The Rules of Improv: Take Action!

Mark 1:14-20

Every year around this time the family of Calvary Baptist Church takes a step back to think about what it is we are doing here on this corner of Washington, DC, trying our best to be followers of Jesus and to live together in Christian community in such a way that how we live, what we do, who we are, makes and impact in the world around us.  This is no small challenge, so today we think again about our individual commitments to life together in this place.

As in weeks past, guiding our consideration are the rules of improv, the rules you would follow were you in the middle of an improvisational comedy exercise.  I myself am not a professional actor, but the rules of improv have been widely considered helpful guides for life in general, and in our case, life in Christian community.  Today’s rule of improv is “take action.”

It seems that if we are engaged in an improvisational scene on stage in front of an audience, the audience will get a little bit bored if the actors in the scene are sitting around doing nothing.  Riveting dialogue or suspenseful action doesn’t really ever happen, you know, if everyone in the scene is sitting on the couch, say, watching TV.  The “take action” rule of improv is the essential, underlying truth that everyone on stage should be always working to contribute to the scene. 

We talked last week about the rule that anything is possible.  If we’re following that rule and have opened ourselves to accept any eventuality that a scene may present, well, then, today’s rule—take action—is about jumping in with both feet to contribute.  Everyone in the scene must contribute.  Everyone on stage is important if the scene is going to move to its next chapter. 

Of course, this rule of improv is a rather risky one.  When you jump right in and take action you are giving up your safe spot on the couch.  And you are trusting that the other actors on stage will also take action in response to yours.  It is very true that you could lose your spot on the couch.  It is also true that others might greet whatever action you take with apathy. 

But consider the alternative. 

You could sit on the couch and talk about why you are not taking action—that you need to wait for the right moment, or you have to see what the other people do—but the truth is that the scene on stage is not going to go anywhere at all until you get up off the couch and start singing…or announce that you are joining the army…or climb up on the coffee table and do a short but impressive tap dance.  Until the actors actually take an action, the scene on stage will not go anywhere; it will just sit there, stagnant.

One commenter describes it like this: You could sit around and pretend to smoke a cigarette while waiting to see what the other actors do (although, as we all know, smoking is bad for your health), or you could throw out open ended, inconsequential questions like, “So what should we do now?”—neither action adding anything at all to a scene

The opposite to this passive approach, of course, is to jump right in with some directed action.  For example, while you sit on the couch, you could say something like, “I’m so glad our hot air balloon was able land here in theSaharadesert;” or “Hi, I’m Amy and I don’t think I’ve ever met an alien like you before.”  See the difference?  The best improvisational actors continually step up to the plate, take clear and assertive actions, and do their part to move the scene along. 

Those improvisational actors who kill a scene every single time are the ones who refuse to make a clear choice, who are unsure about their commitment to the scene, who wimp out and go back to sitting on the couch.  If the scene doesn’t fizzle out after that, the actor who is unwilling to take action to move the scene forward has, in effect, placed all of the responsibility for the success of the scene on the other actors up there on the stage. 

That’s not funny, and it’s not fair; a lack of investment and action on the part of any actor in a scene can cripple the production altogether and make pulling off successful improvisational interplay even more difficult for everyone.

Informing our consideration of how this rule might apply to Christian community is a familiar passage from the Gospel of Mark, the calling of Jesus’ disciples.  Mark is a perfect Gospel for the “take action” rule of improv because Mark is the Gospel of urgent and immediate action.

Just look!  The Gospel of Mark doesn’t even bother to tell the story about the baby and the shepherds and the star; Mark starts with the baptism of Jesus and jumps right into the story of Jesus’ ministry with both feet.  The first words Jesus says in the Gospel of Mark, even, are immediate: “The time has been fulfilled”—in other words, it’s time to get busy.  No more sitting around waiting.  Jesus doesn’t let anybody wait, either. 

Just look at how urgent his call is!  He calls for specifically two courses of action from everyone who is listening to him: “repent” and “believe”.  For the call to repent, Mark uses the Greek word “metanoia,” which means something rather different than feeling bad about what you’ve done and hoping you do better in the future.  The word actually means to turn around.  It’s an action word that means facing in a new direction and going in a different way from the way you were going before.

