Nebraska Synod ELCA

by Pastor Kris Bohac

Most anyone who knows me knows that I am a baseball fan. In particular, I am a Chicago Cubs fan, but I also enjoy following the Huskers and we’ve gotten to at least a couple of their games the last few years. I find great joy in baseball. We have season tickets to the Cubs and our daughter and son-in-law live about 7 blocks from Wrigley, so we try to get to as many Cubs games as we can.

I like other sports – especially Nebraska volleyball and football. But baseball is my favorite, and truth be told, any time spent at a ballpark is joy for me. I like my team to win, but that isn’t the only time baseball is joyful. To me, baseball is usually just the right balance of relaxation and excitement. It’s rarely the adrenaline rush of football or volleyball. It is joy just in itself, but my family are all baseball fans – not all fans of the same team, but all keyed in to baseball enough we can talk about it in depth. That connection is also a source of the joy.

I recognize that loving sports and sports teams can cross into idolatry. I know I get way more emotional about baseball than I typically do in worship. I can still get teary when I watch the final out of the 2016 World Series when the Cubs won it all for the first time in 108 years. And I can almost sob when I watch some of the videos that came out after that of people celebrating at a loved one’s gravesite because they didn’t live to see it.

I rarely experience that kind of emotion in worship. In fact, I think I’ve always been suspect of worship practices that try to conjure up that kind of emotion. That could be a whole other topic, but my assignment is to write about cultivating love through joy.

I do feel joy in worship but it’s different. It’s quieter. It’s a sense of the holy when I distribute communion. It’s a sense of being “in the flow” on a particularly good morning at any of the churches I serve. It comes from the easy relationships I have with the people I’ve served with for a long time and the new relationships I’m looking forward to at two new churches.

My spirituality has always been more of the cerebral sort – more about thinking and studying than feeling. To be honest, thinking and studying give me joy. As I’ve matured in my faith, I’ve worked to let some of that spiritual expression slip down to my heart a little more often.

One of the things I’ve come to believe in a more heartfelt way through spirituality practices is that God is not just present in those places we expect God to be. God doesn’t just show up in prayer, word and sacrament, meditation, or Bible study.

God shows up wherever people gather. God shows up in forests and prairies, gardens and cornfields. God shows up in the beauty of an art gallery or a concert. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he lists the fruits of the Spirit. Joy is one of those fruits. I do not read that list as things we’re supposed to do or create in ourselves. They are the fruit borne of the Spirit’s work in us. So, where there is joy, the Spirit is at work…and I believe that includes at a baseball game.

Pastor Kris is a second career pastor who worked for 17 years as an internal medicine physician before attending seminary. After a year as an interim pastor in Lincoln, she was called to Bethlehem in Davey and Zion in Ithaca in 2011 where she has remained since. She recently also began serving Grace Lutheran Church, Swedeburg (Wahoo) and Czech Presbyterian Church in rural Wahoo. She and her husband live in Waverly, NE and have two adult children.