God, the Best Basketball Coach: Isaiah 51:1-6
Ordinary Time
“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness
and who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut
and to the quarry from which you were hewn;
2 look to Abraham, your father,
and to Sarah, who gave you birth.
When I called him he was only one man,
and I blessed him and made him many.
3 The Lord will surely
comfort Zion
and will look with compassion on all her ruins;
he will make her deserts like Eden,
her wastelands like the garden of the Lord.
Joy and gladness will be found in her,
thanksgiving and the sound of singing.
4 “Listen
to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations.
5 My righteousness draws near speedily,
my salvation is on the way,
and my arm will bring justice to the nations.
The islands will look to me
and wait in hope for my arm.
6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
look at the earth beneath;
the heavens will vanish like smoke,
the earth will wear out like a garment
and its inhabitants die like flies.
But my salvation will last forever,
my righteousness will never fail.
(NIV)
Pastor: This is the Word of God for the People of God.
People: Thanks be to God.
I’m originally
from Indiana, which means part of my state-mandated education growing up was
watching the film Hoosiers. It’s
a 1986 feel-good sports celebration, for those who haven’t seen it, starring
Gene Hackman as a washed-out coach who takes a motley bundle of high school
boys to state-wide fame in basketball championship. It’s considered one of the best sports films
of all time, which didn’t really impress my seventh-grade self, but part of its
charm is the eleventh-hour pep talk.
It’s a short thing, by speech
standards, in which Gene Hackman gathers his disheartened players at the
regional finals in the locker room. “Forget
about the crowds,” he tells them, “the size of the school, their fancy
uniforms, and remember what got you here. Focus on the fundamentals that we've
gone over time and time again. And most
important, don't get caught up thinking about winning or losing this game. If
you put your effort and concentration into playing to your potential, to be the
best that you can be, I don't care what the scoreboard says at the end of the
game, in my book we're gonna be winners!”[1]
This summer, Pastor Michael has been
leading you through a series on “Family Reunions,” and it may seem that we’re
pausing that to go over to the prophet Isaiah.
This is a continuation, however; it’s just that the family has gotten a
great deal larger. In today’s verses, the
family is the entirety of Israel reeling from the fear and uncertainty
following the Babylonian exile, a period in which the kingdom of Babylon burned
down the Temple and the infrastructure of Israel and carted off the leaders of
society in disgrace. After several
generations, the people of Israel come together on the long-dead ashes of who
they had been, a family reunited in grief and uncertainty. Professor Ingrid Lilly writes, “Isaiah’s
sermon deals with Israel’s specific disorientation at the loss of Zion. Zion is
God’s dwelling in Jerusalem. Zion is a physical place, a material temple, an
Israelite mountain. But Zion is also a sacred space that marks the heartbeat of
Yahwism. Zion is God’s presence with Israel. The destruction of the temple
destroyed this sacred space and eradicated the presence of God. For the exiles
living in Babylon, the ruined Zion must have seemed worthless.”[2]
It’s a pretty sad tone to set for a
family reunion, really.
“Listen to me,” says God through the
prophet, and proceeds to give what is essentially a promise-slash-pep talk,
although far more poetically than Gene Hackman.
“The Lord will surely comfort Zion…my righteousness shall never fail.” The rhythm of this short speech and that of
Hackman’s call to winning actually share characteristics of the best kinds of
motivation, because both the basketball players and the Israelites needed it.
In 2017, the Harvard Business Review
published an article on the “science of pep talks,” saying that they all really
boil down to three main elements:
direction giving, expressions of empathy, and meaning making.[3] Direction giving is what it sounds, the
giving of direction—not necessarily like an Ikea manual but in terms of
“uncertainty-reducing language,”[4]
the reassurance of what’s important and what the task at hand is so people can
lower their anxiety a bit. “Forget about
the crowds,” says Gene Hackman, “focus on the fundamentals we’ve gone
over.” His players know that they know
how to play; they’ve been putting in all the work, after all, of practicing
over and over again, of honing their bodies and minds to the sport.
Here in Isaiah, God reminds the people of Israel, “Look to the rock
from which you were cut…look to Abraham and Sarah…listen to me…instruction will
go out from me…lift your eyes to the heavens.”