And for his challenge to believe, we might think of Jesus’ call as an intellectual assent to a set of ideas—we decide we believe in a certain ideology or set of doctrine.  But that’s not what Jesus meant when he called on the crowds to believe.  His idea of believing was more an action word, the act of placing your whole life into the hands of God and trusting God’s direction for every part of who you are.  Taking action.

To take Jesus up on his urgent direction was going to require getting up off the couch and doing something.

…which is, of course, what happens immediately next in the Gospel story this morning. 

Jesus was passing along theSea of Galilee, Mark tells us, and he called to the folks who were on their boats, fishing.  He capped off his call to repent and believe with an even more radical call to action: he invited them to follow him.

True to his urgent style, Mark writes that immediately Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John, put down their nets and follow him.  They took action; they left something behind; they went to follow Jesus.  And, don’t you know, their action of following set a whole new scene in motion, the unfolding of God’s kingdom starting right there, with them and the action they dared to take.

This week I will travel toOrlandoto meet with a group of American Baptist pastors from all over the country.  For the past year and a half we’ve been meeting via phone and in person to talk about the Baptist version of the crisis of the mainline church.  That is, over the last 40 years there has been a steady decline in church attendance which leads some of the bigwigs to conclude that something is wrong.

Everybody has their own theories about why church attendance is in decline across the board; one commentator I read this week highlighted a couple of theories.  One was his contention that we are the end of the age of duty.  That is, nobody thinks you are a bad person if you don’t attend church regularly.  Which I find to be true.

But on this Sunday of considering Jesus’ call to take action, why would we passively allow the standards of our society to dictate our actions one way or the other?  The call of Jesus is immediate and urgent.  If you are being called to invest your life in a community of faith, then it’s time to take action, don’t you think?

The second reason this commentator highlighted was a little more serious.  He says that many people have a hard time understanding how the Christian narrative helps make sense of their lives.  In other words, many people feel that what happens on Sunday mornings has no tie or relevance to the rest of their lives.

What a sad state of affairs.  In the face of all of this, we could sit back on the couch, cross our arms and passively say things like, “So what should we do next?.”  But if it is our conviction that our faith actually does inform our lives, that worship with and membership in a community of faith have direct relevance and impact on our lives, well, then, it’s time for us to take action, isn’t it?

Today is membership rededication Sunday.  I often say that everyone is always welcome to come and worship with us, but being a member in this community of faith is something that requires action.  In this scene we’re living together, the day by day and moment by moment scene that is the community of faith here atCalvaryBaptistChurch, we cannot afford to sit back, passively. 

If we do that, pretty soon exactly what church specialists have noticed will happen…our scene as the people of God will stall.  It won’t go anywhere.  And as we’ve already noted, a scene with no action, no relevance whatsoever, is a scene that surely does not depict the radical unfolding of God’s kingdom for which Jesus came to earth and so urgently called for action.

Today is membership rededication Sunday.  Perhaps you have been a member here for over 60 years.  Perhaps you are a little newer.  No matter how long you’ve been around, it never hurts to reevaluate what we’re doing here, to ask ourselves if we’re willing to get up off the couch and take action, if we are ready to really invest our lives, our money, our time, our intention, in the work of God in this little community of faith.

In a few moments we will add our prayers to the different pieces of theCalvaryquatrefoil, as the children did a little earlier.  What is your prayer for this family of faith in the year ahead?  As you write a word or phrase, a prayer for the church, you are actually getting up off the couch, uh, pew, and taking action.  You are adding your voice to all of our voices and signifying your own willingness to take action, to be an active part of the work of God in this place.  Shall we pray?

Gracious and loving God, you who call us to follow,

Today, this day, we join the company of every disciple, every outcast, every doubter, every hesitant follower, with whom you shared a meal and to whom you offered grace.  We join the company of the poor, the sick, the blind and lame, with whom you laighed and wept and whom you healed.

