That's the rather impudent query that sprouted on tee-shirts after Duke's back-to back basketball national championships. Talk is cheap, but can you do what it takes to get in the game? Richard Hays, in his commentary on Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, says that sums up today's epistle, First Corinthians 9:24-27. One of you once congratulated me, during one of Duke's winning seasons for “never once mentioning basketball in a sermon. “I can see your point. At this time of year, around here, the greatest competitor of the cross is a rubber sphere about the size of a…basketball.
One Sunday a few years ago, just about this time of year, I was reaching a crescendo in my sermon, bringing everything together with great emotion, when (unknown to me) the local radio station carrying the ser…