John Fischer The Catch

Brooks Conrad, second baseman for the Atlanta Braves, had the final out of the ninth inning bounce right between his legs and out into center field, allowing the San Francisco Giants to score what turned out to be the winning run of the playoff game last night between these two teams. It was his third error of the game, and I noticed, as the manager brought in a new pitcher, that the rest of the infield gathered at the mound, but not Conrad. He was standing out at second, alone in his misery. It wasn’t that his teammates shunned him – it doesn’t take an invitation to come to the mound – but what seemed clear was that he couldn’t face them knowing he had let them down. Someone needed to go out there and give the poor guy some grace and mercy, and maybe they did, but I only saw the few seconds the TV camera caught of him, and that picture spoke volumes. Five players and a manager standing around the pitcher’s mound, and Brooks Conrad alone at second.

Do you know anyone who is alone at second? A co-worker whose mistake cost the company a deal, a musician bumped off the worship team, a single mom who can’t go into church for fear of being judged, a kid who can’t learn the way everyone else can, a neighbor who is gay? Take it on yourself to go and extend grace and mercy to that person. It’s what we all need and what God has offered to each and every one of us: grace (what we don’t deserve) and mercy (exemption from what we do).

Actually, the guy at second is the one who stands to find this out sooner than most.

He was ill at ease and out of his element. At one time in his life, this would have been tame, but that was before he met Christ and everything changed. He had been a rising rock star in his native country in Eastern Europe, but a trip to America had brought him in touch with Christians and Christian music and the idea of singing for something much bigger than himself took hold, launching him and his group into national recognition as one of the premier Christian rock bands in the country.

But the lure of his homeland made him long to return and test his newfound faith in the marketplace. Christian music is a separate market only in America. In Europe and Eastern Europe there is only music. Popular music. And he knew a strong album could re-establish his presence in that country’s pop market, giving him an opportunity to influence young people from the vantage point of his music. So he had gone to one of the best producers in the business in London, England, and during the recording process the producer had taken him to a punk club where one of his bands was playing, and that’s when his struggle began. The environment troubled him. “Should I stay or should I go,” was the question on his mind when God spoke to him in an audible voice.

Now if I didn’t know the man, I would wonder about his claim about hearing God speak. He told me this story personally and had no reason to make it up or embellish it. And it’s also what he heard God say to him that convinced me it was true. For as he was deliberating whether he should stay or go, he heard a message from God, “It’s okay, you can leave if you want to, but I’m staying.”

This is one of the more powerful pictures I have in my memory bank of what a Christian worldview is and is not. It is not a retreat from the world. It is not fostering a righteousness that sets itself over and above everyone else. It is not living in isolation, but entering into the risk of relationship and compassion.

And I can’t help but think that if God said He was staying in this harsh and painful world, then He has been there all along. While the whole Christian world panicked and left the world, He stayed – and He’s still in it, waiting for us to join Him.

Your assignment for today: take ten minutes, click on the picture and watch this interview on the New Face of American Evangelicalism on ABC News.

I am not suggesting you embrace everything that is being said, nor do I fully endorse every panel member (they are mostly new names and faces for me). Nor in ten minutes can this be a complete statement of what Christians should be doing in the world. But I do like the perspective they are speaking from, the broadening of issues and the more complete picture of what it means to follow Jesus than we usually receive in the public square, and in most of our churches for that matter. This is closer to how I believe Christians should be thinking than what is more commonly put forth in the media, both Christian and secular.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised at the absence of judgment and/or cynicism about “right wing Christianity.” The interviewer baited the panel members several times if they had wanted to critique the current climate. Instead, they simply said that discussion wasn’t important. They were too busy trying to find out what it means to follow Jesus in the world they live in today, than to bother critiquing what anybody else might be doing.

