Max hated the locker room. It wasn’t a mild dislike, like the days he would rather not go to science or choir. Max really dreaded walking into the locker room and confronting first the smelliness of the locker room and then those small lockers. These lockers were really just baskets that you could slide in its track and lock when it was closed. They concealed absolutely nothing. If you were dumb enough to set small things in there they would likely fall to the bottom locker.
To Max it seemed that the slipperiest characters in Jr. High always managed to get the bottom locker. The tough guys who always wanted to prove their manliness by pounding on guys always took the top lockers as a way of showing their superiority. And on the other end, the sly types discovered that booty, free for the snatching, always fell down. The boy who took the bottom row could easily reach anything that fell by taking the basket all the way out. Of course they would have to do it quietly without drawing attention to himself so no one would claim the prize. And of course they never had to admit to actually stealing if someone discovered their loss prize. As long as these sly opportunists didn’t bother to tell anyone the profitable trophies that fell their way they could keep them as their own. And if the real owner discovered what happened in time, and thus forcing the sly bottom row fox to give back the booty, he could cover his intentions by making a scene of yelling at the loser in front of everyone else. Somehow being angry and making a lot of noise about keeping your stuff where it belonged seemed to cover up their less honorable intentions. To Max it had ceased to be funny that anger was used to cover deceitfulness, but that was part of Jr. High locker room life. Max hated it.
Other things in the Jr. High locker room were even worse. Max dreaded the Jr High boys who had suddenly become very aware of girls. Too much aware for Max.
Adults might smile as they remember this time of raging hormones, but for Max it created a war zone. You see the whole bunch of them were somehow nervous about the whole thing. In grade school most of the boys didn’t care about girls. Now in Jr. High, the guys with open-minded parents who didn’t bother to teach them things like the preciousness of others, these guys saw girls as another way to prove themselves. For some of them it was an out-right obsession. Complicating the scenario was the fact that most of the girls in Jr. High wouldn’t give these boys the time of day. Therefore, the combination of an inner chemical drive that wouldn’t quit and a lack of self-control on the outside created a tense situation for anyone who didn’t want to go along with them. These boys freely expressed their emotions, attitudes and desires in the locker room. Often they were loud and coarse. They thought it was manly, that it lifted their self worth to talk dirty, tell coarse jokes and make the more sensitive boys uncomfortable.
Teasing and taunts were always in order in the locker room. Often they were not kind. No they were cruel at times. The only time the atmosphere cleaned up was when Coach happened to come walking through.
There seemed to be an automatic alarm that went off in tough boys whenever the Coach was about to walk through. Within the time it took to sneeze, cough, or give some other signal, the locker room would be transformed from a Jr. High version of the Abu Ghraib (aboo grheb) prison to a locker room of fine, upstanding adolescent boys who came from the best and most moral families in the communities. Or at least that was the image they tried to put on fort coach so he wouldn’t get suspicious of what was really going on. The only important point for them not getting in trouble all the while having all the fun they could. Usually they succeeded.
It was their humiliating behavior Max dreaded most. Most of time the boys thought they did it for fun. However, this fun, this locker room floor show, almost always required the price of a ticket. Not a ticket from each boy, mind you, but a ticket paid for all the boys’ fun, except the one who had to pay. That one boy was the one who had to pay the price with himself. He paid in hurt emotions, a painfully damaged ego and a scarred self-esteem. It was a costly price to pay.
It wouldn’t have worked as well to pick on two boys usually. It would have been too difficult for the ringleader bully to humiliate two boys at the same time because he had to watch the victim’s emotions closely looking for signs of weakness. Once that weakness was found, it was then that the pack of wolves would close in on the kill, err, I mean began to have fun. Any sign of emotional weakness was like a speck of blood on a chicken in a farmyard. Farmers say that the other chickens will pick at the speck of blood, even as it gets worse, until the victim lies dead, or rescued by the farmer. This was the biggest reason why Max hated the locker room. The smelliness, the funky basket lockers and the humor were all irritating, but he dreaded the degradation done in the name of fun. Locker rooms have their favorite victims. Anyone could be it, but the easier marks produced the most fun in the least amount of time.
Max had been told at home that the way he chose to behave in Jr. High could easily become life long habits. Yuck! Mac did not want to act like these guys for the rest of his life! Max’s mom had done a good job of drilling this lesson home since his earliest days. Max did not want to grow up as a locker room jerk.
At one time Max had joined in the taunting. It wasn’t because he wanted to. At first it was simply to make sure that he wasn’t the daily victim. Max figured if he was one of the tormentors, the tormentors wouldn’t pick on him. One day, however, Max felt guilty. At first he tried to talk himself out of the guilt be telling himself it was only fun. That’s what the other boys said. That “It is only done in fun” logic ceased to hold water the day he saw pain on a victim’s face. As the boy left the locker room having endured the group’s shame, Max could see the beginnings of tears on a very hurt face. That face, a picture of half-hidden pain, touched Max’s sensitivities.
His mother’s lessons had paid off. Max was tuned in to his own feelings enough to notice another’s pain. Max’s mom had taught him that everyone was important. It was this lesson that helped Max acknowledge the pain on the boy’s face.
That picture of a face in pain also knocked holes in all his other arguments as well. Max knew shame was a very potent pain. It left no physical evidence, but shame often left hidden bruises that wouldn’t heal for years. A story Max had read once about a kid who committed suicide after some of his classmates had abused him drove the truth home. Max knew pain of shame was real. He had also experienced it.
