The B-Team

Scripture: 1 Corinthians: 1:18-31

Every now and then, real life plays out with the kind of timing and drama that feels like it comes from a movie. One of the clearest examples for me happened years ago at a youth ministry dodgeball tournament. For whatever reason, this event had a lot energy and hype.   There was a large turnout.  Teams showed up in matching outfits, with chants and strategies ready.  Early in the tournament, one team dropped into the losers’ bracket. The team consisted of a student from the youth group, two of his friends, and his girlfriend. It was obvious to everyone that one member of that team didn’t quite match the others in athletic ability. Still, they clawed their way through the bracket, refusing to get eliminated. Against all odds, they reached the finals.

Because it was double elimination, they had to beat the undefeated team twice. Incredibly, they won the first match. The anticipation grew as the second match started. The final game was electric. Every throw, dodge, and hit drew cheers. Eventually it came down to one player on each side—and they knocked each other out at the same time. We had planned for this rare scenario: a sudden‑death knockout. One player from each team would stand in a marked triangle, each with one ball. Step out or get hit, and you’re out. First team to two points wins.

Their opponents were a team of football players. Our underdog team saved their lone girl for last. The score was tied 1–1 when she stepped into the triangle. The whistle blew. The football player threw high. She ducked, fired low, and hit him clean.  The room exploded. Students rushed the floor and lifted her up. For a moment, it felt like living inside a movie.

This event sticks out because it is honestly the anomaly. Because it is so rare, we love it when the underdog wins, and when the player with more heart than skill carries the day.     Normally the kids picked last get relegated to being present and that is about it.  They never get passed the ball, they get put at the end of the batting order, and they rarely are given the opportunity to shine.   The reality is that the people who tend to be picked last just stop playing the game.  However, those who stick with a sport because they enjoy it, even if they are not the best of the best, get to play on the B-Team.   This morning’s scripture is encouraging, because it is a reminder that God will often use the people that the world relegates the B-Team, to transform the world. 

The church of Corinth is one that Paul knew well.   In Acts chapter 18 we read about how Paul established the church, and it states that Paul spent a year and a half with the Corinthians.  Paul wrote the letter of 1 Corinthians because the church had some friction, there was some division, and we get the impression that things were a little rocky.  However, I think some of that is understandable and maybe a little unavoidable.  I am not sure we always appreciate how much the early churches like the one in Corinth were charting new territory.   As followers of Jesus, they were taking steps into a new way to live.  They were striving to live as a community of believers in a way that was a radical departure from their culture.    

Paul acknowledges this in the beginning of this morning’s scripture.   The congregation of Corinth was a mixture of Jews and Greco-Romans.  Paul points out that the cultures they were immersed in find greater meaning in wisdom or signs, but that they should look to Jesus.   Paul points out that following Christ is going to set the Corinthians apart from their neighbors, because the kingdom of God works differently than the Empire of Rome.  To illustrate this, Paul points to the Corinthians themselves. 

Roman society was highly stratified, and there was no middle class.  A select few were in the upper group, and everyone else was not.   Yet it was a society with a strict social hierarchy and everyone had a good idea of who their superiors were, as well as who they could claim was under them.  For the most part the church of Corinth was not made up of the rich and powerful of the city.    This is a point that Eugene Peterson’s Message paraphrase helps bring out.   Petersen paraphrases verses 26-31 of this morning’s scripture like this: “Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”

Petersen’s paraphrase might be a little harsh in calling the Corinthian church a bunch of nobodies, but he does a decent job at capturing Paul’s points in modern language.   The ways of the cross are foolishness to the world, and the fact that the believers of Corinth were not the wealthiest, most influential, highest prestige, citizens of the city is an example of that.  The wisdom of the age would have been in order to grow a movement and to make real change, then those with influence and power would be the prime people to recruit and rely upon.   Paul points out that was not God’s plan.  It was not God’s plan to use the somebodies of Corinth to bring about transformation, it was God’s plan to use the nobodies, the underdogs, the B-Team to be the start of a world changing movement.  Paul’s point in this morning’s scripture is that to a world that believes it knows better, God’s wisdom and God’s plans can appear like foolishness. 

