THE PLEASURE OF GOD

Wooster College
May 11, 1986
John M. Buchanan

“Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well

pleased." --Luke 3:22 (RSV)
Scripture
teke-actscer Marle rq-1y
Inn B PYe

Garrison Keillor's bestseller, Lake Wobegon

Days, is a book about - Grace, among other things.

As you probably know, Keillor is the creator and
rene nena? ed

star of a weekly American Public Radio program

re

called "A Prairie Home Compansion," which in the

past several years has gathered about it a cult of
zealots who wear Lake Wobegon T-shirts, \buy tapes

of Keillor's wonderful nonologues, end swap gossip
about his personal life. \ Among the zealots - and I

am only on the periphery of this particular cult -

the Saturday_dinner hour broadcast time is

inviolate, sacred space, dedicated to the unlikely

—

activity of sitting and listening to the radio.

One of Keillor's more remarkable monologues

was about "The Storm Child." \! discovered

ee,

something of the Word in this story; a commentary

the —
on er text for this day 4 “And the Holy spirit
SS

descended upon him...and a voice came from heaven,
Fe, are my baleved tee with t “ I am well
pleased.'"

[carter sixth grade, I left Sunnyvale and rode
the bus in to Lake Wobegon High in town, where Mr.
Detman was principal, a man who looked as if wild
dogs were after him and a giant icicle hung over
his head. Worry ate at Mr. Detman. He yelled at
us when we ran downstairs, believing we would fall
and break our necks and die on the landing. He
imagined pupils choking on food and wouldn't allow

meat in the lunchroom unless it was ground up. He

had his own winter fear--that a blizzard would

sweep in and school buses be marooned on the roads
and children perish, so, in October, he announced
that each pupil who lived in the country would be
assigned a Storm Home in town. If a blizzard
struck during school, we'd go to our Storm Home.
“Mine was the Kloeckls', an old couple who
lived in a little green cottage by the lake. : She
kept a rock garden Ont he=balee=sTUes Wi ti terraces
0 fnalyss.cdiiapenbotnembeme=srETreermetetrkessed
Virgin scatedumand=eround=hersfeet=aebed of

nemrgerdss:: it looked like the home of the kindly

old couple that the children lost inthe forest
suddenly come upon in a clearing and know they are
lucky to be in a story with a happy ending. \ That
was how I felt about thekloeck1s,\ After I got their
name on a slip of paper I walked by their house and
inspected it, though my family might have wondered
about my assignment to a Catholic home, had they
known. We were suspicious of Eatholics, enough to

wonder if perhaps the Pope had ordered them to take

in little Protestant children during blizzards and
make them say therosary for their suppers. / But I
imagined the Kloeckls had personally chosen me as
their storm child because they liked me | ‘Himl"
a
“they had told Mr. Detman. ‘In the event of a

blizzard, we want that boy! The skinny one with

the thick glasses!’

“No blizzard came during school hours that
year, alt.the-snowstorms-were-convenient™evening or

weekend Ores ane 1 Vache! a TO™S tay with the

leeekts, [but tha, were eter in my thoughts and

they grew large in my imagination. \ Hy Storm Home.

Blizzards aren't the only storms and not the worst

—————

by any eens: | could imagine worse things.| If
the worst should come, I could go to the Kloeck1s
and knock on their door. ‘Hello,’ I'd say. ‘I'm
your storm child.'

“Oh, I know,’ she'd say. ‘I was wondering

~~

ae

when you'd come. | 0h, it's good ta see. you [Fox

would you like a hot chocolate and an oatmeal

cookie?'

“We'd sit at the table. ‘Looks like this
storm is going to last awhile.’

""Yas.!

=

“Terrible storm. | They say it's going to get
worse before it stops. I just pray for anyone
who's out in this."

ma

Yes.'

—

“But we're so glad to have you. | I can't

tell you. | Cart! | Come down and see who's here!’
— oe | os

“'Is it the strom child?;

vest [mse i the flesh!'" (pp. 248,

The essence of the Christian religion is
——— ore,

grace.l On a broad, theological level it is a

revolutionary assertion that God, creator, source

of life, ground of being. loves the creation: .- -

doesn't despise it, lisn't even neutral, but

EN , ey

passionately loves the creation, |is pleased with
Bieaeaaieea eee ee MNS

creation. \ the personal variation of that theme is — 6GeACE —
aa

God's unconditional love and acceptance and the

experience of value and self worth which results.

ee

It sounds simple, but it isn't. | It is
illusive, radical and most ofus_notonly don't
———s Ea ——s
understand it, but spend a lot of time pursuing +t

——

and in frustration accepting substitutes.
ee

It is so central that the story, which is for
et,

a

us the vehicle of the good News begins with an

itiiemmammeeeeee

incident that is pure grace.

