Superman, Cliff Lee, Jesus, and You

I spent the last week at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida with my good friends Tal and Jim. I think that was the first technical vacation any of the three of us have had in the past couple of years. Tal works more than anybody has a right to, Jim stays busy, and I have noticed that most of my "vacations" over the years have included times of very fruitful work. These are good things, but it was so nice to have a week of acting like children, riding roller coasters and cracking inane jokes.

Among the swath of rides we tested out several times, The Incredible Hulk, and Spiderman were by far my favorites. I remembered that growing up, I was a fan these superheroes. I also loved that Batman would sup up his suit to even create super-powers out of plain-old American ingenuity. And Superman? What kid can claim to be free of an abiding love for the Caped Crusader?

As if to make the vacation even more fun, my beloved San Francisco Giants were on their way to reaching the World Series for the third time in my life. The real truth is that roller-coasters and super-heroes were all well and good for me growing up but my real super-heroes were baseball players. Let somebody else save Gotham City, I wanted to play shortstop for the Giants, live outside the city, and retire sometime in my 40's.

Baseball players seemed like real supermen, and they always will have some of that place in my mind. But last night reminded me of a very important fact. Men are men. A World Series pitcher is every bit as much a human being, fallible and flawed as the rest of us.

So onto the field stepped the Superman for the Texas Rangers, Cliff Lee, who had won 7 of his first 8 starts in his postseason career. He was unbeatable. His fastball was quicker than a speeding bullet. His curveball could swoop with all the force of an anvil dropped from the sky. He was super-human, right?

Wrong. Cliff Lee proved to be just as human and prone to failure as the man in Center Field behind him, the recovering-addict/Jesus-loving Josh Hamilton. Lee was just as human as his counterpart, the Giants' slight-of-build/marijuana-toting 2-time defending Cy Young Award winning Tim Lincecum. He was human.

It is strange, isn't it, when we see somebody we thought to be "above all this humanity" be really human.

Instead of Superman, the mild-mannered Clark Kent showed up. No Hulk, only the frightened Bruce Banner. No upstanding Batman, just crummy playboy Bruce Wayne. No Spiderman, just nerdy, insecure little Peter Parker.

So much of life is confronting the stark reality that this world is not a place for idealism. We live in a down-to-earth reality and we must deal on the basis of that reality rather than our self-imagined fantasy. Our wide-eyed idealism we once had is either slowly whittled away or comes crashing down on top of us. Sooner or later, we are confronted with the choice to accept reality as it is or to re-construct our own interpretation of the way things are.

This is where the gospel meets us. Christ did not become ideal man, nor did he come to us as one who could outrun a herd of camels, let alone a locomotive. When he overturned the tables in the temple, it didn't look a thing like the Hulk, probably more like a frustrated Bruce Banner.

The fact that Christ became real man is not only something nice for us to remember. This fact should transform the way we see everything. We now see that God has revealed himself as one of us, however much greater he may be intrinsically.

In Christ, not only does God show himself, but man is also revealed for the first time.

Not with any super-powers, just with dependence on God and love for his neighbor. Not conspicuously, but in humble obedience. Not flying, but kneeling. Not conquering, but submitting.

Now we know what it means to be man. We don't strive to be super. We don't seek to be unique. We don't look to be revolutionaries. We humbly seek God's will and live in love toward one another.

The guys playing baseball on television tonight are not ideal human beings. Neither are you. Neither am I. But do you know what the good news is? God is the Father of Christ, Lee, Lincecum, Hamilton, you and I. Even more, Jesus is not afraid to call us brothers. He loves us because he has made us his brothers and sisters. He approves of us based upon his own work and not ours.

He is after the real you. He wants the guy behind the mask, behind the stats, and behind the closed doors.

He lives for men, not supermen. That's good news for guys like us.