We join the company of beggers, prostitutes, and outcasts, sneered at and rejected, haunted by guilt and pain, and to whom you gave dignity, freedom, and life. 

We join the company of the self-seeking and unscrupulous, those who were hated by others and who hated themselves, into whose homes you were welcomed and whose lives you transformed.

We join the company of the zealous, the disciplined and the dedicated, those who have insurrection in their thoughts and revolution in their dreams, those utterly impatient for the overthrow of oppression.

We join the company of the doggedly loyal, unwilling to settle for second-hand faith, of those who betrayed you and were welcomed back into your loving embrace, covered by grace.

We join the company of the church through the ages.  We share their need, we have their doubts, we know their failures, we are also sinners hungry for grace. 

With courage and renewed commitment we take up the call to be your people in this place, for this time, so that those who come after us will see our lives, transformed by your grace, and also summon the courage to join us.  And for courage and faith ourselves, we ask this day as we pray the prayer that Jesus taught us:

 

The Rules of Improv: Anything is Possible

Listen here.

The Rules of Improv: Anything is Possible

1 Samuel 3:1-10

Who would have thought, just a few years ago, that a pastor would arrive at church on Sunday morning, having emailed herself the sermon for that day…only to find that the Internet is completely down at church.  So, she takes a very small jump drive and walks a block to find her friend, Rachel Johnson, at Starbucks, where she attaches the jump drive to her friend’s machine, downloads the sermon, walks back to church and prints it out—all in time for 11 am worship.  Just goes to show that anything is possible….  Truth be told, that pastor was really relieved, because even though she planned and is preaching a whole sermon series on the rules of improvisational comedy, she is not interested at all in improvisational sermon delivery. 

We’re talking about the rules of improv this Epiphany, that is the rules one would follow were you in the middle of an improvisational comedy exercise. 

It might sound strange that this is the starting point for considering our texts in these weeks, but it seems that there are rules that must be followed in order for improvisational comedy to be a success, and (who knew?) many of these rules are also applicable to the creation and nurture of Christian community. 

Twentieth century theologian Karl Barth is famous for often saying we Christians should always think about God with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.  I am not sure that Karl Barth would approve, but as we look for the light this Epiphany—as we try to figure out how exactly we live in community together—we’re taking the Bible in one hand and the advice of comedienne Tina Fey in the other.  Together I think we have something to learn about life in Christian community. 

Remember as we do that the underlying principle guiding the success of improv and, one might say, Christian community, is the determination to say yes…to assume a stance of openness to whatever may come and, in the case of Christian community, to the ongoing and often unexpected work of God’s Spirit.  I will make the assumption again this morning that we are willing to say yes as we move forward toward an examination of our text and our rule for today.

Last week we welcomed Epiphany with the story of the wise seekers come from the East, following a star.  We recalled that God very often shows up to fill in the blanks in our lives, introducing possibilities we never could have imagined.  This rule has prepared us for today’s text and today’s rule of improv.  Today we read about the call of Samuel and are considering the rule: anything is possible.  Anything is possible.

Today’s rule is important because in order for an improvisational comedic interplay to begin, build, and play all the way out, every one of the actors involved has to maintain the stance that anything is possible.  Anything.  Tina Fey describes it this way: “…[I]f we’re improvising and I say, ‘Freeze, I have a gun,’ and you say, ‘That’s not a gun.  That’s your finger.  You’re pointing your finger at me,’ our improvised scene has ground to a halt.  But if I say ‘That’s the gun I gave you for Christmas!’ and you agree, then we have started a scene because we have AGREED that my finger is in fact a Christmas gun.”

“Anything is possible” is the approach we must take if we want to start an improv scene or move our community to a new level of understanding and living out God’s call for us, because as we learned last week, we never know how God is planning to fill in the blanks, to lead us to a new expression of life and faith.  Anything is possible. 

What would it mean to live as if we truly believed that rule?

