I Wanna Be Like Wayne Gretzky

Philippians 2:1-11

Growing up as a kid in small town Canada, I played hockey.  Everyone did, or so it seemed, in my community.  We played in organized leagues at the local arena.  We played on frozen ponds during Christmas vacation.  We played on school yards with street hockey sticks in the summertime.  My brother and I even had a rink, or a much smaller version of it, set up in our basement so that we could play when it was raining outside.  I would strap camp sleeping mats around my legs as goalie pads, get my baseball glove and for my stick, I had a small tennis racquet.  We set a mattress against the wall and that was the goal that he had to score on.  It was crazy.  It was dangerous.  It was painful.  But man, was it fun.

We had our hockey heroes, but when I was in Jr. High, everyone’s hero was one player; Wayne Gretzky.  He was just coming into the NHL and playing for arguably the greatest hockey team ever, the Stanley Cup Champion Edmonton Oiler teams.  People were buying posters, jerseys, hockey sticks and loads of other stuff related to this boy wonder who could do things with a hockey puck that none of us could believe.  We would sit and wait for CBC on Saturday night to play the “Hockey Night in Canada” theme song hoping that it would be an Edmonton game.  We wanted to see what he would do.  We all wanted to be just like him.

We did actually.  We would mimic his moves.  We would practice his spins with the puck.  We’d try to shoot like him, skate like him, pass like him so that someday we might be just like Wayne.

But we’d hear stories about what he did to practice as a kid and get as good as he was.  His dad would litter the back yard ice rink with hockey sticks and Wayne would skate around and pick the puck up and bounce it on his stick while he skated.  There were miniscule targets that he would shoot at and pass to.  He would travel endless miles to games and do his school work in the car on the way to tournaments.  He would be outside in the backyard for hours on end, day after day, learning the moves that would make him a legend.

To be like my hero would take too much time, effort and energy.  I liked hockey, but not that much. 

My dreams of being like Wayne faded into my childhood.  Eventually, I quit hockey and now I watch my son long to be able to play like the stars that he sees on television.

To be like my hero would take too much. 

In Philippians 2, we hear about another hero, much greater than some hockey star.  We hear about Christ; the greatest servant, savior, messiah and human that has ever walked this earth.    Paul says this about Jesus;

“He made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant…he humbled himself and become obedient to death – even death on a cross!”

Wow!  What a man!  Jesus is incredible in that he did all of this even though he was “in very nature God.  He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.” 

Jesus is one with the father.  Yet, he left it all for us so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father.”  Jesus gave up everything so that he might give us everything and bring his father glory.  Amazing.

But lost if you read too quickly is the line that opens this hymn of the early church.  It’s a little line that you might miss, but it has so much to say to us.

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who….”

Let that sink in for a second.

Be like Jesus.  Here’s what he did, what he gave up, what he sacrificed, the whole thing.  Now be like him.

I couldn’t handle a couple extra hours of hockey practice.  How can I do that?

You can’t….on your own.  You and I aren’t capable enough to live even a moment like Jesus does in our own strength. 

Jump a verse or two down.  “It is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

You and I can’t do it, but God can do it in us, through the Spirit, because of what Jesus did for us.

That means that we don’t work harder for God, it means we depend on him more.  It means we don’t do more for the kingdom, we allow God to use us in whatever way he plans to.  It means we don’t read more, memorize more, sing louder, jump higher, etc, it means that we love God and live lives of thankfulness because of the hope we’ve been given through the grace of Jesus Christ.

I’ll never be Wayne Gretzky.  My ankles are too weak and my knees are too shot, but I can be more like my real hero; Jesus Christ.  I won’t be like him because of how hard I try nor because of what I’ve done, but because of what Christ already did and what he’s still doing in me.

Self-Reliance

Psalm 20

One time, when I was a kid, my dad asked me (read:told me) to wash the car.  We lived on a dirt road and often, there were potholes filled with rain water that would splatter mud on our car as we would drive past.  It was pretty much always dirty, but my dad would try to clean it and care for it so it wouldn’t look too bad.

On this particular day, he wanted me to wash the car because he felt that I needed to learn how to do it.  He said to me, “Scott, you wash the car once the best way that you can, and then we’ll see how it looks.  If it’s not good, then I’ll show you how to wash it the right way.”  I think I made some feeble protest about twice the work, but a couple of moments later, I was hosing the car down to get it clean.

