Psalm 119:33-40
Galatians 6:1-10

This is an exciting, wonderful time of the year for college football fans.  Winning has become such a driving force in college sports that many coaches’ jobs are on the line nearly every game.  The elevation of the college coach is accelerated beyond what is reasonable.

The importance of the coach was illustrated several years ago in the Kudzu cartoon strip written by Doug Marlett.  Rev. Will B. Dunn is one of characters.  One of those cartoons has Will B. Dunn standing in front of gleeful parents and he is holding their new born child, preparing to baptize the baby.  Rev. Dunn asks, "Have you decided on a name for this child?"  "We have," the parents reply.  "We're giving him the most respected name in the region! A name exalted above all other names!"  Rev. Dunn inquires, "What's that?"  And the parents respond, "Coach.  We’re going to call him Coach."
Several years ago I was attending a conference on preaching in New York.  Dan Ivins, a colleague of mine, and I had gone together to this meeting.  While sitting at a table to eat, Dan looked across the room and said, "That's Coy Franklin."  I didn't know who Coy Franklin was.  We walked over to speak to him and introduced ourselves.  We learned that Coy Franklin was pastor of a church in Alabama. The fact Coy Franklin was a pastor was not the reason Dan Ivins knew or was interested in talking to him.
You see Dan Ivins is an avid fan of the Tennessee Volunteers.  Although he lives in Rhode Island now, he has been known to buy season tickets, and use vacation time to attend Tennessee football games on fall Saturdays.  

What was important to Dan about Coy Franklin was that Coy had played college football for the University of Tennessee.  That elevated the importance of Coy Franklin in Dan's mind.    
In the conversation that Dan and I had with Coy Franklin, Coy shared a significant insight about life as a collegiate athlete.  Coy had two brothers who preceded him in playing football for the University of Tennessee.  Just before practice began in the fall of Coy's senior year in high school one of his older brothers offered him some advice.  His brother said, "Coy, the chances are very good that you will be offered a scholarship to play football in college.  I encourage you to enjoy every minute you play football during your senior year in high school, because it will be the last time you play for fun.  After that, when you receive a scholarship, playing football will be a job.  It will be the job that pays for your college education.  If you can remember that, it will help you.  When you go to practice, remember you're going to work.  Some of your friends will be going to businesses near the campus to work to earn money to help pay for college.  When you are going to practice and to games, you are going to work."  Coy said, "That was some of the best advice I have ever received.  It helped me enjoy my senior year in high school.  And it helped me tremendously in the grueling practices at the University of Tennessee." 

Coy's story helps put things in perspective.  I offer it this morning so that Coy's story may be helpful to all of us.  Coy's brother put playing football in a helpful perspective.  Today, I want us to put life in a helpful perspective.  We can best do this when we live life in the proper mood.  We do not communicate very well if our statements or sentences are in the wrong mood.  We do not live very well if we live in the wrong mood.  I suspect all of us have met people who seemed to have been born in the negative mood. Very often we are invited to live in the comparative or competitive mood.  Actually, we live best when we are in the complementary mood.  Let's explore these moods and see what our Scripture lesson from Galatians has to say about them.

Comparisons occur often in life.  Many parents know how destructive it is to compare their children to each other.  Some parents don't know and never get a clue in spite of how much their children resist the comparisons.  Brothers and sisters do enough comparing of themselves to each other rather naturally without any external pressure. 

One of the worst things a teacher can do for students is to set up one student as the model or example.  It is unfair to the one who is being set up as an example because it increases the expectations to unbearable proportions and causes resentful reactions by other students.  It also is unfair to other students because it is taking the abilities, achievements, and accomplishments of one student and suggesting that what is wanted and needed are clones, as many people as possible who will be just like this one student.  In no way are the unique characteristics and abilities of each student being taken into consideration.    

Many standardized tests are administered in the comparative mood.  A primary objective is to compare each student to all the others who have taken the same test.  What gets lost often is the student's performance and potential.  

A similar approach is taken when athletes are being recruited to play college sports.  A person may be an outstanding athlete.  He may be a tremendous running back or she may be an unbelievable spiker in volleyball.  But much of the evaluation of the athlete will be done in the comparative mood.  How does this athlete compare to that one?

This comparative mood approach becomes contagious and permeates our culture.  We find ourselves constantly comparing ourselves to others.  I do it all the time.  And every time I compare myself to others, I'm always in the middle.  I do it traveling on the interstate.  Always there is someone traveling faster than I am and someone going slower.  I did it on the autobahn in Europe a few years ago where there is no speed limit.  In a rental car we were using, I hid the needle on the speedometer only to look in my mirror and see a driver flashing his lights wanting to pass me.  I've done it vocationally.  I have friends who are pastors of larger churches and friends who are pastors of smaller churches.  I know people who have written more books than I have and people who have written less.  The list is endless.  Regardless of what characteristic is being compared I'm always in the middle and you are too.  There always is someone who is a split second faster and one who is slower.  There always is someone who gets off the ball faster and someone who is just a little slower.  There is someone who cuts quicker, throws the ball sharper, whose grades are a bit better, whose voice is clearer.  On and on.

