Graciousness 4: The Assist

Philadelphia 76s point guard Maurice Cheeks dished out 7,392 assists in the course of his basketball career, but his best one came 10 years after he retired. On April 28, 2003, Cheeks, then coach of the Trailblazers, stood on the sideline as 13-year-old Natalie Gilbert began singing the national anthem before a game with the Mavericks. Natalie got as far as "the twilight's last gleaming" when she froze, forgetting the words. In her silence the crowd began to whoop it up, and she buried her face in the microphone as though trying to hide. But Cheeks quickly went over to her and began singing, "Whose broad stripes and bright stars...". He draped his arm around her, and they finished the song together as the whole crowd joined in. Watch it on YouTube, and you can see for yourself why Cheeks is rightly regarded in basketball circles as a great class act.

A gracious person stands ready at a moment's notice to provide an assist like that for someone stuck in a bad situation. It can be very simple. The other day as I finished a transaction at the bank, the guy behind me said, "Excuse me, sir?" and apologetically noted that my collar was up in back. I had neglected to fold it down over my tie. I thanked him and fixed it, and told him I never would have known the collar was amiss if he had not alerted me. I was reminded of the quick work of a friend of mine who, when sitting in a high school physics class, saw that his teacher's fly was open. Rather than embarrassing him with "Mr. Johnson, your zipper!", he hastily scribbled a note and placed it atop an assignment he was handing in. The teacher soon found an excuse to leave the room and came back adjusted.

The classroom is one of those settings that provides daily opportunities for gracious assists on the part of both teacher and student. When I was at Trinity I was very impressed by the way several professors managed to respond thoughtfully to the tangled verbiage of over-caffeinated seminarians. Had I been more gracious myself, I might have gone up to them afterward and said, "Thank you, Professor. I like how you were able to make sense of that question!" I can only imagine how many times they had to resist the temptation to stare at a student and mutter, Snape-ishly, "Go regroup your fuddled thoughts and come back when you have a coherent sentence."

I believe most students probably don't realize that their teachers need assists too. Scholar and author Scot McKnight used to tell us that when he first started teaching he was afraid to go to class. Professors realize that they will get evaluated. They probably look themselves up on RateMyTeacher, and know very well when they are bombing. By the time I got to graduate school I learned the trick of raising my hand and posing lots of questions to struggling teachers, and that always seemed to energize them. It was a matter of helping out a teacher whose brain was good but needed picking.

Look for opportunities to give an assist. Jesus will some day say to the righteous, "I was hungry and you gave me to eat, thirsty and you gave me to drink, in prison and you visited me," etc. He might also say, "I was a 13-year-old who forgot the national anthem, and you came to my side and helped me to finish it."