Just for Fun John 15:9-17, Acts 10:44-48
Most children are nothing if not inventive.
For example, a child can make most anything into a ball.
In Mexico, children will play soccer with anything that can be kicked.
When I was growing up we played basketball.
I remember when I was in the eighth grade.
My friends and I would hurry through lunch so we could be among the first ten
to get out on the black top and play basketball for half an hour.
Somebody would be designated to sneak his empty milk carton
past the lunchroom monitor
and once we got out we would fill it with gravel and fold over the top.
This was our ball.
Then the first ten out who wanted to play
got to choose up sides for the first game of a single elimination tournament.
As long as you kept winning you kept playing.
Lose and you’d sit down to wait, hoping for another turn before the bell rang.
You know what happened.
You saw it growing up. Maybe you lived it.
The best athletes were chosen rapidly.
The least accomplished were chosen last.
The desperate hope of all of us who took our basketball seriously
was that the really bad athletes wouldn’t even try.
There was enough honor among us to acknowledge the right of anyone
who was among the first ten out to be considered for one of the first two teams.
But that didn’t stop us from rolling our eyes or groaning loudly
if somebody like Randy or Jack stepped up to be chosen.
They weren’t any good.
Everybody knew it.
THEY knew it!
Why couldn’t they just face facts and sit and watch
and not mess things up for the rest of us?
Looking back, I think, WOW - what courage it took for those guys
to stand up among the ten and demand to be chosen,
ESPECIALLY when they knew they weren’t athletic or coordinated.
Randy was likely as not to throw the "ball" to someone on the other team,
and if Jack got it, he would just freeze and get swarmed by the defense.
But every now and then they stood up to play, not content to sit on the sidelines,
defiantly deaf to our groans and blind to our sneers.
Where did they get that courage to say, "I’m as worthy of playing the game
as anybody out here."
Where did they get the wisdom to know that our attitude toward them
was OUR problem and not theirs?
I almost got up the courage to ask them at our 30th high school reunion,
but they seemed to be having so much fun and I still feel ashamed enough
that I didn’t want to stir the pot of eighth grade stupidity.
Jack made a killing in the Real Estate market
and now runs a bed and breakfast with his partner down in Jacksonville, Florida.
Randy designs home interiors and moved back to Gastonia to nurse his sister
before she died of cancer.
I’m guessing neither one of them is, to this day, any good
at putting a milk carton full of rocks through a playground basketball hoop.
I’m also guessing neither one of them cares.
What once seemed so critical, so vital to my identity, my value as a human being
now doesn’t even register as a single blip on the radar.
I thought scoring the most points was the goal.
How much more fun we all would have had
if we had understood that the more worthy goal was simply to enjoy the game.
That’s a pretty foreign concept these days, playing for the joy of it
instead of winning at all costs.
We used to view an emerging ability to cooperate with others
as a sign of developmental maturity in our children,
but now many see it as a weakness
compared to the kid who’s got the drive to be first.
We used to admire a competitor for stopping to help another
but now that’s seen as the mark of a chump.
It’s gotten ugly.
One soccer league had to suspend the time honored practice
of players shaking hands after the game
because fights were breaking out and that was the coaches!
It was either baseball great Leo Durocher or football legend Vince Lombardy
who said, "Show me a GOOD loser and I’ll show you a LOSER,"
This attitude must have worked for them on one level
because their success landed each of them in the Hall of Fame.
But that kind of thinking is exactly what has corrupted our culture
and taken the joy out of life.
Think about what it says.
First it says that everything is a competition,
nothing can be done WITHOUT there being winners and losers.
There are no moral victories,
there’s no honor in battling hard and calling a draw,
there’s no value in even doing something that DOESN’T have winners and losers.
Second, it says that if you do compete and you fall short
you HAVE to sulk and pout and swear revenge,
you have to hate yourself and feel humiliated and cover your head with a towel.
If you don’t, it makes you a loser.
If you get any satisfaction out of playing well regardless of the final score,
or if you can see your opponent as only an opponent and not your sworn enemy,
then you just don’t have what it takes to be a REAL champion!
Poppycock!
How did we get to the place where ruthlessness in sports or business or politics or religion
is a thing to be admired rather than exposed and exorcized?
How did civilization come to evolve backwards
so that sacrificing one’s own gain for the sake of another
or reaching out to lend a helping hand
or working to make sure that everyone gets some of what they want
is seen as a weakness?
Some would say it really is worse now than it used to be.
Others would say it’s always been this way,
we’ve just stopped being hypocritical about it.
In teaching his disciples what it means to BE his disciples
Jesus underscored the fact that life is not a competition.
God’s favor is not something to be earned or won,
and joy cannot be achieved by gaining some kind of advantage.
Instead, Jesus’ disciples are chosen not by their point production but by grace.