It was a sunny day in the small town where we lived.  It was hot and I actually enjoyed being a little wet while I completed my chore.  I hosed the bumpers, hood, roof, tires, trunk, fenders, bumpers, everything down and then proceeded to wash it down before rinsing it off.  I meticulously rubbed down each section, especially around the tires where the mud had caked on.  I finished rinsing the car off, looked with pride upon my nice clean car washing job, and ran to get my dad.  He was upstairs taking care of something and so it was a couple of minutes before he arrived.  While awaiting his verdict and praise, I went to the kitchen to grab a cold glass of iced tea.  He finally came down and we walked outside to see the fruits of my hard work.

I was quite surprised to find the car a streaky mess with water marks all over the metal that had been so clean only a few minutes before.  Needless to say, another car washing followed including a lecture about drying the car off when it is still wet to avoid streaks.

And then my dad said something that still sticks in my brain. 

“Scott.  It’s important that you know how to do things the right way.  If you learn how to do it wrong, you will always do it wrong.  If you know how to do it right, you will always do it right.  It’s important that people can depend on us doing things right.”

My dad was teaching me to have a work ethic.  He wanted to show me how to do a job in such a fashion that when I did it, it was done completely and done well.

I think that in some ways my dad succeeded.  I have a good work ethic.  I do work hard.  I get a lot of things done, and much of what I get done, I get done well.  I take pride in my work.

But in some ways, he failed.  He failed because he didn’t always model for me the best way to do things.  He was imperfect, and some of those imperfections were clear for his children to see. 

But I think that there was an even more important failure.  I know this one wasn’t intentional, but it seems to me that it still applies.

My dad taught me how to depend on myself.

“Okay,” you say.  “What’s the big deal?  That’s what we all want to do don’t we?  I don’t want my kids still being dependent upon me when I’m 60?”

You are right, of course.  I don’t want that either.  That’s clearly an important value that we want to teach our children, but sometimes in how we teach it, we teach them self-reliance that moves us to a place that we don’t want to go.

It moves us not to rely on God.

In Psalm 20, the writer starts off his song by encouraging the listener to depend on God’s provision in all things.

“May the Lord answer you when you are in distress…

“May he send you help…
“May he remember…

“May he give you…

“May the Lord grant all your requests.”

It’s interesting to me that this psalm, attributed to David; the king over all of God’s people, reflects dependence and reliance upon God instead of dependence and reliance upon one’s self. 

“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”

When you go to work in the morning, who do you depend on?

When something is hard and pushes you to the limit, where does your hope come from?

When I’m burdened and troubled, do I feel the need to grab my bootstraps to pull myself up, or do I drop to my knees to talk to the one who loves me, and lives within me?

I’m grateful that I have a good work ethic.  It has served me well.  But when I look to myself as the answer to all of my own problems, or depend on my own strength to get me out of trouble, I think that I need to unlearn my ethic a little.

I think that’s the excuse that I’m going to use for having a dirty car.  Yeah.  That’ll work.

At One Time...But Now...

Things change.  That's a pretty clear fact of life.  We get older, we physically change, my hair is greyer than it was before.  By pants are a different size.  I don't act the same way that I did ten years ago (thankfully).  We change.  Hopefully most of the changes that we experience are good ones and we're growing in maturity and wisdom.  That's one of my prayers for myself and my family.  I pray that we're growing in the middle of all the change around us.

But if change is just focused on physical attributes or how we have grown in how we respond to situations in our lives, I think that we're missing something.  As I look at the Bible, I see that change is not just about getting older, or even about getting wiser even though that's really important.  A lot of the time its about God changing us.  Sure we can call that wisdom or discernment and take credit for it if we wish, but then we lose something in the process.  God is the actor in us maturing.  The Spirit is transforming us.  Christ's work is continuing in us for a purpose and as a part of a plan that's not of our making or design.  And as God changes us more into the people that he wants us to be, he uses us for things that we never thought possible.  If it were up to us, we'd miss them, but when we leave it to him, we discover gifts that we never knew we had.  We meet people that we never thought could mean so much to us.  We see things that were right in front of our face, but we never knew were there.

That's sort of my purpose here.  Scripture sometimes uses the phrase "At one time....but now...."  It's a phrase that the text uses to show change that's happened in the life of a Bible character. 

"You ...were at one time disobedient to God (but) now have received mercy...."

A change.  Not a change of human hands, but from God.  A change from disobedience to receiving mercy.  A change from alienation from God to acceptance and embrace.  A change that I nor anyone else can take credit for.

I want to write some about those changes.  I want to spend time thinking about what was, now what is, and what can be because of God's changes in my life and the lives of others.

I hope to learn a little in the process and be able to change my perspective on some things. 

At one time, I wouldn't have done this sort of thing, but now......