We don't know what Jesus did between the age

of twelve, when we last hear about him, and thirty,
—y, iio ——
when he reappears one day on the banks of the

Jordan River and is baptized by his cousin John.

Seana eel

Scholarly speculation suggests that he lived at

home, worked in his father's carpenter shop in

Nazareth, earned a Living - perhaps supporting his
family after Joseph died, attended synagog and, in

general, lived a fairly normal life for a

Palestinian Jew of that time.

Nazareth surely did, was part of what all of us do

in that_time frame, namely get ready for the rest

bars of what Jesus of
————— TE Ho

of our lives: | wait for, |wonder about.,| struggle

with options,\experiement with something called our

vocation; | te purpose of ourlife, \our calling, or

what we hope to do when we grow up. §/The purpose of

our being here this A.M. has something to do with

that. \ The assumption is being made this A.M. -
ce te ee parewta\
with rejoicing and sighs of relief that this part

ey

of the journey is over for some of you. | If they
a as f you. | Tf they tle mw aredviith—

only knew! - If they ask you today'to declare wreel—d
aie A a

yourself - on the subject of your vocation, you may
———— na

now fowmine® then that Jesus didn't get around to

his until he was 30.

Jesus came out to the river to hear John
—— =p

preach for the same reason that you or I suddenly

ee
decide to go to church, \or a concert, \or a lecture, or bw é. saloon

or <to=hear-an evangelist=preach,—on the qutside

chance that while we're there we'll get some clue

oe, —e

about the meaning of ourlife. |e while he was

Se es

there listening to his cousin, John, flailing away
= Skee

at the hypocrisy and phoniness in Israel and how
Ee eee: |

God demands righeousness and total_commitment,

Jesus came to some instant conclusions about the
a

Se,

meaning of his own thirty year old life and what he

wanted to do with the rest of it. Dna so, only
" ee ee

slightly impetuously, he stepped into the muddy

water and allowed \John to baptize him, which John

said was a way to be washed clean of the past and

to begin _life all over again, and for him the

experience was so devastatingly beautiful that he

must have told his disciples about it and they

remembered it and told about it after he died.| Now
it is always precarious to try to recapture in

words another person's private religious

ce

experience. | But the words the gospel writers chose

are good ones, and memorable and haunting3| “...the
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spirit, like a dove descended upon him...’ and

that voice which he alone heard - \'TYou are my

a ee
—

“
beloved son - I am pleased with you - you are God's
pleasure.'"

It was his commencement. [r was the event
es

that launched him into the rest of his life,-that

incredible three-year pilgrimage that forever

changed human history. \ and at it's heart, before
as

it is anything else, it is grace ~ an experience of

God's unconditional love and acceptance - and

W
pleasure... You are mychild...I am pleased with

|

you."

The religion We CSDOUS@mbeg ins here:| not
aa
really with a set of philosophic propositions or

moral imperatives, but with this_experience between

a, a

Jesus and(gpd,\ between child and parent, creature

and creator. \\It begins, that is to say, very near

el

the heart of the universal human experience.

a

One doesn't have to look far for ie. \ your
i

own life is a. good starting place and the mirrors

of our experience - the Arts and the Behavioral

— Sy
Sciences are full of reminders. \ Garrison Keillor,
_ Se Reiss eines

in the Storm Child story, knows about the human
SEE ——

need for affirmation and arace.\ so does ALic@_

Walker. rier remarkable noyel, The Color Purple,
=—— aes

and the stunning movieg¢ based on itis about the

absolute human need for grace, the destructive and
Cea ——

demonic propensity of life when it is deprived of

it and the potential for newness, for rebirth, for
= a

resurrection, when grace happens.

The Behavior aledai ences support the

theological and artistic articulations of the

theme. S) Mak
dm

If the parents of the class of '86 got VM
together to discover what oe to produce such 5z +S
gifted young men and wome, I'll bet we~d discover Goel wh, »
that the one thing we all did when you were babies - ~*%

v ~~ ~~ 4 “ox
was run out and ct parenting Bible of that al pa
day, Haim Ginott's Between Parent and Child - which Ob pe
advises over and over again that\"a child's : ce ‘

over fp acd

greatest fear is being unloved and abandoned by his por + Ath --

we Sees,

pee 135) Ginott taught us not to say
Se

10

what we wanted to say, namely, "If you spill your
go?
milk one more time, I'm leaving."\ More to the

ect

point, Ginott taught us about grace.