This was true in the first century and it has been true throughout Christian history.  The people that God chooses to use rarely lines up with the people who would look like sure bets on paper.   There is a story from our Indiana United Methodist history that illustrates this.   To best understand this story, we need some historical background.  The Methodist movement came to what would become the United States when John Wesley sent two of his preachers Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke across the Atlantic.   This led to the founding of the Methodist Episcopal church.  Methodist preachers quickly left the established cities of the East Coast and pushed out with the pioneers into the frontiers.  The Methodist preachers led camp meetings, founded new churches, and preached in circuits.  During this time one the most inspiring and best Methodist preachers was a man named Harry Hoosier.  Thomas Coke once wrote in his journal about Harry: “I really believe he is one of the best preachers in the world. There is such an amazing power attends his preaching.”   Despite being such a gifted preacher, many people immediately discounted the man because of the color of his skin. 

Harry was a freedman who ended up working as the coach driver for Francis Asbury.  Even though he could not read and write, Harry showed a propensity for memorizing scripture.  Asbury began reading the bible to him aloud during their travels.  Over time, Harry began to preach but he was not allowed to preach to everyone.  As they traveled the south to tent meetings, Asbury would preach for the white people and then only afterwards Harry Hoosier was permitted to preach to the enslaved black people.  However, Harry’s preaching was so good and so compelling that many of the white people began sticking around.  As Asbury moved more to the frontier, Harry began to preach more regularly, and his message of grace moved the hearts and saved the souls of unknown number of rustic frontier folks.  

Despite the clear empowering of the Holy Spirit in the life of Harry Hoosier, because of the deeply rooted racism in America he never was fully treated as an equal.   Despite clearly showing fruit, he was never ordained as a Methodist minister.  Despite telling people about the love of God, he found himself ridiculed.  This was especially true of those on the East Coast.  At this time in established costal places like Virginia, the respectable elites of society did not have a high view of the rugged pioneers on the frontier.  They saw them as backwards, uncivilized, and unintelligent.  These mean hearted social elites believed that the pioneer’s willingness to listen to a black preacher was proof of their uncultured ways, so as a way to insult those on the frontier they were dismissed as Disciples of Harry Hoosier or Hoosiers for short.  Harry Hoosier passed away in 1806, but as the frontier pushed West into places like the Ohio River valley referring to rural pioneers as Hoosiers stuck at least in the territory that eventually became the state of Indiana. 

The primary sources are just not there to definitively say where the name Hoosiers originated, but the scholarship is strong that it originated with Harry Hoosier, a black man called by God to be a Methodist preacher.   It was the wisdom of the era that a person like Harry Hoosier could not be an effective preacher.  He was ridiculed, and so were those who responded to his message of grace.   The elites of 18th century saw Harry Hoosier preaching as foolishness, but he was exactly the person God intended to use as one of the best preachers in the world of his time.  

God calls and uses the people that the world might consider to only be worthy of the B-Team, and God uses them to make a real difference.  Harry Hoosier is just one of a great cloud of witnesses that testify to this truth.  Again, it was the wisdom of the age that someone like Harry Hoosier could not be an effective preacher.  What would have happened if Harry had listened to that wisdom?  How many people would have never come to know the saving love of Jesus Christ?   If he had listened to the wisdom of his age, then the good news would not have been shared.   

Similarly, the wisdom of this age is that bigger is always better.   I have to wonder how many people have held back from what God is calling them to do, because they have listened to the wrong wisdom?   How many people have assumed because they do not think they can get the biggest crowd, fill the largest building, or be #1 at something meaningful that it is not worth doing?  How many people are not following God to the best of their ability because they assume they are only B-Team material?    I fear, that the number, whatever it is, is too many. 

 We should take courage and comfort in the statements of this morning’s scripture.  We do not have to be all-star material to play the game, because God chooses the weak, God chooses the lowly-at least those deemed as such by the standards of the world.  Yet this scripture reminds us that “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” 

If you feel that when it comes to your faith and how you live it out, you have been sitting on the sidelines, then perhaps it is time to get in the game.   Perhaps, the dream that you have, the way that you think you might be able to make a difference, the idea you have to bring about real transformation, or the way that you can stand up for justice is the way that God is calling you.    You do not have to be the best at whatever that is, and it is OK if you feel like you are just B-team material, because God has consistently used the B-Team for the transformation of the world again and again.  Not for our own glory, but for the glory of Christ-crucified.  As it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.

 So may you not follow the wisdom of this world but make you seek to follow the wisdom of God.  may you trust that God does not call the equipped, but God equips the called.   Where ever God is leading you, may you be willing to take that step in faith.  Brothers and sisters in Christ, welcome to the B-team, let’s go make disciple and transform the world.