Guiding our consideration today is that text from the book of 1 Samuel chapter three, the very famous text about the calling of the prophet Samuel.  As you recall, the Israelites were in very desperate straits at that moment in their history.  They had lived through forty years of the Exodus and settled in the Promised Land, led by Moses and Joshua.  In the intervening years, they were governed by a series of judges—individuals in whom God placed authority and power to communicate to the people what God expected of them.  But the age of the judges seemed to be running out; there was no clear leader emerging who could take charge anymore.  And as a result, the Israelites were a largely unorganized group surrounded by increasingly fierce enemies who were often on the offensive. 

Who knew where the next leader might arise?  The people lived everyday in the quickly fading memory of the miraculous leadership of God, who had taken them out ofEgyptand into the Promised Land, but in the distance it was easy to forget God’s providence, to become complacent about their identity as God’s people.  Fear, the push to assimilate with their neighbors, the loss of memory when it came to God’s providence…all of these issues plagued the people ofIsraeland kept them from seeing possibilities. 

Anything is possible? 

No, that’s not the way they saw things.  Instead, the possibilities seemed to be getting smaller, the limits were closing in around them.  They couldn’t see a future because they could not imagine anything other than their very limited present.

We know things were tough for the Israelites as soon as we read the second sentence in chapter three, “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.”  The regular routine, the status quo, was the silence of God, and the people ofIsraelhad come to expect and anticipate that turn of events.  Either God was silent or they were not listening, but because God equaled silence in their minds, they came to stop expecting God to show up…and so they were not ready…not in the least…when God did.

Into this dismal situation a little boy was born—Samuel—born against the odds to his mother Hannah, who had tried for years to have a child but couldn’t.  The text says she struck a deal with God, promising that the child she would have would be dedicated to the Lord.  And God showed up when Hannah became pregnant and Samuel was born.  Because anything is possible, remember?

And you can read more about the story in the two preceding chapters, but Hannah took her son Samuel, a young child, and indentured him to service in the temple, working for the priest Eli as a helper.  Eli needed Samuel because Eli’s sons—normally the ones who would take over as he aged—were good-for-nothings who would never become priests if they kept going the way they were.  Samuel was very young and doing his best when, as we read in chapter three, one night he heard a voice.  He heard a voice calling him and Samuel, the ever-diligent temple assistant, assumed the voice was Eli’s. 

You know what happened: the voice calling Samuel turned out to be God’s.  Eli was the one who started to suspect that, even though the word of the Lord was rare in those days, perhaps it was the word of the Lord that called to Samuel in the temple that night.  Maybe it took so long to dawn on him because he’d forgotten that anything is possible—anything—even a middle of the night voice of God calling a young child to lead his people.

Could Eli allow for the unlikely possibility that God was showing up?  Could he help Samuel answer the unlikely call of God that seemed to come unsolicited from the darkness that enshrouded the temple?  Who knew?  Who knew that God could be calling a young boy to respond to the possibilities of his hope for the peopleIsrael?  It didn’t seem likely, but, as Eli knew…things can change and change dramatically when you live as if anything is possible.

If you happen to be a fan of YouTube, you might already be familiar with a video of Sarah Churman that has gotten millions of hits since its posting in September of last year.  Sarah was born with a rare genetic deformity that means she’s missing the hair in her inner ear that transmits sound to the brain. She was fitted with her first hearing aid at age 2, but even with that technology she could only hear some vibrations and loud noises. She compensated throughout her life by becoming adept at reading people’s lips.

In late 2011, Sarah was fitted with a device called the Esteem Inner Ear Stimulator, an implantable hearing aid for the specific kind of hearing loss Sarah suffered.  On the popular YouTube video, you can see a video of Sarah Churnam hearing for the very first time.

Even if you’re unfamiliar with all the details of Sarah’s situation, the video is quite moving.  What would happen if Sarah could suddenly hear?  She’d worked so hard to compensate in other ways; the thought of being able to hear just seemed out of the realm of possibility.  Yet there it is on video–Sarah Churman hearing…her own voice, the voices of others…a reality she never could have imagined, not under any circumstances, not in any amount of time.  She could hear the voice of her husband.  She could hear the chatter of her children.  She could hear.  Anything, after all, is possible.

