Mighty Casey

Romans 5:1-5

John 16:12-15

My father had a habit of making my brother and I memorize poetry. Well, I say that he made us, but after a while we were happy to it, a kind of game between my brother and I—who could remember more of what poems. My dad was a huge Longfellow fan, and both us kids too a shine to it as well, really enjoying sometimes to afternoons in recitation of Paul Revere’s Ride, and the Song of Hiawatha, and the Village Smith. “Under the spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands. The smith, a mighty man is he with large and sinewy hands; and the muscles on his brawny arms are as strong as iron bands…” That is to say, that we were total poetry nerds.

At this same time, my brother got to be interested in baseball and Dad brought home from school a copy of “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Thayer. Reading it and going to my brother’s T-Ball games really created in my mind a sense of the imagery and of the emotion that come together in the poem. If you’ve never read it, the poem recounts a game, with the home team Mudville down by two and nearly at the end of the innings. Second and third get a man each, and the fans are holding their breath as the mighty Casey steps up to the plate. Here is the savior! The favored Mudville boy to hit the ball out of the park. But he lets two pitches go by, in a vain attempt to drive up the suspense, and then as the third pitch comes we hear in the last stanza of the poem:
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.

It was one of the first poems I read where it ended with such a decidedly sad and unhappy ending. After all, I knew what a defeated crowd looked like from the games we sat through on my brother’s behave (which isn’t commentary on his playing). The poem stuck with my though because the imagery bothered me, why write a poem with a sad ending?

I think now perhaps it was written to reflect the suffering that is going on in reality. After all, the author must have thought; there is a loser in every game. Now too, we have many sufferings that come to us. Not only in the world at large though that is surely enough. More soldiers killed in action, more people destroyed and displaced by war, children trying to get an education gunned down needlessly… In our local community too there is surely suffering, even in our churches and our families.
The face of the human world is well acquainted with suffering.
One of my students at Buffalo commented to me that the prayer list sometimes depressed him because there were so many people on it! Perhaps we don’t do as good a job as we should at keeping the list updated, but it is still a long one.
So, this is our world, and this is our experience from which we operate. And yet, in the lectionary reading for today we hear Paul is telling us that we should rejoice in our sufferings!
Paul might have been crazy. I actually have heard a lot of things about poor Paul, that he was a drug addict, that he was a homosexual, that he wrestled with unbridled lust… It can go on and on. More likely than any of those things is the fact that Paul was a man afflicted with suffering. There are places in the Letters that he talks about not being able to see, and the thorn in his side quite literally could have been a painful scoliosis. Paul knew what suffering was about.
And yet, in his letter to the Romans, he suggests that there is to be found in that suffering a kind of joy. Beyond that he outlines a cyclical journey that suffering can and must take to ultimately lead to hope and therefore joy. Suffering he says, leads to perseverance and perseverance to character and character to hope. I ask again, is Paul crazy?
Paul is obviously a man afflicted. In the Letters we know that the “thorn in his side” was prayed over for removal and relief and yet Paul found none. Rather than doctrine could this message from Paul simply be a way that a godly man has to deal with a persistent pain? How can we trust what Paul is saying? Do we just take it on faith and by proof of his miracles that these words he says now can be included in the Gospel truth? Let’s come back to that in minute.

In our reading from John we hear Christ speaking about the spirit. Last week at Buffalo we had a little celebration of sort in honor of Pentecost, and the birthday of the church of Jesus Christ. This week in the reading we actually go backwards in time to a point where Jesus is getting the apostles ready for that day when the Spirit comes. The First purpose of the Holy Spirit is to be the connection to God that we would have lacked after the death of Christ. It is granted to every believer today only by the salvation we receive through Jesus, but was present in the lives of the prophets before.
Jesus is telling the followers what to expect from the Holy Spirit. It was described as a mighty rushing wind with the appearance of tongues of flame. Probably something pretty mind numbing if you didn’t have at least a little warning of what was to come.
The Second purpose of the Holy Spirit apparently is to continue to reveal truth to us about the nature of God and the nature of his will for us here on earth. In the first line of the reading Jesus says that He actually has more to say to the apostles about the nature of things, but he knows that right now it is more than they can bear. An education in Christianity it seems is like all other forms of education. We must first go through primary school then secondary then collegiate, and so on. It’s the most basic form of our earthly wisdom to know that you have to “walk before you can crawl.” The same applies here. The story of the faith is building upon itself and even though Christ knows that there is more to come, he knows also that the followers just aren’t’ ready for it at that time.

So with this in mind look back to the teachings of Paul in Romans, and even to all the books of the Bible that comes after the Gospel of John. These are the parts of the Bible that have been led and directed by the Spirit. This is the Spirit of Truth in essence using the authors of the later books to reveal more of the Godly truth that was in store for us.
But there is more. We come now into a more full understanding of what the Spirit is, that it is a living essence that demands we too think and live and gain understanding under its guidance. In other words if Paul seems crazy then it is right for us to seek the counsel of the Holy Spirit on the matter. Or see if Paul can be trusted as the spirits representative. And of course Paul is trustworthy. The acts and the conversion of Paul are designed by God to show the believers that he, in fact, does have the hand of the spirit working in his life.
So then we are forced to look at this cycle of joyful pain that Paul describes.
Recently I was visiting my uncle who has been battling a disease for several years. It’s been a slow degeneration of his muscles and for a man who held two black belts in the martial arts it has been a painful process, physically and emotionally. I read this verse to him to see what he thought of it, and gave him my perspective which stems from a more accurate translation of the Greek in the phrase. When we read that word suffering the Greek is actually dokimen. Which could lend itself more to troubling experiences. What I said to my uncle was that they could be counted as Experiences of Trail. He seemed to like that, and find some peace in it.
Our experiences in life will try us, and if we can find the way to persevere, or to come through these trials with a faith in God’s power in tact then we build up a stronger character, we invigor our resolve, we look to a heavenly reward and at the end of that is a renewed Hope. And what is hope, but that wonderful expectation of what God can do. It is an anticipation, a looking and longing for, a desiring and a trusting on the Will of our God.

And know that God does not try us willfully to see if we will survive. But this broken and sinful world can hardly do anything but try us at every turn. That’s the way the game works. Only heaven and Eden were created to be a place of perfection.
Look again now to the end of the reading in Romans. Paul has outlined how to deal with experiences that test us, that seek to weaken our belief and strength in Christ, and now he makes us a promise. Hope will not disappoint you. Look to the Lord with anticipation and trust and you will not be disappointed. God pours out his Love for us. And this is the man who has been met with silence at his constant prayers for healing and the removal of a painful thorn in his life.

So, as we go out and deal with the inevitable trials of experience that the world has in store for us, we can choose to follow Paul’s example. It will never be as simple as making lemonade from lemons, the trials we face will truly test us and push us to the limit. Like the fans in Mudville our grief will be palpable at some points. Yet, with the idea of Hope in our minds we can persevere with the strength of God and the community of faith at our side. We can allow the experience to build us up instead of tearing us down and with a renewed sense of Hope and the promise of God we can be ready to help hold up others who will surely need us.

Even the author of Casey I think had some sense of hope. After all, he says in the first line of the poem that they are playing the game with one inning left to play, which can only mean that even though Casey strike out much to the disappointment of his fans, there is still one more at bat left for the team.

Then when we are faced with the trials of life, remember Paul in the batter’s box, next in the batting lineup, looking forward with hope to that last inning to conquer the visiting team.