Josh Bascom, “The Place You Need to Be”
When the pandemic first hit, or really a day or two before things started to fall apart, I was in the hospital with my wife Courtney who had just given birth to our daughter Kate. I was beyond excited. You see, because of the timing of things, I was going to be on paternity leave at the perfect time so I would have nothing to do but watch the ACC Basketball Tournament, my absolute favorite thing. But as we all know, that tournament got canceled because of Covid, and as the news broke on the hospital TV screen, like a child myself, I slumped back in my chair, threw my arms up in the air and yelled, “well, what am I supposed to do now?!” Courtney, sitting in a hospital bed holding our newborn daughter, simply looked at me, looked at the baby, and kindly rolled her eyes.
Once sports finally came back in the summer of 2020 I went on a binge, and I haven’t looked back. I love sports. I love watching games and playing games, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why they entertain and intrigue us so much? When I was growing up the world seemed fairly separated between people who did and absolutely did not like sports, but recently with one incredible sports documentary coming out after another, the line of division has slowly begun to dissolve. If you still don’t think of yourself as a sports fan, please shoot me an email and I’ll quickly recommend a dozen movies and books that you will love, because they cue you in on the drama and emotion playing out on and off the field, and how it all relates to our everyday lives—no matter who you are.
When we watch someone striving and struggling, succeeding and failing in the pursuit of victory, there is something at work before our eyes that feels simultaneously very far off and very near. We can and we cannot relate. Most of us can’t relate to the physical strength and skill of the athletes on TV, and I know that I’m always in awe of their mental focus and determination, but I think that we can all relate to the emotions of desire to achieve something, something that these men and women wear right on their sleeves. We can relate to the highs and lows of it all as that drama plays out, and finally to the release that comes with victory or the agony and pain of defeat. Watching or playing sports can be a profound snapshot of our lives. We say it’s just a game, but it’s the emotions and the stories, on and off the court that captivate us. Someone trying desperately to get to a literal or metaphorical finish line, to the place they want to be, but haven’t gotten to yet.
In our reading from Ephesians this week, St Paul is speaking to an audience of Gentiles, people who were at once outside of the Jewish Covenant with God, who have since become believers and followers of Jesus. He is reminding them of who or where they once were and what they now have become; “But now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have come near by the atoning blood of Christ.” (2:13).
Paul uses the language of far off and near here to refer to those who lack and those who have full legal and religious rights in the Jewish community as the people of God. The gentiles were once foreigners with no share in the privileges of Israel, but now they have become fellow citizens of the saints, they have become full members of the household of God. Paul begins this letter to the Ephesians by reminding them of this, so that they won’t lose sight of what they’ve been given in the grace of Christ, and so that they won’t think they’ve earned this victory or good standing on their own. God has given it to them by drawing them near to him, so they shouldn’t boast or judge or condemn anyone else in self-righteousness. God’s grace is a gift that has transformed their lives, and everything honestly—they were far off, but now they are near.
What does it mean to feel or to be “far off”? To feel like you are not where you want to be, or to feel that others are not where they should be? Maybe for you it’s the feeling of disappointment or dissatisfaction in your career, or relationship? Maybe it’s the place of grief, or feeling alone? Or maybe it’s the way you feel about your town or the world when you look at the news? To feel “far off” can be a very personal thing or a social and political thing. Whatever it is, to me it communicates that there is some significant division between what we want and what we have, or what is right and just, and what we’re seeing and experiencing. Things are not as they should be for us, or in our self-righteous moments we might be quick to say, “while I’m doing a pretty fantastic job with my life, I can’t say the same for you. You aren’t where you should be.”
So what do we have to do to bridge the gap, to get our lives and this world where we want them to be?
My most recent sports obsession is a totally new one. I’ve never watched Nascar or any other kind of car racing, but there is a show on Netflix called “Formula 1: Drive to Survive”, that I can’t stop watching. It’s about Formula 1 racing and the teams and the drivers behind it all. In F1 there are ten teams, and each team has two cars and two drivers that enter every race. They accumulate points as a team each week with their two drivers, but the drivers themselves rack up points to see who the best driver is at the end of season too. The teams work together until the rubber meets the road, and then it’s every man for themselves, and even your own teammate can become your biggest competitor. Cheating, backstabbing, whatever it takes to get to the top plays out in this great show.
One of the most profound scenes takes place in an episode that focuses on the Mercedes team. They have dominated and won the team title the past five or six years, and their top driver Lewis Hamilton has won the prize for top driver over those years as well. But the episode really focuses on Valterri Bottas, the Mercedes number two driver. They show him winning second place time and time again, and as his teammate and their pit crew celebrate with champagne and confetti falling week after week, you see Bottas dripping with dissatisfaction, and honestly quite a bit of sadness. In an interview towards the end of the episode Bottas simply looks at the camera and says, “This is awful. I’m not where I want to be, I don’t know where I’m going to be next year, I don’t know what I’ll be doing.” You can see the pain and desperation in the eyes of this man who you would think would be celebrating, but instead his heart and his mind are far off somewhere else. After all, when our identity and drive in life come from our performances, from being the best, then only one of us wins, and everyone else feels like a loser.
It turns out there is a problem with the question, “what do we have to do to bridge the gap between where we are and where we want to be?” When the solution is placed in our hands, we turn life into a competition, one in which we scratch and claw, call out, condemn, cancel, sabatoge and scapegoat our neighbors who we see as our opponents and obstacles set our path, rather than fellow children of God.
But Paul reminds the Ephesians, and us, that the solution or the possibility of a solution to our broken hearts and this divided world doesn’t rest in our hands, but instead it’s in Jesus’ hands, and Jesus himself is the solution. Paul writes;
“in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.”
God has lifted us all up, even the losers, and taken us in love and mercy to the place we need to be. When it comes to the important matters of life, then it’s not a matter of what we need to do to get where we want to be, but it’s a question of what needs to be done for us, or rather, what has been done for us so that we can be brought to the place we need to be. On the Cross Jesus won the race for all of us, or whatever game it is that you’re sweating out in your life. On the Cross He delivered us all to the place of being fully known, fully forgiven and fully loved. Because of Jesus, you have been brought today—right now—to the place you need to be. All divisions between us, all divisions between you and the person you wish you could be, all of it was defeated on the Cross and drowned for good with enough champagne and confetti for all of us.
Amen
