…and another reason to write that book…

from Searching for Mercy Street, by Linda Gray Sexton

“As I wrote the book, I found myself reliving times that were both painful and joyous, accompanied by intense emotion.  Many readers asked me if the process of writing it had been cathartic, and the first time the question was posed, I hesitated, looking for the right way to explain how writing a memoir impacts one’s life. 

It had not been cathartic, exactly.  The catharsis had happened before I wrote the book, in my analyst’s office.  Writing it had been more like testifying, to myself as well as others, that such things had happened to me and that they acquired increased importance when reexamined. 

As I told my own story, I validated my life’s experiences and toughened myself; it was a part of my self education, one that helped me gain control over what had once seemed unmanageable.  Silence compels us to look at what lies behind it, and revelation brings with it knowledge—which is why some feel as if they must write about the private aspects of their lives, in search of solace and clarity. 

To speak candidly, with neither justification nor humiliation, relieves the haunting memory and mind and becomes one way to regain our dignity and our strength.”

Poetry Corner

They say the wheel was invented

and fire was discovered.

 

When you sit in the circle

and rub together the sticks of your life,

what grey smoke-signaled stories

rise in the starry black sky?

 

Listen and pay attention.

 

Warm

what has grown cold.

Shine a light

on what has darkened.

Stoke the embers

around your gritty ashes.

Fire up the vitality

lurking in your everydays.

Fan the flame

of knowing thyself.

 

The spark of desire resides

in your own story.

 

–k.l. turner

Lent With Lauren

I don’t like Lauren Winner. 

I guess that’s not really fair, since I’ve never met her and I am sure she is a nice person, but I mean I don’t like her in the sense that I didn’t like her book Girl Meets God.  It may be surprising, then, that I am reading her newest book, Still, during this Lent.  Or maybe it’s not so surprising, since Lent is all about admitting mistakes.

It took some convincing for me to start Still.  Girl Meets God just struck me as so sure, so enthusiastic, so absolute.  And sure, enthusiastic, and absolute are not words that I often use to describe my faith.  In fact, I haven’t used words like that to describe my faith since I was, oh, about 13 years old. 

And maybe I didn’t even way back then.

But Lauren sent me the book (she sent copies to a lot of people; I was on a list).  And I thought that was nice of her.  And I learned (after a friend convinced me to read it), that her new book is not so sure—it’s rather about failure and feeling the absence of God. 

Now this, I can relate to. 

Perhaps this book I can read, and maybe I can nod with recognition and underline for later rather than sniffling with frustration and failure (which, though dramatic, is something I did when I read Girl Meets God).

Since Still has an accompanying Lenten reflection guide, I’m following along there, too.  Today’s question for consideration: How do loss, absence, and emptiness sometimes give us a fuller understanding of God?

So, I’ll get right to work answering that question, though please recall I’ve been trying to find an answer since way back when I was reading Girl Meets God…or maybe even since back when I was 13. 

The truth is that I don’t know the answer to that question.

I only know that loss, absence, and emptiness are real. 

And so, I’m fairly sure today, is God. 

So for right now that will have to be enough.

Promises, Promises: Never Again

Genesis 9:8-17

I will never forget that fateful day, about two years ago, at 10:45 one Sunday morning.  It was the day I sat down to print out my final copy of the sermon for that morning and somehow that I can’t figure out still to this day, managed to delete the file. 

It was not a delete in the “undo edit” sense of delete.  I completely, somehow, destroyed the entire file and had no sermon on paper that morning.  In the fifteen minutes that passed between my deleting the file and the start of worship, I decided I could either run away and never come back…or wing it, which I ended up doing. 

I did not intend to press the delete key (or whatever I did) that morning.  But however it happened, in that moment the entire sermon was gone.  It still gives me chills just thinking about it.  Anybody besides me remember that day?

