Planet Reebok

The current series at Riverside is on the beatitudes, and yesterday we explored, "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth."

One of the illustrations I dropped during my sermon was about basketball. I play on a team with some old friends and some guys from the church. Matt McReynolds would tell you he is not very meek... Anyway, last Monday we got killed. During the thrashing the other team was talking a lot of smack/junk/trash. Their captain in particular likes to talk for most of the game. This became funny when Doug Coleman began harassing him all over the court. Doug, strong as an ox with a huge grin on his face, talking back (but kindly) and telling me later, "I just wanted to mess with him to see what he would do... grown men shouldn't act the way he was acting." Doug can do that because the other man couldn't just squash doug with a finger (like he could to me). I should also mention that this particular team thinks Steve Bell is Kobe.

ANYWAY, what I noticed is that they talk a lot more when winning. When we have beaten them they talk to the referees.

This also reminded me of playing pick up basketball in college. There are 50 guys I can think of - that I played with hundreds of times throughout my time at Mizzou - who do not know my name. But, they know my friend Jody's name. The difference is performance. Jody's nickname was the Matrix because many of the guys weren't sure why he could score as many as he could on them. But, they knew his real name also. Antonio, Junior, Brooks, Shackleford, Chuck, the other Chuck... Guys I played in pick up games with and against, league games with and against... some of them fought with some of my closer friends and we broke up the fights. The point is that respect is earned there. Humanity, to some degree, is fully dependent upon what you can (or cannot) do. I still love basketball, and I even understand this dynamic. But, it is hard and sad also.

In the Beatitudes Jesus is imagining a community, a humanity, and a world where humanity is simply based upon humanity. Where the world is ruled by a just order, where people assert justice and not their own selfish interests (which is a working definition of meekness). And Jesus says that the people who follow Him will begin to evidence these traits today. It is a scary and beautiful reality that the subversive, revolutionary Gospel of God dignifies us with such a role. To move into the world evidencing our inadequacy, our meekness, our willingness to mourn...