Just Blue

A sermon by laypreacher Christine Peterson Today, as you all know, is Fathers' Day. While I obviously am not a father, I do have a father, and Paul's message to the Galatians this morning put me in mind of a story about him that I want to share with you.

When I was a teenager, my dad volunteered to coach a boys' basketball team at the YMCA in downtown Durham, North Carolina, in an inner city neighborhod quite a distance from the comfortable suburb where we lived. As a new coach, he didn't have a lot of choice about his draft picks. He got the kids that hadn't played before, or the ones that everybody knew weren't very good players. And he got another kid named Charlie that nobody wanted because Charlie's skin was the wrong color. In the south in the early 70's, a de facto racial segregation was still very much the order of the day, despite the legal and moral challenges emerging on the national scene.

“You don't have to take him,” they told my dad. “We'll just tell his mother there aren't any openings on any of the teams this year.”

“I'll take him,” said my dad. “It's no problem.”

But it soon became clear that having Charlie on the team was a big problem for the other kids. They kept their distance, acting as though Charlie was invisible, and did the things kids do when they decide to gang up and pick on someone -- name-calling, mean jokes, tripping or pushing him and pretending it was an accident. They wouldn't talk to him, wouldn't drill with him, wouldn't pass to him. They weren't really bad kids; it was simply the way of the world they'd been born into. But I sensed my father's growing frustration with their mean-spirited behavior, and with the lack of cooperation that resulted in so many missed opportunities on the basketball court.

I think Paul might have understood my dad's frustration, for his letter to the Galatians is addressed to early Christians struggling with issues of just who could be included among the followers of Jesus, and on what terms. In their culture. distinctions of religious background, economic status, and gender roles were clearly defined and deeply significant. Jews and Gentiles did not mix. Free men had power and status; slaves and women really didn't count for much. Yet people were drawn to the good news of Jesus across these dividing lines. And many Jewish Christians, used to seeing themselves as God's chosen people, regarded Gentile Christians as outsiders who would have to learn to obey their Law and adopt their customs in order to belong.

But Paul is having none of it. In his letter, he reminds these diverse groups of Christians that before they are anything else, they are all children of God. He reminds them that they have clothed themselves with Christ – a reference to the white garment with which each and every newly baptized Christian was clothed as they emerged from the waters of Baptism. In putting on that white Baptismal robe, Paul insists, you took on a new identity, grounded in the love of God and in belonging to this community of all who follow the Way of Jesus. From now on, Paul tells them, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” To those accustomed to a position of privilege, Paul insists that the church is to be a level playing field.

“Why didn't you pass to Charlie?” my dad called out to a boy named Jeff. “He was open!”

Jeff answered defiantly, “I don't pass to --” and finished his sentence with the ugly “N-word” that was common parlance at the time. I thought my dad was going to blow his top.

But he took a deep breath, and said sternly, “Everybody over here. Now.”

The kids dragged their feet over into a huddle, and my father looked Jeff straight in the eye. “What color is your jersey?” Jeff, a bit taken aback, answered “Blue?”

“Very good. What color is Charlie's jersey?“ Jeff was quiet for bit, then reluctantly mumbled “Blue.”

“Right again. Now if you all want to play on this team,” my dad continued, “all this garbage needs to stop right now. When you put on that blue jersey, you are part of this team. and you all need to work together and play as a team if you want to win games. There is no black or white on this team, just blue. If that's a problem for you, you let me know right now and I will call your parents to come and pick you up. And if I hear that word again from anybody, you will be sitting on the bench. Am I making myself clear?”

There were a more than a few rebellious looks, but eventually they all answered. “Yes, Coach.”

It didn't happen overnight, and it took a lot of drills, a lot of practice, a lot of encouragement, and a few more stern reminders, but gradually, under my father's coaching, that ragtag colllection of inept kids turned into a pretty decent basketball team. It didn't hurt that Charlie was really good. He was quick and agile, with an amazing instinct for being in the right place at the right time, and there was no shot that kid couldn't sink. They got to playing so well that other coaches and teams who had written them off as a bunch of losers began to take notice. And when Charlie sank a shot from over the center line in the last seconds of a game, giving them the win by a point, there was no going back. Against all odds, my dad's team made it to the league championship game. They lost, but it didn't really matter. My dad took them to MacDonald's to celebrate, and all those kids who had shunned Charlie a few short months ago argued over who would get to sit next to him, and unanimously voted him Most Valuable Player for the season. They talked excitedly about how close they'd come to winning the championship, and how they would surely do it next year.

Sadly, the Coach lost his own battle with cancer before next season came around, so I don't know what would have happened. What I do know is that he gave those kids something a lot more important than a trophy. He gave them a chance to cross the dividing line that defined their world, to spend a few hours a week on a level playing field, and find it good.

Clarence Kelland once remarked, “My father didn't tell me how to live. He lived, and he let me watch him do it.” My dad didn't talk about his faith very much, but he did a just and faithful thing in challenging the ingrained racism in his time and place, and offering an experience of community to kids who didn't have one, and I think that Paul would have approved.

This community without dividing lines, where identity as children of God transcends all distinctions, was a radical notion in first century Galatia, and it's a radical notion today. We mostly don't think much about being Jews or Gentiles, we don't have slaves, and we've made progress along that male/female divide, and that black/white divide, though we still have a long way to go. But the human tendency to draw lines that create insiders and outsiders, to consider others less deserving than ourselves, is still with us. We draw lines between liberals and conservatives, haves and have-nots, straight people and gay people, people who've had the good fortune to be born in the USA and people who slipped in from someplace else – the list could go on and on. But when we are baptized, clothed with Christ, we promise, with God's help, to work for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being. Whatever lines we may have drawn, or whatever lines have been drawn for us, the love of Christ invites us and challenges us to step across them, opening up new opportunities and imagining new possibilities for all of the children that our Father in heaven calls his own.

If you are a father, your children, and perhaps your grandchildren, will watch you live. And if you choose to spend some of your time on this earth reaching out to make life better for God's children on the other side of life's dividing lines, chances are that some day your children will remember that and honor you for it, and I think that God will, too.

Happy Fathers' Day.
Amen.

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