Bounce the ball, please

John Wooden, the legendary former basketball coach at UCLA, was once asked how he thought the game had changed since his retirement in the mid-1970s.

Wooden, who is now 96 and still attends some games, said without hesitation: "Traveling. Players don't bounce the ball on the way to the hoop these days and the referees don't call it."

The rules of the game haven't changed. If you move your feet with the basketball in your hands, you also have to bounce the ball on the floor. Failure to bounce the ball while in motion is a foul called traveling.

Any cursory look at ESPN's "Sportscenter" will reveal that today's marquee players travel constantly: LeBron James, Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, etc. It's more exciting to watch a player carry the ball from the top of the key, leap, execute a 360-degree turn, and dunk the ball in the hoop. It's fun to watch -- but it's also a direct violation of the rules.

I realize I'm running the risk of seeming like the Dana Carvey-inspired character on "Saturday Night Live" -- the curmudgeonly figure who scrunched up his face and wheezily spoke these words: "Back in my day, we had dirt for breakfast every day, and we liked it!"

There is certainly room for innovation. But be creative within the rules. Rules undergird tradition.

Jesus of Nazareth, whose birth we once again celebrate in just nine days, was wrongly tagged as a rule-breaker by the Pharisees. The Pharisaic attempt at the politics of personal destruction aside, Jesus actually valued the rules and kept faith with tradition.

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets," he said. "I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished." (Matthew 5:17-18)

The genius of Jesus is he understood when the rules were being overzealously enforced. The Pharisees took the law of Moses and added their own spin, making the rules the Jews lived by so rigid that compassion was drained away.

I wonder if a certain American Indian chief had a Pharisee in mind when he was asked to evaluate a sermon he had heard. "Big thunder, lots of dust, no rain," he said.

Jesus put the rain -- the compassion -- back into the law. This infuriated the Pharisees because it disrupted the control they enjoyed; their authority was centered in the spin they placed on the Jewish law. When Jesus cut through the spin, they schemed to get rid of him.

But make no mistake -- Jesus was opposed to the spin, not to the law. As Paul the apostle put it, Jesus is "the end of the law." (Romans 10:4)

Be creative within the rules. Jesus did it and brought compassion back into the Jewish rule book. But the rules are there for a reason. When there is total buy-in and the rules are faithfully applied as originally intended, everybody benefits and tradition is established.

Musical notes represent rules for singing and instrumentation. When those rules are followed faithfully, we hear music the way the composer/arranger intended. There is comfort and solace in hearing the notes a certain way. This is true especially at Christmastime, perhaps the most tradition-bound season of the calendar year.

The other night, while flipping through the channels at home, I came across Taylor Hicks, the most recent "American Idol" winner, singing. I didn't recognize the song at first, there was so much "Oh, yeah," and "Wo, wo, wo," added by Hicks. The song was "O Holy Night."

Just sing the notes, singers. They're beautiful just as they are.

Just preach the Gospel, pastors. It's stirring just the way it is.

In other words, friends, bounce the ball. Please.

Jeff Long is pastor of Centenary United Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau. Married with two daughters, he is of Scots and Swedish descent, loves movies and is a lifelong fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers.