First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46, Philippians 2:1-8, I Corinthians 1:25
August 5, 2001
From time to time, I have both revealed my true age and tested the outer limits of your memory by talking about the games I once played as a child. But, to my knowledge, I never once mentioned that grand old standby of playgrounds everywhere, “Red Rover.”
Start with two teams. Could be five to a team. Could be ten to a team. Red Rover is one game where almost any number can play. Call one team “Team A.” The other, “Team B.” String each team into a line. Have each line face each other, several yards apart. Encourage each team’s members to join hands or link arms….whatever it takes to unify the line and make it solid. Then have Team A single out one member of Team B to test the strength of that linkage.
Together, Team A calls across the playground divide: “Red Rover, Red Rover, let Billy cross over.” At which point, Billy (from his position on Team B) sucks in his breath, marshals his adrenaline, engages his feet and runs pell-mell toward Team A’s line, trying to break through. If Billy can’t….break through, I mean….then he is captured and must remain a member of Team A. If, however, Billy does manage to break through, then he selects a member of Team A….usually the strongest and fastest member of Team A….to take back home and join Team B. The game goes on until one team is out of players. Or until recess ends.
Some schools, I am told, now forbid the playing of Red Rover on the grounds that it has the potential to become overly rough and violent. Truth be told, I suspect most kids play it anyway.
As a kid, I quickly learned that, in playing Red Rover, my head was as important as my body. When the opposing team called, “Red Rover, Red Rover, let Billy cross over,” they were counting on the fact that they would be able to keep my body from penetrating their line….given that I clearly and obviously lacked the girth then that I possess now. They had absolutely no respect for my physical prowess….failing to see in me the athletic behemoth I would one day become.
But while I may have been spindly, I was far from stupid. I knew I did not have to overwhelm all 20 kids in that line. I only had to overwhelm one….or at most, two. Somewhere in that line, there had to be….just had to be….two kids whose linked arms were scrawnier than my chest. So after isolating them, I ran at them, through them, or over them. Whatever it took. For I learned, early in life, that Team A’s line was only as strong as its weakest link.
That was shortly before I learned that if we are all created equal, it is only at the point of opportunity, and seldom (if ever) at the point of ability. I remember long years of my life when I would have gladly traded the things I was good at, for even one of the things I wasn’t. I would have willingly accepted C’s on my report card in return for the ability to hit a curve ball. And 12 years of violin training I would have ditched in a heartbeat for the knowledge that I could beat up Frankie Paciero (if necessary) or turn the head of sweet Janie Swift. To be sure, I had a couple of ten-talent chips in my genetic poker hand. But for years, I didn’t know what they were and wouldn’t have valued them if I had.
The weakest link. In some setting….on some day….in some endeavor….that’s going to be every one of us. Bobby Higginson got himself in hot water earlier this summer by saying that the Tigers….his Tigers….were never going to compete for anything until they filled a few holes. Which all of us know to be true. Except that when the Tigers take the field, there are people presently standing in those holes (the very holes Bobby says needs filling). Do those players know they’re holes? Do they figure Bobby is talking about somebody else? Or do some of them secretly harbor the suspicion that Bobby is, himself, “the hole”….and that the Tigers will never win until they get themselves a new left fielder?
Your golf team has a weak link. So does your bowling team. Along with your barbershop quartet. And maybe even our Chancel Choir. Business and industry are full of weak links. Only in business environments, “dead wood” is the term more often used. So what do you do with your weak links? Do you improve them? Endure them? Broom them? Or do you transfer them, so that they become somebody else’s problem?
That’s what we do in the United Methodist Church. We transfer them….all over the state. One year here. Two years there. Maybe three years in one place, because some congregation hasn’t learned how to work the system and pass them along. Only in the last five years have we put big money into a coaching and counseling approach to chronically ineffective clergy. I mean really big money. A few years back, we put six clergy in the program. Today, five of them are gone. I guess we coached them out. Nicely, though….as it should be in a Christian organization.