“The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread…”.

What if, in a world in which no one expected God to speak, that one night, late at night, God did—God spoke?  And what if God spoke, not to the status quo who had lived for so long with things just the way they were, but to a child who had no status and no power, who no one with any reasonable approach to life would expect to be the receiver of a message from God? 

The people of Israel were living day to day expecting nothing but silence from God, living in fear of the next attack by their enemies, limited by their lack of expectation so much so that they couldn’t even allow for the possibility that God’s word might come in a way that was different and unexpected, unlikely and out of the norm.

We can’t blame them, because the truth is that we do it, too.  It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae of life as it unfolds around us, never expecting anything other than what we experience day in and day out.  But as a community of faith, we profess that God is at work in and among us, throughout the entire world.  And if there’s anything we know about God, it’s that we can never predict when or where God will show up, what crazy adventures of faith we’ll be invited to embark on, how in the most unusual possibilities we will unexpectedly see our next steps unfolding before us.

What would it be like if we took the “anything is possible” rule to heart and lived expecting, well anything?

For one thing, it would be awfully risky.  When you apply a guideline like anything is possible, you automatically give up any hope of controlling a situation.  And this can be scary, especially for a community like ours, with years and years of history and structure underpinning our life together.  Can we readily accept the possibility that anything could happen?  You are wearing roller skates…sure.  The sky is purple…okay.  There’s a chicken on your head…naturally.  Anything is possible. 

When anything is possible, then the old structures by which we have ordered our lives and our life together suddenly become incidental.  They do not restrict the possibilities of an improvisational scene or of life in Christian community.  Instead, when the old way of seeing the world gets pushed to the side and new possibilities become opened, you never know what might happen next!

Though Eli and Samuel had been living within the constraints of life as they knew and expected it, for some reason they had the courage to live the “anything is possible” rule that night when they heard God’s voice calling Samuel.  You can see what happened to the people ofIsraelwhen they did, too, because Samuel became the greatest prophet of the Israelite people, ushering in the monarchy andIsrael’s greatest king, David.  Who would have thought that life for the Israelites would unfold in such a strange and unexpected way?  But they never would have found their way without the courage they displayed when they believed anything was possible—anything—and God showed up.

What about you, what about us?  Do we have the courage to live as if anything is possible, to cultivate hearts and spirits that are open to anything that might arise?  If we can somehow live together as if anything is possible, then the church might become a way station in which God’s unexpected work in the world unfolds. 

What would happen, say for example, if we imagined there would be equal opportunity for everyone in our country, no matter race, color, or ethnicity? 

And what might happen if we had the courage to speak out on behalf of peace and justice, insisting that an end to the civil war inEl Salvadorwas possible after all?

What would happen?

We never will know what can happen unless we have the courage to imagine…that anything is possible.

Amen.

The Rules of Improv: Fill in the Blanks

Matthew 2:1-12, Epiphany

Happy new year to you all.  It feels great to be here in worship beginning the new year together after a hectic holiday season.  Welcome back, and a special thank you to all of you who were with us in worship on Christmas and New Year Days.  I found it a particularly meaningful season because I got to worship with so many of you on both holidays.

So.  We begin the new year, as is our tradition, with an examination of what it means to live in community together, to be the family of God here atCalvary Baptist Church.  Part of this emphasis has to do with the new year—it’s a new time to think about what we hope and plan for the year ahead, and to ask: are you ready again to make the commitment of life in Christian community? 

And part of this emphasis has to do with the season of Epiphany, which began this past week.  Epiphany is a time in the church year where we get up and follow the light, like the wise men we read about today.  And as we follow, sometimes shielding our eyes from the glaring brightness of God’s presence and sometimes squinting with concentrated effort trying our very best to make out even one little glimmer that will guide our next steps, we consider yet again what it means to be followers of Jesus Christ, and what it means to create a community of faith together, one that reflects God’s best hopes and dreams for the world. 

