I was deep in the bowels of a decrepit and foul ballpark. But to ten-year-old me it was pure adventure. It was Seattle Sick’s Stadium (not Sick Stadium, though that too would fit — the crumbling 1938 showcase of beer-baron Emil Sick), the home of the ill-fated Seattle Pilots.
Google tells me the summer of 1969 was the summer of Woodstock, Stonewall, Chappaquiddick, the Manson murders, and the Apollo 11 moon landing. For me, it was the one and only summer of the Seattle Pilots.
Joe Schultz managed the Pilots. If you’ve read the landmark baseball chronicle, Ball Four, “Joe Schultz” may trigger a peculiar combination of colorful profanity to involuntarily spew out of your mouth. Here’s the thing: in the off-season, Schultz worked for a member of my pastor-dad’s former congregation. Try to imagine today’s multi-million dollar managers working other jobs in the off-season!
This family friend arranged for Schultz to get us comp tickets to the game. A crowd of people were jostling and milling around the concourse, hoping for a glimpse or nod from someone important. My dad said something to an usher, and from that press of people we were singled out and led down a hallway to a closed door.
It felt as if the crowd parted like the Red Sea and we were chosen to walk down the wondrous way.
We waited while the usher went inside. In a few moments, a smiley Joe Schultz emerged and we were alone with him. Far from the madding crowd. He didn’t unleash his legendary string of expletives. I don’t remember anything he said. He gave me a baseball and then the moment was quickly over. He disappeared through the door, a game to manage.
Chosen. Euphoric. Gratified. Special. I had been granted access to a place that most only hoped to glimpse. The inner sanctum.
And I had been there.
A little more than a decade later, I found myself in the tiny Principality of Monaco on the Mediterranean Sea meeting my future in-laws. Swimming in the Mediterranean remains one of life’s great joys. Most days we swam off the breakwater with the bohemians, cheapskates, and proletariat.
On occasion, however, we joined the cousins of my then-fiancée at the ultra-upscale Monte Carlo Beach. This is a place of royalty, fashion designers, opera singers, and movie stars. Not a place frequented by tenderfoots from suburban Seattle on their first trip abroad.
The cousins’ grandparents were members. They would call ahead and pass me off as “their grandson.” I doubt anyone was actually taken in by this ruse. But you know how it is. Elite establishments often prefer polite fictions to uncomfortable scenes.
The gates opened and I entered a place where I didn’t belong. We’d smuggle in sandwiches rather than frequent the restaurant or snack bars that we could neither afford nor feel comfortable in. I felt conspicuously out of place, yet exhilarated, incredulous, and impressed that I made it in.
These memories come to mind whenever I hear the first few verses of Romans 5 that often show up in the Lectionary this time of year.
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand.
Access.
To the door of the Pilots’ locker room.
To the Monte Carlo Beach.
It’s curious that such warm memories are triggered by this passage from Romans. I really don’t like the image of access to God or grace.
Access can sound as if God’s grace is guarded, in an exclusive gated community available only for the approved few. Access to a gleaming citadel where we feel awkward, unworthy, and uncertain.
At the risk of sounding humorless, I sometimes wonder whether all our jokes about St. Peter and the Pearly Gates reveal that lodged deep in our collective unconscious is a fear of having to pass inspection, answer correctly, or know the password in order to gain access to God.
Instead, I want to imagine an embracing welcome. Not an anxious admission, but a sense of peace and belonging like we’ve never felt before. Not impostor syndrome, but homecoming.
A colleague tells of his first days as a hospital chaplain. A sign on a big, heavy door read “Restricted Access.” Other staffers occasionally passed through, but no one ever explained to the rookie chaplain if he was included. Eventually he screwed up the courage to inquire of a nurse.
She stared at him in disbelief. “You’re the chaplain. For you, of course, it’s not restricted!”
Maybe the grace of God in Jesus Christ is something like that? We have this sense that access is restricted. We presume it’s not for us. Am I allowed to stand here? Do I need permission to enter that space? Am I authorized to fill this role? Am I restricted from serving in that way?
And yet, grace — being grace — quietly says “For you, it’s not restricted.”
A few weeks ago the Lectionary gave us Jesus declaring “I am the gate” (John 10). I hear that as a welcome, not a restriction. Even the familiar “narrow is the gate,” (Matthew 7) might not be the call to moralism and grim religiosity for which it is so often mistaken. What if instead, the narrow gate is the relinquishing of pious performance?
And what if this access isn’t simply entrée to some distant heavenly throne room? What if it is access to meeting Jesus among the poor? Access to the company and comfort of the Holy Spirit. Access to the Bread of Heaven in ordinary bread at the Lord’s Table. Access to startling good news in ancient words we’ve heard countless times. Access to holy and formative friendships. Access to seeing the world thick with the glory of God.
I remember the thrill of being ushered through restricted gates, long ago — the sense of astonishment and distinction that it gave me.
But maybe, God’s grace in Jesus Christ is not just a select few being waved through the guarded gate. Maybe instead, this grace is so enveloping and elevating, so intimate and singular, it feels to each one of us as if we are the special and chosen one, ushered down the red carpet. Beloved, beautiful, and finally home
Maybe.
One Response
Prosagōgēn, privilege of entrance. All that you write. I experience those same feelings today in any number of situations. How constantly this must have been an issue in the socially stratified capital city of an empire. A daily experience for all kinds of things. Also: “Whites Only” and “Colored.” For St. Paul there is no “separate but equal.”