As we look to our Hebrew scripture this morning, I think it’s clear that God meant to press the delete key.  If you’re unfamiliar with the story of Noah and the great flood, you can back up about two chapters and read the entire story, in various versions, from God getting mad, to Noah building a boat, to the animals filing in two by two. 

But I’m fairly sure you know the story, as does most everyone, because it has been told and retold with cute little furry animals and an ark that looks like a Carnival cruise ship in Fisher Price’s interpretation.  In fact, you can buy stuffed toys of Noah and the ark; or wooden figurines that make up a whole set.  You can decorate your baby’s nursery with a Noah’s ark theme, or, like me, sew your kids the cutest Noah’s ark curtains for their bedrooms.  Some of you may even have received a notecard from me with a picture of Noah and his wife on the ark with the animals, and she’s saying: “Noah, sooner or later we need to talk about the elephant in the room….”

But the story of Noah and the great flood is really not a laughing matter at all, and probably not that appropriate for your kids’ bedroom theme, either.  The story of the great flood is a story of fear, terror, and regret, it’s God pressing the delete key—on purpose—on a creation that had violated, over and over again, the relationship between created and Creator, that had taken the gift of free will and gone, well, crazy.  

The world in Noah’s time was not what God envisioned.  It was not what God wanted when God entered into relationship with human beings.  It was a situation so bad that God hit the delete key—on purpose—and the whole world was destroyed. 

Start over.

Someone asked me this week if the story of Noah and the ark was a true historical story.  Since I suspected this might be a trick question, I think I fell back on my standard safety answer, “What do you think?” 

As we know, the Bible was not written as a historical record of events.  Instead, it’s a grand and sweeping story of God’s interaction with the world, of the relationship between human beings and their Creator.  This flood story is the Hebrew version, one of between 250 and 300 flood stories found by anthropologists on every continent in almost every group of people. 

So since this was probably not the ancient version of CNN’s story of an actual, historical flood, we readers of the text have some deeper and more universal truth to learn about God or about ourselves through the telling and hearing of this story.  In other words, whether or not an actual historical event took place just as reported here, the story of Noah and the flood is true, and it has something to teach us about relationship with God.

Specifically, today on the first Sunday of Lent, we read this story as the first of several “covenant stories” found in the Hebrew text and think about promises.  The word covenant means promise, and as we’re embarking on a season of the church year when we are invited to take a long, hard look at our lives and think about making some changes, we’re looking back at stories of faith in which promises are made, broken, renegotiated, and kept. 

Let’s review a little bit of what how things were before the story of the great flood.  The story of God’s relationship with humanity begins with the creation of the world, as you recall, but in the six chapters between that and the flood, things really start to go downhill.  There’s the whole Adam and Eve with the snake and the tree of life situation, followed closely by their banishment fromEden.  Then their sons Cain and Abel get into some trouble resulting in murder.  Things get worse even from there until, at the beginning of chapter 6, the text says: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”

And so it was that God starts over, presses delete, begins again.  Of course the events of the flood changed the earth.  Populations were decimated; the whole of the earth was covered with water; only Noah and his family survived on the ark.  And did that fix the problem of sin?  Did it stop acts of human selfishness, anger, and greed?  Well?  What do you think?

No, of course it did not.  Creation continued.  Humanity rolled along as it had before.  People made mistakes and betrayed each other and disobeyed God, destroyed the earth and still cause all sorts of trouble.  Don’t think God is smiling down benevolently at our antics these days, given up on expectations since the whole flood.  I don’t think that God’s hopes for us are any less rigorous or lofty than they were then.  But it is true that something changed with the flood. 

God changed.

And God changed because God made a promise—a promise to hang up the bow of vengeance and retribution, to retire from battle, to forgo our destruction no matter what.  A promise.  God’s promise didn’t change our behavior; God’s promise changed the nature of God’s relationship with us…a change from humanity getting what it deserved to an offer of grace and relationship, no matter what.  God changed when God made his promise.  We change when we make promises, too.