And Jesus’ disciples are the beneficiaries of his great sacrifice on their behalf.
There is no contest to be won,
no opponent to be mastered,
no reason to humiliate your competition so as to make yourself look good.
In fact, making everything a competition obscures the gift.
Dividing the world into teammates and opponents only diminishes the joy.
And joy is the goal.
Not pleasure, not satisfaction, not even happiness, but joy.
It begins when you begin to fathom what God has done for you.
It moves toward completion when you begin to dream of what you can do for others.
I want to tell you about a place of joy right here in Nelson County.
I’ve not been there yet, but I’ve heard about it.
Ten years ago Emma Vaughan decided that there were children
in the Massie’s Mill area of the county who needed something to do in the summer
other than sit around home watching television.
These are children whose parents can’t afford to send them to camp.
Miss Emma, along with her husband and a few friends from church
pooled their resources and offered their time
and invited children to come to the Massie’s Mill Recreation Center
to spend the day.
They went from day to day at first, gathering at the end of each day
to talk about what had gone well and what flopped.
In the Summer of 2004 they had nearly 50 children, infants to age 15,
each weekday for eight weeks.
Last summer they didn’t have the day camp. Miss Emma took ill and died.
But this year her daughter and others have rallied
to try to carry on Miss Emma’s work. 50 children have already signed up.
Another blow is that their primary benefactor also died last year
so they are simply stepping out in faith that the money will be there when needed.
Kathy Croll and I attended an organizational meeting of volunteers this past Thursday.
Lynn Grosz, the cooperative extension agent in charge of 4-H
is helping to recruit volunteers and provide resources.
At what is now officially known as Emma’s Day Camp
they’re looking for volunteers to come on a daily basis,
but they’re also looking for volunteers to come in once or twice and teach a skill
or get together an plan some kind of event.
Maybe some of you are interested.
They’re also looking for financial assistance.
We’re going to look at the church budget to see what we can do.
The point is that Emma Vaughan’s friends are not wealthy,
nor are they connected with people in high places,
nor are they looking to get awards or pad resumes.
On the big playground of life
In a culture in which there are no GOOD losers,
they wouldn’t be the first ones chosen. They might not get chosen at all.
But that doesn’t seem to phase them.
In the spirit of Randy and Jack they stand up to play anyway
because they know that out of pure love
God has chosen them to be Jesus’ friends.
And as Jesus’ friends they can’t help but reach out to others.
They’re not playing to win.
They’re playing just for fun. And for joy.
For example, a child can make most anything into a ball.
In Mexico, children will play soccer with anything that can be kicked.
When I was growing up we played basketball.
I remember when I was in the eighth grade.
My friends and I would hurry through lunch so we could be among the first ten
to get out on the black top and play basketball for half an hour.
Somebody would be designated to sneak his empty milk carton
past the lunchroom monitor
and once we got out we would fill it with gravel and fold over the top.
This was our ball.
Then the first ten out who wanted to play
got to choose up sides for the first game of a single elimination tournament.
As long as you kept winning you kept playing.
Lose and you’d sit down to wait, hoping for another turn before the bell rang.
You know what happened.
You saw it growing up. Maybe you lived it.
The best athletes were chosen rapidly.
The least accomplished were chosen last.
The desperate hope of all of us who took our basketball seriously
was that the really bad athletes wouldn’t even try.
There was enough honor among us to acknowledge the right of anyone
who was among the first ten out to be considered for one of the first two teams.
But that didn’t stop us from rolling our eyes or groaning loudly
if somebody like Randy or Jack stepped up to be chosen.
They weren’t any good.
Everybody knew it.
THEY knew it!
Why couldn’t they just face facts and sit and watch
and not mess things up for the rest of us?
Looking back, I think, WOW - what courage it took for those guys
to stand up among the ten and demand to be chosen,
ESPECIALLY when they knew they weren’t athletic or coordinated.
Randy was likely as not to throw the "ball" to someone on the other team,
and if Jack got it, he would just freeze and get swarmed by the defense.
But every now and then they stood up to play, not content to sit on the sidelines,
defiantly deaf to our groans and blind to our sneers.
Where did they get that courage to say, "I’m as worthy of playing the game
as anybody out here."
Where did they get the wisdom to know that our attitude toward them
was OUR problem and not theirs?
I almost got up the courage to ask them at our 30th high school reunion,
but they seemed to be having so much fun and I still feel ashamed enough
that I didn’t want to stir the pot of eighth grade stupidity.
Jack made a killing in the Real Estate market
and now runs a bed and breakfast with his partner down in Jacksonville, Florida.
Randy designs home interiors and moved back to Gastonia to nurse his sister
before she died of cancer.
I’m guessing neither one of them is, to this day, any good
at putting a milk carton full of rocks through a playground basketball hoop.
I’m also guessing neither one of them cares.