It used to be that the Methodist ministry was a tenured profession. Once in, forever in…. assuming, that is, that you kept all your clothes on. Then, a few years ago, we began invoking a little-known clause in the Discipline, allowing credentials to be withdrawn and Conference membership to be terminated for ministers who consistently and repeatedly demonstrate “no fruits.” Whereupon at the once-a-year, closed-door, union meeting at Annual Conference, we began saying “Good-bye” to about one a year. Which always seemed cruel to me, until a colleague pointed out that it might be crueler not to.
Sooner or later, the weak depart. It is a fact of life. In fact, it is “the fact” of biological life. As a congregation, we are all over the map on the issue of evolutionary theory and the teaching thereof. What saddens me most is that this is not a either/or question. In point of fact, every scientist I know in this congregation stands somewhere under the broad umbrella reserved for “theistic evolutionists”….meaning that we see God’s creative energies clearly implied, rather than implicitly denied, by the work of latter-day Darwinists. Reading a book this summer written by someone very much in the Fundamental wing of the church….a colleague several cuts to the right of me….I was surprised to see:
Everyone concedes that evolution is true to some extent. Undeniably there are variations within species of animals and plants, which explains why there are more than 200 varieties of dogs, (why) cows can be bred for improved milk production, and (why) bacteria can adapt and develop immunity to previously-effective antibiotics.
And what is one “staple” of evolutionary theory, if not “the survival of the fittest.” As environments change, the strong adapt and the weak disappear….with caviar-bearing Caspian Sea sturgeon perhaps the next to go.
Why do millions watch a televised game show they profess to dislike, hosted by a lady they profess to hate, unless there is something in its premise that rings truer….and hits closer to home….than most of us would like to admit? I am talking, of course, about Anne Robinson and The Weakest Link….which is this year’s version of Millionaire or Survivor. Like its predecessors, Weakest Link is a British import, as is Anne Robinson. But you will be interested to know that versions of this show are now playing in 47 countries (including Turkey and El Salvador), meaning that all over the world, people are lining up for a whipping by a lady who first humiliates them, and then invites them to take the “walk of shame” with a terse: “You are the weakest link. Good-bye.” Somewhere on the way out the door, she also reminds them that they leave “with nothing.”
Like Millionaire, Weakest Link is something of a quiz show. People answer questions against a clock, thereby increasing the pool of money to be won. But the questions are really rather stupid. A graduate degree and several years in the library will not prepare you to answer them. But a few games of Trivial Pursuit will.
And, like Survivor, every round of questions is concluded by requiring the remaining players to “vote off” one of their own (until only two are left). In other words, the contestants are forced to work as a team in order to make and bank money, but then, on six separate occasions, they are forced to rip the team apart, thereby increasing their hope of pocketing all the cash. As they say in promoting the show: “It’s strategic. It’s fast. It’s psychological. It’s ruthless.”
But the show wouldn’t “go” at all without Anne Robinson….a dominatrix dressed in black, who has been described as a cross between Cruella de Vil and Hitler’s mother, who goes after any blood she smells with the tenacity of a rottweiler. Why the contestants endure it without snapping back is beyond me. To one “weak link” the other night, she said: “Not to worry. I am sure you will find work. There must still be several villages advertising for an idiot.”
Is Anne Robinson like this in real life, or is it all an act? Well, the jury is out on that one. But the Brits (who know her best) say that what you see is what you get. She is one tough cookie. A twice-married, hard-as-nails journalist, she has battled and beaten addictions to cigarettes and alcohol. She is also fond of saying (in response to her success): “People have called me a lot of names, but they have never called me stupid.” Which, if you recall, is the same thing I said when Team A called Billy Ritter to come and crash their line. Even a brain of Pooh-like size knows that there is always an exploitable weak link which can be attacked or exposed for athletic or monetary gain. That knowledge is bred into us. Which is why it is not surprising that no matter how much the show repulses us, it nonetheless attracts us.