In 1999, Michael Ackerman was a pediatric cardiologist in training at the Mayo Clinic.  One of his first heart transplant patients was eight year old Stefani Pentiuk, who had been on the transplant list for only two days after doctor’s determined she would not live without a transplant heart.  When the call came that a heart was available, Stefani was in her hospital room with Dr. Ackerman and asked him if he thought she would live through the transplant.

Dr. Ackerman said later that no class in medical school prepared him for questions of life and death from little kids whose very lives were at risk, and he doesn’t recall what made him say it, but in answer to her question Dr. Ackerman made a promise…he told eight year old Stefani that he would be at her senior prom to dance with her, that the transplant would take and when it did, he promised to show up for a dance.

Sure enough, ten years later Dr. Ackerman was traveling from California to Florida for speaking engagements, but he stopped off inMichiganjust to make an appearance at Stefani’s senior prom.  As you can imagine, there were tears all around.

Later, when interviewed on CBS this morning, Dr. Ackerman was asked why he would promise an 8 year old that he’d dance at her prom.  After all, what eight year old really spends that much time thinking about a senior prom?  Dr. Ackerman said he didn’t really know why he said what he did, other than the fact that he was thinking about Stefani’s father, and about himself as a father, and imagining that senior prom would mark a passage to adulthood that every father would want to see.  Going to the prom didn’t mean much to eight year old Stefani at the time, but it did mean something to Dr. Michael Ackerman.  It meant enough to see Stefani and her family through the transplant and then travel hours out of his way ten years later just to dance with 18 year old, healthy Stefani…just as he had promised.

In a little way, Dr. Ackerman’s experience when he made that promise to Stefani was a bit like what happened to God after the flood.  With the making of a promise, with the hanging of the bow in the sky, something changed.  God’s promise changed God—changed God’s regret over creating such sinful creatures into a resolve to love us, no matter what, to forgo our destruction no matter how and how often we miss the mark or fail to meet God’s expectations.

Promise making and promise keeping take courage, largely because they change us.  Even God faced change so profound that he had to remind himself of the difference.  InHawaiiwhere rainbows are a daily occurrence we learned that seeing a rainbow was a reminder to us of God’s promises.  Turns out the text says the bow is a reminder to God…because perhaps even keeping promises is not that easy for God, either.  Ancient deities are often depicted holding a bow and arrow.  For God to hang a bow in the sky is a physical reminder that God has put away battle; that destruction is no longer an option on the table; that the promise God has made has changed…God.

As we set out on this season of Lent we give thanks that God’s memory is more powerful than our forgetfulness.  God will not forget God’s promise to us, even when we forget our promises to God. Striving to keep a promise and failing: these often characterize our Lenten experience.  But, though we fail, God does not, and God’s promises to us do not fail either.

The story of Noah and the great flood is a reminder of just that.  God has hung God’s bow in the sky and put away retribution forever.  God has changed God’s mind.

Perhaps even in our human failing, if we have the courage to make promises, we will change, too.  If we examine our lives enough to promise something new, we might find that the act of promise making and promise keeping softens our hearts…that is shifts the focus of our lives from ourselves to others…that we will act responsibly in relationships and situations…that we will see the world in a way that doesn’t always require ourselves at its center…that we will change.

What signs might we need to feel the changes our promises make in us?  How can we follow God’s example in the story of Noah and let our promise-making soften our hearts and change us?

This Lent, make your promises.  And then, let them change you.  Amen.

Poetry Corner

Trying to Be Thoughtful in the First Brights of Dawn

I am thinking, or trying to think, about all the

imponderables for which we have

no answers, yet endless interest all the

range of our lives, and it’s

good for the head no doubt to undertake such

meditation; Mystery, after all,

is God’s other name, and deserves our

consideration surely.  But, but -

excuse me now, please; it’s morning, heavenly bright,

and my irrepressible heart begs me to hurry on

into the next exquisite moment.

