Recorded
Version On Being a Real Man

David Orendorff · Luke 18:9-14 · October 28, 2007

This is United Methodist Men’s Sunday in the UMC.  We are asked to recognize the United Methodist Men’s groups of our congregations.  But at Bear Creek we don’t have an official United Methodist Men’s Group so what are we to celebrate?  I decided to celebrate men of faith.  I offer my apologies to you who are women because the sermon will focus on being a man.  I pray you will endure this with patience and maybe learn something about we who men are.

We live in a region where it is tough to be Christian.  I may be wrong but it seems to be harder for men.  For example, in the average church there are significantly fewer men. Being a spiritual person seems generally more acceptable for women.  Only sissy men go to church and pray to God.

Men don’t talk much about what it means to be a man.  The women’s rights movement has caused a lot of conversation about what it means to be a woman, but real men are just supposed to know what that means.  And besides, if you have to ask you obviously aren’t one. And so though we might be confused or wonder we don’t dare admit it.  So we unconsciously pass stereotypes from man to man and generation to generation.

I learned early that real men like and play sports.  So as a youth I was active in sports.  I played basketball, football and baseball.  I was never a gifted athlete but I was at least trying to be a man.

I had a variety of coaches.  Some of them were terrific, some of them stank.  I wish I had had Coach Joe Ehrmann. He coaches not only on the sport but also on being a real man. At practice he leads his players in a warm up unlike any I experienced.

“What is our job as coaches?” Ehrmann asks.

“To love us!” the Gilman boys yell back in unison.

“What is your job?” Ehrmann shouts back.

“To love each other!” the boys respond.

In 2004 Parade magazine ran on article on Ehrmann and his coaching philosophy.1 Parade Magazine, August 29, 2004 (pp. 4-7)  Ehrmann is a former NFL star who at 55 was an assistant coach of Gilman High School in Baltimore.  For most coaches winning is what it is about, for Ehrmann coaching is about building men.  He has a philosophy that I like.

First he says there are three falsehoods boys are taught about being a real man.

1. Athletic ability:  In our society athletes are heroes whether they want to be or whether they like it.  We pay them enormous salaries, give them all kinds of public exposure and even create fantasy teams of our favorites.  Every boy growing up toward manhood compares himself to the athletes on TV and in his school.  To be slow, clumsy, or a “girly man” is to be worthless.  To be the star athlete is to get public praise (and often the girls).
2. And getting the girls is the second falsehood of being a real man.  Ehrmann calls it sexual conquest.  Sociologists know that males who are seen as attractive to females get better jobs and achieve public praise more often than the unattractive.  Just look at politics in which being sexually attractive is a prerequisite to running for major office.  Ugly men rarely win.
3. And this leads us to the final falsehood of being a real man which is power, which in our culture usually means economic success.  Those who have positions of power and/or are financially successful are heroes.  Powerful rich men fascinate us and we will listen to them when we won’t listen to others, e.g. Donald Trump.

When all three falsehoods merge we get a Kobi Bryant whose public image (I don’t know what he is really like) becomes a false model of manhood.

Now just so women don’t think men are the only stupid part of the human race, I want to say that women almost always unconsciously support this false image of being a man.  Most women find themselves attracted to men with rich or powerful men with athletic good looks.  The woman’s side of these lies is that being a real woman is being attached to a real man.  The best women even marry men who are physically fit (if not actively athletic), are attractive to other women, and have money or power.  The consequence is that women will abuse themselves, emotionally or physically, so they might get the right man. This false stereotype of being a real woman is as sad as the false stereotype of being a real man, but that is a whole other sermon.

Now I don’t argue that all athletes or all men serve the lies of masculinity, but I do argue that all we who are male live under or against the power of these lies and that these lies shape who we are.  All of us can sometimes be caught comparing ourselves to other men, men who are more handsome (or uglier), have power and seem to attract women.  All of us are at times caught wishing we could be like the “real men” of the lies.

Ehrmann, who has had success in the three lies, argues that athleticism, sexuality and money are not the best measures of being a man and he teaches his athletes something quite different.

