TGIMMmoneyball1

June 17

[media presentation below]

GospelThink

Wednesday, June 17

MATTHEW 6:1-6,16-18
I tell you to do your religious duties, but not to draw attent

Prayerthoughts
a. I do many things that can be called “righteous deeds.” What is my motivation behind them—that is, why do I do them—to be praised or paid or actually to help someone?

b. “Giving alms” is an automatic in Christian spirituality. Do I give of my time or talent or money on behalf of a good cause with no desire to receive something in return?

c. The Lord wants my “almsgiving” to be secret. As I study my “giving” to others during this week, how many people knew about it?

d. The Lord wants my prayer to be sincere. Do I make a show of my prayer so that others see what I am doing and therefore “praise” me? Am I praying all the time and not just at assigned times like in Church?

e. I must be careful as I study another not to assign an evil intention to what they are doing. I cannot read another’s mind when it comes to their praying or giving or fasting.

f. The Lord wants my fasting (from food, television, Internet, etc.) to be in secret. The fasting should remind me to turn to God more in my life. What should I choose to fast from?

g. My prayerthoughts…

Today, I will read 2 Kings 2:1,6-14 and write an important thought from it.

Some Thoughts on the Liturgy

TRADITIONAL SPIRITUALITY

+ Paul tells the Corinthians in the first reading that “God is able to make every grace abundant to you”

- and therefore he wants his audience to use that grace, to sow it, so that they can reap from it

+ We look at the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7, as incidents of grace that are given to us

- and our spiritual lives will grow if we use the grace that is given

+ Today, the Sermon continues with three traditional Jewish acts of religion:

- religious Hebrews knew and practiced all three of these

- what Jesus is most interested in is that they be real, and not be for show

- Jesus was looking at the intention of the people

- he knew well why people performed religious acts

- some liked the praise, the approving looks when they did some deed, or just the notice they received

- in Jesus’s mind, this portion of the Hebrew understanding of religion is very important in our own spiritual development

+ There must be a giving to others if we are a Christian, and in Jesus’s mind, no one should know about it

- it is the whole basis of the Christian concept of stewardship

- we heard about it yesterday with Paul’s idea of generosity, and here Jesus speaks it

- we freely give back to God what God has given to us, and we don’t make a big show about it

- I really have a rough time with people who have to have their names on things that they donate

- look at all the stained glass windows and a lot of furniture in the Church

- but as pastors you have to accept it

- and you can’t really make it a teaching moment because people with money basically do not relish being taught about things that have to do with money

+ There must be prayer

- a portion of the passage on prayer is the Gospel meditation tomorrow

- the “Our Father” and the statement on forgiveness

- here Jesus does not have anything against public worship since he took part in it

- probably what he is saying is that private prayer is the most important

- time spent in careful consideration of the way our lives are going, that is, the way we are using the grace the Lord has given us

- it is the concept of “wasting time with God”

- simply being in God’s presence and recognizing what God has done for us

- saying formal prayers by ourselves slowly, thinking about the phrases

- reading Scripture with the idea that Jesus/God is saying something to us, and it is our job to figure out what it is

+ There must be fasting, that is, times of deliberately not eating or drinking or temporarily giving up something you like

- for the purpose of humbling ourselves before God, strengthening our faith, and reminding us of the importance of God in our lives, and therefore the importance of others

- giving up things simply to remind us of God

- Francis’ idea of giving up

- for us, it is the concept of only having what is necessary to live in this world of ours

- I believe that that is basic to the whole thought of Franciscan spirituality

- we remind ourselves of God’s importance by making sacrifices

+ The traditional three forms of spirituality with Jesus’s own nuances are given to us today, and three questions for our spiritual life:

- how well do we give to those who are in need?

- how much time are we giving to prayer?

- are we fasting at times for the right reasons?