–Mary Oliver

All or Nothing: A Lenten Lie

It’s only a couple days in and I am not feeling so sure about this whole giving stuff up for Lent thing.  I mean, I do something every year—take something on, give something up, etc., but the degree to which the practice actually affects my spiritual life, I will confess, varies widely from year to year.

Or day to day, to be honest.

This year after talking with several friends about Lenten practice, I decided to go ahead and try to really change something substantive—to chart a new course that would take some effort.  I guess that’s the whole point—to reorient your life so that you look at things in a new way and perhaps think with new perspectives about your life—but it’s a lot easier to just give up something you don’t really like anyway, feel all self-righteous about it, and call it Lent.  Right?

The problem I am finding already with trying to change something substantive is this pervasive “all or nothing” mentality that seems to infiltrate every part of life, including and especially right now, my Lenten practice.  “All or nothing” is particularly tricky, I think, for those of us who buy into the whole achievement oriented perspective of our culture.

It goes like this: I shouldn’t have said that to the kids (or done that to a friend or preached that sermon or skipped that meeting).  Since I did, that shows I have failed as a mother (friend, pastor, leader, etc.).  Since I have failed in this one situation, it stands to reason that I am an utter and abject failure as a mother (friend, pastor, leader, etc.).

This mentality as it applies to Lenten practice is a little simpler, but the all or nothing mentality is the same.  I had planned to take an a specific practice each morning for Lent, say.  A day passed with all the craziness that days in my life bring, and I completely forgot.  This shows that I have failed.  Not only that, it shows that I am a failure.  And, even though it’s only the second day of Lent, I guess I should just throw in the towel.

Now that I’m actually putting this all or nothing mental process down on paper, I can clearly see how completely ridiculous it is.  The whole point of repentance is getting up, brushing yourself off, and trying again.  We wouldn’t need to repent if we didn’t fail.

So, I guess this means that Lent is still underway—no need to throw in the towel just because Lenten practice doesn’t always translate into Lenten achievement.  It’s okay to try again.  And again and again and again, if need be.  And while Lenten practice keeps me giving it one more shot, I’m going to try to also (or maybe most especially) skip the “all or nothing” lens through which I sometimes look at Lent.

And then when I fail, try again.

How to Eat an Elephant: Practicing Lent

Ahhh, it’s Lent.

I’m not going to lie: yesterday, Ash Wednesday, was a little rough for me.  Perhaps the melancholy came as a side effect of spending an entire, 12-hour, professional day thinking about sin, but I found myself tearing up as I recited over and over again: “The steadfast love of the Lord endures forever…”. 

Thank God for that, because while there’s a whole Lenten season stretching out ahead of us ripe for the practice of all the good habits put off due to the pace of life the rest of the year, frankly the very thought is a little overwhelming.

You know what they say about eating an elephant, though.

So, to begin with the first bite, I thought I’d put up a blog post, because I love writing and I haven’t been doing it here on my blog lately.  And, it’s Lent, so I’m beginning. 

One bite at a time.

“To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one’s own numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in one’s own way. It means to be able to learn, to be able to stand what we know. It means to stand and live.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

A Prayer for the Brink of Lent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

God, how well we remember

the celebrations of last year–

the hopes and dreams

and wild expectations

that we dared to allow in our hearts.

And now, how troubled

we are to recall our faliures!

We have not lived up

to our own expectations.

We have not measured up to your call.

The world has not been healed.

There is no peace.

The poor are still hungry.

Our dreams have burned to the ground.

The songs and carols of Advent and Christmas

brought a brief respite

from the darkness,

but now we stand on the bring of Lent.

We are weary and frustrated.

We are fearful of what

you might now ask us to do.

Help us to bring today

the ashes of our dreams,

and present them to you

for transformation.

 

–Katie Cook

The Rules of Improv: Characters and Relationships

2 Kings 5:1-17

In 2009,America’s longest running soap opera aired its final episode.  Seventy two years and more than 15,000 episodes after its first broadcast as a radio program in 1937, Guiding Light’s main characters drove off into the sunset for their next adventure and left millions of fans hanging.

