Had Alabama ever seen a parade like it? – Yes, on that cold January day in 1983 when the white hearse rolled the 51 miles from Tuscaloosa to the cemetery in Birmingham.  What a scene!  For the first mile, Alabamans lined the route four deep!  And for all the way, in ones and twos — every one of them paying tribute to the winningest football coach of all time (at least, up until then):  Paul (“Bear”) Bryant!
                            
    Now, with all due apologies to Auburn, Georgia, Florida, and other fans, I must spend the next few minutes talking about Bear.  During his coaching career he led his teams to 323 victories in all.  And in his 25 years as head coach at Alabama the Crimson Tide won the national championship six times!
   
    All sorts of stories are TOLD about Bear.  He’s supposed to have earned his nickname by having wrestled a bear at age eleven.  He loved — at least, earlier in his coaching career — to guzzle “Salty Dogs,” a mixture of gin, grapefruit juice, and salt.  As early as 1965, Time magazine could say, “Bryant is college football’s most controversial coach.  He may also be its best.”

    Friends, consider with me today “The Breath of the Coach.”  And please don’t think I’m talking about Bear Bryant’s breath after he’d been gulping “Salty Dogs!,” either.  No, “Breath of the Coach”— believe it or not! — is the very phrase Jesus uses in our Gospel for this Pentecost that I read from John, chapter 15.  Listen again to verse 26:  “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.”


    Now always in the Bible the words “spirit” and “breath” and “wind” are the same  Jesus here is talking with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion.  He knows that his time is up.  And he’s trying to prepare, to fortify them for what  lies ahead.  Earlier he’d declared (John 14:16):   “I am going to the Father,” he tells them.  But “the Father . . . will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit” — “the WIND, the BREATH!”

    Friends, if the word “spirit” in the Bible can be translated “breath,” then the word “Advocate,” or “Paraclete,” I contend, can be rendered as “COACH.”  -- THE BREATH of the COACH!  Tell me, what’s the PURPOSE of a coach?  -- Well, let’s look at what a coach DOESN’T do.  The coach doesn’t PAMPER us!  Did Bear Bryant ever BABY anyone on his teams?  When, standing on the sidelines, he saw one of his players bark his shin, did Bear burst into tears and rush out with a silk handkerchief to dab the blood?

    NO!  A GOOD coach doesn’t coddle.  And yet far too many church folk erroneously view the Holy Spirit as a Pamperer!  In fact, the King James Version of our Bible, beautiful as it is, has led us astray at this point.  It mistranslates the Greek word  “Paraclete” as “Comforter,” making us think this is the Holy Spirit’s chief role.  “Comforter” suggests a woolly blanket that we might pull up about our ears on a winter afternoon.  To be sure, a coach, on occasion, does have to console her or his team.  When the players have given their all, but it’s not been enough to win; when the locker room is filled with downcast eyes and maybe even a tear or two, a GOOD coach does try to offer words of solace.  But comforting’s only one tiny part of his or her overall role.

    What, then, DOES our Coach, the Holy Spirit, DO for us? – MANY things!  Let me mention just a few.  FIRST, the coach TEACHES us, shows us how to play the game. The great Knute Rockne devoted fully HALF of his book Coaching to diagrams and explanations of football plays.  Our divine Coach, the Holy Spirit, teaches us, trains us.  Indeed, says Paul, the Spirit, in our prayers, “intercedes” for us, “with sighs too deep for words!”

    When you and I read the Bible, or hear it preached, it’s the Holy Spirit who causes us to understand and to respond.  When we share the consecrated bread and wine of Holy Communion, as on this Festival Day, it’s the Holy Spirit who causes us, in faith, to be nourished with the Body and Blood of Christ.

    A second duty of the coach, however, is to SHAPE us.   What rigorous physical training a GOOD team must undergo!  The drills!  The calisthenics!  The practices!  A player’s BODY must actually undergo physical changes to be of assistance to the team!  The flabby child of summer CAN’T be molded into shape OVERNIGHT!  It takes WEEKS, MONTHS of training!                           

