The Greatest Sport

This is a post on the Greatest Sport.
Not another plug for Ultimate, you might be thinking. Will the guy never give it a rest? What Would Jesus Play? The Holy Spirit of the Game. Yeah, we get it, Ultimate frisbee is a great sport.

True, but it's not the greatest sport.

What I love about Ultimate is many things, but many of those things are going away. I loved the idea of Spirit of the Game, that you play hard, but you play fair and you don't play dirty to win. I loved that it was self-refereed. I loved that I was good at it, and could keep up with my competitors.

Brodie Smith declares the Spirit of the Game doesn't work. We have "observers." And I can't keep up anymore. It is still a great sport, but what made it personally great for me is not so deep.

No, the greatest sport is one of the oldest, and that is wrestling.

The list, please:

1) It is man v man or woman v woman or woman v man. There is no ball, puck, shuttlecock, bow, arrow, sword, bat, frisbee, club, racket. sleigh, stick, weights, goal, water, gloves, paddle, bike, skates, horse, car, beam, vault, rings, hurdle, ski, board, javelin, pole, discus, bar, gun or stone. The only other non-equipment sports that I can think of are some of the martial arts, running and sumo wrestling. There's no actual contact with other humans in track - it's a race against the clock, mostly. If I had to say what the necessary equipment for sumo, it would be a Whopper. 

Wrestling pits you and the other guy/gal. There's no team mates to help/hide behind. There's no judges to bribe or blame or impress.

2) It is absolutely the brown shoes on the tuxedo of sport. The only people who like wrestling are wrestlers. And sometimes their families. Do you want to know how disrespected it is? It almost got bumped from the Olympics. Three levels of equestrian, ping pong and synchronized swimming are Olympic sports, but not wrestling? I don't mean to put horses down (!), but come on.

3) It builds confidence. Do you want to know how much confidence it builds? It builds so much confidence that wrestlers have resisted the urge to punch the millions who call their sport gay. That's confident. My coach, Ed LeBeau, was one of the most important men in my life because he taught me that trying your hardest, playing fair, preparing weeks and months for a six minute match is worth it on a spiritual level.

4) No greed. No wrestler is in it for the fat contract at the end. They wrestle because they love the sport, not because it is the path to a multi-million dollar payoff. It is a pure sport.

This fall, I hope to carry on where my father began 50 years ago, when he started the wrestling program at Concordia Lutheran High School in Fort Wayne, IN. I am not starting a program, but I'm hoping to join the group at Franklin Pierce High School. I look forward to working with the coaches and athletes, to rekindle my love for this sport and to make some friends along the way.

Stay tuned.

Our Savior Spenerian Church, part 2

Last week, I wrote about how Philipp Jackob Spener has influenced Our Savior Lutheran for the better, by spotting a hidebound tendency in the Lutheran church of his day, and reforming the Reformation.
The Word of God is used more extensively in our small group Bible Study, most of which talk about the sermons our pastor preaches the week before. Our youth subscribe to a daily Bible reading texted to their phones. One of our core values is that we are an equipping church, sending out the priesthood of all believers, trained by our staff, to do mission in their individual neighborhoods. Our motto is to Love God, Love People and Live Like Jesus, a phrase Spener would be very comfortable endorsing. In our apologetic approach, we avoid, like Spener, “fruitless disputation.” Instead of attempting to reason unbelievers into believing, we begin our discussions with “regular” people from a point of connection, not one of contention. And most importantly, our university-trained ministers always try to create sermons “in such a way that the hearers may profit from the sermon in life and death.”

Spener’s extensions would be heralded by the sainted Luther, who would have surely encouraged a better educated populace, as well as a more biblically literate clergy and flock. He would part ways, I think, in calling disputations “fruitless”; they may have been fruitless 100 years after, but they were certainly important at the outset.

Where Luther and Spener (and to an extent, Lutherans today) would part ways is in Spener’s emphasis on the inner man, and this is truly where the rubber meets the road. Spener writes: “Nor is it enough to be baptized, but the inner man, where we have put on Christ in Baptism, must also keep Christ on and bear witness to him in our outward life.” 

This is really an updated version of penance.

 Luther taught that there are two parts of forgiveness: confession and absolution. The Catholic church taught that there was a third part: satisfaction. It was not enough that you confessed your sins to God and heard God’s word of absolution, you needed to perform a righteous work to prove to God that you meant it. I believe this is part of Spener’s legacy: it’s not enough to be baptized, to go to communion, to confess and be forgiven, to read and hear God’s word – you have to prove it by the way you live. It would not matter to Luther that this proof is the way God wants you to live your life. Luther would not disagree that the way Spener wants his folks to live. In fact, if you read Luther’s works on confession/absolution (to give an example), he said the hearts of the newly absolved should then desire to go find the person that they’ve sinned against and asked for their forgiveness too. That looks like satisfaction, but – and here’s the sticking point – it is not required for God’s forgiveness. God’s grace does not depend on our deeds. Period.

If something is required, it trespasses into the realm of justification.

Taken to its logical conclusion, you do end up with a pietistic (not Pietistic) result. After saying that pious students should be promoted, while the impious (but more intelligent) students held back, he writes, “It would not be a bad thing if all students were required from their universities testimonials concerning their piety as well as their diligence and skill.”  Today, Christian universities typically ask for a student’s statement of belief, or at least a pledge to adhere to code of Christian conduct. Part of Spener’s legacy is seen by our expectation of Christians bound by a code of behavior, and in this way, we are not far from our brother Pharisees.

The week in review 7

Stillness: Recalling God's Presence
I felt the presence of God while visiting Pastor Steve this morning. I assumed I would be the recipient of more grace than I was doling out, him being a pastor and all, but he really did set my mind and spirit at ease about his condition and about his location in the place of God. Twice this week = Bob being the first- I have come across people in terrible situations - brain tumor, spot on kidney - that would have put some people in a tail spin, whereas these men of God saw this as an opportunity to proclaim their complete faith in and love for God, come what may. Very cool number, what God does to you.


Gratitude: Expressing Thankfulness
I'm thankful for my Sunday night group, who took a great small group idea - we are traditional-loving Lutherans - and have created a mission to get good enough at niche worship services - Holden Evening Prayer, Chicago Folk, Taize, Compline, Lutheran Evening Worship - to be able to offer that to the community. It won't happen over night and it won't happen without practice, but it will happen. 

Reflection: Looking Back on Your Day
Not the day off I planned, but a blessed day nevertheless. 
Planned day: wake up leisurely, read the paper, watch a movie in the morning, read ahead for next week's class assignments, have a nice dinner and go play frisbee at night.
Actual day: woke up at 8 in a panic, remembering that this is the last day to get Maeve's loan application in. We filled out all the forms this week, but we hadn't heard definitively that all the paperwork was in correctly. The email said that while she had my loan application, she had not yet received verification that Maeve had filled out the counseling session, which is required. Our 8 am is their 4 pm, so I filled out Maeve's counseling session pronto, and our friend in the financial aid office kept hitting the "refresh" button, and her status kept coming back "submitted," but not "accepted." In a panic, I had Maeve rush down to the office (5 minutes after her last final of the year - yay Maeve!), for I have no idea what reason - to cheer on the computer?. 10 minutes after our friend in the financial office was supposed to be off work - and off for a week's vacation - the refresh came back accepted. Now, if it didn't come back "accepted," Maeve would not have had enough money for the last bit of tuition, would not have had any money as downpayment on her apartment, and wouldn't have any money to get back to England. Just under the wire.
It's 9 am.
Also in that morning email is a note from Pastor Steve's wife saying he was taken to the emergency room and that his tests were not good; and that his children were gathering around him. I told Pastor Brian, who went in on his day off too; I missed him by 5 minutes, but had a great time (see above). Another of our members was in recovery from surgery at a different hospital, so I thought I'd pop in and have a quick prayer with her; she was in recovery for two hours, so I didn't get home until 2:15, but I had a lovely chat with her church member care giver in the waiting room. Bloom where you're planted, even when watching Say Yes to the Dress.
Finally home, we talk to Maeve and set about the beginning of our major back yard project (see below) and I'm too tired to go play frisbee. We sit in the hot tub and crash.

Sorrow: Asking for Forgiveness
My wife keeps planting trees, I keep killing them. I can't tell you the number of times I've mowed over baby plants, weed whacked blooming plants and stepped on thriving ground cover, but I can tell you the most recent one - today. We severely cut back our 25 foot Japanese maple with a chain saw (Roh-roh-roh!) and one of the major branches fell on our fence. So my job was to turn the big branches into little branches. So I let the wood chips fly - not knowing (or forgetting) that there was a sapling Japanese maple right in the middle of all the branches. Bren was even thinking - well, we're cutting down the diseased and dying maple, but at least the new one will be there during the lean years. I'm a murderer.

Hopefulness: Resolving to Grow
I'm hopeful that I will be able to create a Lutheran curriculum for missional communities. Give me time, give me wisdom, give me strength.