=

. Th i
“be. Thomas Harris wrote_an enormously

popular and helpful book, I'm OK ~ You're OK, which

Proposed that most of us spend most of our time

sp

trying to feel “OK" or trying to cope with the fact
that we don't feel"0K" either about ourselves, or

about others. }|And we continue to learn - although

——_— ey
we seem grossly unwilling to do anything publically
and politically about it, that the opposite of
nd po y pp wr _

3-
grace and acceptance, - namely Child abuse, by “ Ol

parents — - or people abuséby the system = il tw ‘ -

most dangerous and self-perpetuating and self-
<—E——

des¢ructive dynamic in our cul turer we know

anything @sure about the human condition it is
ey

RTE aa

that people who have been told they don't matter,
|
will - when they begin to believe it - act like

human life doesn't natter. | Frat truth, of course,
—_—_—E

has enormous implications for social policy and it
ee

*.

Li

is currently not very popular.

The Christian pel taion begins with the

radical assertion that God the creator loves the
—— ae

world: \|that the world and everything in itis
— — Cee , x
pleasing to God and that the best thing about the

world in God's eyes is the human life n life that is in

In one of our very oldest stories the creator
louta a4: Lared ort .
God is portrayed Ǥ kneeling in the mud, faston\ig

a human being, and then breathing breath into it,

—_—=--, 9

life.

At the heart_of it is this grace, the

aa

passionate, unconditional love of God for the world

and the people in it. But somewhere we got off

ee ee

track and forgot that part, and—redefined@ tr

Somewhere, about the time Christianity had it
rist y had its

notorious love affair with Greek pil fasepty, Pie

enterprise got refocused and we began to conclude

that God is most interested in some other order of
a ee

12

\
being, some other time or pl ace:| that God doesn't

love us as we are but as we could be or perhaps as
ee, ————————

eee

we will be someday aftePwe die and go somewhere

oo

eise.
Under the strong influence of Hellenism

Christianity allowed its attention to be refocused

sd

somewhere other eae Se wor, and life and_human

beings. It has been an altogehter durable heresy.

=o

We, whose God kneels in the soft mud of the earth
(i aa a
to make us, have been persuaded that religion is
best wh it i
when it is otherworldly and that what God made
is suspect, if not outrightly evil.) Canadian
theologian Douglas John Hall observes Can hour's

listening to the electronic church of a Sunday

morning is all that is necessary to document the
8 wile pact

fact that r propensity to onhateea=

spiritualism that despises the world is still very

much with us.) Jstewardship: A Biblical Image Come

of Age, p- 33] And in a kind of ultimately,

ae

ironical trust, the most zealous of them <hr are
————; yc oacalaacee | — (c ‘ de
Ha caper (Cig

13

the ones who seem absolutely eager for th@@erndete

Clin A qe en d_of the worl a of the
life God ‘ia f Mun Greek. Wary Ww Yew drer

a

The result is a world and a race of human

MAD.
tvteg in the world who seem despised, not loved..

a world in which 800 million people are hungry,

ey

world so overpopulated that it cannot possibly

sustain the people already alive if they should all

try to live as we do: ja world in which there are
ee

400 priority targets,by government estwes* for
Bor ee g ) g a,

nuclear destruction in this country alone:}a world
—— —*)

—

in which every community of more than 50,000 people
Ne ee er re

in this nation has “those things" Lewis Thomas

calls them, already aimed at them...

These are all problems that can be solved.
rr ae ee oe : i

We don't have to bleed this civilization of its

—_ —— —

treasures and its hope in order to build more and

it AT,

bigger and better systems to destroy vite. | The
cost of one new sophisticated jet fighter would

establish 40,000 working pharmacies in a third

14 ae, Oy Naty

world country and juqst might be more persuasiaj@.

ultimately when it comes to talking about whose

revolution is more poperun || hat this world and

this nation needs is a graduating class of people

who know how to love the world and the people in
i ee ee) —
it.
The essence of Christianity is this radical
ni

sequence:

God loves the world

‘inne

God_loves you

God wants you to love the world.

There is a wonderful passage in the The

i

Brothers Karamazof when Dostoyo€s€y has Father

ne
Zosim@say it for us:
"Brothers...Love all God's creation, the
whole and every grain of sand of it. \ Love every

leaf, every ray of God's light.| Love the animals,
\

love the plants, love every thing. \1f you love
everything youwill perceive the divine mystery in

—

things." [D. J. Hall, ib. 2]

15

TL. Lu ov bd Wwe > Perp ver lov< wy
Or4 °~«
[ Our deepest need as persons is to be

worth something...to matter, to be loved.