So, welcome to Epiphany.  In the next few weeks you’ll be challenged to think about what church membership means, to consider what degree you have and you will invest your life in a community of faith, and specifically this community.  And, even more daunting, we’ll be considering together what it means to live as the church, how we best reflect the light of God’s presence on earth through our life together.  It’s a big task we’re taking on!

To help us with what seems rather daunting I, naturally, turned for help to comedienne Tina Fey. 

It’s true.  I am not embarrassed to tell you that sometime last year, when it first came out, I purchased and read Tiny Fey’s book, Bossypants.  Perhaps it’s not among the most foundational of civilization’s literature, but you have to admit that Tina Fey is a comic genius and, well, the book was a pretty funny read.  In part of the book Tina Fey talks about the rules of improv—that is, the rules actors follow when they are engaged in improvisational comedy.  Fey contends that some of these rules are good rules for life in general, and I immediately thought they sounded like a pretty good guide to life in Christian community, too.

Readingabout improvisational acting has led me on quite an adventure of learning.  The sum total of my understanding of the craft when I began was limited to Tina Fey’s book and occasional viewings of Whose Line is it, Anyway?, but since then I have learned so much more, thanks in large part of Calvary partner The Washington Theatre Lab.  After careful tutoring from directors Buzz and Deb, I learned that there are, in fact, foundational rules for improvisational acting.  But following the rules for engagement in a scene together is critical to moving an improv act—or any scene at all, really—to the next level.

Sounds like Chrtistian community, right?

Over the next few weeks as we learn the rules of improv, uh, Christian community, we’re going to be assuming that we understand the main principle underlying everything—that is, SAY YES.  Turns out you cannot have improvisational interplay unless everyone involved is willing to say yes.  Tina Fey calls it the Rule of Agreement, but that makes it sound like you have to surrender your own opinion.  That’s not it.  Rather, it’s more like you pledge to live with the promise of possibility…that there just may be something to that crazy idea someone else had…and that together you will find your way to something wonderful in the end.

So if we’re going to examine the text these next few weeks using some rules of improv, we’ll have to assume that we’re willing to say yes—to say yes to the crazy possibility of Christian community, to say yes to the coming of God’s kingdom…which, as you know, is regarded by most as one of the strangest realities one might ever hope for: a world where everyone has what they need, where peace and justice are the orders of the day, where goodness and grace reign supreme.  If you’re serious about Christian community, then the thing we must assume as we begin is that we’re all willing to take a leap of faith, to say yes to all the possibilities God wants to create in us and in our world. 

So let’s try it; I don’t want to be assuming something I shouldn’t.  Can I hear you say yes to this exploration of Christian community?

Today’s rule of improv is FILL IN THE BLANKS.  Along with our text this morning we’ll consider how this rule of improv might be part of successfully creating and sustaining healthy Christian community here in this place.

As you recall, our gospel text this morning comes from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter two.  It’s unique in the gospel writers’ accounts of the birth of Jesus, and it’s one of the strangest chapters in the whole story.  There was a star, you see, and far, far away from Bethelem/Nazareth, there were wise men, Magi, foreigners from the East who studied the stars and who were so taken with the appearance of that one bright star that they set out on a long journey to find the baby whose birth, they believed, was foretold by the presence of the star.

As with many stories of our faith, the church has embellished the story of the star followers from the East.  Tradition has even assigned them names.  The truth is that we don’t know much about them, other than they were students of the stars and they observed a disturbance, an out-of-the-norm celestial event, which they believed foretold the birth of a king. 

And here, right here, is where we find the intersection of our rule for today, Fill in the Blanks, and what the story of the Magi might have to teach us about God.

See, improvisational acting is, surprisingly structured.  There is, my actor friends would say, about 90% of the structure already in place, in a sense.  Improvisational acting is not just getting up on stage with no preparation and hoping for the best.  When you do that, the audience can always smell a rat, and you can’t really appreciate the surprising ways improv allows you to fill in the blanks of new possibility if there is not some structure, some preparation, already there and waiting in expectation for the arrival of the unexpected.

