Sunday, March 17, 2024 – The Fifth Sunday of Lent
On “Super Tuesday” election night (March 6) a name from
the past jumped out at me—and it had nothing to do with the presidential candidates. The name was Steve Garvey, who won/earned a spot in November’s election for the United States Senate seat in California. As many of you of a certain age will recall, Garvey was the all-star first baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1970s. Those were the years when the Reds and Dodgers were bitter rivals and competed yearly to win the old National League West title. Like the rest of the Dodger roster during those years, I did not like Garvey and would boo him when I saw him play at old Riverfront Stadium. Those were some ball games!
The truth was that Steve Garvey was a first-class ball player and human being. He did everything right. He played the game with dignity and always went all out. He would never deny a fan an autograph. He associated with many charitable organizations. In an age of long-haired, sometimes unkept players, he was clean cut. He was married to a beautiful wife, Cynitha. The Dodger organization was proud to have such a player/human being associated with them. Simply, he had it all.
But, in the late 1980s Steve Garvey fell out of grace and his image was tarnished. He was divorced from Cynitha and was involved with other women and had paternity issues which went public. He would describe this time in his life as a “midlife disaster.” And as they say, “O, how the mighty have fallen.”
The story of Steve Garvey should serve as a warning to us, as would many other cases of those who were on the “top of the world,” yet crashed in scandal and bad decision making. You most likely have your know examples. CNN has been running a series of programs called The United States of Scandal profiling well-known personalities who fell from the top due to scandal. In Scripture, consider the Old Testament stories of King David and then King Soloman. They had it all and then fell. Related to some degree, recall Jesus’ parable of the man who built big barns and filled them with grain for himself and planned to relax for life (Luke 12: 13-21). “And I [The Rich Fool] will say to my soul ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.’”
You and I are always a “work in progress” throughout the lifecycle. This work will only come to final completion when we are in full union with our God in paradise. Until that blessed moment, we are always striving to improve and perfect our lives and our witness of the Gospel. If we are open to God, God is constantly calling us to new levels of life, to both enhance ourselves and to offer a profound witness to our world. We dare not relax, thinking that we have reached the finish line and turnoff God’s new invitation(s) to us. If we do, ruin awaits us.
“If you put these instructions before the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound teaching that you have followed.” (1 Timothy 4:6)