—

When I try to comprehend why the early

disciples decided to follow Jesus I conclude that

ithad something todo with this grace: | some
extension into their lives of the experience that

changed his 1fe -that momentary grace when he knew

ee |

the love ai and pleasure of God./\ Somehow, with him,
a ES -

from him, in him, they were included in that
powerful 1_grace.\ standing close close to him, it flowed
\ hd g0.—thise +s. grace,
the churgh's hecious “f@psure.\
‘what we c PIs Tt is
- Our oe reason for

ach vener A f grace.

over ther

he Good News is that the God who created us,
loves us unconditionally. | In Paul's words, \"The
eee ry
Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are
children of god, {and if children, then heirs, heirs

— | oe

of god and fellow heirs with Christ. "{{Romans 8:15-

a

16

17]

Our vocation is to become God's chitdrent/to

act like God's chiTdren,| olive a life of freedome

ae

and joy and peace because thegod who created -
loves us, is pleased with us.
It is an incredible suggestion. —God-lomas

siSee Somehow, what was said to Jesus that day, is

aetna pea,
said to you and me:/ "You are my daughter - Your
eg, a

are my son...I am pleased with you... You are the
Pleasure of God."
There is a passage in one of Paul illich's

eee I ey
books which his readers know for its simple

eloquence on the topic.\ Tillich thought profoundly

and often complexly about our faith, \ But here, he

i

thought and wrote very humanly, andett=meansemere

semvgpieel he phi
“Grace strikes us when we are in great pain

and restlesness. | It strikes us when we walk

aa ——

osopher-theologian wrote:

through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty

—_— — —

17

life. It strikes us when...our weakness...our lack
of direction...have become intolerable. It strikes
us, when year after year, the longed-for perfection

does not appear, when the old complsions reign

within us as they have for decades, when despair

destroys all joy and courage. \ Sometimes at that

moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness,

———

and it is though a voice were saying,\ ‘You are

acdepted, accepted by that which is greater than

you, and the name of which you do not know...Do not

ask for the name now: | perhaps you will find it
\

later. | Do not try to do anything now: perhaps

—_

later you will do ,much. | 90 not seek for

anything... Simply accept the fact that you are

accepted."

In the Tong history of our race it is the one
a ey,

word we have wanted to hear. | we are, in fact,

restless, until we find our rest in God. | we are,

SS
in fact, illzat-ease, anxious, until we know that
we are gael our personal pilgrimage it is

18

the word we desperately need. Hear it, again,

today.) Hear it, as it was heard, by a thirty year
— —————s ~~ Se

old man, standing in the muddy water of the jJordan

River, deciding what to do with the rest of his

Cd

1ifes\ Hea it, where you, are, today, at this
critical and Joyful junction -

"You are my daughter.
You are my son.
I am pleased with you."

Amen.

3

Sport

Money” Pitcher Comes Back

is Leonard is the most remarkable righthander of two eras

: never started another game, and
the past three seasons that seemed

: than probable, Dennis Leonard

Id already be the most remarkable

cher of the past twelve years. From

75 through 1982, only Steve Carlton
on more frequently, though only Kansas
Jity appeared to notice. Thrice a 20-game
winner for the Royals, Leonard was the
most bankable starter in the American
League, the most successful righthander
in baseball.

But because he habitually began his
seasons at about the same speed as the
news departs Missouri, Leonard was nev-
er called to any All-Star games. Away at
his quickest pace in May 1983, the invin-
cible-looking pitcher with the pirate-red
mustache was dispatching a routine strike
to Cal Ripken of Baltimore when Leon-
ard’s left knee (his landing leg) imploded
and he disappeared. As sport usually cal-
culates these things, this scarcely quali-
fied as tragedy, even when lengthy surger-
ies and lost summers followed one after
the other. Besides the memory of nearly
2,000 honorable if unheralded innings,
Leonard had a guaranteed long-term
contract to fall back on: $900,000 a year
through 1986.

However, the image of professional
athletes as complacent money grubbers
has lately been suffering. Michael Jordan,
pro basketball’s most sublime subject,
missed 64 games this year with a wounded
foot but declined the Chicago Bulls’ invi-
tation to shirk the remainder of the sea-
son. Jordan would not even let the Bulls
curtail his court time. “I am a basketball
player,” he declared, and rejoiced in scor-
ing 49 and 63 points even while losing to
the Boston Celtics.

