Baby Shark

If you are the parent or grandparent of a young child or children, you know the song “Baby Shark.”

You probably know it even if you aren’t a parent or grandparent. It’s ubiquitous. It’s also everywhere.

It’s even in the world of baseball. Specifically, it’s in the Washington Nationals’ part of the world of baseball.

That’s a part of the baseball world that I usually pay little attention to unless they’re playing the Braves. But now they’re in the World Series and the Braves aren’t, even though the Braves finished ahead of them in the National League’s Eastern Division.

(By the way, I don’t like the wild card. I don’t think baseball teams that don’t win their division should make the playoffs. But I digress.)

But it is what it is. And the Nationals may have won the World Series by the time you read this.

Now back to our story.

Washington’s “Baby Shark” craze started back in June when Nationals outfielder Gerardo Parra started using the song as his walk-up music.

(By the way, I’m old enough to remember when baseball players didn’t have walk-up music. The announcer announced their names and they walked up to the plate. I miss those days. I also despise the designated hitter. But I digress.)

Parra chose the song because his kids like it. That’s a very good reason.

Our grandson Sullivan likes it too. His version is better than anyone else’s version. Our granddaughter Isabella is too young to sing, but if she could, her version would be better than anyone else’s too.

Now “Baby Shark” is a thing in Washington. People at Nationals games do the motions (does “YMCA” have competition? ). Grown people wear shark costumes to the games. Players “chomp” with their arms.

(Such chomping is too Florida Gators-like for my taste. But I digress).

How big a thing is it in Washington? Watch the Washington National Cathedral Organists Play "Baby Shark” and you’ll see how big a thing it is. It’s a very big thing.

You might also watch some Lebanon Protestors sing "Baby Shark.”

Thousands of protestors have been in the streets of Lebanon’s capital city Beirut. They’re protesting about economic conditions and government corruption.

The other day, a mother and her fifteen month-old son were in their car when it became surrounded by protestors. The mother told the protestors that her son was frightened. About a dozen of them sang “Baby Shark” to him to calm his fears.

“Baby Shark” is an earworm song. It gets in your head, and you can’t get it out. It’s irritating.

I don’t really care that it makes Washington Nationals fans happy.

But if it brings joy to children, I’m all for it.

Here’s a thought: what if we judged all of our policies and practices by the answer to this question: is it good for children—for our children, for America’s children, and for the world’s children?

Yes, that just might be a good thing to do, do, do, do, do, do.

The Gospels

I’m in the middle of teaching a college course on the New Testament, and we just finished talking about the Gospels. I’m also about to start teaching another course, this one on just the Gospels.

So I’ve had the Gospels on my mind. This is a good thing.

Here are a few fun facts about the Gospels.

First, they were all written well after Jesus lived, died, and rose again. The Gospel of Mark is probably the oldest of the Gospels, dating to around 70 A.D. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke were probably written ten to twenty years after Mark, and John a few years later than Matthew and Luke. During the years between Jesus’ departure and the first written Gospel, preachers and teachers shared the stories about and teachings of Jesus orally.

Second, the Gospels are all anonymous. None of them say who wrote them. The titles (“The Gospel According to Mark,” for instance) were added later.

Third, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are close kin. We call them the Synoptic Gospels; “synoptic” means “seeing together.” We call them that because of their similarities. Most of what’s in the Gospel of Mark is also in Matthew and Luke, so most scholars think that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. (By the way, Luke tells us right up front that he used sources. It’s in Luke 1:1-4.)

Matthew and Luke also contain a lot of sayings of Jesus that Mark doesn’t have. Most scholars think they had access to a “Sayings Source” (we call it Q, abbreviated from the German Quelle, which means “source”). No such document exists, but scholars infer its one-time existence from the texts of Matthew and Luke. For example, most of what Jesus says in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5–7) is also in Luke’s Gospel, but the sayings are scattered all over the book. So it seems that Matthew and Luke both had a source that contained those sayings, but each of them organized and presented them in different ways.

Fourth, the Gospel of John is a much different kind of book than the other three Gospels. Most of what is in John’s Gospel isn’t in the other three. Only John has Jesus’ “I am” sayings (“I am the bread of life”; “I am the light of the world,” etc.). On the night Jesus is betrayed, John tells of Jesus’ washing his disciples feet, but not of his establishing the Lord’s Supper.

Fifth, there are four Gospels in the New Testament. They tell the story of Jesus in different ways. You may or may not have wondered why we have four stories of Jesus rather than just one.

Some folks have tried to construct a single story out of the four New Testament Gospels. In the second century, a fellow named Tatian compiled a harmonized version of the Gospels called the Diatessaron (“Harmony of Four”). It was popular for a while, but it fell out of favor. By their ongoing use of the four Gospels, the early Christians decided that four were better than one. (You can acquire a modern version of a harmony of the Gospels, but I agree with the early Christians: four are better than one.)

So why do we have four Gospels? Each Gospel comes from and addresses a different community in a different setting. The writers present the story of Jesus in ways that address the situation of the community for which they are writing. They interpret the story of Jesus in varying ways in order to proclaim the same truth to different communities: the crucified and resurrected Jesus is the Messiah and Savior.

Sixth, two thousand years later, the Gospels continue to challenge, convict, inspire, and instruct us. Christians should read them because they teach us of Jesus and of what it means to follow him. Everyone should read them because they are utterly fascinating.

Seventh and last, the word “Gospel” means “good news.” The four Gospels contain the best news that has ever been told. So I encourage you to read them.

We sure could use the good news today.

Processes and Responses

At 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday, December 12, 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision that, on a 5-4 vote, decided the case of Bush v. Gore in George W. Bush’s favor. It was and is a controversial decision. It would have also been controversial had it gone the other way.

Gore had won the popular vote by over half a million votes. But, once Bush had Florida in his column, he had the majority of the Electoral College votes.

I’ll be upfront and tell you—surely to the surprise of no one who knows me and/or reads my writings—that the decision didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. I voted for Gore because I thought he’d be a better president than Bush, so I wanted the Court to rule in his favor.

But it didn’t. And on the next day, Wednesday, December 13, 2000, Gore conceded the election to Bush. As I understand it, Gore had other options. But he chose to concede so the country could move on. He put what seemed to be the nation’s best interests ahead of his personal political ambitions.

I was proud of our nation when no riots broke out in American cities and towns on Thursday, December 14, 2000. While I believed that a flawed system had placed the wrong person in the White House, I was nonetheless grateful that we accepted the results the system had given us.

Half of the American electorate didn’t like the way the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, and thus the presidential election, turned out. Many Democrats believed that Bush was an illegitimate president. As time went on, a lot of us didn’t think Bush was a very good president.

But we didn’t revolt. We didn’t threaten insurrection. Many of us thought the system had failed, but we begrudgingly accepted the results and tried to move on.

Now, some of you are thinking, “Yeah, but lots of you turned out after Donald Trump’s win in 2016. You didn’t just accept the results and move on.”

You’re right about that. Many of us turned out and demonstrated (I didn’t, but I have beloved family members and friends who did. I try to do my part by writing) because we believed that, unlike Bush, the newly elected president embodied a rejection of fundamental American principles, not to mention basic human dignity. We believed that the threat to our Constitution and to our nation needed to be identified as such.

Now we have reached a point where an impeachment inquiry is underway. We’ll see where it goes. Some of us think it’s necessary, while others of us think it isn’t. That’s a matter of opinion, and everybody has one of those.

Here’s what isn’t a matter of opinion: impeachment is the constitutional process for removing a president from office for cause. The relevant clause, found in Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States, reads: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

The House of Representatives is charged with passing articles of impeachment, and the members of the Senate with serving as jurors in a trial presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Senators vote on whether to convict or acquit.

This is the third impeachment inquiry into a president that the nation has experienced in my lifetime. The House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, but he resigned before the House voted on them. The House impeached Bill Clinton, but the Senate acquitted him.

We’ll see where the current impeachment inquiry goes.

I’m just asking that we all recognize the legitimacy of the process. This is the process our Founding Fathers set up, and we need to trust it.

If, upon its completion, people who are displeased with its outcome feel a need to respond, I hope we will do so in orderly and peaceful fashion.

You know, like many people did in the Women’s March on Washington on the day after President Trump’s inauguration.