When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!" For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men." (Luke 5:8-10)
I was in Indianapolis a few years ago and I was taken by how nice Hoosiers are—they are like the response to the riddle “what do you get when you cross Yankee Weather and Tarheel Attitude?” It made me think of the movie Hoosiers, which is usually on most men’s top five Sports Movies lists. There is hardly an overt reference to Christ in the movie but I believe the Lord has snuck his message right through the back door of something secular, like the Centurion risking his life to get Paul to Rome.
Simple story: Norman Dale is run out of college basketball coaching for life for the one unpardonable coaching sin: assaulting one of his players. After serving 20 years in the Navy he is given a chance by his old friend, a principal of a small Indiana high school, to coach the school’s basketball team. Dale quickly realizes he is in untenable position. The town garners its identity from its basketball team and the local star, Jimmy Chitwood (note the initials) who will not play on the team for personal reasons. Not surprisingly, the town fathers are deeply suspicious and resentful of Dale. The only apparent way to earn their trust is to convince Jimmy to play, which Dale promises he will not do. Without Jimmy, the team gets off to a losing start and Dale is brought under increasing pressure by the town fathers who take each loss personally.
Inexplicably, Dale does the last thing a man in his position should do, he takes Shooter, the town drunk, on as his assistant coach. Shooter is so far gone that his own estranged son, who is on the team, tells Dale, “this thing with my Dad . . . I’m just not seeing it.” The town fathers, outraged at Shooter’s ascendency, call Dale to task, but he refuses to yield, saying simply “I apologize for nothing.” Ultimately, Dale is only kept from being fired by the team’s messiah, Jimmy, who finally agrees to play, but only if Dale remains the coach.
With Jimmy back, the team begins to win and Dale pursues his project of redeeming Shooter, without apparent success. The first time Dale is thrown out of a game, Shooter takes over the team but has no response when his son asks, “well what should we do dad?” Same old Shooter, he shrinks back from the need of the boys for leadership and slumps onto the bench, letting the team flounder forward to a loss. The look of disappointment in his son’s face drives Shooter back into his bottle and that’s where you would expect the story to end—but for Norman Dale. He forces Shooter back to precarious sobriety, drags him back to the team and, incredibly, gives him a second chance to take over the team by getting himself intentionally ejected from a close game that the team needs to win. This time Shooter does not fold up, instructing the boys to employ the “Picket Fence” on an out-of-bounds play that ends up winning the game. Ultimately, despite more missteps by the recovering Shooter, his son visits him in the hospital to tell Shooter that he loves him and that he wants the family to reunite when Shooter is fully healthy. And thus is Shooter reconciled to his family and redeemed.
What blows me away about this story is not that Shooter is redeemed but that it is Dale who is the ultimate agent of his redemption. That’s where I see God’s hand. The Hollywood answer would have surely been to have Shooter redeemed by the messianic Jimmy, his son or a maybe a social worker—anybody but the basketball coach. Dale is not even a particularly sympathetic character—middle aged and crusty, his fall from grace was so rapid, complete and unexplainable that when he confesses it his girlfriend, he can only say “what was so strange about it was, he was the best kid who ever played for me.” Dale epitomizes the kind of person we have been trained to demonize. And yet, Dale, himself pulled from the World’s trash heap and redeemed by the principal, was willing to risk his chance to return to coaching just to lead the seemingly unredeemable Shooter to life.
Why does the Lord put his net in the Hands Of The Repentant? Why trust hands that once were so soiled in sin to perform his holy works? Could it be that men who themselves once near drowned in the dirty water yank with abandoned zeal on the collars of those the World assumes long lost to the deep? Perhaps, forgiven so much, the Repentant just won't quit.
No comments:
Post a Comment