Roger Clemens… and Liturgy

This week, the New York Yankees announced in grand fashion that Roger Clemens, the 45-year-old fireballer from Texas was moving back to the Bronx. Starting in June, he will once again don the pen stripes for the Yanks. The kicker—Steinbrenner is going to pay Clemens a pro-rated contract for the 4 months left of the baseball season. The end result is a payday that will amount to almost a million dollars… a week. A WEEK! Not bad work if you can get it, right?

I love baseball, and I really like Roger Clemens. I certainly can’t fault him for his decision to go back to New York (even though I take great pleasure in the misfortune of the Yankees) from the Houston Astros. A million a week is a lot of money. So I don’t blame him for his decision. This move does, however, make me a little nostalgic because it reminds me of what I love about baseball.

I love the history. I love the pageantry. I love the tradition. There’s something to be said for a sport that has been around as long as baseball has. Think about it in terms of the great speech of James Earl Jones from Field of Dreams: “America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers; been written, erased and re-written, but baseball, Ray, baseball has defined us.” Clemens move is another reminder that baseball is changing and that things important in history no longer matter so much.

Ballplayers don’t play for a club any more; they play for a paycheck and get traded quicker than Kevin Costner will make a sports movie. It’s only old school guys that remain completely loyal and still have a glint in their eye. People are more interested in big homeruns than bunting a runner from first to second and then hit and running him home. That’s yesterday’s stuff. I however want to make the argument that history is not bad because it’s old, and I want to make it in terms of something else I care deeply about—worship in the church.

Liturgy, hymns, chants, creeds—these are all old things. And like most old things, they are considered outdated and obsolete. But I think there’s got to be something good in there if for no other reason than the fact that for the last 1500 years the liturgy has remained the same. I can walk into any liturgical church in the world and immediately know what is going on. Why? Because the liturgy.

Some would argue that it, like ball players who stay with their contracts and know how to do a suicide squeeze, is outdated. Maybe it is, but that doesn’t mean we have to get rid of it entirely. Can’t a church include elements of liturgy, Reformation hymns, and 20th century worship music in the same time space? Can’t a team have a guy who jacks 50 homers and one who sacrifices himself to move a guy to second in the same lineup? I don’t think it has to be an either/or thing. But to include both we have to give up some flash. We have to take the road less convenient. We have to concentrate a little more on the finer points. But maybe as baseball fans (or are we talking now about liturgy fans) can rise up together gain and say, “Give us our peanuts and cracker jacks! Give us a sac fly and a runner tagging from third! Give us the passing of the peace and How Great is our God!”

Give us substance as well as hype.