October. I’m glad it is October. Aren’t you? I mean, who doesn’t love October? Crisp nights, warm days, apple harvests, bugs in the backyard die in the frost, and sports—sigh … I’m glad it’s October, especially because it’s playoff time in baseball. During the summer I’m lucky to get one baseball game a week, but in October I’m, at times, feasting on two and three games a day. Who doesn’t love October?
Oh wait. Maybe not everyone loves October this year. Other years perhaps everyone does, but this October maybe the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves are not feasting on baseball like they thought they would be. They had October-playoffs in their grasp, but lost it … and have no one to blame but themselves.
The last week of September marked the dismal, October-erasing, historic collapse of the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves. On September 4, the Red Sox had a 9-game lead in the American League Wild Card Race over the Tampa Bay Rays, but after a stellar August they had a tragic September (7-19) and watched their lead vanish. On the last game of the regular season in the last week of September, the Red Sox lost a must-win game—a game in which they held the lead into the ninth inning; a game in which they were playing the worst team in the division; the Baltimore Orioles. But a ninth inning rally for the O’s denied the Red Sox of the privilege of baseball in October. (I love the fact that it was the Orioles that did this, by the way!)
The Atlanta Braves did not perform any better. They had an 8.5-game lead in the National League Wild Card Race at the beginning of September. They, too, limped along all month while the St. Louis Cardinals made strides. In the last game of their regular season, in the last inning of the last game, the Braves also surrendered a sure lead and lost the privilege of baseball in October.
I’ve seen it so many times; in every sport, every level, and every sort of field. A team has a solid game-plan and the lead. And then something happens; something that defies logic. It’s like black magic. Something happens at half-time or between the fourth and fifth sets or at the beginning of September; some bewitchment that spooks them into switching from winning the game to not-losing the game.
Do you know what I mean? Red Sox: the way you started is the way you continue. Braves: the way you started is the way you continue. Your game-plan was successful—why switch in the middle from winning to “not losing”?
The leap from the baseball world into the church world is not at all difficult. Church, the way we started in Christ is the same way we continue—by faith, not works. We, like the 2011 Red Sox and Braves, are often at the brink of a historic collapse when we think of switching from faith as the way to please God to human works as the way to keep God pleased. Whether it is because of panic or neglect or miscalculation, we are often tempted—in some strange September enchantment—to conclude that “faith alone” cannot carry the day anymore and therefore exit from God’s game-plan.
But why would we ever even consider changing God’s game-plan of faith? The way we started in Christ—by faith, not works—is exactly the way we continue in Christ. By faith, not works. It is so simple, so genius, so inspired that Paul scratches his head in Galatians 3:1-14 and wonders out loud if there is some bewitching going on; some logic-eroding, memory-erasing black magic, evil-eye spell-casting that is diverting the church’s eyes from fixing upon Our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ to the one of the thousands of counterfeit saviors.
“O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you … having begun in the Spirit are you now being perfected in the flesh?” (Galatians 3:1,3)
Yet before we shake our heads at the ancient Galatians or cluck our tongue at their tendency to revert to a system of human rules to please God (and men), let us own the fact that this is our dismal track record as well. We, too, forget how the Lord got us started in the new life—by faith, not works—and quickly devolve into a game-plan to grow in the new life on our own merits and rule keeping. We often chuck the game-plan out at the break, despite its success in setting us free from the endless bondage of “trying harder” and “doing more,” morphing into a squad that shifts from faith back into the same systems that enslaved us before faith arrived. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.
