Now Jesus emboldened his followers to think of wins and loses in a new way, all that epitomized in one line in Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi where he writes, “yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.  More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”  Amazingly enough, people bought into that line of thinking, so much so that they began to carve out an identify for themselves in the communities where they happened to live. They were referred to by some as “those people who are turning the world upside down.”  Their entire outlook on life had changed.                   

              “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” That represents the kind of extravagant statement that Paul frequently makes, but others whose names we will never know shared his convictions. You see, after their conversions, Christ’s followers adopted a whole new way of seeing things. It has been repeatedly demonstrated, friends, that that kind of thing is not at all uncommon when people spend a certain amount of time with the Lord.

              Christ offers a dramatically new way of seeing ourselves and the world.  But you and I often come up near-sighted. “We don’t see things as they are, [the poet Anais Nin once wrote] we see them as we are.” Anais Nin wasn’t writing as a Christian witness, but what she observed is something the Christian must take into account. We very often fail to see things as they are [the way God created them], but instead we see them as we are, suited our particular disposition.

              To see the world as God saw the world, as Christ saw the world is a stretch. How could God be so cruel as to prevent Moses, Moses who had given over his life to God, [how could he] prevent him from entering the Promised Land?  Why? 

How could Jesus put the greatest commandment of all beyond the reach of mere mortals?  Love the Lord with everything in us?  Love our neighbor as ourselves?  Impossible.  Can’t be done.

              We live in a culture that keeps score.  Winners cross over to the Promised Land, a World Series win, a prized promotion, President of the United States, whatever the Promised Land might be.  Losers can only stand and muse at what might have been, a World Series crown they will never wear, a great commandment---love the Lord with everything---we will never fulfill.

              Anais Nin had it right, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”  It’s not ultimately about wins and loses, friends, the way we have, for the most part, been conditioned to look at life, “second place is for losers,” the “whoever winds up with the most toys wins,” sort of thing], it’s really about how we play the game. 

                If it were about wins and losses, the prophets of God and the disciples of Jesus, and even Jesus himself, certainly got a raw deal. No, not wins and loses, a crown of glory for everyone who can fulfill all of God’s commandments to the tee, and condemnation for the rest of us who struggle to love God single-mindedly.

                  No, not wins and loses, rather its breaking out of our own mindset to see ourselves and the world as God in Christ would have us see things, and, friends, that is seldom accomplished in one big leap.  It is accomplished in increments, by the decisions we make today.  Should I make time for prayer?  Should I take some time to read a passage from scripture?  Should I accept that nomination to be an elder or that invitation to join the choir?  Should I hold on to that grudge or should I let it go?  Should I take time to visit that friend in the hospital?

               When tonight’s game is over I wouldn’t urge anyone to go into the loser’s locker to remind the players “It’s not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game.” Yet that said, when ultimate wins and loses are tallied in the lives of those players, this year’s World Series victory will very likely show up somewhere on their list of accomplishments, but what those players will most be remembered for is how they played outside the chalk lines, how they played on the field in this great game in which each of us is a player.  

                 Our wins will come, so too our loses, but for now it is enough to concentrate on how we play the game, that decision here, that decision there, through which our character is being shaped, the decision here and there by which we are building the resume we will ultimately place in God’s hands. AMEN.