What once seemed so critical, so vital to my identity, my value as a human being
now doesn’t even register as a single blip on the radar.
I thought scoring the most points was the goal.
How much more fun we all would have had
if we had understood that the more worthy goal was simply to enjoy the game.
That’s a pretty foreign concept these days, playing for the joy of it
instead of winning at all costs.
We used to view an emerging ability to cooperate with others
as a sign of developmental maturity in our children,
but now many see it as a weakness
compared to the kid who’s got the drive to be first.
We used to admire a competitor for stopping to help another
but now that’s seen as the mark of a chump.
It’s gotten ugly.
One soccer league had to suspend the time honored practice
of players shaking hands after the game
because fights were breaking out and that was the coaches!
It was either baseball great Leo Durocher or football legend Vince Lombardy
who said, "Show me a GOOD loser and I’ll show you a LOSER,"
This attitude must have worked for them on one level
because their success landed each of them in the Hall of Fame.
But that kind of thinking is exactly what has corrupted our culture
and taken the joy out of life.
Think about what it says.
First it says that everything is a competition,
nothing can be done WITHOUT there being winners and losers.
There are no moral victories,
there’s no honor in battling hard and calling a draw,
there’s no value in even doing something that DOESN’T have winners and losers.
Second, it says that if you do compete and you fall short
you HAVE to sulk and pout and swear revenge,
you have to hate yourself and feel humiliated and cover your head with a towel.
If you don’t, it makes you a loser.
If you get any satisfaction out of playing well regardless of the final score,
or if you can see your opponent as only an opponent and not your sworn enemy,
then you just don’t have what it takes to be a REAL champion!
Poppycock!
How did we get to the place where ruthlessness in sports or business or politics or religion
is a thing to be admired rather than exposed and exorcized?
How did civilization come to evolve backwards
so that sacrificing one’s own gain for the sake of another
or reaching out to lend a helping hand
or working to make sure that everyone gets some of what they want
is seen as a weakness?
Some would say it really is worse now than it used to be.
Others would say it’s always been this way,
we’ve just stopped being hypocritical about it.
In teaching his disciples what it means to BE his disciples
Jesus underscored the fact that life is not a competition.
God’s favor is not something to be earned or won,
and joy cannot be achieved by gaining some kind of advantage.
Instead, Jesus’ disciples are chosen not by their point production but by grace.
And Jesus’ disciples are the beneficiaries of his great sacrifice on their behalf.
There is no contest to be won,
no opponent to be mastered,
no reason to humiliate your competition so as to make yourself look good.
In fact, making everything a competition obscures the gift.
Dividing the world into teammates and opponents only diminishes the joy.
And joy is the goal.
Not pleasure, not satisfaction, not even happiness, but joy.
It begins when you begin to fathom what God has done for you.
It moves toward completion when you begin to dream of what you can do for others.
I want to tell you about a place of joy right here in Nelson County.
I’ve not been there yet, but I’ve heard about it.
Ten years ago Emma Vaughan decided that there were children
in the Massie’s Mill area of the county who needed something to do in the summer
other than sit around home watching television.
These are children whose parents can’t afford to send them to camp.
Miss Emma, along with her husband and a few friends from church
pooled their resources and offered their time
and invited children to come to the Massie’s Mill Recreation Center
to spend the day.
They went from day to day at first, gathering at the end of each day
to talk about what had gone well and what flopped.
In the Summer of 2004 they had nearly 50 children, infants to age 15,
each weekday for eight weeks.
Last summer they didn’t have the day camp. Miss Emma took ill and died.
But this year her daughter and others have rallied
to try to carry on Miss Emma’s work. 50 children have already signed up.
Another blow is that their primary benefactor also died last year
so they are simply stepping out in faith that the money will be there when needed.
Kathy Croll and I attended an organizational meeting of volunteers this past Thursday.
Lynn Grosz, the cooperative extension agent in charge of 4-H
is helping to recruit volunteers and provide resources.
At what is now officially known as Emma’s Day Camp
they’re looking for volunteers to come on a daily basis,
but they’re also looking for volunteers to come in once or twice and teach a skill
or get together an plan some kind of event.
Maybe some of you are interested.
They’re also looking for financial assistance.
We’re going to look at the church budget to see what we can do.
The point is that Emma Vaughan’s friends are not wealthy,
nor are they connected with people in high places,
nor are they looking to get awards or pad resumes.
On the big playground of life
In a culture in which there are no GOOD losers,
they wouldn’t be the first ones chosen. They might not get chosen at all.
But that doesn’t seem to phase them.
In the spirit of Randy and Jack they stand up to play anyway
because they know that out of pure love
God has chosen them to be Jesus’ friends.
And as Jesus’ friends they can’t help but reach out to others.
They’re not playing to win.
They’re playing just for fun. And for joy.
posted by David Cameron | 5:41 AM
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