Enduring Love: baseball, faith, and marathon running

This past week, my husband and I traveled to Pittsburgh to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates take on the St. Louis Cardinals for the home opener. I got these tickets as a gift for Alex for Christmas, and let me tell you it wasn't easy to get them. I had to be ready right at 9:00am when they went on sale (otherwise, they sell out within 5 minutes), and at 8:55, I tripped over the cat which caused me to split my pants and drop my credit card behind the couch. After some frantic gymnastics moves, I extracted the credit card and pulled up the website with 45 seconds to go, only to realize that our WiFi had picked 8:59 as a great time for maintenance and shut itself off.

For some {maybe most} of you, this chaos wouldn't be worth it. After all, one could just watch the opener on TV with the MLB app. That would not require us to drive 7 hours or sit in 45 degree temperatures. I mean why go to all of that trouble?

Devotion

My husband has a special kind of devotion to the Pittsburgh Pirates. In case you did not know, the Pirates went 21 seasons with a losing record, some seasons of which we even lost 100+ games. For most of my late childhood through early adulthood, the Pirates were sort of an ugly blemish on a city that produced super-stars like Sydney Crosby, Mario Lemieux, Jerome Bettis, and Hines Ward. People attended Pirate games because the food was always good; at PNC Park we have giant Pierogie mascots that have a race during the 5th inning, and that brought more entertainment than the baseball game. (You can learn about pierogie races here). In crowds after hockey or football games, my dad would yell "Let's go Bucs!" and the crowd would respond with uproarious laughter. No one expected the Pirates to do anything worthwhile. I can remember how disappointing it was to go to Pirate games. You see, I had really loved the Pirates when I was growing up; I have memories of getting Jay Bell baseball card with my bubble gum, and cheering for Barry Bonds {before he started juicing}. It was 20 years of pain and shame, and the big beautiful park in the North Shore was to be avoided at all costs.

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Alex and I began dating at the tail end of the 20th losing season. The first 6 months of our relationship were in winter, and he would spend hours reading about prospects and digging for spring training information. Any chance he would get, he would tell you about how this was going to be a different year. The baseball season is 162 games long, and he watched every single one of them. We didn't end up having a winning season that year, but it was much closer, and there were games that were actually fun to watch. In early September, we knew that the season would not be continuing into October, and by mid-September, the losing streak had continued. Still Alex would chorus on: "Next year, we'll be better." "One game at a time." "It's a long season."

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Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.

-Donald Miller

It was Alex's loyal, unfailing love for Pirates baseball that first made me fall in love with him. As I watched him experience the highs and the lows of the season, daring to hope for a brighter future, unaffected by the scoffs of doubters and laughs of cynics, I thought to myself: if this man can love a baseball team with this kind of devotion and steadfastness, surely any woman he loves is in for the same kind of treatment. I'd like to be that woman.

The wind-up; the stretch

Of course, the Pittsburgh Pirates are much easier to follow now. They've made an appearance in the postseason 3 years in a row, last year claiming the 2nd best record in all of baseball. We sat in the 45 degree weather to watch a solid victory, rather than an embarrassing display, on opening day. Still, the baseball season is 162 games long, and nobody wins all of them. The game of baseball stretches and yawns; it often plays out in quiet chess matches between pitchers, rather than the high-speed sprints of hockey or the constant gusto of football. As we enter baseball season, we enter into ritual and habit, simple behaviors that enact our devotion to the sport and our team.

It strikes me that this is so similar to our devotion and loyalty to our faith and our church. Faith life is so different from our most popular American sports in some ways: it is not necessarily about the buzzer-beaters that get your heart pumping {curse you, Villa Nova}; sometimes we wait our whole lives for that dynamite slap-shot or that Cam-Newton perfectly placed pass to the end-zone. Our faith isn't like the 16 game NFL season or the three weeks of March Madness. Our faith stretches before us like a long marathon, like the long baseball season. Long sports require rhythm, stamina, and stability. They require us to think about them for a long period of time rather than just in short sprints.

April Showers, May Flowers, Summer Sunshine

Beginning sometime around now, life begins to feel like a waterslide headed straight for summer. There are hundreds upon hundreds of activities and opportunities for us to engage in as the days get longer and the temperature gets warmer, and our starry eyes are drawn to the things that get our blood pumping, to the fleeting jewels. And this is a natural part of the changing ebb of the year. My husband will tune into the Stanley Cup Playoffs in a few weeks, and we will travel and do other things, but he will always come back to the Pirates. He will look up their scores every day, and read the sports columns every morning. He will always come back to his first, true love: the Pittsburgh Pirates.

This month, we are focused on stewardship: on the sharing of our Time, Talents, and Treasures with Unity Presbyterian Church. At the end of this month, we will make a commitment to how much and what type of time, talents, and treasures we will be sharing. I think this is an appropriate time for us to think about how we commit ourselves to our routine devotion to this place we love and to the God we serve. How will you display your commitment to this congregation and your devotion to our God through your time, talents, and treasures in the coming 2016-2017 school year?

The Psalms are full occasions where the writers talk of God's "steadfast love." This phrase is the translation of "hesed" in Hebrew, which means really, an unyielding devotion, a perfect faithfulness. Psalm 59 says,

But I will sing of your might;

 I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning.

For you have been a fortress for me

and a refuge in the day of my distress.

O my strength, I will sing praises to you,

for you, O God, are my fortress,

the God who shows me steadfast love.

When I think of God's steadfast love, I think of the rock at Fort Mill Elementary School that has seen thousands of coats of paint, and yet displays the positive love and compassion of our community. I think of friends and mentors who have been a constant presence through trials and joys in my life. I think of my husband watching 162 baseball games a year for 21 years, more than half of which were losses, but loving the Pirates franchise all the same.

When you think of God's steadfast love, what images come to your mind?

How will you respond to God's steadfast love with your own devotion and praise?

Some extra resources

 

A Video from PBS about baseball and religion

A blog on failure...unfortunately by an Atlanta Braves fan