Institutional learning has a way of shutting out questions. Someone who asks a lot of questions is looked upon as an annoyance – someone who is holding everyone else back. A naturally inquisitive person can’t handle the discrimination for very long and eventually shuts up, which is a shame since she was the doorway to truth for everyone including the teacher.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7) What does this mean, if it doesn’t mean to persist? Shake the tree. Rattle the cage. Don’t stop until you get an answer. Pound on the door in the middle of the night until the person you want gets up out of bed and comes to open it, if only to get rid of you (Matthew 11:5-10). Jesus said that He rewards people like this.

“Don’t stop asking. Make your teachers and preachers sweat. People don’t like questions because they really don’t care about knowing the answers, or they are too uncomfortable leaving the difficult questions unanswered. As long as they think someone, somewhere, knows the answers, they are off the hook. (That’s what all those Christian books are for, right?) Obviously, the point is not to learn, but to get through the study in the allotted time, probably because that is their spiritual obligation.

Don’t let them silence you. Rock the boat. That’s what you’re there for. Rock on!”

Bumper sticker recently spotted and noted as worthy of at least some reflection: “Loving kindness is my religion.” Something about this strikes me as being odd. It’s like it’s a new slant on religion, when in fact, it is the embodiment of true religion. God would be elated if loving kindness were everyone’s religion.

Is this anything like, “I don’t need to go to church because the forest is my church”? Well if it was meant to be an affront to religion, it is quite the opposite. It is actually complimentary to religion, because true religion is all about loving kindness.

“Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4) There’s no fire and brimstone here, no scare tactics, no ten easy steps, no coercion… just the kindness of God that leads to repentance. It’s all anyone needs.

So why would anyone think the loving kindness of God would somehow redefine religion? Loving kindness is God’s religion, too.

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Filter name:”KEYWORD= Profanity: weenie”

Subject Line: “The Catch”

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I received the above profanity notice following Friday’s Catch about Eloise at the Plaza. It’s only appropriate that the offending Catch would be the one about Eloise, that little six-year-old troublemaker that always played havoc on all the rules. The always-precocious Eloise is up for profanity censure. Once again, Eloise would be proud. This time, it’s her dog, Weenie, who is the cause of a profanity charge. This ranks right up there with little Jackie Paper being dragged into court for marijuana possession all because of “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

Stuff like this is always what happens when you live by rules. All sorts of misassumptions and mistaken identities occur, plus there is the simple fact that just about any rule will have an exception – some situations where it will not apply. There are exceptions to everything. Whoever put “weenie” on the profanity list had no consideration for Eloise or her dog.

Rules require policing, and someone has to do it. In this case it was a spam block, but police can take varying forms. The one unifying factor is that everyone and everything is suspicious. That’s why a life lived by rules is always doomed to fail. There are no rewards for not breaking them, only punishment for when you do. I do this quite often around the house when I pay attention to the rules principle. I become the house police eager to pounce on the next mistake. You can imagine how much fun I am to live with.

This is why we all need an Eloise in some form to rain on our rules parade. Eloise is good for all of us. She shows up the unevenness and sometimes ridiculousness of living strictly by rules.

Only one rule – one law – is necessary. It determines all others and guides our behavior in all things. It is the law of love to which there are no exceptions.

Monday was Marti’s birthday and a friend of ours gave her the perfect gift: an Eloise doll that had been in her family for some time. It was unopened in its original packaging and since true Eloise paraphernalia is no longer available, it was a real find and a treasured gift.

Marti has been an Eloise fan for most of her life – not the Eloise in the movies and DVDs with Julie Andrews as nanny, but the true Eloise that lives in the imagination inspired by the books of Kay Thompson and illustrations of Hillary Knight. As a matter of fact, that Eloise embodies much of Marti’s character since the book was written “for precocious adults.”

Eloise was indeed a precocious child, living in the Plaza Hotel in New York with her British nanny, her dog, Weenie and her turtle, Skipperdee (who eats raisins and wears sneakers). Eloise occupies her time doing “rawther” important things like riding the elevators, “skibbling” up and down the stairs, roller skating down the halls while “skiddering” two sticks along the walls bringing guests vainly to their doors, crawling around the feet of elevator riders looking for her skate key, and, of course ordering room service, “Charge it please!”

