Next week is Super Bowl Sunday. Since my Steelers are not in it, who cares? So instead, on this day of our Annual Meeting, I would like to talk about baseball. Besides, Spring Training is right around the corner. I don't know if I ever told you the story of my one year playing Little League baseball. It is a boring story because our team lost all but three games and I hardly played at all. Hindsight tells me that the only reason I made the team in the first place was that my Dad was running for mayor. He lost. So when the next season rolled around and the manager couldn't trade me because nobody wanted me, he simply cut me from the team. He also cut out my heart; but I recovered.

The truth is I was a lousy baseball player, but I still know a lot about baseball and I love the game. Baseball is much more a mirror of life than football. There is no clock and you always have a chance to win no matter what the score. In baseball, as Yogi Berra says, it truly ain't over till it's over. Not so in a game regulated by a clock.

That's why I know that if God would choose a sport to play, it would be baseball. And if God played baseball, he would be the pitcher. And he would be left-handed, so says my theological mentor, Robert Capon. Capon says God’s best pitch would not be the high, hard fastball but the slow curve, the left-handed slow curve ball. The pitcher who has the greatest longevity in baseball, believe it or not, is the one who can throw the left-handed slow curve ball. The left-handed slow curve has always been God's most effective pitch.

From the very beginning of creation, from Adam to Abraham to Jesus, everything took time -- slow, left-handed curveball after curveball. Treks through the deserts, several hundred years of slavery in Egypt, more time in the desert, a glorious century of Saul and David and Solomon, the exile and more slavery and finally Jesus. No hard, straight stuff. Just curve ball after curve ball, left-handed. Curve balls, left-handed curve balls: that's important to remember about God. God throws left-handed curve balls.

I'm right handed, left brained. Color me back and white. The facts, please, just give me the facts. Sometimes I tend to be too abrupt and to the point, almost as if I am not listening. If I see a problem, I want to fix it quickly, with a high, hard fastball. As a batter, I want to hit a home run every time up. Let the weak sisters hit the singles, score runs slowly. The problem is that home run hitters strike out far more times than they hit the ball out of the park.

Again, if we read the history of the church, the one thing that the church has always believed it has on its side is time. The church is never in a hurry to make changes. The people in the church are. The church is not. For the church several hundred years is enough time. Twenty-five, fifty years are a drop in the bucket. For those living in those twenty-five to fifty years that is a lifetime. I suspect that's why we want right-handed fastballs and not slow left-handed curves. We want what we want and we want it now. We don't have time to wait. But we often don’t have any choice, do we?

Today's three readings, all of Scripture in fact, are about how God throws slow curveballs left-handed and expects us to do the same. Okay, every once in a while, God throws a high, hard one, right-handed ands gets the job done Zap! God works a miracle here and there; but like creation, it usually takes God a long time to get done what God wants done. Long, slow curve balls. Left-handed, right-brained curve balls. Creative curve balls. Take the reading from Micah. The people want to know how they can get God to hear their prayers. They figure that if they throw a high fast one to God, get straight to the point, hit God straight in the eye, that'll get His attention. Offer a big sacrifice, they think; the best calf on the farm. Or how about thousands of rams or tens of thousands of gallons of oil? Or maybe even a first-born son. That will surely do the trick, win the game.

Not so, says Micah. Micah says that if you want to please God, you have to do what God does: keep throwing long, slow curveballs left-handed. In Micah's terms: do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God. That takes time. Not as long as it took God's first pitch in creation to cross the plate, nor the pitch that started the Church, but it takes time. And Micah says, when we throw those slow, left-handed curve balls, we'll discover that the results will be different and better than we ever thought.

Paul says the same thing. What kind of people does God seek? He wants those who can hit the slow, left-handed curve ball. In my analogy in Paul's terms, it would be like this. The situation is the bottom of the ninth, three runs down, two outs and the bases loaded. On the bench God has a .340, home run hitter, an All Star, to pinch hit. But whom does God send up to the plate? He sends up the .220 singles hitter and says only one thing: "Wait for your pitch.

The .220 hitter knows he's not very good, or, in Paul's terms, knows he is weak, on the team because his dad is the manager or the mayor. But he also knows that he has to wait for his pitch. He can't hit the fastball. But he can hit the slow curve if he waits on it long enough. The .340, homerun hitter goes up to the plate and thinks fastball, looks for the fastball and swings at the first pitch, a slow, left-handed curve; pops it up and ends the game. The .220 hitter looks for his pitch, gets it, and singles in two runs.

Whom do you think the manager now sends up to pinch hit? Right, another .220 singles hitter. That's the way God works. That's not the way the wise people of the world work, Paul says. But that's the way God works. So should we. Both the good pitcher and the good hitter thrive on the slow curve ball. If you can't throw it, you're career will be over. If you can't hit it, likewise. But if you can do both, even right-handed and left-brained, it's Hall of Fame time. We right-handed, left-brained people simply have a harder time getting it. But we can.

That's what the Beatitudes say loudly and clearly. The world says that only the home run hitters and fastball pitchers make it to the hall of fame. God says, if you want to make it to my hall of fame, you have to throw and hit the left-handed slow curve. There is no other way. The world says that the meek and the humble and the persecuted are losers. God says that they and only they are the real winners. The long, slow curve ball again. We play the game and we win the game of life with singles, slowly.

A few days after you received the Annual report in the mail, you received a report from our Visioning Committee. I trust your read both and spent some time reflecting on both. The reports ask two questions: "Where do we go from here?" and "How do we get there?" I don’t know about you, but I would love to have the answers to those questions right now. Throw me a fast ball and lets get going. I do not want to spend some more time thinking and discussing and planning. I hate those slow, left-handed curve balls. But that is the pitch God is throwing at us, you and me.

I often get frustrated with the slowness that it takes at times to get some things done. Slow, left-handed curve balls are not my style and they may not be yours. But they are God's. To quote a former Bishop of Washington: "It is so hard to be patient with the terrible patience of God."

As I mentioned last week using another analogy, we are all plumbers, you and I, apprentice plumbers, and we are all in need of fixing. We help fix one another. That often takes time and it always demands patience – patience with ourselves, patience with one another and patience with God. Whether we are fixing a leaky faucet, playing a game of baseball or simply growing into the person and parish God calls us to be, we need to be patient.