The Cubs Win the Pennant!

My dad was not a huge sports fan. He’d watch football on television whenever the New Orleans Saints played, but never basketball or baseball. With one exception. He would watch the World Series.

I’m still not much of a sports fan. Don’t ask me, “How’s them Cowboys?” because I frankly have no idea. But because it was on TV, I would watch the occasional football or baseball game with my dad.

2016 World Series

Last night, I think my wife thought I was kidding when I said I wanted to watch the final game of the World Series because the Chicago Cubs were playing the Cleveland Indians. The Cubs hadn’t won the pennant since 1908 and fans got used to saying “wait ‘til next year” at the end of each season. The Indians had a 68-year drought, too, so history would be made no matter who won.

But my reasons to watch went beyond witnessing history in the making. I would be watching the game with my 8-year old son. He doesn’t care for sports, either, but you need to know the basic rules of the game known as “American’s pastime.” And there was some nostalgia in passing on knowledge of the game to my son the way my dad did with me.

But why am I writing this in a blog devoted to the Bible? Because it has to do with faith in the resurrection.

The Resurrection of Jesus

Back in the spring of 1983, I took my first college-level class in New Testament literature. It was an extension class taught by Dr. Bob Ludwig from Loyola New Orleans. I went on to take a half-dozen other religious courses through the Loyola Institute for Ministry (LIM) but it was that first class that set me on the road to serious biblical study and self-discovery.

The third course in the LIM program was Christian Origins: An Exploration of the New Testament. In the third chapter of the textbook – written by Bob Ludwig – he tries to explain to the reader “what Jesus’ resurrection meant within the context of the New Testament proclamation.”

He first describes resurrection as a personal transformation. “Like the event that transforms Jesus and gives him a radically new existence, personal transformation from disintegrated self to a new sense of wholeness is miracle; it is gift. We cannot will ourselves to wholeness and unity.”

It is also about coming to faith. The witnesses to the risen Christ “in believing that God has raised Jesus from the dead, are brought to new life themselves; what they believe about Jesus, they come to believe about themselves as well.”

He sums up by writing “the witnesses of the resurrection were filled with a boundless hope. If God has raised Jesus from the dead, then anything can happen.” He provides some examples:

The only way we can come to understand their experience is to imagine the most outlandish thing possible and then to think of it actually realized. People in Chicago (or all the rest of us for that matter) can imagine that on a September morning they pick up the paper to read “CUBS WIN PENNANT!” New Orleanians imagine an August weather report: “Cool and dry again. That makes fourteen straight days!” Everybody imagines this one: “U.S., SOVIETS END ARMS RACE!” with the sub-heading “Money To Go To Poor.”

 When the impossible happens, when we actually experience something that we thought was totally out of the question, then our imaginations are freed to think of equally outlandish things as possible. If the Cubs can win the pennant, we can feed the world’s hungry. If August in New Orleans can be cool and dry, acid rain can be cleared up. If the United States and the Soviet Union can end the arms race, then the Middle East, Ireland, and the South Bronx can live in peace. What is possible is no longer limited by our expectations.

Impossible Things

Dr. Ludwig wrote those words in 1984. Much has changed since then. The Soviet Union is no more. While Russia still flexes its muscles on the world stage, we are no longer engaged in an arms race with it. “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland have been over since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The South Bronx is still poor, but much safer than if was back in the 70s and 80s. On the flip side, the Middle East is still a cauldron of turmoil and New Orleans weather is still hot and humid in the summer time.

And, yesterday, perhaps the most outlandish of all impossible things, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.

“YEAH! Right back at ya!” Photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Pessimists will say that we have only replaced one set of problems with another. Acid rain has been replaced as an environmental concern by the bigger threat of climate change. The existential danger of a nuclear-armed Soviet Union has given way to fears of unstable countries like North Korea or non-state actors like terrorist groups in possession of the Bomb. But to focus on the negatives misses the point of how much has changed – and can still change – for the better.

What is the most impossible thing you can imagine? Peace in the Middle East? Contact with aliens? Republicans and Democrats working together? If the Cubs could win the World Series, those impossible things can happen. It might take 108 years, but it can happen.

After all, the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl in 2010. My dad died in 2007, so he didn’t get to see it, but I know it would have made him as happy as all those Cub fans celebrating right now. If that can happen, truly anything can happen.

I believe in the resurrection.