A little help please

[SMUstang]

The one and only Texas game in Ownby Stadium.

I doubt that is true except for games post 1948. SMU use to play all their home games in Ownby prior to moving into the Cotton Bowl to acommadate the crowds wanting to watch Doak Walker.

OK I should have said in modern times. touche

[MrMustang1965]

Help! I am working on my sermon for this Sunday and I need some help. Part of my sermon has to do with my favorite team of all time, the guys who played the first year following probation. I am having trouble remembering any names past Mike Romo. Can anyone give me some help with the names of several of these SMU heroes?

Thanks!

Here is Terry's sermon from last Sunday. A wonderful & inspiring message. He has given me permission to post it on www.ponyfans.com.
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January 22, 2006


“It’s Up to Us”



As most, if not all of you know, I grew up in the wonderful city of Dallas, Texas. More specifically, I spent most of my time on the campus of Southern Methodist University, home of the Mustangs. I am one of those people, even as an adult, who live for their college, suffering a thousand deaths at each loss and celebrating each win. In fact, if you were to cut me open, I would undoubtedly bleed red and blue. One of the hardest things about living here in Northern KY is that I can’t make it to the various games back in Dallas.

As a kid, some of my earliest and best memories come from the times I spent on campus. My dad was a professor at the law school and we only lived a few blocks from the campus, so I spent lots of hours hanging around waiting for him to get out of class, riding my bike around the quadrangle (you could still send your kids out to do that kind of stuff back then), going to Moody Coliseum for basketball games, and heading out with my family to the Cotton Bowl to see the Mustangs play football. From my earliest days, I lived and died by SMU football. I can’t even begin to guess how many games I attended.

Needless to say, when I graduated from high school, there was only one place I wanted to attend. It was during these years that I became one of those fans that you see on TV today. Shortly after I graduated, I got to be part of one of the greatest moments in SMU history, watching the Ponies defeat Pittsburgh in the Cotton Bowl. I also got to be part of the lowest, seeing my beloved Mustangs get the death penalty for cheating and then having the football program cancelled for two seasons. Talk about painful.

But out of this death penalty was born on the greatest seasons in SMU football, something that I will always remember. 2 years later, with a team loaded with freshman, mostly players that no one else wanted, SMU football came back. The players, kids by the name of Mike Romo, Jason Wolfe, Mike Bowen, Uzo Ukeke, are names that none of you have ever heard, but they are some of the most amazing people that I ever had the chance to watch play football. That first year, 1989, was both painful and magical. The loss to teams like Texas, Texas Tech and Texas A&M. The University of Houston hung 95 points on them one Saturday afternoon. But they also won two games, and the admiration of lots of people.

One game, in particular, stands out for me. On a beautiful fall afternoon, my Ponies arrived in South Bend to play Notre Dame. Beneath the storied Touchdown Jesus, the Ponies lined up to play one of the top teams in the country. We were living in Iowa at the time and I had the chance to see the game on TV. It was quite a game. The undersized and undermanned SMU players put up a good game, but lost 59-6. But there was something about that day that I will always remember. After the opening kickoff, when the SMU offense came out onto the field, I looked at them on the screen and wondered what was going through their minds. As they stood in the huddle, with 59,000 fans screaming at them, I wonder if it ever occurred to these guys that it would be a whole lot easier just to stay in the huddle and not go to the line of scrimmage. Can you blame them? It had been a long season, and if they actually did what they were ‘called’ to do, they would undoubtedly get bruised and dirty and beat up—they might even fall flat on their faces and get laughed at. It is a lot easier and safer just to hang in the huddle where you won’t get beat up, where you stay nice and clean and everything stays perfect.

It is actually a rather silly thought, isn’t it? The idea of a football team, or any other team, staying in the huddle rather than mixing it up seems so far fetched that it would never happen. But I have discovered that this is a very interesting and powerful metaphor for our Old Testament story this morning from Jonah, and also, unfortunately, for the Church today.

The story of Jonah is one of the favorites in all of Scripture. If you grew up in the church, you no doubt know it well. God asks Jonah to go to Ninevah, an incredibly corrupt city, and call them to repentance. It is a call that Jonah doesn’t want, so he splits. God told him to go one direction, and he went the other. Basically, he refused to play in the game. He pouts, he frets, he gripes at God. While on the ship running from God, God reminds Jonah who is in charge. The wind picks up, the waves crash over the side of the boat, and everyone starts to fear for their life. In a panic, Jonah’s shipmates toss him overboard where he is swallowed by a big fish, held for three days, and finally spit up on dry land.