The writer of Matthew’s gospel had an agenda, a structure, and his agenda was to tell the story in such a way that we readers would know Jesus was the king, the promised Messiah come to save his people.  So when Matthew tells the story of the Magi, he talks about them coming to worship Jesus, using the word for worship in Greek that would only be assigned to the worship of God.  In other words, Matthew puts the structure in place from the very beginning.  Anyone reading his gospel account would know that he believes Jesus is Messiah—there’s no question about that. 

It’s structure.

But God arrives unexpectedly in the birth of a baby in a manger, in the coming of the strangers from the East.  These wise seekers didn’t know the culture into which they were coming; they didn’t understand that their appearance would add a whole layer of disturbance, of dis-ease, to an already tenuous social and political situation.  They believed enough to set out to worship him, and when they arrived in the region ofGalilee—almost certainly years after Jesus’ birth—they went directly to the palace to check in with Herod, the ruler of the region.  After all, if you were looking for a baby king, it would make sense to start your search in the palace, right?  Just think about it, first from Herod’s perspective…you are the ruler of a region and someone comes to your door asking about the new king in town…a new king about whom you have no knowledge.  This would be a disturbance of the highest order, and in Herod’s mind it was.  It sent him into a panic and the threat of these strangers’ arrival, asking about a king, resulted in oppression of the Jews taken to a whole new level.  Dis-ease, uncertainty, disturbance as the blanks are filled in with kings from afar.

And, you remember, that the wise seekers finally also made their way to the baby and his parents.  They probably weren’t in the stable still, but they were living the life of peasants in the Galilean region.  They did not typically entertain rich philosophers from the East; they did not often receive luxurious gifts like the ones the wise travelers brought, even they weren’t quite sure who this baby was and why there were so many strange things associated with his birth, and now his life.  And you know the neighbors took note when the entourage of camels and wise travelers showed up.  It was a strange turn of events, for sure, a disturbance unlike any they expected or anticipated.  A strange way, for sure, to fill in the blanks.

They were all looking for the same thing…the structure of God’s promise and hope informed them all, even Herod, who was so scared of the thought of God’s coming that he lashed out violently to try to stop it.  God is here, God is at work, God has sent a promise.  That is the structure.

Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess.

Why?

Because you can never predict how or why or where or when God will show up.  God might show up in a stable, or a star, or the presence of far-off travelers, or …who knows?  God’s always up to something, filling in the blanks in ways we never, ever anticipated.  Ever.

And so it is in Christian community.  We have considerable structure—not just in this 150 year old congregation, but in the Christian Church as a whole.  There is orthodoxy and theology, liturgy and tradition.  And all of these things provide structure for our life in Christian community.

But we should never get so comfortable in our lives as the church that we are not expecting God to show up—somehow, in some (usually unexpected) way, to fill in the blanks of possibility and hope, more creatively than we could ever have imagined.

Because the life of faith in Christian community is not a prescribed, static list of procedures.  We are engaged in relationship with the living God, and this beloved community in which we live and thrive must always reflect the prophetic wonder of a God who is constantly showing up in the strangest places in the most unusual ways.  A star?  A stable?  Where on earth will God show up next???

This is the question we must ask ourselves over and over again as we fill in the blanks of the life of faith.  Will we have the courage to leave the blanks open—room for God to show up even in the structures we have created, even in the flawed and often broken system of the church, of Christian community?  Because we need the structure; the church is a holy opportunity for us to find relationship with God and remember our callings with each other.  But we can’t forget to leave room for the improvisational God, who will always fill in the blanks in ways we never, ever expect.

I leave you today with words better than any I could come up with, written by theologian Frederick Beuchner:

“Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of [us]. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in the least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there, too. And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully.”

Amen and amen.

Poetry Corner

for the week of Epiphany…

Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who made the morning

and spread it over the fields

and into the faces of the tulips

and the nodding morning glories,

and into the windows of, even, the

miserable and the crotchety –

 

best preacher that ever was,

dear star, that just happens

to be where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever-darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light –

good morning, good morning, good morning.

 

Watch, now, how I start the day

in happiness, in kindness. 

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

(Why I Wake Early, 2004)