Seventy two years of following three families fromSpringfield,Illinois…to keep a story interesting for that long there’s a whole lot of drama that has to happen.

According to my reading of summaries, the main characters on Guiding Light had been married and divorced numerous times, often to each other.  One of them drove off aFloridabridge, washed ashore on aCaribbeanisland and married a prince there. The prince’s evil brother dumped her into the ocean and she was swept back to theUS.  One of the main characters was presumed dead three times and did actually die once.  But then was miraculously revived.  Entertainment Weekly did a tally and determined that in the history of Guiding Light alone, 15 characters returned after being killed off and seven were paralyzed and confined to wheelchairs before miraculously recovering. 

Soap operas have long been a favorite daytime entertainment, with up to 17 running at once in the 1970s.  I have vivid memories of my grandmother clearing us all out of the living room everyday forGeneralHospital. 

Why? 

It’s the drama.  It just sucks you in.  The point of all of this drama, of course, it to keep people tuning in every single day to be sure that they don’t miss a thing.  It’s the characters and their relationships with each other that propel the story forward, even if the drama they live seems completely ridiculous.

We’ve been talking these past weeks about Christian community and the rules of improv.  Turns out there are strong correlations between the rules of staging a successful improv scene and some guidelines for healthy Christian community.  With the guidance of the Hebrew text today we can imagine how making room in our community for unexpected characters and rich relationships will propel the story of our life together to whatever it is God has for us next.

Today the rules to keeping drama going, for taking an improvisational scene to its next expression—so it won’t peter out—require the development of characters, characters whose specific personalities interact with each others’, no matter who they are.  In improv, your characters have to be diverse, different, interesting, each one distinct in not only life situation but also how the character stands, moves, speaks, the timbre of the character’s voice, the words a character chooses to say.  All of these things define a character, and a scene needs characters willing to interact with each other or…well…nothing will happen. Character, the development of character, is the substance of a scene, the thing that makes it unique and specific.

Once we’ve identified and defined characters, somehow those characters have to be in relationship with one another.  If an improv scene doesn’t establish relationships, it will never touch any sort of human core, and it certainly will not move the plot along. One expert calls relationship the central nervous system of any scene–it makes connections and provides meaning, giving substance to the art of the scene.

And remember, without a substantive scene, a drama cannot play out. Some scenes will be emotional, some will be tense, and some will be funny…but without them, the story unfolding on the stage is not really a story at all.  Characters in relationship with each other are critical to the progression of a scene.

The writer of today’s Hebrew text could have made a living writing for Guiding Light because the story we read today is like, well, a soap opera, filled with lots of unconventional characters who are living in unlikely and unusual relationship with each other.  To be exact, in the scene we read today, there are eight different types of characters who interact in turn with each other, propelling the scene forward with urgency and intrigue.

You may remember the story from Sunday School.  It’s the story of Naaman, great commander of the Aramean army. 

The Arameans and the Israelites lived in ongoing conflict, and the army ofAramwas responsible for the death of at least one ofIsrael’s kings.  It seems that the Arameans were having a good run of it with their powerful commander Naaman leading successful raids on the Israelites in the name of the Aramean king. 

Our character Naaman, however, had a terrible problem.  He suffered from a skin disease; the text says he had some kind of leprosy that not only threatened his life but threatened his prestigious position in Aramean society.  People with leprosy were routinely excluded from their communities for fear of spreading infection; Naaman’s future looked pretty bleak as he got sicker and sicker.

Naaman didn’t know what to do.  He’d tried every medical and religious healing strategy he could find, and nothing was working. 

With this problem framing the story, in comes another character.  She was an unlikely character for sure, a young Israelite girl captured and taken into slavery to work as a maid to Naaman’s wife.  The whole household was surely thrown into chaos with the uncertainty of Naaman’s disease, even the servants, and as a result a strange relationship between this little maid, the commander of the Aramean army, and the prophet of Yahweh developed. 

