WHAT IF HE COULD?
What if he could?
That thought flashed across my brain 5 seconds after he answered the announcer on TV the other night. He was smiling of course. He is always smiling. Like there is always a day in July where the wind blows just like a warm summer promise; and the sparkle on the trimmed green grass can send a soul stirring warmth straight into a gray and blustery November. He’s 75 years old now. Still a twinkle in the eye. And the smile’s still there.
“So what,” asks the announcer, “are you up to these days? What are you doing with yourself?”
Here is what he said;
“Well, I’ve got a call into Oprah. See, I’ve got this plan and I’d like to work with her on it. . . . .it’s a plan to end poverty.”
A plan to end poverty.
Five seconds later, I thought “What if he could?”
But it was in those five seconds that I found an Advent Journey.
Type this smiling man’s name in your internet browser and you’ll get back 210,000 entries. If you’re one who both remembers a day and longs, on the most primal perhaps even genetic level—for a time when the Chicago Cubs will again play baseball just like the Chicago White Sox did this past year; you’ll know his name like you know your own heart.
But it’s not his name, or even his number—14—that speaks to Advent here.
Advent’s journey comes from looking off in the distance, down the road, a future scene so vividly alive and colored rainbow joyful: that you simply can’t believe it.
So you don’t.
My five seconds began with an inner sneer I could almost hear—although the thought went unsaid: “Ending poverty? I don’t even know what that means! Who’s poverty? His poverty? How do they measure that? He is just so naïve. What’s he talking about?”
My inner sneer brought up a memory. Another story from when his 2,528 baseball games over 19 years in the big leagues had ended. The triumph of being one of 12 children in 1930’s Dallas; then a 17 year old kid joining the Kansas City Monarchs, then on to become the very first African American to play for the Chicago Cubs. The very first. Then, in 1977, to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
That part I got. He helped shape what heroism meant to me and a lot of other little boys and girls. And even now as I write this, a picture of him is smiling, up on my wall, looking over my shoulder.
I understood all that. Treasured it. So when I heard the story, back right after his playing career had ended, of him working at a local bank, being the guy you go see to open a checking account; my inner sneer, disguised back then as a young man’s veneer of worldliness, my inner sneer came out in full force. “What the heck is THAT? He’s become some kind of bank clerk? What’s the deal there? Why is he doing that? Does he have (I thought, drawing on my newly minted Psychology Degree) Does he have some sort of hidden problem?” Hmmmm. What is this?
Back then I didn’t know that work, jobs and careers don’t just flow effortlessly along from one stage to the next. Even for super star baseball players. I didn’t know about taking what you can get and making the most of it. I didn’t know about still smiling: when it mattered the most. I didn’t know how fulfilling life could be when life had you up against a wall.
But he did. He knew all that.
Maybe 10 years later a guy I worked with mentioned that he had seen the smiling man on an airplane. I asked if he was sure it was him and my friend answered, “I Knew it was him because he was wearing a cap that said “Mr. Cub.”
That memory came back and I thought, “Imagine making a job out of being who you are?”
“Yes I know” I tell my “Inner Sneer” it’s a “Personal Services” contract. But it’s also making a job out of being who you are. Not many of us could do that.
My five seconds of disbelief were near a close.
“I have this plan to end poverty” he says again. My Inner Sneer starts to speak: but before I can think the cynical thought, the announcer says to the smiling man: “I understand your Mother is still with us. She is what, 95 years old? Does she still have advice for you?”
Then the man with that smile says, “She sure does Bob. She calls me up and she always says the same thing to me. She always tells me, “Ernie? You just pray, pray and pray!”
And that’s when my five seconds of wrestling with my faith just snaps closed and done. I hear the smiling man paint a picture of what he sees down the road. “I have this plan to end poverty.” And I think:
“What if he could?”
And that takes me straight to Advent. Right here. Right now. In the polished wood pews of our church.
Now at Advent we anticipate:
Peace on earth. Good will to All. Christ is born.
What if he could?
