Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Hope Springs Eternal
Rev. Brent Gundlah
In baseball, a player’s “batting average” is calculated by taking the number of hits a player has and dividing it by the number of that player’s at-bats. The result is reported out to three decimal places and multiplied by a thousand. So, a player with twenty-five hits in a hundred at-bats is hitting 250.
Rickey Henderson had a respectable career batting average of 279 (for context: the average batting average since 1871 is 262). But he managed to score more runs and steal more bases than anyone in history, which landed him in the Hall of Fame.
Rickey was also one of the game’s most quotable personalities and, for reasons unknown, he always referred to himself in the third person.
Legend has it that someone once read the gospel passage John 3:16 to Rickey and his reply was, “Rickey don’t wanna hear about John hittin’ 316, Rickey’s hittin’ 330.” As a baseball fan and a minster, that one really resonates with me.
The highest career batting average in Major League history belongs to Ty Cobb, who’d hit 366 when he retired ninety-five years ago. One must have at least 3,000 at bats to qualify for the all-time leaders list, which itself is no mean feat (both Rickey and Cobb had about 11,000).
To put Cobb’s achievement in perspective, the second highest career average belongs to Rogers Hornsby, who posted a formidable 358, 86 years ago. The only other player ever to finish a Major League career with an average over 350 was Shoeless Joe Jackson who did it 103 years ago. One could argue that batting is a lot tougher than it used to be.
It’s important to mention that Josh Gibson, Jud Wilson and Oscar Charleston, who played in the Negro Leagues before baseball’s integration in 1948, all hit over 350 in their careers. Gibson fell just one point short of Cobb’s mark with a 365 average.
It’s pretty amazing when you stop and think about it — thousands of people have played baseball at it’s highest levels throughout the game’s long history; and yet, only six have managed to hit a career 350.
What I find even more incredible, though, is that baseball’s best hitters only succeeded about once in every three tries, meaning that all baseball players fail to do what they’re supposed to do at least 65 percent of the time.
I’m not telling you all this simply because I’m obsessed with baseball (okay, that’s part of why I’m doing it). I’m telling you all this because it’s what came to mind as I was thinking about today’s reading from Romans.
Romans is the first of Paul’s letters in the New Testament (appearing right after the Gospels and Acts), but it’s likely the last letter that Paul wrote (fun fact: Paul’s letters aren’t ordered chronologically, but rather from longest to shortest — and Romans is the longest).
Paul’s letters are really challenging to our modern ears — not only because his theology is complicated but also because he says some things that people rightfully find off-putting (like calling his opponents “dogs” and that whole “wives, be subject to your husbands” thing). Paul’s thought process is often hard to follow (he’s like a first-century Rickey Henderson). And yet Paul’s writing could often be beautiful and his ideas profound. The moral of the story: even apostles can’t manage to bat a thousand.
The Letter to the Romans was written about 20 years after Christ’s death and resurrection, at the end of Paul’s mission to the early churches in modern-day Greece and Turkey.
As he puts pen to paper, he’s about to start a new mission to Spain (sadly, he’ll die before he gets there). Paul plans on visiting Rome as he heads West, and he sends this letter in order to introduce himself and his ideas to this congregation — unlike the other churches to which he writes, Paul had never visited this one.
The Roman church hadn’t been around for very long (probably less than 10 years), but there are already tensions brewing in the congregation — between Christian Jews (who have recently returned from exile) and Christian Gentiles — over things like who among them is most important and which of them are God’s favorites.
Paul’s been at this apostle thing for almost 20 years by this point, so he’s a pro at dealing with church conflict. He seeks to settle this dispute by reminding the Roman’s that there’s one gospel for all humankind — as he explains it, “The power of God for salvation [is available] to everyone who has faith.” And, just to be clear: “Salvation” simply means a state of perfect communion with God and one another.
For Paul, the faith that leads to salvation is given to us solely by God’s grace, which is made known to us in Jesus. We are freed from sin through the death and resurrection of Christ — whose “act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.”
In Paul’s way of understanding things (think of it whatever you will), sin came into the world way back in the Garden of Eden through Adam, and sin will leave the world through Jesus. The judgement that followed Adam’s sin has brought hardship upon humankind for a long time, but Christ brings us liberation from sin in spite of our sins.
In fact, the sheer magnitude and frequency of our sin makes the grace that God shows us even more incredible; as Paul says in the verses leading up to today’s passage, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…”
So Paul is trying to solve one problem (a dispute among the Romans) by explaining that all can receive salvation through a faith that is given us by God’s grace (meaning we can’t earn it). But, in so doing, Paul creates another problem – a big problem.
He foresees the mistaken conclusion the Romans are going to reach from all this, and decides to head them off at the pass — which is where our text for today begins.
Paul begins with a question: “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” And then he immediately provides the answer: “By no means!” Paul says this because if a grace that can’t be earned is what saves us from sin, then people might wrongly infer that we are free to sin with impunity.
In fact, because Paul has just finished saying that the enormity of our sin makes God’s grace all the more incredible, some might think that the more we sin, the more grace we’ll receive.
Paul’s initial response to this is a long way of saying, “Yeah, nice try.” He then follows up with a short meditation on the meaning of baptism, which, for Paul, is this: When we’re lowered into the waters, we become actual participant’s in Christ’s death; and if we are dead to sin and given new life, then we can’t go on living in sin.
As Paul explains it (using a lot more words), “Our old self was crucified with [Christ] so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin;” and as we rise from the waters, we are made free so we too might “walk in the newness of life.”
The words that Paul uses to discuss baptism are really important. Listen first to how he speaks about death:
“We died to sin… We have been buried with [Christ] by baptism into death.”
Past tense — in other words, our sharing in Christ’s death has already taken place.
Listen now to how Paul speaks about resurrection:
“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
Future tense — said differently, Christ’s resurrection to new life has already taken place, but ours will occur at some point down the road.
What does all of this mean? Well, for Paul, our experience of Christ’s death and resurrection is basically a situation of already and not yet. We’re dead to sin, but not yet fully-reconciled to God and one another. In the meantime, as we wait for Christ’s return and for that reconciliation to take place, we are invited “to walk in the newness of life,” to “consider [ourselves] alive to God in Christ Jesus,” to actually live like we’ve been given the incredible gift that we’ve been given.
Look, Paul’s no idiot; he knows that sin is still part of the human condition. He understands that as long as we live here on earth, we will never be perfect — not even close.
But Paul believes that grateful recipients of God’s boundless grace, can be better, will want to be better, and will strive to be better — even though we can’t always get it right. Because this is the only way in which true believers in a graceful God would respond to God’s grace.
Which brings me right back to where I started — with baseball batting averages.
No one in the history of the game has ever batted a thousand for even a season, let alone an entire career. Given the nature of the game, it’s impossible to do so. Even the absolute best-of-the-best will fail way more often than they succeed, which testifies to the difficulty of the task they face.
And yet, inning after inning, game after game, season after season, they keep stepping up to the plate for another at bat — the 125 hitters and the 350 hitters — putting the failures of the past behind them and believing that they will somehow get it right this time.
The probability of success — both for the guy who’s about to be sent down to the minors and for the future Hall-of-Famer — is slim, but they all keep trying because they truly believe that the outcome will be different this time.
For all his words and all his bluster, this is Paul’s essential point: we should strive to live the kind of lives that God has called us to live because, as believers in Christ, we can trust that things really are gonna be different this time.
For this, and for so much else, thanks be to God.