Blessings in Our Limitations
messageofhope | Reflection | Sunday June 6 2010Integrating Faith and Sports
Gospel: Lk 9:11-17
Week of 6/6/10
In this past week’s Gospel, the disciples (we) experience blessings from our limitations.
Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God, and he healed those who needed to be cured. As the day was drawing to a close, the Twelve approached him and said, “Dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a deserted place here.” He said to them, “Give them some food yourselves.” They replied, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have, unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people.” Now the men there numbered about five thousand. Then he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty.” They did so and made them all sit down. Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets. Lk 9: 11-17
Being Broken to Receive Blessings
What struck me this week when hearing this particular gospel were the actions and words of the disciples. The first thing that struck me was their initial real world concerns for the well-being of the over 5,000 people in this deserted place. There they were in the middle of nowhere with only enough food for a few, and they genuinely got concerned. And why wouldn’t they have? It makes me think of today’s economic times and the thousands of parents who are staring into the faces of their sons and daughters wondering where the next month’s food and rent is going to come from. What are we to do? What are we to say? Where are we to go, when we experience this sort of need? Much like me everyday, the disciples were in the world, and were struggling to discern how not to be “of the world,” but be in Christ.
Here lies the drama that struck me this week with this gospel. When hearing the instructions of Jesus to feed the over 5,000 people, they responded by saying we only have enough for ourselves here, and unless we go buy some for everyone, we are all going to be stranded out here without our basic human needs being met. My guess was that they very much were thinking, WE CAN’T DO WHAT YOU ARE ASKING US TO DO!!! My guess was that they were beginning to feel limited in their capacities, limited in their abilities, limited in their view of what they thought they were able to do. They had just come back from healing and driving out demons and if they were anything like me, they probably began to think, I am pretty good, I am pretty important here. Yet now they were asked to do something that they knew humanly could not be done. Their egos and illusion of self must have been punctured. Their image of self had to again be severely limited and broken. Yet this act of being “punctured” and broken, may be what is needed to allow grace and the many blessings to overflow through us in our words and deeds. And maybe was what allowed the disciples to allow Jesus’s words and blessings to sink in and live through them.
I think of how many times on the athletic fields throughout my career that I have been “punctured” in some way. Not making the team that I had planned, being cut, or realizing that I am not the player that I thought I was. And in my world, if I am not the player I thought I was, then my idea of self and why I was respected was now “up in smoke” with that illusion. Being broken is never easy; yet in the midst of our brokenness of self, I have found that I was now open to Him and His grace and blessings.
I heard a quote last year that illustrated the illusion of my baseball career, when former pitcher Jim Bouton said, “You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” Being able to come to grips that my identity and my reason for being secure, was not the illusion that I thought it was. This was very painful. Yet that brokenness, was the best thing that every happened to me, and I am thankful that it happened in the beginning of my career because it has helped me today pray everyday, “Lord, help me decrease, and you increase.”
Mandela Influence
With the eyes of the world watching South Africa this weekend with the start of the World Cup, I can’t help but to think about the influence of Nelson Mandela. This past year I watched the movie, Invictus, which illustrated his unbelievable ability to seek reconciliation rather than revenge in a very hostile and deadly situation. After being imprisoned for nearly 27 years of his life for being a part of the anti-apartheid movement, and upon becoming President in his release, he was open enough to see a possibility of reconciliation in his country, and he saw it through the sport of rugby. Not only did it illustrate the power of sports to heal and bring a country together as one, this movie illustrated the power of one individual to change and heal a nation.
It made me think, what enabled Mandela to have that courage, peace, and hope of reconciliation? The more I thought about it, the more I was lead to one the most powerful scenes in the movie, where the South African rugby team visits the prison in which Mandela was held. There in the jail cell, Matt Damon’s character, stands and looks out the small window of the small cell. Just for a moment, he experiences tremendous physical limitation, a limitation that Nelson Mandela felt for close to 27 years of his life. This scene reminded me of the writings of St. John of the Cross who experienced the same kind of limitations, and thus sparked his deep love and experience of Christ. What is it about experiencing profound limitations and brokenness of our humanity? Maybe it leads us to a place that is bigger than ourselves, more powerful than our capabilities, more love than our capacity to love, and thus experience grace that we can’t begin to fathom.
The theme song for Invictus is called 9,000 days. By the way taken from the poem, Invictus, written by William Earnest Henry who wrote it from a hospital bed where he had a lifetime of physical suffering. 9,000 days was about the number of days that Nelson Mandela experienced his profound limitations. The lyrics say:
I thank whatever
Whatever Gods may be
9000 days were set aside
9000 days of destiny
9000 days to thank Gods where ever they may be
In our time of limitations and brokenness, let us thank God. Whether it the realization of our profound limitation of this life itself and that some day we will physically die, or when we experience a physical illness, and or injustice done to us, or our own illusions of self become visible. Let us be broken, so we may receive the grace and blessings of the One who gives us true Hope and fulfillment. So, much like Mandela, we may enter the world and culture of sports seeking reconciliation and not revenge, empathy not apathy, faithfulness not selfishness, and Love not hatred.
