Open your God-blessed eyes—so says the prophet Elijah to his student Elisha… Open your eyes and see the radiance of the Divine—so says Jesus to his disciples on the mountaintop… Open your eyes, take off that veil, let the light shine out of the darkness of your troubled soul—so writes the apostle Paul encouragingly to those unruly Christians in Corinth. Today’s passages are all about opening our God-blessed eyes and seeing everywhere we look the WOW factor of God!
This WOW factor of God, this radiance of Christ, this sparkling of the Spirit’s presence, is all around us, friends…on the mountaintop, to be sure, and also in the valleys of doubt; in the simplicity of a baby’s baptism, and in the complicated conversations of theology that sustain us; in difficult decisions and in easy routines…God WOWs us over and over and over again.
The ancient psalmist wrote that there is no place where we can go to hide from God’s presence…the heights, the depths, the forests, the seas, wherever we roam, there is God. Today’s scripture authors take that presence of God to the next level… Not only is there no place where God is not, but that God who is ever present, is seen as radiantly sparkling, as delightfully bright, as dramatically apparent…if, and this is a big “if”…if only we open our eyes and see.
Two weeks ago our world experienced another transfiguration such as the one experienced by those disciples on that old mountaintop in the first century…a moment of drama and clarity that brings people into a place a little closer to God and God’s glory. This contemporary transfiguration—this moment of clarity, this place a little closer to God and God’s glory—occurred in, of all places, a high school gymnasium, on a basketball court, in a boys’ game being played by two high school arch rivals.
On the one side was the DeKalb Illinois team, with coach David Rohlman and senior starter and free throw shooter Darius McNeal. This DeKalb team had traveled on snowy roads 2½ hours north to Milwaukee to play the much-anticipated game. As it turns out, they also waited patiently for another 2 hours for the game to start. Why? Because their rivals—the Madison High School team—was waiting for their coach to arrive at the gym. Madison Head Coach Aaron Womack had left the gym during the JV game, because he had received word that the mother of one of his players had just succumbed to cancer.
Earlier in the day, Carlitha, mother to Madison player Johntell Franklin, had taken a turn for the worse. Her son, who was scheduled to play in the game that night, rushed to the hospital to be by his mother’s side as she died. Johntell later told one journalist, “It was shocking. I couldn’t believe that my mom was gone…she just gave me a look, like ‘keep your head up, everything will be all right.’”
Johntell’s coach, Aaron Womack, heard the news and left the gym to comfort Johntell at the hospital. They talked about Carlitha’s sudden death. They talked about the approaching game. Johntell told his coach that he would not be playing that night. After a bit of time, Coach Womack returned to the gym and handed over to the referees his official roster, minus the name of Johntell Franklin and two other players who had remained at the hospital with Johntell. The Madison team, now reduced to 6 players, joined the patient DeKalb team in warming up on the gym floor.
Madison Coach Womack reported that, as the news spread of the death of Johntell’s mother, Coach Rohlman from the DeKalb team came up to him and encouraged him and his team to take their time, and even suggested that they not play the game, given the emotional state of the Madison team. Coach Womack later wrote in a letter to the editor of the DeKalb newspaper, that “this was a wonderful gesture seeing as how [the DeKalb team] had traveled over two hours and any further delay would keep them from returning home at a decent time…this type of display of sportsmanship,” he wrote, “is almost unheard of nowadays.”
Finally, the long-awaited game began. The score remained close throughout the first two periods of play. Near the end of the second period, Johntell Franklin entered the gymnasium…and he was suited up to play. All eyes turned to him. “When [Johntell] came with that uniform on, there was like a hush over the crowd,” his Coach Aaron Womack said. “I almost had to call a time-out to wipe some tears away.” Johntell would later say of that moment himself, “I needed my friends…and my mom would have wanted it that way…”
Of course Johntell’s arrival at the game was a surprise. The young man had not been included in the official roster of players for the night. The rules say that if a player who was not listed on the roster later enters the game that costs the team a technical foul: the penalty is two uncontested free throws for the other team.
Johntell’s coach asked him if he was sure he wanted to play, and then did call a time out. While the team greeted Johntell, Coach Womack informed the referees that he would receive that technical foul for entering a player that was not in the official book. Now well aware of the situation, Coach Rohlman of the DeKalb team argued with the ref and said his team did not want to take the technical foul. Just let the kid play, Rohlman rationally suggested. The referees would not budge. Extenuating circumstances or not, they said, the rules are the rules: technical foul against Madison and two free throws for the DeKalb team. When the refs came over to the DeKalb bench to ask who would shoot the technical, the coaches again argued that they did not want the free throws. The refs dug in, saying “Rules are rules…you’ve got to take the free throws…the kid is not on the roster…that is the rule…”
Seems as though transfiguration was about to WOW the crowd gathered on that Saturday night. Without hesitation, Coach Rohlman of the visiting DeKalb team, gathered his players around him, and asked, “Who wants to take these free throws?” Number 11—starter, senior point guard—Darius McNeal put up his hand. His coach quietly said to him, “You realize you’re going to miss, right?” With a smile, Darius nodded his head and walked alone to the free throw line. He held the basketball as if preparing to shoot, and then purposefully, bounced the ball just in front of himself, and it rolled lazily under the basket. The ref picked it up from out of bounds, threw it back to Darius, who positioned himself for the second shoot. The same thing happened…the ball fell far short, bouncing in front of Darius, then rolling out of bounds. Darius McNeal, high school senior, had volunteered to miss the free throws, to miss them on purpose and the entire gym, aware of the unfolding scene, stood and cheered the visiting player and his team. Asked about the free throws Darius McNeal said, quote, “I did it for the guy who lost his mom. It was the right thing to do.”
And indeed it was the right thing to do. It was the extraordinary thing, the transformative thing. It was a moment that sports writers nationwide hailed as “almost unheard of sportsmanship and class…” But it was much more than that. In that moment, if eyes were open to see, there was transfiguration in that high school gymnasium. Like the moment on the mountaintop of old, this was a moment of drama and clarity…a moment of grace that brought people into a place a little closer to God and God’s glory.
Miraculously, the moment of transfiguration—of seeing the radiance of Divine grace played out between two rival teams—did not cease with the final horn at the end of the fourth quarter. No, these two teams left the gym to do what they do each time they meet…they went to share a pizza dinner together. “Four kids to a pizza,” one of the coaches happily told the local paper, “two Madison kids and two DeKalb kids…” Sounds to me like more than a game… more even than nationally-recognized sportsmanship… sounds to me like transfiguration, like meeting directly with God who just happens to suggest a couple of missed free throws and then who playfully serves up grace in a slice or two of pizza.
WOW! As of old, God does it again and again and again! Transfiguration right there on a high school basketball court followed by transfiguration at the pizza parlor! I wonder where God will be transfiguring next.
