Good News for Good Friday

I know, I know, the last thing you want to read today is a sermon. But … I did the meditation last night at our Maundy Thursday service and told a couple of stories. One of them is fit to repeat here. If it feels too much like a sermon let me know.

I remember a night in high school when a swim meet had just ended and I was talking to a kid and another kid came up to us and said, “Hey, are you guys going someplace?” Just the way he said it rubbed me wrong and I said, “Yeah, we’re going to Petko’s, meet us there,” and that kid went off to meet us at that restaurant while the first kid and I – who never had any plans to begin with – went to our respective homes. It was NOT a nice thing to do. Life went on, we graduated, I moved away from Flint, Michigan, and onto other places and other things, but … from time to time over the past 35 years I have thought of that night, and when I do I’m always filled with a fair amount of guilt. Whenever someone would mention that guy’s name I’d think of that night and feel bad about what a callous jerk I used to be (as opposed to the nice jerk I’ve turned into).

Last year, through the magic of Facebook, the guy found me. I was living in the Netherlands at the time, so we did a little Facebook chatting, but then I moved back to Michigan and one day he wrote and said he had to come to Grand Rapids and wondered if we could have lunch together. We’re eating lunch, catching up with each other, and finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I spilled my guts, confessing how terrible I’ve felt for 35 years and wondering if he could ever forgive me for my unkindness.

“You did what?” he said.

I went through the whole story again.

“That’s funny,” he said. “I remember you were always funny. That sounds like something funny you’d do.”

“You don’t remember?”

“No,” he said, “Not at all.”

“You weren’t scarred for life?”

“No,” he said laughing. “I guess not.”

Well, if he wasn’t, how come I was?

This is the point of last night and today on the church calendar. As Don Henley sang a few decades ago, when you get down to the heart of the matter it’s about “forgiveness.” The first part of forgiveness, from God’s point of view, is that he doesn’t remember. When God remember us, he remembers that he loves us; he remembers that he thinks we do funny and endearing things, but he doesn’t remember the terrible things we’ve done. In Isaiah 43 he says it like this: “For my own sake I will blot out your transgressions and I will remember your sins no more.” For his own sake! Like my friend – better to forget than be scarred by it.

This leads to one of the harder parts of forgiveness – forgiving ourselves. I just touched on this briefly last night, and I won’t dwell on it here, but really if the Good News is good at all, then we’ve got to be able to integrate our lives in a healthy way, to accept and love and most of all forgive ourselves. Like my friend, God forgave and forgot a long, long time ago. Can we do that?

Thanks Delta -- This Was Interesting!

I’ll be watching tonight’s Milwaukee at Philadelphia game on ESPN (provided it isn’t snowed out!), hoping to hear Rick Sutcliffe, the color commentator, say something about the remarkably brilliant baseball fan he sat next to yesterday on a flight from KC to Detroit, the first leg of his trip to Philly. The remarkably brilliant fan, of course, was little old me.

Through the ministrations of Delta Airlines, I found myself seated next to Sutcliffe, the 1979 National League Rookie of the Year and winner of the 1984 NL Cy Young Award. We did happen to talk a little baseball. My famous memory worked its quirky charms and even managed to backhandedly insult him – somehow I remembered he was traded from Cleveland to the Cubs for Mel Hall and forgot Joe Carter was in the deal. Mel Hall was a borderline player; Joe Carter was a perennial All-Star. Oops.

For all you long-suffering Cub fans – did you know that Major League Baseball took home field advantage away from the Cubs in the 1984 playoffs? In the best of five series, the Cubs won the first two at Wrigley, lost the next two at San Diego, and had to win game five to head into the World Series for the first time since 1945. However, because there were no lights at Wrigley Field in those days, MLB decreed game five would be played in San Diego because they wanted the game broadcast in prime time. Who knows if playing at home would have made a difference, but the Cubs managed to lose that game and their World Series drought continues unabated decades later.

After the 1984 season, coming off the Cy Young, Sutcliffe was a free agent and was courted by his hometown Kansas City Royals. They offered him a lifetime contract – similar to the deal they had given George Brett. How many of us have that sort of chance in life? But something happened in Kansas City that winter – the intensity of the attention got to Sutcliffe. He told me that reading about it every day and being approached everywhere (he mentioned being “cornered” in a restaurant) repelled him. He didn’t want to be that famous – he thought of his two-year-old daughter and he wanted a chance for her to have a normal life. So he rejected a lifetime of financial security and re-signed with the Cubs. I thought that was a marvelous story of someone standing at a crossroads and seeing the down side of the things so many of us fantasize about.

Another crossroads came as his career was waning. He said he was aware of players using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. He even “named names” of former teammates he could hardly recognize anymore because of the physical changes that had happened to them. He made the decision not to use – and wondered for years if he’d made the right choice. After all, look at what steroid use did for the late careers of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens – they defied time and became better players late in their 30’s than they had been when they were younger. At that time steroids were not illegal in baseball. There were millions of dollars at stake. The health risks were not as well documented as they are today. Why not do it?

I thought of how easy it is for fans to look down on players who chose to use steroids – but we have no idea what we’d do in similar circumstances. How many people reading this have left a few million dollars on the table? And, even today, what are the consequences for those who did choose steroids? The record books aren’t going to be changed. Nobody is making Mark McGwire or Alex Rodriquez give back the tens of millions they earned. Why shouldn’t they have done it?

Sutcliffe mentioned his daughter to me again, and said, “She tells me I have the benefit of being able to fall asleep at night with a clear conscience.”

It’s a remarkable thing to think about. As I raced through the Detroit airport yesterday in a mad dash to get from gate A21 to gate C24 in 17 minutes, I was reflecting on how cool it was to have been able to talk to him for an hour or so. If you don’t have anything going on tonight, turn on ESPN and listen to the big guy for a while. It might help you keep in mind our common humanity, and the twisting paths our lives take.

A Radio Program

I think this is cool but I'm biased. If you click here http://spotlightradio.net/listen/teammates/ you can read and listen to my first radio script that has been produced. It's one of my all-time favorite stories. This will be broadcast sometime this month, but you have to live in someplace like Mumbai to hear it -- it's produced for the non-English speaking world.

All Things Fred

Here's an April First treat instead of a trick. Go to www.buechnerinstitute.org and peruse the site. If you click on the link to their blog, you will see a short message I gave at the inauguration of the Buechner Institute four years ago. But don't stop there. You can read some of what Katherine Patterson (author of The Bridge to Terebithia) said at the BI a few weeks ago, and you can find information on this year's Buechnerfest. Give it a serious look -- you won't be disappointed.