To be a better man, to be a real man, he says:

1. Recognize the “three lies of false masculinity.”  Only a few males will ever be real men if the three lies are true.  To be a real man it is important to know the lies for what they are and to reject them as the basis of our understanding for our own masculinity.
2. Allow yourself to love and be loved.  The lies of manhood teach boys that being a man is about power (physical, sexual and financial).  But Ehrmann is teaching his athletes that being a real man is about the quality of the relationships we enjoy in our lives.  He wants to know from his kids “What kind of son are you?  What kind of teammate are you?  What kind of friend?”
3. Accept responsibility, lead courageously and enact justice on behalf of others. Ehrmann says that the lies teach a boy that being a real man is getting your own way, even if you have to be a bully and by power coerce others into giving you your way.  Real men, according to these lies, can say, “You’re fired.”  But Ehrmann teaches his boys that real men practice the concepts of empathy, inclusion and integrity.
4. Learn the importance of serving others.  The lies about being a man teach that it is about your own star power, your own conquering of women, and your own financial power.  Ehrmann teaches his boys that being a real man is about asking the question, “What can I do for you?”
5. Develop a cause beyond yourself.  The lies of being a man teach that real men get what they want for themselves.  Hence the real men of the lies hold out on contract disputes regardless of its effect on the team or the company until they get all or most of their own way.  But Ehrmann teaches his boys that real men fight not for themselves but for their partners, their team mates, the children, the poor, and the environment; for causes that are bigger than their own self interest.  Real men leave the world a better place.

It turns out that Ehrmann’s understanding of being a real man comes from his faith.  He is not only a coach, but has a real day job as the pastor of a church.  His understanding of being a real man comes from his understanding of Jesus.  Jesus embodies God become flesh, embodies what God meant manhood to be.

1. In multiple ways Jesus rejects that being a man is based on athleticism when he calls as disciples the lame and sick, the poor and lost.  In his own time Jesus was called “uncomely,” which is a polite way of saying he was hard to look at, i.e. ugly.
2. Jesus constantly calls his disciples to love and be loved.  For Jesus, this is the irrefutable and primary reason that we were created and why we live.  Real men know that God’s fundamental nature is servant love.  And so real men, made in the image of God, are servant lovers.
3. Jesus calls men to accept responsibility for the world around them when he calls his disciples to be about teaching and healing the whole of the world.
4. Jesus’ call to love God, neighbor and self is a call to very specific kinds of relationships; servant caring.  Again and again Jesus’ teachings and actions are about being a servant to the least.
5. And Jesus’ cause is no small cause; it is nothing less than the Kingdom of Heaven, now and forever.  Jesus teaches his disciples, as Ehrmann teaches his boys, that real men (and women) serve not the smallness of their own lives, but the greatest cause of all, God’s reign in every part of life.

Ehrmann, in what might very well be the words of Jesus to the boys and men of today, says, “Masculinity ought to be defined in terms of relationships and taught in terms of the capacity to love and be loved.”  It is the message we receive from Jesus on being a real man.

What little I know of Joe Ehrmann comes from the Parade magazine.  But it seems to me he is a real man in the image of Jesus.  He has taken his message to the inner city of Baltimore where he is the minister and founder of a community center known as The Door.  He has worked in the streets of East Baltimore, which is a pretty tough neighborhood.  “He also co-founded a Ronald McDonald House for the families of the sick and launched a racial-reconciliation project called Mission Baltimore.  Now he’s a pastor of the 4,000-member Grace Fellowship Church and president of a national organization that supports abused children.”2 Parade, Sunday, August 29, 2004, page

As I read the article I wondered, the old lies die hard, what kind of team such coaching might produce.  Sure the kids might be growing in loving ways, but are they winning games.  Don’t losing coaches regularly get publicly castigated and then fired?  So doesn’t winning have to be the main goal of coaching?

Ehrmann is reluctant to talk about winning and losing in the usual terms.  At the end of the article Parade magazine has one small sentence.  The magazine writes:

“Unless pressed for specifics, Ehrmann does not even mention that Gilman finished three of the last six seasons undefeated and No. 1 in Baltimore.  In 2002, the Greyhounds ranked No. 1 in Maryland and climbed to No. 14 in the national rankings.”

Real men, Jesus men, are the winners whether they win this or that game, get the woman or have money.  Ehrmann’s program of love and be loved, take responsibility, serve others, and develop a cause bigger than yourself, seems is successful because it creates men of joy and makes the world a much better place for women and children.  I celebrate men who have discovered this and live it in the face of an often hostile work place and culture.  I pray the Holy Spirit will perfect us so that I might become more fully the real man of Jesus and that by this we might influence a few others toward being real men.

Shalom and Amen.