And after all of this, God again asks Jonah to go to Ninevah and call the people to repentance. Reluctantly he heads out, trudging across the city for three days, screaming out ‘people of Ninevah, in 40 days you will be destroyed if you don’t repent of your sins.’ I have the feeling the only reason Jonah finally did this was because he hated the Ninevites, and looked forward to their destruction. Much to his shock and dismay, Jonah’s message is heard, and he is angered to discover that the hated Ninevites respond to God’s warnings and they repented of their sins. While God is pleased, Jonah isn’t—and God scolds him for his lack of grace.

In contrast, look at what is going on in the gospel of Mark, the story of the call of Simon, Andrew, James and John. Upon hearing their call, Mark writes that they left ‘immediately’ to follow Jesus. In fact, all through Mark's gospel, we hear this word—everything happens immediately for Mark. Not only is Mark in a hurry to tell his story, he also tells it with a sense of urgency-with no time to waste. Mark wants us to realize, in this story of the call, that the followers of Jesus, then and now, aren’t just being called to just any journey, but we are being called to be part of a special journey, the journey of the Kingdom of God.

One thing you need to realize about these disciples. They were people that pretty much no one else wanted. You see, when little Jewish boys were growing up, the ones that did really well at Synagogue, who were the smartest and the brightest, were tapped to go on in their education. They were the ones who would end up as Rabbis, and teachers, and scribes. The others, the ones who weren’t so smart, who didn’t show as much promise, ended up becoming fisherman, or tax collectors, or carpenters. But Jesus had this amazing habit of picking people that no one else wanted to follow him. And from these people, amazing things happened.

These two passages provide a backdrop for us as we begin our journey out of the saltshaker, and into the world. It is hard to admit, but there are times, maybe too many of them to count, when the church becomes more like Jonah, preferring to hide, to run from God’s call. And who can blame us? Shoot, it’s comfortable in here. It’s safe in here. If we get out of our holy huddle and start doing what God intends the church to do, we might get dirty, or bruised, or laughed at.

But these passages give us a clue as to why we are called to get out of here, of why we are to get out of the saltshaker. First, if we don’t hear and answer the call of God, the work of the Kingdom won’t get done. If Jonah had refused to go to Ninevah, they would have never heard the call to repent and experienced God’s grace. It is really amazing to realize that God thinks so much of us, the church, that He left all of this work of the Kingdom for us to do. Fortunately, we have the power of the Holy Spirit with us, so we aren’t alone as we head out. But, the important thing is this: if we don’t answer the call of God, it won’t get done. God seems to have no other plan than for us to do it. Scary thought, isn’t it? But that is the way God has it set up.

Secondly, we have to realize that God’s results are different than what we expect. So often, we bad mouth ourselves, talking ourselves into believing that we have nothing to offer to God. We say things like:

“I can’t do that”
“I’m not good enough”
“They won’t listen to me”
“I’m too old”
“I have already done my part”

When we allow those kinds of thoughts to take over our minds, we are just as guilty as Jonah when he walked the other way from God’s call. We are just as guilty as a football team that stays in the huddle. As Jonah discovered, God can and will do amazing things through us when we answer the call. God will do things that we can never begin to imagine.

Third, just like salt does no good in the shaker, we do no good when we hang around our holy huddle at church. It has been said that ministers are a lot like manure. When we are all together, we stink to high heaven. But when you spread us out, we can do some good. Salt is the same way. If it just sits in the shaker, no one gets any benefit out of it. Friends, we have been given this amazing gift of God’s love in Jesus, and we can’t afford to simply sit here with it. We have to answer the call, be willing to go out where we might get dirty and flavor a world that is literally dying to hear the good news of God’s love in Jesus.

I mentioned earlier about the first season back for SMU football back in 1989. All of us, as fans of SMU, will remember that painful score against the University of Houston when we lost 95-21. It was a crushing defeat and everyone who had anything to do with SMU was embarrassed. I know that it had to be difficult for those young freshmen to head back to campus and practice the next week. But 4 years later, when all of those freshmen were seniors, they got to experience something that made many grown men weep with joy as the Ponies defeated Houston 41-16. It was one of the best moments I have ever been a part of. That was the one game I got to attend. But you know what, the victory they experienced never would have happened if these young men had not answered the call, gone through the pain and the hurt and the dirt. If they had given up, if they had never left the huddle, they never would have been a part of the victory.

It is the same for us as followers of Jesus. All of us will cross paths with someone this week who needs to know that they are loved, who needs to experience the grace of God in their lives. And the call is before us this morning. You have been touched by God’s grace in Jesus. Now it’s time to take it with you and give it away.

[PlanoStang]

Thanks for getting that sermon, I was really curious about what it was
about. I was hoping for something about the 89 season.