What are the chances?

When the little Israelite maid gave word to her mistress about Elisha the prophet, known for healing and other miracles, Naaman, in desperation, went to the Aramean king and the king wrote an official letter to the Israelite king demanding that Elisha heal his commander Naaman.

See how all these characters in unlikely relationship with each other propel the story toward its redemptive end?

All terror broke out inIsraelthen; the king ofIsraelwas sure that the misguided help offered by the little Israelite maid had put him in a completely untenable political position—how could the king manufacture a healing?  Even with Elisha the prophet in residence?

Well you heard the rest of the story.  The king asks Elisha to intervene; Naaman is given instructions that offend him; the worried servants on both sides continue the intrigue by begging the various players to listen to each other, give the situation a chance, rather than rushing in to another armed conflict.  In the end Naaman agrees and he is healed. 

It’s a great story, full of all the characters and plot twists that make for good drama.  A king, a slave girl, a prophet, a foreign wife, a servant, a commander…all of them in relationship with each other, helping to move the story to the end God intended all along.

All the commentators I read said that this pericope, this story about Naaman and Elisha, is all about healing.  They say it’s about looking for healing in unexpected places, it’s about God doing all sorts of things we don’t expect.  And perhaps it is.  But I also think this story has something to teach us about characters.  Characters and relationships. 

What if this epic story of Naaman and Elisha is a model for our life together in Christian community?  We learn from reading about Naaman and friends that any story worth telling is going to be full of characters, full of the drama that comes from characters willing to live in relationship with each other, even unlikely relationship.

A Hebrew slave giving advice to a famous Aramean general?

A holy man healing a foreign enemy?

Slaves working behind the scenes to orchestrate cooperation?

Everything about this story is unlikely, but it’s the characters and their relationships with each other that propel the story to its end.

And what an end it was.

Naaman followed the direction of the prophet Elisha and bathed in theJordan Riverseven times…even though he had strong suspicions that the directions were ridiculous.  And after bathing seven times in theJordan, Naaman found himself healed.  Completely healed from the disease that would end life as he knew it.  Healed.

Could it be that the story we are living is largely dependent upon our willingness to enter into relationship with the people whom God has brought into our lives? 

They may not be people we had envisioned.  They could possibly be people we might find distasteful under normal circumstances.  They may even be people we would label unclean or unrespectable, people we’d never recommend hanging around with. 

But the future of the story depends upon our willingness to embrace the characters who come our way, to enter into relationship with them even when those relationships are the last thing we’d ever expect and perhaps even the strangest thing we’ve ever imagined.

Just like a soap opera!

One of my favorite recent movies, I confess, is The Blindside.  The movie is based on the true story of Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy who take in a homeless teenager named Michael “Big Mike” Oher. Michael doesn’t know who his father is and his mother is a drug addict; he has had limited education and has even less life skills.

When Big Mike expresses an interest in football, his new family goes all out to help him, including giving the coach a few ideas on how best to use Michael’s skills. They not only provide him with a loving home, but hire a tutor to help him improve his grades and qualify for an NCAA Division I athletic scholarship.

I was crying at the end, when I learned in the theatre that Michael Oher was the first-round pick of the Baltimore Ravens in the 2009 NFL draft.

What are the chances that something like this might happen?

The chances are zero, unless one allows all kinds of unusual characters to enter a life…to engage in relationship with people you never thought you’d know, much less love.

That’s what’s required for propelling a scene forward: a willingness to welcome the characters who come our way, to see in those around us (no matter how different or strange they may seem) the potential for true and deep relationship.

And then, we have to move…move boldly into relationship with each other, no matter how strange these new relationships might feel to those around us, no matter how strange we look to each other!

