Sermon:
October 17, 1999

Scripture:
Galatians 6:1-10

Dear John,

Greetings from Birmingham, Michigan ... home to Oakland Hills and a lot of other nice places. And home to a polyglot of people ... some of whom love golf ... some of whom love gambling ... some of whom love Miller Lite ... some of whom love the Lord ... and some of whom love all four.

You don't know me, John. But I hang out in Birmingham, where I love golf and the Lord (albeit in reverse order), but customarily pass on gambling and Miller Lite. Not that I am above temptations, earthly pleasures and other things sometimes associated with "the sweet life." Because I'm not. Which is neither bragging nor confessing, so much as an attempt to "start clean" ... as in open, honest and free from the moral hypocrisy which always speaks ill of the church.

As a wanderer on the earth, I am 27 years older than you are. As a hacker on the golf course, I am 27 shots poorer than you are. I seldom visit fairways during the day. But, then, you seem to have trouble finding them at night ... fairways, I mean.

Which occasions my letter, don't you see. I am talking about recent news releases that begin:

Daly Doesn't Regret Falling Off Wagon.

Daly Says He's Drinking Again To Improve His Golf.

Daly Admits To Fifty-One Million In Gambling Losses.

Callaway Fires Daly

Which strikes me as sad ... even though you didn't do any of this to hurt me. You don't even know me. But I've watched you "up close and personal." And I've watched you "on the telly." I've seen you hit `em a mile off the tee. In fact, until Tiger pounced, nobody hit `em further.

And, like most amateur athletes, I am addicted to power. I would much rather talk about distance than accuracy, although (as my friends will tell you) I have precious little reason to talk about either.

You have always been long, John. Less always, straight. Which has caused you problems on the course. And which has caused you problems off the course. True, there have been high points. Four tournament wins ... two of them "majors." Two kids ... both of them charming. Top ten finishes ... in double digits. Dollars earned in the 90's ... too many to count. Not to mention women who have loved you, friends who have companioned you, sponsors who have signed you, and galleries who have cheered you.

Even your darker side has captured our allegiance. We rode with you ... rose with you ... crashed with you ... and climbed back on the cart with you. You played hard. You played too hard. But then you worked hard ... literally sweating it out so that you could play some more. And we wanted you to succeed ... in the best way. You went to rehab ... twice. You came back ... twice. You ripped up a hotel room in Jacksonville Beach. And you were hauled off a golf course by ambulance, courtesy of an advanced case of the DT's. But you always apologized...always paid ... always battled your way back. Why, this morning's paper says that you made the cut in Vegas with three successive rounds under 70.

Pardon me if I evoke the image of the late Bobby Layne ... Detroit's most notorious "rounder." Riding out of Texas to quarterback our Detroit Lions, Bobby won us a trio of championships in the 50's. It was often said that Bobby played better hung over than sober. His bar-hopping exploits with Alex Karras (in the early days of Alex's career) staggered the imagination. And he was famous for inviting friends (and strangers) to Texas, saying: "You bring a white shirt and a five-dollar bill, and ol' Bobby will make sure you never change either." He was a master at milking the clock, getting more out of the last two minutes of a game than anybody ever thought possible. But then the clock turned tables on ol' Bobby ... cutting short his career, as it did ... and ringing down the curtain on his life, as it did. Darned that ol' clock anyway!

Like I said, John, you offered us a lot to see. And a lot to like. But now you've gone public with your latest slip ... fall ... whatever. And you've told us that we should stop expecting anything better ... that you are who you are ... that you're gonna do what you're gonna do ... and that if it causes anybody any problems, that's just the way it'll have to be.

Your twenty-six month run at sobriety is over. As you put it: "I got in my Jeep with a twelve-pack of Miller Lite and drank it all by the time I got to Arkansas. That's how I knew I'd relapsed." Concerning Callaway's offer to finance a third rehab stint at an undisclosed clinic, you said: "The people were nice. But it just wasn't for me." And concerning the binges which often turned violent, costing you your wife, your girlfriend, your sponsor, and (on occasion) your professional standing, you said: "I want to gamble. I want to have a few drinks now and then. Trying to stay sober is making me miserable. And as to whether I can avoid the problems that drinking and gambling have brought to my life ... honestly, probably not." And to Golf World Magazine, you said: "I have finally reached the conclusion that drinking is a part of my life. It's in my blood."

Well, John, thanks for the candor. And the warning. It will help us understand you, without expecting too much of you. Honesty counts for something, I suppose ... given that it lets all of us know where things stand.

This is not to say you'll never play good golf again, or be the life of the clubhouse again. Which is something you really enjoy, you said ... good golf for 18 holes and good laughs at the 19^th hole. Which is not without appeal. Happy hours are convivial times. Nineteenth holes are convivial places. But, for most of us, they are way stations rather than terminus points on life's journey. We drop by there, but we don't bed down there.

For years, John, the only television sit-com I watched was Cheers. I liked its crisp dialogue, its clever repartee, and its lovably idiosyncratic cast of characters holed up in that mythical basement bar in Boston. They were not without appeal. Woody, Sam, Cliff, Carla, Frasier, Lillith, Diane, NORM! ... I loved `em all. Still do, sort of. Until one day I realized that (as adults) they were funny, but dysfunctional ... that (outside of the bar) they were largely incapable of mature and enduring relationships ... and that to pin any hopes of any kind on any one of them, would only lead (in the last analysis) to frustration and pain. It was safe to love them from afar. But only from afar.

I wonder, John, if you notice people beginning to distance themselves from you. Like the women in your life ... the children in your life ... the friends in your life ... the sponsors in your life. Not that you will ever lack for people, mind you. They'll always be there ... as long as you can pound `em, down `em and continue to pay for `em. But I remember something Wilt Chamberlain said in his autobiography that virtually everyone else missed. We're all talking about Wilt, given his recent death in L.A. You remember how Wilt, in print no less, boasted that he had made love to 20,000 women over the course of his lifetime. Whether or not anybody believes that, everybody remembers it. But what nobody remembers is the rest of the quote, wherein Wilt went on to say that he'd rather have made love 20,000 times with the same woman, figuring that (in retrospect) it would have been better. Can you hear the pain in that, John? Or the longing? Where relationships are concerned, there's quantity and there's quality. It's amazing how many people get that mixed up. Until it's too late.

While I'm on a roll (pardon the gambling reference), let me append a trio of words ... albeit briefly ... on the subjects of stewardship, self-control, and this little matter of "whose life is it, anyway?"

Stewardship is a twenty-five dollar biblical word about what we own and what we owe. You like to gamble. You like high risk and fast action. Would that you were better at it. But, then, very few people are.

You need to know, John, that I am not a gambler. It's not in my blood. But I'm not all that sure it's in anybody's blood. I helped lead the fight against casinos in Detroit. I lost. But I'm not sure who won. In the first two months, the average Detroit player has given $66 back to the house ... each day ... every day. That's pocket change for you. By your own admission, you've recently lost $500,000 in Vegas. And contained within the same admission is the reference to 51 million lost in the 90's.

To be sure, not all of that was earned money. Some of it ... maybe most of it ... was winnings you gave back. But not all of it was winnings. 12 million of it was earnings. Your earnings. John, do you know what 12 million might have done, used differently? You could have blown it on a University and built yourself a library. Or endowed twelve chairs. You could have built two or three large churches. Or twelve little ones. You could have sent a symphony orchestra on a three-month tour of third world countries. Or built a wing on a cancer center. For all I know, you could have picked a medium-sized city and sheltered all of its homeless residents.

Money is a tool, John. More than that, it's a blessing. Jesus had a word about tossing pearls before swine. He said: "Don't do it." It's no good for you. It's no good for the digestive systems of swine. And it's a terrible way to treat pearls. Ponder it, John. Ponder it.