“When you're a pitcher,” says Leon-
ard, 35 next week, “your only chance at
peace of mind is never to second-guess
yourself. If someone cranks a home run
off your fastball, you can’t start thinking,
‘T should have thrown the curve.’ I felt an
obligation not to quit, but it wasn’t be-
cause of the money. Five years down the
road, I didn’t want to start second-guess-
ing my whole career, wondering if I gave
my best.”

So he became the phantom of the
Royals Stadium training room. Whenever
the team was gone, he was there torment-
ing his patellar tendon, the worst “ball of
spaghetti” his doctors had ever restrung.
“Occasionally he’d call me up and say, ‘I
didn’t go to the park today,’” smiles
Mickey Cobb, the trainer, “but I knew by
looking at the room that he went every
day.” A small, bald man of 44, Cobb be-
gan life at 2 lbs. in rural Georgia, polio-
ridden and without benefit of physician.

Going against the Yankees last week
“T know there are still no guarantees.”

He started limping at four. “I couldn’t
play when my friends were playing,” he
says, “so I carried the Band-Aids.”

For Leonard, Cobb carried a good
deal more than that. “Mick doesn’t think
he’s handicapped,” says the pitcher.
“That inspired me.” Through
four operations, three de-
spairing journeys back to
square one, Leonard re-
quired more than inspira-
tion. Dick Howser, a conge-
nial man but a_ practical
manager, supplied a belief
that was better than faith.
“You can only sympathize
and pull for him so much,”
Howser says. “Then you got
to see it.”

By last July, Leonard
was pitching batting prac-
tice. He started over in the
minor leagues with the Fort
Myers Royals (A) and gin-
gerly pitched his way to the
Memphis Chicks (AA). In September, 28
months after his collapse, Leonard re-
turned to Kansas City to pitch the eighth
inning of the second game of a double-
header against Milwaukee. He allowed
one hit. “This spring,” Howser says, “T
told him, “You're going to have to be a
good pitcher to make our staff.’ He told

a

ELIEE-EE

jordan heading for 63

me, ‘I don’t want to be an average pitcher
anyway. I don’t want to just be around.’ ”

When Leonard looked around, he
should not have been so astonished to see
that all the Paul Splittorffs and Larry
Guras had given way to Bret Saberha-
gens, that Leonard’s entire class had
graduated. “It doesn’t seem that long
ago,” he thought, “when I was the young
pitcher.” Without any quarter, he made
the team, but Danny Jackson had to
sprain an ankle to secure him a start. On
April 12 the Royals played the Toronto
Blue Jays a game that for melodrama
eclipsed all their October playoffs.

In a scene straight from The Monty
Stratton Story, Toronto immediately test-
ed Leonard's leg with a bunt, and might
have kept it up if bulky First Baseman
Steve Balboni had not dived to the bag in
such a heroic frenzy that Second Baseman
Frank White laughed out loud. “There
are times,” White says, “when a whole
team reaches down for something that’s
even better than winning. I know it
sounds impossible.” On the subject of im-
possibilities, consider three hits, 18 men
retired in a row and a 1-0 victory that
ended on a strikeout. “When I struck
Rance Mulliniks out,” Leonard says, “it
was like I finally was home. Everyone ran
out on the field except Mick, and he was
the one I was waiting for.” In the dugout,_|
the pitcher pressed the ball into his train-
er’s hand.

Leonard won his next start too,
and while he lost the one after that to
the New York Yankees, 2-1, neither his
leg nor his arm was to blame. It was his
glove. The following morning, he was
greeted by his son Ryan, 8. “Dad, I heard
you lost last night.” “Yeah, I screwed up
an easy double play, threw the ball over
everything and ended up with three
errors.” Ryan laughed so
hysterically Leonard had to
join him.

The family is readjusting
to having a ballplayer in the
house. “When I packed up
for the first road trip, they
wondered where I was go-
ing.” Around the neighbor-
hood, he is better known as
a Little League coach and
sroundkeeper. “Watching
the kids play these last few
years, [remembered how we
all started out playing for the
love of ‘games. If you're
lucky enough to make it to
the N.F.L., the N.B.A. or
big-league baseball, you
start talking about ‘a living’ and ‘a job’
and ‘having to go to work.’ But I honestly
think the majority of players in my posi-
tion would have tried, and not one of them
for the money. In the back of my mind, I
know there are still no guarantees.” On
the other hand, he is overdue at the All-
Star game. —By Tom Callahan

Ta¥Hdve HIG

=~.

84

TIME, MAY 5, 1986.