Going to the Mat

Every time I deliver a sermon people come up in wonderment and ask where I learned to preach.  However, I never get to tell them because they immediately fall to the floor laughing and roll away.  I am, of course, glad to see people being happy, but I would like to answer that question.

I learned to preach not in the classroom nor the study nor the pulpit but in the gymnasium.  I love college wrestling and, when we lived in the Midwest, I drove hundreds of miles through zero-visibility blizzards to watch the then-titans of the sport:  Iowa vs. Iowa State.  I think I like wrestling because so many things in our lives are stacked against us, but in wrestling you go to the mat with someone exactly your own size.  Winning, therefore, does not depend on your father’s friends or your mother’s money.  It depends entirely on your own determination, strength, speed, and ability to seize split-second opportunities.

In those days, nobody could stop Iowa State University’s incredible juggernaut, Dan Gable.  The Russians had seen Gable on film and, prior to the 1972 Olympic Games, the Soviet sports commissars (also known as S.A.S. — Soviet Athletic Supporters) searched all over the Soviet Union for someone to go to the mat with Gable.

Beating Dan Gable was a Soviet national priority.  As expected, the gold medal event at Munich came down to the Russian and the American, man against man, and Dan Gable demonstrated conclusively in 1972 that, at 149.5 pounds, he was the best in the world.

However, there is one division where the scales are not even.  In those days, heavyweights could be any size, and Dan Gable had an Iowa State and Olympic teammate named Chris Taylor who came into the circle at a mere 420 to 450 pounds (depending on what he ate for lunch).  Now 280 pounds is a very big man, but trying to take down Chris Taylor was to imagine putting Mount Everest on its back.  For this task, the popular term is appropriate — “truly awesome.”  How would you prepare for a wrestling match with a 400 pounder?  I suppose you could practice by taping together a couple of 200 pounders.

Over the years a lot of wrestlers tried a lot of moves on Chris Taylor.  They tried to push him backward and to the right side and to the left side — all without success.  However, Taylor lost the Olympic gold medal because his opponent did the one thing he never expected.  Dietrich of West Germany grabbed Taylor around what might, by courtesy only, be called his waist and pulled him forward!  This hold, called a souplesse, involves getting your opponent off his feet and up on your chest, then falling backwards and twisting him over before he comes down and crushes your ribs and skull.  The souplesse takes great speed, strength, and courage, and I would never have believed it possible with 420 pounds unless I had seen it on television with my own eyes.

Sermons are like wrestling matches.  Preachers try to push you around in predictable directions, and since you know what is coming you are prepared to resist these holds and stay on your feet.  Week after week preachers work up a sweat circling around a congregation and quit when the whistle blows without a single takedown because every move was expected and effectively countered.  Thus, if congregations are going to be pinned by the Word of God, preachers need to come at them in unexpected ways.  After all the ordination vows require the use of our imaginations (Book of Order G14.0207h).  Of course, trying to flatten a congregation by going for the pin is not the only goal of Christian preaching.  Sometimes people just need to be grabbed and hugged.  Other times they only require a bit of exercise so that circling around with them for a little while is sufficient.  In my preaching however, I keep trying the souplesse, and one of these days I will get it right.  Until then I will just have to be content to let congregations fall on me.

Hapi Daze Are Here Again

In the ancient Egyptian religion, Hapi is one of the four sons of Horus and is depicted in funerary literature as protecting the throne of Osiris. He is commonly depicted with the head of a baboon. Baboons are not highly admired among Americans today but were once considered the muses of scribes and associated with wisdom, science, and precision, much like my wife described me.

Nevertheless, contrary to erstwhile iconography, baboons are aggressive, extremely territorial, and equipped with very sharp four-inch fangs. The collective noun for a group of them is “troop”, and the point here (and there) is that in the real, wild world, it is exactly scientifically wise not to annoy this species as it troops through the forest.

With one more reference to the animal kingdom – this time to Edward the Gibbon – the narrative moves from fauna to flora. Incidentally (meaning who cares except me), Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL was the first book read to Nicholas Boffin by his one-legged literary man, Silas Wegg, in Charlie Dickens greatest novel OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. Anyway, some years ago,  I was traveling by car with my family in the kingdom of Prester the John (a.k.a. Ethiopia). According to the rolling, rounded prose of Edward the Gibbon, “Encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world, by whom they were forgotten.” For Gibbon, Christianity was beneath contempt, but apart from that sweeping judgement – it is fair to say that even today, along the remote dirt roads in the hinter highlands of Abyssinia, Rest Areas are not well marked.

When an entrepreneur with a Rest Area kind of episstolary business on his mind looks to shake up said business in a quiet spot, it is easy enough to find a proper depository for one’s goods and the services required might include a leaf-taking, which would remind the biblically literate notetaker that Adam and Eve invented the loose-leaf system. By long custom and civilized agreement, the Ladies’  territory is crouched in the bushes to the front of the car and the Gentlemen hang their wares to the rear (pardon the expression).

One fine day, finding myself in need of a bush for business, the family stopped the car to allow me to run back and take off rather than take off and run back. I was shortly relieved, so to speak, to locate and enter a Rest Area.  Not to be too cheeky, although the sun was shining, a full mooning might be expected. However, my weird family decided that it would be lots of fun to follow the patriarch into the bushes and startle him with baboon noises. They stoutly attest to this day that they were prevented from their scheme by the observation of a real, wild, noisy, vicious troop of baboons crossing behind (pardon the expression) the car in my defenseless direction.

I did hear strange noises but dismissed them convinced of family weirdness. Moreover, running with your trousers around your ankles is extremely difficult to say nothing of undignified. Further, not stepping on inventory in this environment requires sharp focus and concentration, not to be disturbed by what is only heard butt not seen.

Therefore, when I emerged back on the road, well-zipped in the trousers, unscathed by animalia, and unflushed of complexion, my family claimed, in the first place, to be as relieved as I. Secondly, they were unaware that I had never seen, but only heard, the putative baboons. Thirdly, to my insistence that what had followed me into the bush was not a troop but a family,, they confessed the intention but denied the action. Finally, they still refuse to accept my assertion that I was never alarmed because what I heard did not sound like real baboons.

I leave it to you, Gentle Reader, were the baboons Ethiopian or American?

Encountering God

Encountering God, by Andrew Purves and Charles Partee, is now available on Amazon Kindle for $0.99.

Christian doctrine gives order to the Christian life – what people believe, know, and what they do about God’s message of salvation. In this clear and helpful introduction to doctrine, Purves and Partee focus on the basic issues of Christian faith as filtered through contemporary experience: the mystery of faith, justification and sanctification, salvation, sin, the sacraments, hope, and joy. Useful for both group and individual study or in the classroom, this guide brings the doctrines of the Christian faith to life, and helps readers understand the relevance of these doctrines in day-to-day experience.

“For some of us, thinking about God is a practical matter – indeed the most practical matter, for if we think wrongly, we will live wrongly. This book instructs us in right thinking about God and what that means for the way we live.” — Eugene H. Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia

“A generous and thought-provoking work. The use of autobiography is so engaging that the book held my attention like a novel but enriched me like only a serious work of theology can do.” –Jeffery F. Bullock, President, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary

Andrew Purves is Hugh Thomson Kerr Professor of Pastoral Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

Charles Partee is P.C. Rossin Professor of Church History at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.