Eloise is six, and if anything needs emphasis, she just says it three times: “Nanny gets up feeling tired tired tired and puts on her kimono and skibbles over to slam those windows down so that we don’t freeze freeze freeze.”

Eloise’s precociousness consists primarily of breaking certain rules while most of the hotel staff looks the other way.         That’s because they are mostly insignificant rules and minor inconveniences that endear her to the guests more than annoy them. It occurs to me now that these were the types of things I never did as a kid because it would have would have gotten me into too much trouble as a kid.

Christian behavior always seems to end up being all about straining at gnats and swallowing camels. Back then, the gnats would have been represented by a campaign against a kind of movie-going, card-playing recklessness that would have made Eloise proud, while ignoring the camels of injustice, inequity, and lack of mercy.

I wonder, what are the gnats gnats gnats we are all up in arms over today, and the camels camels camels we are ignoring?

In 2 Corinthians 2:15, Paul writes: “For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing…” In two simple phrases, he arranges all of living humanity into only two camps. There are “those who are being saved,” and “those who are perishing.” I would submit to you that this is a much better way to distinguish in our minds between people than to think of them as Christians and non-Christians.

Our usual distinctions as to Christians and non-Christians may, in fact, be wrong. Paul’s definition is superior in that it implies a process while ours implies a fixed state. Christian and non-Christian terms also allow us to think we know something when we don’t. These terms simply do not allow for the spiritual journey that we all are on. A person whom I might call a non-Christian today might very well be one who is being saved. In the same manner, I am sure there are people whom we would call Christians today who are, in fact, those who are perishing. In any case, we don’t know for sure, who is what, and I, for one, think that’s a good thing.

By thinking of people as being saved or as perishing, it relieves us of the pressure to have to pigeonhole everybody. Every single person you meet is either being saved or perishing, and you may not know which it is. This is the kind of truth that allows us to treat everyone the same. All have equal importance since the book is not closed on anyone.

And here’s something I’d like to offer you in light of this if you find it helpful. I have decided that I will treat everybody as if they are being saved, regardless of what they say. Why not? If I’m right, then I will have helped them along the way. If I am wrong, then I will have created the best possible environment for them to believe.

Actually, I thank God I don’t know ultimately who is perishing, because I can’t imagine someone I love going to hell. I’m going to hope for them right up to infinity and beyond. You never know what kind of deals can be done with angels in the last seconds of life — seconds that we may never know about. At least not yet.

You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who haven’t seen me and believe anyway. (John 20:29)

There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open? – Woody Allen

The gospel is all about caring for the real human needs of people, not just about getting them into heaven.

Suppose you see a brother or sister who needs food or clothing, and you say, “Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? So you see, it isn’t enough just to have faith. Faith that doesn’t show itself by good deeds is no faith at all—it is dead and useless. (James 2:17)

Jesus Christ brought the kingdom of heaven to earth, but He didn’t just touch down for a momentary appearance. Sometimes we forget He carried on a ministry here for three years. He connected with and did something about the suffering needs of the sick, dying, and mentally ill. Faith in action brings two worlds together.

The reality of heaven doesn’t make earth less real or less important. If our longing for heaven and focus on eternity is disengaging us from earth, we should probably check and see if we have the right heaven. If we have the right heaven, the opposite should happen. The more committed we are to heaven (the more we get an eternal perspective on life) the more deeply we will be committed to this life and those around us. Heaven brings meaning to earth, not an escape. It brings dignity to every human being, a reason for our existence and a desire to want to connect everyone to God.

When Jesus came, one of the first things He did was announce that the kingdom of heaven had come. This is it. Heaven is here. Let’s live in such a way as to answer Mr. Allen’s question with an unseen world that is right around the corner, and open all night.