We could tuck ourselves away and live only in relationship with those who are like us.  But Christian community is not like that at all.  Instead, we are perpetually offered the opportunity to know people who seem strange to us.  We have the opportunity to know them and, even better, the opportunity to engage in relationship with them, to see where that relationship might take us next.

Perhaps the story of Naaman and Elisha offers us the opportunity to examine the characters in our own stories.  They are numerous, no doubt.  The question is whether we can or will engage in relationship with these characters.

It’s a risk, for sure.

Some of these people are weird.

But the risk is worth our time, isn’t it?  Who knows where the relationships between characters like you and me might lead?  You never know, but a relationship like this might usher in theKingdomofGodsomewhere. 

Naaman took a chance and entered into relationship with people foreign to him, folks he had considered enemies.  The young slave girl recognized her relationship with the commander of the Aramean army and lived boldly into that relationship.  The slaves in that story took a chance and asked Naaman to risk his pride for the hope of healing.  Elisha took a risk and answered Naaman’s plea for healing.

What might happen to us if we had the courage to collect the characters we’ve been given and enter into relationship with them?

Characters and relationships…they are what builds and nurtures Christian community, the community in which we live God’s transformational Gospel and the hope of the whole world.

It’s a risk for sure, all of these characters living in relationship with each other.  But imagine what would happen if they did?  Imagine the story we could tell together; it would be a story that would change us…it might be a story that changes the whole world.

Amen.

The Rules of Improv: Change, Change, Change!

Mark 1:29-39

I’d like to begin today with a rather unusual approach to examining the text. 

Look down your pew…these are the people with whom you will now commence to tell a story, in full, from start to finish.  I’ll begin, then the person on the furthest left (my right) of your pew should continue, all the way down the pew until the final person finishes the story.  If you’re sitting in a pew by yourself, then hop on over to another pew or join another group, otherwise you’ll miss the point.

I know this is not your typical church experience, so before we try it I am going to ask the choir to demonstrate.  And so, we begin: “It was a dark and stormy night…”

Okay, now you.  “So far the day had been fairly noneventful.  Suddenly, from around the bend ahead…”

I have to say, you never know what people are going to come up with.  What are some of the contributions folks made to your stories, contributions that threw you for a loop?

If you try to imagine being up on a stage and playing a part in a skit in front of an audience, a skit in which you are required to respond on the spot to whatever your fellow actors throw your way, well then you will have a little bit of a sense of how it feels to do improvisational comedy.  Whether or not a scene will progress to its next iteration or fall completely flat is the question that hangs in the balance, and the tension of that uncertainty is what makes improv so much fun to watch when it’s done well. 

The improvisational scene is utterly and totally dependent on the actors’ willingness to take whatever curve ball is thrown their way—anything—and add to it, to move the plot along.  Folks who do improv professionally know this strategy as “yes, and…,” the strategy that underpins any improv situation…

…or any life as Christian community…. 

Just like actors in an improvisational comedic scene, we’ve got to take whatever comes our way and add to it if we want our life together as followers of Jesus to be filled with all the possibility and promise the Gospel offers for our lives.

This was certainly a challenge for folks who were beginning to get word of a carpenter fromNazarethwho was stirring things up aroundGalilee.  Change, constant change, was the order of the day for sure right here in the first chapter Gospel of Mark.  Here Jesus has inaugurated his ministry officially…things are about to change. 

Everything changed when Jesus jumped into theJordan Riverto be baptized by John.  The strangest and most unbelievable thing happened,…a dove descended from heaven and a voice announced that Jesus was God’s son.  It was a change from the normal order of business, for sure.

And then Jesus went away for 40 days and nights into the wilderness, where he had an epic battle with temptation.  I could be wrong, but I would expect that a struggle between good and evil may have been something of a change from his life as a carpenter inNazareth. 

Next Jesus goes searching for disciples and the disciples he invites to join him change everything.  The text says they set their nets down and follow him, not knowing anything about where their path would lead or what was in store for them all.  Everything changed for them that day they signed on as Jesus’ followers.  Everything changed for them and for all the people they knew and loved.  A total change in profession?  A radical, instantaneous shift in the course of your life?  It was change of the highest order, a turn of events they didn’t even see coming that morning when they woke up.

