Your unique swing

Sermon given at Sydenstricker UMC July 23rd and 24th 

Sermon not recorded 

^NRS 2 Timothy 2:1 You then, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus; ² and what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well. ³ Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. ⁴ No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier's aim is to please the enlisting officer. ⁵ And in the case of an athlete, no one is crowned without competing according to the rules. ⁶ It is the farmer who does the work who ought to have the first share of the crops. ⁷ Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in all things.

Some years back I enjoyed reading and then watching a movie about a round of Golf that occurred around the early 1930’s. It was between some of the greatest golfers alive at that time in a setting on the coast of South Carolina. Of course, it was a fictional account by the author. The movie is called “Bagger Vance” and it is about a great game played between opposites but equals in the world of Golf. And among them is a wounded warrior who must play to their level one more time. The cast of characters included Bobby Jones who really lived and some would say was the greatest golfer that every lived and a gentleman in every sense of the word. And then there is Walter Hagen, also a real life person who was a brash hard living person that will always be remembered for his drinking, womanizing and style of golf. Interesting enough, it was Walter Hagen that many consider to be the father of modern day professional golf. So we have this golf championship that has at its heart the two greatest golfers of the day who are opposites in life, one living what a Christian lifestyle and one living a worldly lifestyle. Into this world comes Captain Junah, a local favorite who is a hero from WWI, a great golfer before the war and now living in obscurity, hiding because of his wounds. Why you might ask would I bring you this story on a Sunday morning sermon. Well, maybe just maybe because like the parables of Jesus, we can see our own stories in it and learn important truths. You see, Junah is broken. He is broken because what he understood of life had been taken away from him on the battlefields of Europe. There he saw things that young men and women shouldn’t have to see and it changed him. It wounded him. Henri Nouwen suggests that all the people called by God are wounded healers. Wounded by life in one way or another, some suffering superficial wounds that they just need to get over, while others are hurting from deep deep wounds and tremendous emotional scars. And each of us comes to this game facing obstacles that life has placed there for us. Have you ever had events transpire that sucked the very essence of life right out of you and you began to question everything that you believed in and thought to be true? There is a question that hangs in the air throughout the movie that is important for you and me today. Is it simply a game between three men or something much more than that? Is life a game where we learn the skills to play and spend our lives acting out roles that we believe we must in order to fit in the world? Or is it more than that, a field where each of us has the opportunity to make a difference fulfilling our purpose in the world that God has given us. Into this world of golf comes this mystical character, Will Smith as Bagger Vance. Bagger appears one evening as Junah is practicing, not to well I might add. He begins to work on Junah’s mind. You see Junah has the ability to play golf at the same level as these two greats. But just as Bobby Jones style is different than Hagen’s, so too is Junah’s. In the world today there is book after book telling golfers how to hold the club, how to swing. Make your swing like Palmer or Nicklaus or Hogan or Woods. Buy these clubs because Mickelson or Woods wins with them. We are bombarded by the marketing hype to become just like someone else. Is it any different in life? There are more books about how to live your life, how to fix what ails you and how to be successful than all other book types combined. Become like Brittany Spears or Brad Pitt or countless others that bombard our consciousness every day. But what Bagger Vance says to Junah is earth shattering. Junah, he says, each of us has our own unique perfect swing that we have been given in order to play the field the way we are supposed to play it. No one else is quite like us. I am reminded that Paul tells us that we are all one body but of many parts and one without the other cannot work. But we cannot all be the head or the arms of the legs. We each must fulfill the role we uniquely are given in life. And there will be those days when we lose our swing, when we get lost, when we have our lives sucked out of us by people or events. So Junah begins to believe again and the game takes off. He begins to play to the level of the two greats beside him and then he begins to think that he knows more than Bagger and life begins to plummet again. You see in golf just as in life, there is a higher consciousness that we are called to align ourselves with or we will fail. Fact is, we cannot understand our own natures, our own desires and our own passions and realize that when out of sync with the one who created us, we are in chaos and out of control. Truth is we each have a special purpose that is uniquely suited for us. It doesn’t look like your neighbors or the latest ad on TV, but is ours and ours alone.

Paul is trying to tell us this in the scripture today. That soldiers don’t concern themselves with the big picture, only what their superior is telling them to do. Too much information boggles the brain and makes one ineffective. Likewise the athlete does not question why the race follows a certain path; they accept that it does as they train to compete with their desire to win. When we allow the Holy Spirit to come into us, transforming us into the unique person God would have us be, it is then that our own special swing begins to work. But one day when things are going well, we begin to believe we control life and no longer need to ask God for guidance. And we find that our wonderful swing has put the ball deep in the woods. You know the place. That place where all of our deepest fears come rushing to the surface to remind us how little and inadequate and worthless we are. That place where our tormentors want us to be so that they can control our actions and ultimately our lives. You know what an abused person looks like? An abused person is a person whose life is controlled by the abuser through guilt and bullying to the point that there self esteem and sense of worth is so low that only the bullies seems to have the key to how to live. So they spend their lives living someone else’s idea of life. Abused people are sitting beside us, looking just like us; in fact we may see one in the mirror in the morning. Wake up! That is what the world wants of us. But when we find the ball in the woods, God is whispering to us to decide. We have been given the tools to guide the ball through the trees and out into the playing field again, but you must have faith and decide to trust when it seems that everything you know is wrong and working against you.

During the time of my transition from public life to becoming a full time clergy, I had the opportunity to share a weekend with some of my best friends. One of them is no longer with us but his memory stays close. Each morning we arose, ate breakfast (yes, even men can handle the cooking of eggs and bacon without destroying the kitchen), and then hiked up to the outlook to view the morning from the mountains perspective. During that time I was able to reflect on the past time of trial and then begin to reflect on the future not only for my own life but for the life of the churches I would serve. It was a time of transition for all of us as we looked to an uncertain future beset by obstacles, both financial and resource. What I also saw were endless possibilities where the future can hold bright promise if we find what God intends for us as individuals and collectively as a church. Each of us to achieve these goals must focus on our own individual gifts as well as the collective gifts of those around us. Rob Bell reminds us that in the Hebrew, the name for God is so sacred that it is seldom mentioned or spoken. We refer to God as Yahweh, an English definition of the word in old Hebrew that sounds like “Yod Hay Vo Hay”. Is it possible that the name of God is so difficult to say because it is beyond our understanding? Or is it possible that the name of God is so wonderful that we just need to breathe in order to hear it. I have shared with you before that the first thing a child must do in order to live is breathe. And the final thing that our bodies do when we die is to expel the air we have in our lungs. Does that mean then that God breathes life into us at birth and we die when that breath of life can no longer be sustained? Or does it mean that we need God to come in us when we are born in order to live and when we can no longer say the name of God we die? I wonder what this says to us about our need for God. That without God in our life, we are simply walking dead.

For each of us, one day the ultimate test will come. In golf, unlike most other sports, golfers call penalties against themselves. When the ball moves it is a stroke. Now no one else may have seen it move, but you did. It sort of like if you’re driving at midnight and the light is red and no one else is around, do you wait for it to change to green or run it. And so it happens to Junah. No-one else sees it move, but he does. When it happens in the movie, the young man watching says to Junah, but no one would know. And Junah’s reply, “You and I would and that is all that matters.” And it is at this moment that the mystical figure says it is time to go. Why? Because he has taught what needed to be taught. That the special authentic swing is all about knowing and trusting and believing in yourself and in the God that created you. To do the right thing all the time, not because someone else might be looking, but because it is the right thing to do! So you have to ask yourself, with the championship of your life on the line, when the ball moved and no-one saw it, would you do the right thing?