These verses are chock full of imperatives, commands for the people to
refocus on the long history of who they were before the Exile and how God never
left in any of those years and won’t leave now; they only have to listen, look,
know that God is leading them back to themselves and forward to all of the ways
they’re still becoming a blessed nation.
The second piece, expressions of
empathy, recognizes that the person needing the pep talk is a person who feels
sadness and anger and fear and hope and all the other deeply human things we hold. “Don’t get caught up thinking about winning
or losing,” says Hackman, aware that his players are locked in their minds with
the worry that they won’t be good enough at this competitive level. “The Lord will surely comfort Zion / and will
look with compassion on all her ruins,” says the prophet, knowing that a little
compassion will go a long way when it wasn’t just buildings that were
burned. “Joy and gladness will be found
in her, / thanksgiving and the sound of singing.” How good to think of the possibility that joy
isn’t gone forever! How hopeful that
singing could be a thing they desired to do again!
Meaning making, like direction giving,
helps people take what’s going on and fit it into their experiences so that
they can tell themselves and others the story of what’s going on and what comes
next. Why is it important that the
players go into the game with their heads held high no matter whether they win
or lose? Why is it important that the
people of Israel not get lost in their sorrows and their “what if”s and their
“it used to be”s and instead look to the work that God is still doing?
Because one of the most important
things to take away from this passage in Isaiah—especially we who are
Christians, we who are in the 21st century, we who are a people for
whom this text was not originally written, we who are an audience the
writer never could have dreamed—is that God is, indeed, still at work. God didn’t leave at the exile, brushing off
holy hands and exclaiming, “Welp, that didn’t work, better luck
elsewhere.” God didn’t look at the
returning people weeping over the ruins of their temple and say, “Eh, we tried,
good game though.” “My justice will
become a light to the nations,” God says, inviting the family of Israel to be
the first to shine it; “my salvation will last forever, / my righteousness will
never fail.” Even when the earth itself
falls apart, God is not done; God’s invitation to be part of the unfolding
Kingdom is still extended.
But the thing of it is that God isn’t,
actually, a basketball coach, or a motivational speaker. We can use frameworks like these to understand
our text, but we must move further into the reality of relationship because the
story keeps going beyond the triumphant music over the ending credits. There has to be follow-through; we who come
to this text thousands of years later may look at our own lives and be in
desperate need of a pep talk, of empathy, of direction in a way that no pretty speech
will cover. We look at our world and we
may wonder where is the justice, the righteousness, the compassion; where are
the wastelands being made into gardens?
This is where we encounter the reality
that, if faith is indeed a relationship, we have to work at it, too. What are our stories of when God was present,
hewing us out of a quarry, creating many out of one simple beginning? What are our moments of grace, comfort,
compassion that may not be as obvious in this season but have been bright as
the sun in previous times? What is the
reassurance of God’s presence in the past that we can use to hold on for this
time of the present?
And how are we taking on the reality
of gardens, of righteousness, of justice?
Christ calls us to the work of mercy, of love, of transformation not as
passive recipients but as active family members, people who know that life and
life abundant is a gift, not a weapon.
Through what big and small acts of kindness are we part of the promise
that God’s righteousness will never fail?
Maybe it’s helping to set up for the Hidden Treasures Sale or hosting a
trunk at Trunk or Treat so that kids know they are safe and loved and welcome. Maybe it’s taking on a new role in the partnership
here with local schools. Maybe it’s donating
supplies to and praying for the workers of After the Storm, the Michigan United
Methodist outreach currently working with those affected by the storms last
week. Maybe it’s coming up with an
entirely new ministry and listening for the ways in which God calls this church
to justice, to righteousness, to the healing of a battered world with the
incredible power of hope.
“I don’t care what the scoreboard says
at the end of the game,” says Gene Hackman, which is true in that he as the
coach and we as the viewers care a lot more about whether this team plays with
dignity and integrity. “Listen to me, my
people,” says God; the exile will not break you, the destruction of others will
not erase you, the story is ongoing. Keep
going in prayer and thanksgiving, with all the range of sorrow and grief and
joy and hope that you have, for God is not done yet.
May your heart be healed from whatever
exile has broken it; may your eyes be lifted to the God Who still calls you by
name; and may your hands be opened to the work of being a child of God, bearing
the love of Christ in the world. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment