Confirmation and the In Field Fly Rule

Sermon Confirmation Sunday

May 6, 2012

John 15:4

Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

I know I’ve said this before, but I love baseball

but I don’t know what the in-field fly rule is.

Well, actually, I’ve made this observation so many times that folks always feel the necessity of explaining the in-field fly rule to me.

So, in just the last two years or so, after a lifetime of loving baseball, I now know what the in-field fly rule is and more than that, I know why it’s on the rule books.

I stayed with my brother these last two days in Colorado Springs and he went over this rule with me for the umpteenth time.  He’s an umpire for several amateur leagues both softball and hardball, so he knows more the rules about baseball than anyone should.

The in-field fly rule is this:

If a ball is hit in a pop-up that lands in the infield and there are fewer than two outs and that there are runners on first and second OR the bases are loaded. The batter is OUT regardless of whether the ball is caught by any player in the field.

It’s a strange rule at first glance, I know, but it is a good rule and I now know why it needs to be there.

But, not knowing about this rule or why it’s important has not interfered with my love of baseball for lo, these many years. When, in the rare instance that the in-field fly rule is invoked and the batter is ruled out even though no one caught the ball on the fly or tagged any player out, the announcer might say, “The batter is out--in field fly rule.” I might be perplexed by that announcement or I might have just taken a bite of my hot dog and a slug of my soda and not noticed.

On those equally rare occasions when I’m sitting next to a guy like my brother, they might say, “in-field fly rule”. And I would say, “Oh.”

Well, I think that going to church is a lot like this. You need to know a little bit about the church and its worship, but you don’t need to know everything.

You need to know the basics and that is what Confirmation is intended to be.

We learn the Lord’s Prayer, the Doxology, and the 10 Commandments. We learn a bit about the meaning of Holy Communion and about how Jesus is present next to us when we take it.

We need to know something about the sacrament of Baptism--that it is a rite of initiation into the church, a “sacrament of belonging” as the Jesuits put it--but that it might not have much to do with the washing away of original sin as if a child is born with such a condition.

We need to know something about God’s love for us which transcends our every betrayal of God and God’s love for the world.

We need to know about GRACE.

Those things are key it seems to me.

But you don’t need to know everything about the faith.

The Church in its long history has hundreds of “In field fly rules” that govern its life, but you don’t need to know them all in order to be a saint in the body of Christ.

I find that most of the “in-field fly rules” in the church are written in Latin.

“ex opere operatum”,

“Extra ecclesia nolo salus.”

“simil justis et peccare.”

I think these are all treasured formulas to understanding the difficult twists and turns of the faith, but there will be plenty of time to learn about them. I won’t spend time explaining them this morning.

What you need, in the faith, is to be a partner with others in this faith journey.

As a friend of mine at our meeting in Colorado this past week said, “You don’t need a PhD in systematic theology or biblical hermeneutics (that’s one of those in-field fly-rules). All you need is to be with folks whom you trust and just look over their shoulders for a while.”

I remember when I first started attending a United Church of Christ -- well, an E and R Church since it was before the merger that created the UCC --  when I first started attending my church, I held a hymnal in my hands and sat next to my buddy Allen Wallenschlager. I was just 10 years old when I started attending that Church.  My parents were never members of any church, so I attended church with my grade school friends, not with my parents. My parents never forced me to go to confirmation. In fact, I don’t really think they knew what Confirmation was but they were patient with me in my new found love for the church.

Well, I sat next to my buddy Allen most Sundays and I remember my first encounter with the hymnal. When we got to the second line of the first verse, my eyes did not go where they were supposed to go.

So, for example, in the first hymn for today, “Now Thank We all our God” I sang it by going from the first stanza of the first verse “Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices”

And then to the first stanza of the second verse, “O may this bounteous God, through all our life be near us”

Allen, who was a gentle soul (Thank God) simply reached over to my hymnal when he heard that I was singing the wrong words and pointed to where I was supposed to be singing. He made it clear in that simple gesture that I wasn’t just to go to the next line of text, but to the next line in the stanza which was in the next measure of music.

Now Allen could have been a bully and told the whole Sunday school class that I didn’t know how to sing a hymn, but he didn’t. As I say, he was a gentle soul. And the Church needs gentle souls above all.

You don’t need a PhD in Church History to be a faithful member of the church of Jesus Christ. What you need is a companion in the faith, someone who will look over your shoulder and gently make corrections. You need someone you trust who will allow you to look over their shoulder from time to time and see how they do things.

You will never know all there is about the Christian Church and its history and theological differences.

I venture to say that even those who know much about the history of the church, disagree even more with others who know much.

In the final analysis, the faith boils down to the simplest of truths. God loves you more than you love yourself.

God the Father

God the Son,

God in the Holy Spirit,

will never leave your side and will be there even when you most doubt his presence.

My brother, to come back to him, has also worked in India and has experienced that mystifying sport called “Cricket.” I said to him two days ago, “Do you understand Cricket” and he said, “Yeah, a bit.” I said, “Do you like it?” He said, “Yeah, I do especially since they have some games reduced to 5 hours rather than 5 days.”

But he did say that you need to know something about a sport in order to enjoy it.

You have to know something.

I told him that I was in a city in southwestern England one March some years ago when a significant world match of Cricket was on. I was the guest of a minister of the church I was visiting and he insisted that I join all the men (and they were all men) in the living room after Sunday dinner, to watch this some-kind-of-championship.

I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on and even though I was enjoying the men and their uproars about things in the game that utterly mystified me, I had no desire to go out of my way to see another game of cricket. I enjoyed being with these friends, but I have never watched another game of cricket.

I note that there are cricket games on TV and there are games played in the Milwaukee area that I could go and watch. And while that would be an odd and enjoyable moment, I think I have better things to do with my free time.

So, my brother said, “You really do have to know SOMETHING about the game in order to enjoy watching it.”

So this is what brings us to this moment.

You, Celia, Jack and Sara, have learned a little about the Church and its faith. You’ve learned that the faith in Jesus Christ is simple if you want it to be or joyfully complex if you want it to be. And the church will find you partners in the journey of the faith that will help you find your place in the hymnal.

Jesus says, “The branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine,” Do you get that metaphor?

Confirmation by itself is just a seed. In order to bear fruit you need to “abide.” That means you need to live along side of others who are sharing the faith with you so that you begin to understand the faith by living it out.

You may never understand the in-field fly rules of the faith.

But that should never get in the way of loving the faith and living it out in the world God has called us all to love.