The troops

"I am an Nigerian soldier and I want to know, if I kill someone, is it a crime?"
Context is key to understanding how startling this statement was to me. This is not an unusual statement in a blog, or a quote from a news story, or in a book about war.
It was none of those. It was written in the sidebar of a on-line college course I'm taking at George Fox Seminary. For those who've never had the pleasure of taking a real-time, on-line college course, what usually happens is that a presenter - a professor or instructor - talks or presents either with video of him/herself in the center of the screen. But on the side, there is a place for dialogue from the rest of the participants; in this case, there were 22 others besides myself and the two professors.
And again, there is nothing particularly startling about the statement if we were talking about just war, or African conflicts; it might even have been appropriate if we had been talking about Nigeria, soldiers, killing or crime. We were talking about none of those things. The professor had merely said, "Does anyone have any questions," with the implication being, "about something we have just been discussing," which in this case was family systems theory.
One person asked a clarifying question, and then there was a pause, and the professor prepared to move on to his next point, when this flashed on the sidebar.
"I am an Nigerian soldier and I want to know, if I kill someone, is it a crime?"
Apropos of nothing, here was one of the participants with an obviously deep-seated, painful question. I don't know about my fellow students, but my reaction was, "Holy crap!" It felt a little like we had unearthed a time-bomb in this young man.
I do know what two of my fellow students thought, because they wrote underneath: "What an interesting question!" and "That's a good question."
And it is an interesting and good question. But, I'm sorry, when I meet this young man at our Face to Face in a couple of weeks, I'm going to have a hard time not thinking of him as a killer. Which he may not be yet, but probably will be, given his locale and the Times.
I have never been and never will be a soldier. I signed up for the draft when I was a kid, because in order to get a college scholarship, you had to. I saw a bit of the "baby killer" mentality of the post-Vietnam, post-Cambodian wars, and have been living in the backlash to that mentality, where the default clap line for any time or anywhere is to "support the troops." There seems to be a country-wide consensus that the two groups you can't say anything hateful about are gay people and The Troops. Even when we were vehemently against the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or almost-Syria, we would quickly add, "but of course I support the troops."
But why? Why this blanket pass on the military?
Of course, they throw themselves into harms way, and are brave and true. I have several former youth group members in various branches of the military and they are fine young men, one of whom has wanted to be in the Marines since the seventh grade.
And of course, they are making sure that our country is safe, which I'm grateful for.
But I didn't ask them to do that. I didn't ask them to kill pre-Christians - because that's what all non-Christians are, right, my fellow evangelicals? Just Christians waiting to happen? So by sending people to a place where they are not Christian and killing them, you have just sentenced them to an eternity in hell.
The Few. The Proud. The Killers of Unsaved People.
The loudest calls will be from those who say, "You'll be sorry when you have to learn Arabic/Russian/Korean."
No I won't. Christians throughout the millenia have had evil overlords, and their faith turned out just fine. They are floating on their own clouds right now. I believe the best thing that could happen to the religious life in this country is if Christianity were made illegal. Look at China. Look at Russia. Plus I've always wanted to learn another language, and about the only way that's going to happen is if I have an evil overlord making me.
So I think it's a good question, my Nigerian soldier friend. I will look forward to meeting you and saying, "While killing people is not a crime if you're wearing a uniform, it is still against God's law."

Facebook Strong

Facebook Strong: Saying something obnoxious for the expressed purpose of being able to late brag about it on Facebook.

This original Urban Word of the Day is based on an actual incident involving yours truly and a Helicopter Mom to End All Helicopter Moms.
I'm driving down the road towards my local Fred Meyer, and am entering the left turn lane to get into the store, when I notice there is a driver tail-gating me - she wanted to get to the left turn lane first, even though I was well ahead of her. She got into the left lane and accelerated just as I was getting into the turn lane. So I'm thinking, "I have an angry bee behind me" "bee" here not standing for anything other than the black and yellow flying thing. Just so we're clear.
I waited in the left turn lane for a second or two to allow the pedestrian, a young man of about 6 feet tall, to get onto the far sidewalk; I noticed there was just enough time to make the left turn before the oncoming traffic would get to me, but not enough time for me and the angry bee to both make it.
I want to be clear about this, because this is the point of contention - the young man was on the sidewalk before I turned.
So I park my car and am assaulted by the angry bee who is shouting across the parking lot - "HEY! IF THAT WAS MY KID THAT YOU ALMOST HIT, I WOULD COME OVER THERE AND KICK YOUR BUTT. IT'S A LITTLE KID, FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!"
First reaction. Wha?
Second reaction: She must have thought that I turned too quickly, and that the pedestrian was in danger of being struck my me, which, as I've said, was clearly not the case.
Third reaction: Facebook Strong.
I imagined that she would race home - literally - and post something like, "I can't believe the insanity of drivers. This jerk in front of me came within an inch of vehicular manslaughter on a little boy at Freddies today. But did I take it lying down. I did not! I got out of my car and told him that if that was my kid that I would kick his butt."
Facebook strong.
Here's the ironic part. The "little kid," the six-foot teenager was actually walking in the parking lot, which I tried to tell her - "Hey, there's the kid right there - ask him if I almost hit him!" But when you're trying to have a rational discussion with an angry, self-righteous (tail-gating) bee (again, the black and yellow flying thing), it just sounds like shouting. She repeated, "IT'S JUST A LITTLE KID FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!" And the little kid was walking by her, towering over her.
And here's my favorite part of the moment. The "little kid" gave her a look like, "Who are you calling a little kid," and then he saw who she was yelling at - me - and gave me a look that said, "She's nuts."
Facebook Strong.