    The same’s true in our becoming mature CHRISTIANS.  It’s not an overnight task.  Presbyterians, unlike some OTHER Christians, see sanctification as a gradual process.  Our Holy Spirit Coach doesn’t transform anyone instantly into a perfect player!  Wisely and patiently the Spirit coaxes us through our spiritual exercises:  prayer, worship, the Word, the Sacraments.  And slowly, sometimes painfully, we do (amazingly enough!) begin to change into something of what God intends for us to be!

    A THIRD duty of a coach is to build a TEAM!  On the football field there’s no room at all for prima donnas!  TEAMWORK is everything!  Even Joe Namath, for all his outstanding athletic ability --first at Alabama and, later, with the New York Jets and, tinally, the Los Angeles Rams — even Namath, for all his flamboyance and playboyism and outrageous cross-dressing for women’s Beautymist hosiery — even Namath was NOTHING without the team!  And the same is true within the Church!  The Holy Spirit doesn’t exist to bathe Christians in invididual limelights, in narcissistic isolation from other believers!

    We Presbyterians, at our best, have always held fast to that.  We’ve always seen Holy Spirit Coach as mainly building the Team.  Such is evident NOT only in the way we GOVERN our church but even in the way you and I worship together.  In our services no one cries out, “Amen!” or “Halleluiah!”  No one jumps up and begins talking about his or her own particular experience with Christ.  Instead, in our worship, we say our responses in unison, say our prayers, sing our hymns together.  Our revivalistic sister denominations sometimes call us cold and formal.  And maybe they have a point.  Maybe something of the chill winds of the Scottish Highlands DOES linger a bit in our worship. But could it be, instead, that we Presbyterians, together with other mainline churches, have an even better understanding of the Holy Spirit as Coach, as Teambuildier, than even the so-called Pentecostals?

    But let me, in conclusion, mention one more duty of a Coach:  to DISTURB us!  Bear Bryant, according to Time magazine, believed “in corporal punishment—usually a size 12-D shoe applied to the seat of the pants.”  Once when, in disgust, a player QUIT the Alabama team, Bear raided his locker and threw his clothes into the street!

    Now when I speak of the Holy Spirit Coach as Disturber, obviously I DON’T mean that kind of disturbance!  But the Holy Spirit DOES UPSET us Christians at times, Makes us discontent with the status quo.  Makes us so ANGRY with the sufferings of the world that, in Christ’s name, we take courage, in God’s strength, to DO SOMETHING about them!

    On the first Pentecost the Holy Spirit, says our First Lesson, came upon the Church with “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” [or “breath”]!  Have YOU today FELT that breath?  HEARD that wind?  – Yes, the BREATH OF THE COACH?

Prayers:
    O God, at Pentecost you sent the promised fire of your Spirit to make saints of ordinary men and women.  Breathe new life into us and enflame us with such love for you, that we may speak boldly in your name; through Jesus Christ, our Lord:                                                                               AMEN.

    Holy Spirit, you ARE our Coach.  In your mercy and grace, shape us into your new creation, molding us individually but especially as a TEAM, using our iives and hearts and possessions in the game of life to proclaim to a watching world the good news; through Jesus Christ, our Lord:            AMEN.

    Healing God, your Spirit is the greatest power in the universe.  So subdue the forces of darkness on this earth, bringing peace where there is strife, love where there is hatred, comfort where there is suffering, joy where there is sorrow.  Especially let your Spirit rest upon our brothers and sisters who are ill — and on those who have brought with them to this place burdens and cares; hear us, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.                                AMEN.

    Finally, by your Spirit, keep us ever aware of those who, having been guided by the Coach throughout their earthly life, now celebrate at the great Victory Banquet in heaven.  Keep us ever in fellowship with them; for we make these and all our prayers through Jesus Christ our Lord:             AMEN.