League of Unity – July 3, 2022
30 years ago this weekend the film ‘A League of their Own’ was released. A fictional exploration of the real All American Girls Professional Baseball league. That league is the root of the Williams sister’s dominance of tennis, of four World Cup championships, and it is the ground on which female MiLB and MLB coaches stand. In real life the AAGPBL endured from 1943 to 1954 and over 600 women served and shared an played in that beautiful and trying experiment. The movie ALOTO is one of my all-time favorites,for obvious reasons given my love of baseball. But also, even though it is a comedy, if I need a good cry, t the first notes of the title with that Carly Simon song, and especially the end scene, break out the tissues.
A few years ago when I was still in youth ministry We had monthly movie nights and each year had a theme. One year it was sports movies – we watched ‘Rudy’ and ‘42’ and others – and we also watched a’A League of their Own’. I was a bit apprehensive as I clicked play. This was a youth group of mostly middle school boys. I didn’t know how they would react. They loved it – they were cheering as if the game scenes were a real game. And they were asking critical questions about realities they hadn’t heard about: women couldn’t do what? This led to more than one pause in the movie as it touched on the musts and the couldn’t’s for women then. Telling the whole stories of who we were and are, of how we succeeded and how we failed, telling these truths is important for our own moral development as we open ourselves to the motion of the Spirit of God to overcome our fractures.
Unity isn’t cookie-cutter, it isn’t identical programming. The lie that unity is all being exactly the same and that everything in the past was honky dory, is a violent disservice to the struggles and bloodshed of those whose hearts beat before ours. The centering question of our lessons today is one about unity. What does it mean to be on the same team? Is mutual love and burden-sharing and being at the same table and earnestness enough, or is there more? The mission of this church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. You find that on page 855 of the BCP. Unity with God, unity with all others in Christ. Our unity with all others will be rooted in our steadfastness in striving for fidelity to God and to lifegiving liberty. Our unity is how we take the field, how we proclaim and share what he offered whether or not anyone else ever joins the team. People desired to be a part of the Jesus movement not because it was easy or brought good standing, but because they saw and felt lives changed by the people who found their wholeness in him. Neighbors and strangers who found purpose in emulating his humanity of feeding and healing. And somehow in that activity together – they found through fellowship, prayer that they were in touch with the heart of God.
We – the Jesus people – never had the most convincing ideas or the most simplest route to eternal life. As the coach says in that film ‘It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” Our Gospel lesson from Luke tells us this critical mission memory from a time after the struggles for unity that we learn about in Galatia, but it is also about what happened before those Pauline destinations, and also what happened after when communities gathered the Gospels. It is a window into the life that happened between Jesus sending those who love him out, and ink meeting parchment about it. Embrace, rejection, challenge, healing – all based in decades of trying to love Jesus and share this liberating good news. It was glorious and it was hard.
In the second reading, we have a farewell of encouragement, mixed with Paul’s ALL CAPS frustration. (That is what large letters means). A scene of how hard it was and is to play on the same team with people from different places and experiences. Ever since we figured out how to use tools, and make coats, humanity has been on treks across the continents, moving and mixing. In the setting addressed by the letter there is the Jewish diaspora community (that wasn’t a different ‘league’ for decades), and the Galatians – who by the way were Celtics! (And had been in that area of what is now central Turkey for over 200 years), and then Roman imperial persons and the merchants that follow empire’s tail. God’s love for wild diversity was on vivid display. All these different experiences and feelings about this Jesus stuff, with the pressures of empire and household and tribe: how hard it is to play Jesus’ game and keep diving for the ball in every generation. And no one knew how to play this ‘sport’ yet! And sometimes, like the first lesson, we also make it harder than it has to be.
There has never been a generation of disciples that didn’t have to stretch into the untamed reality of salvation. Jesus’ embodiment of Love, his whole life and death and resurrection: all of it scuttled the need to ever equate eternity with ‘ditto’. Who wears what and why – it is cloth on the floor of the tomb. In and out based on things you have no control of are nailed to the wood. If you are someone who wouldn’t think to exclude or demean – but also tend to foul off such discussions and self-examination – perhaps some of Paul’s frustration is aimed at you. (me) Ouch.
Jesus is sending us out into this mission of unity with him in being for all people – especially when it is hard. I hear God calling us into something more than sitting in the stands: but I also wonder are we chafing at the freedom of God? What the game has become for us now is not what it may have seemed to be when you first bought the T-shirt. Jesus’ mission directions are not always as simple as go and wash. We are to learn to trust in the wildness of God is the same: and it is hard. The journey, the sacrifices, the bruises, the questions. It is arms crossed until the powerful but unkempt recruit is brought along for the ride. The Unity we seek and praise isn’t about all being exactly the same – how boring would that be! The duty of union with God for all people is a team with dirt in the skirt, undoing injustice, and seeking peace and feeding people. Unity in complexity with wholehearted generosity is salvation and eternity and sacred liberty. It is every inning, even when it is hard because that is part of what can still make it great.