God, church and baseball

I'm in Pittsburgh attending the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. It is the bi-annual gathering of Presbyterians where we go to discover how different we are. For some reason this always seems to surprise us. We lament how little we have in common. We cast aspersions on folks on the other side. Sometimes the divide is razor thin, sometimes a little bigger. There is always dissent. It is as it should be. It's what makes being a Presbyterian such a great thing. It seems though at these things we spend so little time focusing on what we have in common; the core reason for why we're there. While in Pittsburgh I stole away one night to catch a baseball game. The Pirates were in town playing the Astros. I like baseball and I'm a big St. Louis Cardinal fan. I don't follow particularly the two teams that were playing, but the game itself brought me there. Not everybody there was a Pirates fan, nor an Astros fan. But we were all baseball fans. We like the game: the balls and strikes, the pitches and catches, the home runs and strikeouts, the play of the players. Everybody understands what we're there for - to watch, cheer and participate in baseball. What's the "game" that brings us to be the church? In my church back home we do something just about every Sunday - we repeat together the Apostles' Creed. Just about everything else we do is different each Sunday - the music, the scriptures, the prayers, the sermon - but the creed stays the same. And once we leave our variety of actions are even more varied than what we've done "in sanctuary". Still we come back each week to say the creed. It's what we believe, it's what informs our particular paths and it's what brings us together. It's baseball. The Church gets in trouble every time we try to add to it, and when we insist that the rest have to agree to the "add-on". We do this with new confessions, new policy positions, new moral guidelines. And we offer these add-ons not as ideas and points to consider and celebrate, but rather as dictums to be obeyed. And sure enough we gather at the stadium and spend our time fighting in the stands rather enjoying a good game, the best game. There are more U.S. Presbyterian denominations than there are Major League baseball teams. Each seems to want to play a different game. And yet few would disagree over the Apostles' Creed. God in Christ has done an amazing thing. It takes a lifetime to even scratch the surface of how amazing it really is. Every day affords us the chance to respond to it in wide, varied and creative ways. How about a Church of the Apostles' Creed? How about when we gather we take in the game? Celebrate the game? Participate in the game? And not let the rest distract us from what's going on on the field. I know it sounds like a naive suggestion and I know it will fall prey to the sophisticated and the cynical. But wouldn't it be a place to start a conversation - a new conversation about an old game.