A Field Of Dreams
Faith Is About Grace…Not Rewards Or Punishments
by Eric Elkin
“Be careful that you don’t practice your religion in front of people to draw their attention. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”
Spring training is here. The return of baseball reminds us that summer is around the corner. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Old Man Winter is fighting a losing battle with Mother Nature. After a week of below zero temperatures, the news couldn’t come at a better time.
I am sitting in darkness, preparing for Ash Wednesday. My thoughts should be on scripture, but all I can think about is Ray Kinsella. He seems a strange visitor to my mind since I no longer follow baseball. Perhaps the start of the baseball season is breathing a bit of nostalgia into my mind. Or, maybe, I am thinking of my fractured relationship with my dead father.
Ray Kinsella is the fictional main character in one of my favorite movies, Field of Dreams. The film was released a couple of years before my family moved to Iowa so I could attend seminary. We lived down the road from the actual field. Naturally, you couldn’t go a day without hearing the famous line, “Is this Heaven? No, it’s Iowa.”
In the movie, Ray hears a voice and listens to it. The message is clear, “If you build it, they will come.” Ray responds to the voice. He allows his own intuition and immediate circumstance to guide his building instructions.
First, he plows under a section of corn late in the growing season. In the cleared area, he builds a baseball field. The action comes at a price. Ray will not be able to make payments on his farm loan without a crop. Financial pressure is mounting, and his family is confused. Then one night, the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson appears on the field. The reason for his labor becomes a little clearer.
The field provides healing for Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was banned from baseball. Ray assumes his work is done. But the voice still speaks, telling him to build. It leads him to another fictional character, author Terence Mann. The field offers Mann a sense of healing.
“And until I heard the Voice, I’d never done a crazy thing in my life.”
The voice continues to speak to him. This time it leads Ray and Terence to Chisholm, Minnesota. There they meet a retired doctor and former minor league ballplayer. The duo brings him back to Iowa. On the way, they learn the doctor also has a wound in need of healing.
It becomes clear why the voice wanted Ray to build the field. The field was the means of grace to comfort an array of fractured souls. Watching games played by ghost players replace their sorrows and fears with joy. Then the inevitable question comes.
Ray wants to know what is in it for him. He pleads his case. He has done all this work without asking for anything. But he wants to know, what does he get out of it? Shoeless Joe looks at Ray and says, “If you build it.” Then he turns his eyes away Ray and looks to home plate. He nods and finishes the phrase, “He will come.”
Standing at home plate is Ray’s dead father. The man he had fought with his entire life. The man he deeply yearned to be reconciled with is right in front of him. It grants Ray the healing he needed.
Too often we think of faith in terms of being good or bad. When we feel this way, the focus is upon ourselves and our actions. We want to know what we must do to be rewarded for being a good person. And, what must we do to avoid being punished.
The truth is faith is about grace. It is about opening our eyes to see how we receive it, then being challenged to share it. When divorced from grace, faith becomes an endless cycle of failure. The rewards for good behavior will never be enough for us. And every tragedy or setback gets framed as God’s punishment.
Ash Wednesday is a reflective and somber evening. We speak words of confession and forgiveness. The movement is about reconciliation for what we have done and left undone. Yet, more than anything, Ash Wednesday is about being marked with God’s love. A love which we know only through grace. We receive it so we can share it. We remember the grace freely received, so the world we live in becomes a field of dreams.
Click to read Matthew 6: 1-21
Reflection Questions:
What expectations do you have for being faithful?
When have you felt a “reward” fro being faithful was not enough, you expected more?
How would you describe grace?
Where do you experience grace?
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