As concerns self-control, none of us has a corner on that market. And as concerns self-control over alcohol, some have less than others. Not because they lack will power. But because they have a disease. It's called Alcoholism. By your own admission, you have it. And, if you'll take my word for it, I don't. But, again, it's not just a matter of will power. To a great degree, it's a matter of genetics. I believe in the "disease concept of Alcoholism." And if you have been through a pair of treatment programs, I suspect you do, too.

Having the disease means that, over time, your body is going to process alcohol differently than mine will ... turning it into a poison. Which is why one drink now has the capacity to change your personality. And which is why one drink often launches a binge. It isn't fair that you should have this disease when I don't. But neither was it fair that my father and my sister had this disease, while I didn't. Then again, life isn't necessarily fair. Meaning that self-control will be, for you, considerably harder than for me.

But every time I turn to the Scriptures, I find something interesting. I find that self-control is a gift, even more than a discipline. A gift of the Spirit. Meaning that you pray for it, even harder than you practice it. Sounds weird, I know. But trust me. It's true. Why do you think every Twelve- Step program begins with all that stuff about your Higher Power?

Which brings me to the "it's my life, I can do what I want with it" argument. Well yes ... and no. Sure, it's your life. And no one, including God (in all God's almightiness) is going to thwart or deny your right to live it as you choose. Which boggles my mind. I have never discerned why God is "into" granting such radical freedom to blokes like you and me. I guess He figures that our love for Him won't mean much, unless we are equally free to thumb our noses at Him ... should we be so inclined.

I hear the "it's my life" argument all the time from collegians at Albion. Albion is one of our great United Methodist colleges where I am a Trustee and where, as in every other college in America, we are trying to fine-tune an alcohol policy so as to make it both responsible and realistic. Unfortunately, we've got some kids who learned back in high school ... even in junior high school ... that it's a blast to "get loaded." Regularly. And who don't think that we should have anything to say about it. Period. Even though it's been pure luck, the last couple of years, that a kid who should have died (given his blood-alcohol content) didn't. And even though, as a Trustee, I was once named in a lawsuit by the parents of a date-rape victim ... a girl who was too drunk to know what she was doing ... with a boy who was too drunk to know what he was doing ... even though the lawsuit said that I should have known what each of them was doing, on a night when I was ninety-one miles away, writing a sermon at my desk.

We are all bound in this together, don't you see. Paul Simon was wrong. We are neither rocks, nor islands. And islands do cry. And rocks do feel pain ... along with causing it.

People care for you, John. And people are being hurt by you. God cares about you, too. And, if you can believe it, God is also being hurt by you. You sound like a train wreck waiting to happen. And when it does, you're going to make a mess of the landscape. You are going to kill a strange kid. Or you are going to scar your own kid. And you are going to carve big slices out of several hearts ... including those who give more to you than you are capable of giving back, along with those who love you, yet can never figure out why you love something else more.

"Do not be deceived," says Paul to the Galatians. " God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap." Which does not mean that God tilts the scales of justice so that bad outcomes automatically slide down the chimneys of people who make bad choices. What it means is that there is a certain "workableness" to God's world, so that when you tilt against it, it tilts back. Someone once said: "All of us grow in the direction of our reverences." So if you revere a bunch of stuff that does not promote growth, don't be surprised when you end up all gnarly and dwarf-like.

Or, in my favorite line of all, Ann Lamott writes that we are not so much punished for our sins, as by them. You should read Ann Lamott, John. She's a recovering alcoholic.

Which took her years. Meaning that nothing is hopeless, John. Least of all, you. Which grows out of my profession, don't you see. For I have seen the one who changed water into wine, change beer back into furniture.

Within the past few weeks, I officiated at the wedding of a beautiful bride. The last time I met her ... four years previous ... it was to talk about a heroin habit. Her heroin habit. At the time, she wanted to know if I thought the Lord could help her ... "did I really believe all that stuff?" Well, quite apart from anything I said or believed, he could and did.

As for me, John, I get "high" on those kinds of stories. Would that I could get "high" on yours.

By the way, if you're ever passing through Birmingham, call me. I think that I can get us a tee (tea) time.

Sincerely,

William A. Ritter