But I’ll tell you what is also strange. This is strange. We do not like ourselves for watching it….or liking it. Which should also tell us something. It should tell us that while this is who we are, this is not everything we are. We are more than this. We are also better than this. And what tells us that? Our Gospel tells us that. Our Gospel tells us that power is manifested in weakness (not over weakness). Our Gospel also tells us that greatness is manifested in service….that first and last are reversible categories….and that our Lord, who was endowed with it all, laid claim to none of it (Philippians 2:5). Instead, he emptied himself, taking upon himself the form of a servant….not in the sense of a king who goes about the village dressed in beggar’s clothes, but knows that he can take them off (anytime he wants) and go back to being a king again….but in the sense of a king who wore beggar’s clothes all the way down what his culture would have called “the walk of shame,” and did not ever once (in the process) say: “Time out. This is only a game. These clothes are only a costume. I am really the brightest and the best…. the lily of the valley….the flower of the field….scratch me, and you will see that mine is the bluest blood of all.” No, he never said that. In fact, as the writer of the spiritual said: “He never said a mumblin’ word.”
Back in my early teenage years….when I was really too old to go trick or treating anymore….I went anyway. That’s because I wanted the candy. In those years, I dressed as a bum. In part, because it was easy. In part, because no 14 year old wants to bother with a costume. But I knew I wasn’t a bum. And I would have told you so, had you threatened to have me arrested for vagrancy. I would have stated my credentials so fast it would have made your head swim: “I am Billy Ritter….smart as a whip….singer in the choir….scouter in the troop…..world’s cleverist Red Rover player. Don’t believe me? Give me a violin. Then name your concerto.” But our Lord died with his pedigree in his memory and his resume in his pocket. And while many who saw his death averted their eyes because it was ugly, others who heard of it later, closed their minds because it was….well….weak. “But God chose what is weak and despised in the world to shame the strong.” At least, that’s what Paul told the Corinthians. Which you may not completely understand. But to whatever degree that theology is in your bones….or that Lord is in your heart…..you are always going to feel some discomfort whenever the weak are written off, voted out, or summarily dismissed from view with the merest of “good-byes,” before being reminded that they “leave with nothing.”
And then there’s that not-to-subtle reminder in Matthew 25, suggesting that if there is ever going to be anything resembling an eternal separation….goats from sheep…..evil nations from righteous nations….bad little girls from good little girls….it will have less to do with creeds than needs, and whether or not we addressed them, or turned our back on them.
And then there’s this. Life has a way of humbling us, doesn’t it? Thirty-seven years of ministry and I’ve seen it all. But I have never met anybody who said: “You know, Bill, I really look forward to the day when I will become somebody else’s burden.” But we will be, don’t you see. We will be.
I was talking to a minister on Friday….one of the heroic ones, really….bigger than life for pretty much all of his life. Said he to me:
Funny, isn’t it, Bill, that day after day, year after year, church after church, you listen to their stories about terrible things that are happening in their lives…. diseases that they’re battling….pains that they’re suffering….death sentences that they’re facing. And you do what you can. You listen. You commiserate. You pray. But there’s always a part of you (when you get to the parking lot) that says: “Thank God it isn’t me.” And then one day it is you.
He does not know where all of this will go. Nor does he know how long it will go. But for the moment, on Friday, he looked and felt like one of life’s weaker links.
* * * * *
“Red Rover, Red Rover, let Billy cross over.”
When I was a kid, facing that sea of arms, I looked (end to end) for the ones I could break. Now, facing that same sea of arms, I find myself looking (end to end) for the ones that will hold.
Note: I am indebted to internet research by Janet Smylie for detailed articles on The Weakest Link and Anne Robinson. Especially helpful was a lengthy piece from the BBC news entitled “Anne Robinson: TV’s Rudest Woman.”
The quotation on evolution was taken from a book by Lee Strobel entitled The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates t