What I have discovered about the comparative mood is that it quickly sends me into the competitive mood.  When I compare myself to others, I'm always behind somebody.  If comparing myself to others is my goal and objective in life, then I had better shift quickly into the competitive mood and get with it.  I'll work hard at writing more books or finding a bigger congregation or running faster or singing clearer or making better grades.  And I will not do another comparison check until I am sure that I will be ahead of whoever I have identified as my competition.  When I am certain I am ahead, I shift back into the comparative mood and note that sure enough I have moved ahead of that person.  But to my great surprise, some of those I was ahead of have moved up and are now ahead of me.  This is a vicious, life-destroying cycle.  It leads to moodiness and puts people in a bad mood.

What this suggests is that we are making the wrong comparisons and engaging in the wrong type of competition.  Obviously, when we compare ourselves to others, there always will be those who are ahead of us and those who are behind us.  We will forever be stuck in the middle.  But what if we were to compare our performance to our potential.  Apply that in any area of our lives:  athletic ability, scholastic ability, ability to develop and maintain friendships, the use of our abilities to share God's love, how we are doing at work.  How close is your performance to your potential?  Perhaps in some area the gap is extremely narrow while in other areas the gap is amazingly wide.  The instruction from Paul to the Christians in Galatia is, "You should each judge your own conduct.  If it is good, then you can be proud of what you yourself have done, without having to compare it with what someone else has done" (Gal. 6:5).  The narrower the gap between our performance and potential the more nearly authentic we are.  The greater integrity we have.  The more nearly congruent we are.  The closer we are to being on the outside who we know ourselves to be on the inside, the more integrity we have and the more authentic we are.

Each of us needs people who motivate us to reach our potential.  These people are parents, teachers, coaches, friends, maybe even a pastor.  They are encouragers.  They see the potential in us and strive to call it out of us.  They do it through stimulating thought, pointing in a direction, suggesting we try something we had never considered.  Often they see things in us that we do not see in ourselves.  When these encouragers are motivating us, not only are they challenging us to reach our potential, but also they are inviting us to move into the complementary mood.

Whether we are members of a family, a team, a congregation or a combination of these, we need to live in the complementary mood.  That is complementary with an E.  The meaning of complement is to complete.  In another letter Paul used an extensive analogy of the human body for the body of Christ.  Humorously, he portrays what a mess the human body would be in if one hand compared itself to the rest of the body and concluded that it was the most important member of the body and sought to do everything to benefit the hand and thus take away from the rest of the body.  The body would have a huge hand but no feet to take it anywhere and no brain to guide it in its function. 

If we are always comparing ourselves with others or competing with others trying to get ahead of them, we aren't complementing the family, the team, or the church.  We help complete the family, the team, and the congregation to which we belong by striving to reach what our potential is.  Invariably, there are those on a team who attempt to go it alone.  They try to accomplish as an individual what only a team can do.  Each year one of the best teams in the NCAA basketball tournament is beaten by a less talented team.   Usually what happens is the players on the more talented team forget one important aspect of the game, basketball is a team game.  Many years ago when Patrick Ewing was drafted by the New York Knicks, there was tremendous hype about his professional career and what an impact he would have on the team and on the NBA.  In the midst of all the excitement a reporter asked Ewing a question that implied he would single-handedly reshape the New York Knicks to which Ewing replied, "One ain't a team."  Whenever we try to go it alone, we have moved out of the complementary mood and into the comparative mood.  As in math so it is with a team, a family, a congregation, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  
      
Coy Franklin's brother helped put football in a healthy perspective for him.  Rather than comparing himself to others, rather than competing with team members trying to be better than all of them, Coy began to explore how he could complement the team of which he was a part.  It was hard work.  It was a job that paid for his college education.  But what he had to do was strive to get his performance and his potential closer and closer together.  The only way he could do that was to live and work in the complementary mood rather than the comparative or competitive mood. 

The same is true for us in the lives we live.  Our lives will be complementary if the only comparison is to compare our performances with our potentials.  The only way to live complete lives is to strive to be the best human beings we can be in serving God.  That is accomplished by giving ourselves to God and inviting God to help us develop the gifts God has given us to reach our potentials to be the best human beings we can be.  This is the challenge Paul gave to the Chrisitians in Galatia, "You should each judge your own conduct.  If it is good, then you can be proud of what you yourself have done, without having to compare it with what someone else has done" (Galatians 6:4).  It is the challenge of living our lives in the complementary mood.  It is the challenge to rally us to love God with all our hearts, minds, and souls and to love each other as we love ourselves.  Let’s rally together to live in the complementary mood being the best human beings we can be by striving to get our performance closer and closer to our potential.

Let’s do that as individuals and as a congregation.  Let’s compare our performance as a congregation to our potential. We need not compare our ministry to that of another congregation or our staff or our budget or our circumstances to another congregation.  Let’s compare our performance as a congregation to our potential as a congregation.  When we do this we will live in the complementary mood. When we do this we will move our performance closer and closer to our potential. Let’s live our lives in the complementary mood.