Fr. Bob
There was chaplain for a high school football team. That chaplain of course was me. The team had gone, several years without a win. But the twenty-three guys on the team were warriors. They battled on and never lost the sense of brotherhood among them. It was a brotherhood that sustained them as a team.
One Friday night after the game as they always did right there on the field the team gathered around the coach who would say a few words. It was a miserable night. It was pouring, rain. Everyone was soaked to the bone. And the team had just lost the game 48 to O.
Heads are down. The players were feeling the sting of the trouncing they’d just been handed. So, everyone is wondering, including me what would the coach say. I mean what do you say when you’ve been drubbed 48 to zero?
The coach begins. “Get your heads up. Look at me. *Is that not what a compassionate God says to us when we think we’ve blown it. “Get your head up. Look at me. It’s okay. You’re still loved. You’re my son, my daughter.”
The coach ontinues, “I want you guys to know that there is no place in the world where I’d rather be than right here, right now coaching you guys in the great game of football.”
*Maybe that’s why God became one of us. It’s as if there is no other place that God would want to be than with each, and every one of us right here, right now.
Though the young men on the team kneeling there in the rain that night may not have understood it at the time the coach is teaching them an important truth. Even though the numbers on the scoreboard don’t show it because of the way they battled to the end they are all winners!
*And so, for us. The truth is regardless of the success we may or may not achieve while here on earth the Jesus who in the eyes of many died a loser by his death and Resurrection makes us all winners. We’re loved by a God who loves us no mater, what. And that’s what matters.
To end his speech the coach then says, “Turn to the man next to you and looking at him in the eyes give him a fist bump and say, “Glad you’re here.”
*So, as a way of acknowledging that the Christ born among us is here among us tonight if you want, turn the person next to you and looking them in the eye give them a fist bump and say, “Glad you’re here.” Merry Christmas everyone.