Max’s latest experience of shame came the day after Ash Wednesday. At the Ash Wednesday service Max had written his sins down on a piece of paper and gone forward. At the front of the church he had dropped his sheet of paper through the sin shredder. The sin shredder was a paper shredder set over a waste basket. It helped to see your sins shredded to know God had really forgiven you. It wasn’t anything like seeing Christ’s shredded back, but Max couldn’t imagine that. Max then stood in line to take Christ’s cross on his forehead. This ashen smudge was supposed to be a way to identify yourself with Jesus. Max thought the idea was cool. Max liked Jesus. Max wanted to identify with his Savior. Then after the service the whole family went out for ice cream. Max’s dad said they should not be ashamed of their faith, and so going out for ice cream became their foray into a heathen world clearly identifying themselves with Jesus’ team. Max was uncomfortable at first, but enjoyed the camaraderie he felt with his family as they all sat eating ice cream and talking about silly they felt. It was here one of the locker room gang had seen Max with a cross on his forehead.
In the locker room the next day the taunting began. ‘Religious,’ and ‘little Christian,” and ‘holier-than-thou’ type words were used to prod Max for any emotional weakness. Fortunately for Max, Coach suddenly walked into the locker room to tell the guys to hurry up and get out on the gym floor. He stood there clapping his hands chanting, “Come on! Come on! Let’s go! Let’s go!” just in time to cut the taunting short. Every once in a while he would break his rhythm to throw in a boy’s name to motivate someone who wasn’t moving fast enough. When the coach got after them unexpectedly that day it threw the whole class off balance. Not knowing what was coming next stopped the taunting in a heart beat. It also helped that everyone suddenly wanted to leave the scene of a crime in progress quickly. The ringleaders thought that maybe Coach had seen more than they wanted him to.
I have no scientific studies to back me up, but maybe Jr. High boys learn the same way chickens learn a lesson. A study once measured the time it took a chicken to learn a lesson. If the chicken’s concentration was interrupted with an electric shock within 2 seconds of learning a new behavior, it forgot what it learned. These boys apparently forgot about Max’s ash-crossed forehead when they got back to the locker room that day because not another word was said. Apparently the electric shock of the coach’s presence interrupted what surely should have been a week long locker room floor show performed at Max’s expense. Instead, they picked on a regular favorite out of habit. Max was relieved that day.
Now, however, everyday as Max entered the locker room he dreaded what was bound to happen. Sooner or later they were going to target him again because they had surely seen a moment of panic in his face, a sign of emotional weakness. Max felt naked walking into the locker room everyday now. Could Max handle the pressure that was sure to come? Max wasn’t sure.
Maybe he could just tell them to knock it off. “Naw,” Max thought, “doing that could just as easily be taken as a sign letting them know they were getting close to his emotional buttons.”
Maybe he could just say his parents had made him go. He could call them old-fashioned, old school, holier than thou types, or too strict. As soon as he thought the idea he began to feel queasy inside. All he could think of was Peter in the high priest’s courtyard denying that he even knew Jesus.
Max wondered if he was any stronger than Peter was. “Would he cave like Peter did?” thought Max. Max really didn’t know. He remembered Peter’s bravado about standing with Jesus. It kind of sounded like the guys in the locker room. “Yea,” Peter thought, “but then he ran away! What would Max do?
How about you? What will you do when it comes time to stand for Jesus? Will you show up like Peter did, but not go in where Jesus was? Will you try to keep silent as others peg you for a Christian, a follower of Jesus, a holy roller? It doesn’t matter the actual words they use. We all know immediately when someone thinks our faith is excessive.
Peter, however, also shows us an answer to this potential problem. It is easy to see that Peter trusted his own strength that night of the trial. Peter trusted his own strength and fell far short. However, 59 days later Peter would preach his first sermon and 3000 people would accept Christ that day! What was the difference? The power of God. The time in the courtyard Peter ran on his own strength. On Pentecost Sunday Peter ran the Holy Spirit strength.
Today I am asking you to fill out a prayer card to pray for those you love, but who don’t love Jesus. Other times I have challenged you to be ready to talk as well if God provides the opportunity. Today I urge you to commit your life to Jesus and let him know that if he will provide an opportunity for you to talk to anyone about him; you will do it, if He will give you the strength.
Read “A Story of New Life: From Cathy to John”
From Evangelical Covenant Church program: Bringing My World to Christ, written here:
"Having recently celebrated Bringing My World to Christ Sunday at our church, i was struck by the Prayer and Evangelism staff’s forward thinking of not converting this into a program but of preserving it as a genuine way of communicating our dependence upoon the Holy Spirit to use us personally to deepen relationships within our world so that no oe we come in contact with on a regular basis has not been invited to a saving knowledge of the Lord.
"One of the persons on my Bringing My World to Chjrist list from last year came to our worship service. He is one of my youngest son’s bvest friends who after graduation jooined the Navy. I took my son and him out to dinner and let him knmow I had been praying for him all year. We had a wonderful time over dinner and when he hugged me, he whispered in my ear, ’Please continue to pray.’"
Ask people to fill out cards
Put the same names on both cards. The card you turn in will not be available to anyone. I won’t even look at them. I say that because some of you might feel embarrassed about putting certain names down. However, I hope that as we pray this year we will become more courageous. Like Cathy, I hope when the time comes we too can share with the people we pray for that we have been praying for them.
Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” (Ac 4:29 NIV) That’s where we want to go in our faith.
When done, tear off the right side and bring it to the communion table and place them face down. The cards themselves will be counted, and then mailed to the Midwest Conference Office tomorrow. If you need more time to fill it out, then bring it back in the next few weeks and we will send in the rest.
Prayer: Dear Jesus, thank you for laying the right people on our hearts.
Now give us the faithfulness to pray for these people.
Give us the faith to trust that you can do all things when we seen nothing happening.
Give us the courage to speak when the time is right.
Give us wisdom to trust you for the strength and right words to say.
Help them to see you in us as we love them in your name, Jesus. Amen!