+ Most of you have seen or heard about one of the versions of the movie “The Karate Kid”

- in the latest, the young man Dre is taught the art of kung-fu from Mr. Han, the maintenance man

- and the essence is practice—over and over—always the same thing

- “take off your jacket and put it on”

- that is the idea of these traditional forms of spiritual growth

- practice, practice, practice

- it was the thought of the early Jewish people as they set up their spirituality

- Jesus makes it part of his as well.

MEDIA PRESENTATION

Movie: "Moneyball" -- beginning session

TO THINK AS GOD DOES

The Gospel

MARK 8:31-33

[Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days. He spoke this openly. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

Gospelthink: I tell you to try to think as God does which means that I should think in terms of love of others. Am I improving in my thinking?

The movie "Moneyball" begins with a quote from Mickey Mantle who said: "It is unbelievable how much you don't know about a game you've been playing all your life." He did not know about the business of baseball. The movie based on a true story as told in the book, "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game" by Michael Lewis, is about the business of baseball. As he began the 2002 baseball season, Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, realized that he had a serious problem if he did not want to lose. And losing, as he said, was something that he hated to do. He had lost his three best players due to free agency and did not have enough money to hire them back or to trade for better players. His staff was thinking the usual way of thinking in baseball circles: you bring up the players you have in the minor leagues or you trade. Billy was searching for another solution and after he met a young man by the name of Peter Brand who was only educated in economics, he began to think in a different mode.

Jesus gives us a distinction that we should take to heart. When it was clear that the future leader of his Apostles did not understand what he was doing, Jesus reminds him that he must begin to think as God thinks. Peter was thinking as human beings think: we become so taken up with our own feelings that we cannot possibly understand another point of view. Peter had to learn to think in a totally different way, and when he finally did, he began to see what God wanted in his life.

Fundamentally, thinking the way God wants us to think involves objectivity. We must be able to view problems without our own personal feelings. Peter illustrates for us a pattern that we can study. As we are called to determine solutions to problems in our lives, our solutions may be prejudiced by our own set of circumstances. We may not be able to see beyond what we think. Billy Beane in the movie "Moneyball" was able to see beyond his set of circumstances. It meant that he had to change his own thinking first before he discovered a solution to winning baseball games.

British author Phyllis Bottome once said that there are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself meeting them. Much of the time the difficulties are going to remain, no matter what we do; then, if we want to find a solution, the way we approach them may have to change. Only when we are able to look at things in another light will we be able to see that there are answers to problems that at one time seemed unsolvable.

We all have difficulties in life and we search for solutions. One of the solutions might be to look at the difficulties in a different way. It might mean that we have to begin thinking of them the way God thinks of them, and begin to see that our thinking may be part of the problem.

PRAYER

Good and gracious God, our human natures tend to look at the problems of our lives from our own point of view. As your Son told his apostle Peter, help us learn to think as you think so that we will be able to solve our problems a little better. Be with us, we pray.

+++++

GUIDE FOR CLASSROOM PRESENTATION AND PERSONAL ENRICHMENT

Theme: Sometimes we have to change our way of thinking about the problem in order to solve it.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
(session: approximately 63 minutes)
1. What scene during this session of the movie is most striking? Why?
2. Jesus is speaking of the process of redemption in this passage. What is your understanding of Jesus's redemption? See Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, numbers 599-618.
3. Give some instances in our world today in which you see people thinking as they think and not as God thinks.
4. Analysis: "$114,457,768 vs $39,722,689." Should professional sports people be paid as much as they are? Yes or no and why?
5. Analysis: describe the character of Billy Beane as presented by the movie.
6. Dialogue analysis: Beane: "If we try to play like the Yankees in here, we will lose to the Yankees out there." What does Billy mean?
7. What do you think of the approach to baseball that Peter Brand gave Billy Beane?
8. Analysis: the disagreement between General Manager Billy Beane and Manager Art Howe. What is the best way to solve this difficulty?
9. Analysis: Beane obviously has an "anger" problem. What is the best way to control "anger" in our lives today?