Our Savior Spenerian Church

The leader of a Lutheran church looked at the old way of doing things and thought it was time for a new reformation. He looked at a church in which the people went out of duty, rather than for the love of God. He saw a church in which the congregation was entirely dependent on "Herr Pastor"; it took no responsibility for its own spirituality. It met once a week, and they confessed their sins and went through the formula of the liturgy, and sang the same old hymns without joy. He saw a church that was satisfied with gaining new believers by opening its doors on Sunday and expecting people to just walk in. But most of all, the pastor looked at the Lutherans as having head knowledge about Christianity - they were all good catechumens, after all - but that the love of Christ didn't affect their heart in any way, shape or form.
He proposed radical changes in church, by first of all starting Bible studies in people's homes. After all, we are a priesthood of ALL believers, are we not? The leader sought to enliven the worship by not doing things the old way, but to bring in new ideas. He suggested that we could gain more converts to Christianity if we engaged those in the culture, befriending them, rather than lecturing them about what is right. Out of these holy huddles would form new missional communities, pockets of Christians who were attracted by the way we live, not just what we teach. He wanted a church that would live out the principals of Christianity on a daily basis, not just on Sunday. He wanted our schools and seminaries not just to teach the seminarians about Christianity, but to transform their lives, so that they would BE the City on a Hill, not just to talk about it.
He lived 300 years ago.
He is Philipp Jakob Spener (pro. SPAIN-er), the father of Pietism, and the true source of Our Savior Lutheran's heritage. It is my contention that our church follows more closely in the footsteps of Spener than Luther, and that this is not necessarily a bad thing.

We'll get to the bad thing next week.
The good news is that Spener was right - the Lutheran Church 120 years after Luther was in need of reform - and it remains so to this day. We are continually reforming as a church, as needs be. If Vatican II taught us anything, it's that a church needs a good enema every 300 years or so. The church during Spener's time (1635-1705) was rather fusty, just as our Missouri Synod churches were (are) fusty today. Our Savior blew some wind up Missouri's sails 15 years ago as it became the first LCMS church to worship exclusively in a contemporary manner. It is a point of pride in our church; I think it's interesting and has led to my nascent career (in my role as consummate contrarian) to lead a traditional worship service these past three years.
We'll be adding to this post next Tuesday, but for now, let's celebrate the wonder that is Spener, and the changes he wrought in the Lutheran Church, then and now.

Brahms in hell

While my typical choice of medium for Media Monday is Movies, this week I want to take the time to acknowledge a marvelous rendition of Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) performed by the Northwest Repertory Singers at PLU on Saturday night. Lagerquist Hall at PLU is certainly one of the best places to hear any kind of music - we heard Tacoma Youth Chorus concerts for five years there - but this was incredible. Not only did we get to sit with new Breaking Bad afficianado Peter G, but got to hear his partner sing in the choir. Oh, and there was an orchestra there too -they added.
But the main thing I wanted to point out was that the requiem is an actual funeral mass, sung in German, with English notes on the side. I love the German language, and think if I were going to be bilingual one day, it will be German. So - friends, check; great music, check; German, check; AND to top it all off, every word sung was from the Bible. Bam. I keep forgetting how steeped in Christianity the composers needed to be. I mean, if you want to pay the bills, you better play some music they can hear in the pews.
At any rate, there was one line that struck me:
Tod, wo ist dein Sieg 
Hölle, wo ist dein Stachel
My high school German did not fail me on the first line-  Death where is your victory, but I did not know what Hölle was. The translation said it was Death where is your sting, but Tod is death, not Hölle. Well, I could have guessed it was hell, but I didn't - thanks, Google translate! But I noted those lines because they were sung with devastating power. I watched to see which lines the choir was particularly into, and that one seemed to hit everyone in the gut. It was the end of a section, as well, and I heard the air rush out of my partner's mouth - "whumph."
I like Brahm's translation of the line better, though. I wonder if that's what Luther's German Bible said, saying that the devil's hell has no sting because we know we're folded in with Christ's victory over "sin, death and the power of the devil." The English double death is not as interesting as Death/hell.
It's music that needs to be heard in church, but probably never will be. Maybe I'll save up and have it sung at my funeral. Along with Mahalia Jackson's version of Abide with Me.