And in today’s passage the change intensifies even more.  Jesus starts healing people.  Healing them.  At first the people who started changing were the folks on the fringe, on the edge, the ones about whom nobody really knew quite what was wrong, much less how to go about helping them.

But today the change comes home, into the living room of Simon Peter, one of Jesus’ new disciple recruits.  Apparently Jesus and the newly formed band of disciples were using Peter’s house for strategy meetings.  That day when they went to his house, Peter’s mother in law, who lived with his family and thus contributed to the work of the household, had fallen ill with a fever.

This all sounds very benign to our 21^st Century ears, but it was no laughing matter back in Jesus’ day.  To say that Peter’s mother in law had taken ill with a fever not only meant the normal routines of the house were jeopardized, it also was cause for deep worry.  In the ancient world, falling ill with a fever was very often the indicator of a fatal condition. 

But Jesus came in, the text says, and took her by the hand.  He raised her up and healed her, instantly, and, you guessed it… the whole family was thrown into utter and disturbing change.  From worry to relief in one minute?  Unexpected change.

And the change continued as people all over the Galilean region started hearing about the healing, about the change.  They wanted it too—who wouldn’t?  From all over the city they came, streaming in from every quarter, hoping desperately for healing.

But healing is change, especially for the infirm who struggled to make their way in a society that required the contributions of all its members.  They wanted to be healed, but did they know that healing was change?  Big, huge change?  That once a situation they had come to know changed, nothing would ever be the same again.

Scientists tell us that our brains do not like change. 

Surprise. 

Certain neuropathways are formed through repeated experience, and they become like well-paved super highways in our brains.  Because of this, we experience a physical resistance to change.  Why? 

Change is inefficient.  We have already adjusted to a situation the way it is, and we know how to live and function with things the way they are, thank you very much.  To change would require the development and perfection of completely new systems and strategies for getting things done.  In other words, why would you take unpaved back roads when the superhighway is right there?

And change can be risky.  When things change we are vulnerable to whatever may come, situations that we are ill equipped, often, to handle…situations in which we will have to quickly adjust.  There’s fear in that.  Change is never, ever comfortable, in other words, and we’re naturally wired to resist it at every turn, as much as we can.

But here we are, not even at the end of the very first chapter in Mark’s Gospel, and Jesus has blown throughGalileewith nothing BUT change.  He’d come to turn things on their heads; this was radical, staccato change, one thing right after another, teaching a Gospel that had its foundations in the rule that the only thing that’s static is…you guessed it: change.

And here is exactly where the rules of improv and the call to Gospel community intersect today.  Because the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a Gospel all about change…transformation.

This means, that if we are serious about living in Gospel community, we will never be able to predict where God’s Spirit will lead us next.

This means, that if we are serious about living in Gospel community, we will constantly be confronted with the opportunity to say yes to things that are different and new, to move the scene on to its next expression…or to say no in an effort to keep things as they are.

This means, that if we are serious about living in Gospel community, we will often feel unsettled, we will often feel the compulsion to put things back to the way they have always been, the fear of what may be ahead.

This means, that if we are serious about living in Gospel community, embracing change will be the key to moving our community toward whatever is next in God’s ongoing transformation of the world and of each of our lives.

As we read the story of Jesus, who walked this earth bringing change and challenge along with his message of redemption and peace with God, we understand from our own individual perspectives how very hard change can be…accepting it, living through it, embracing a future that is new and unknown.

If it’s hard for each of us individually, well, then, imagine how it is for a whole community.  Like the neuropathways in our brains, our community has come to know certain patterns, to expect certain experiences, to understand God in certain ways.

But today’s rule of improv reminds us that this one we follow is never static.  He is always bringing change and opportunity, always ushering in the unexpected possibilities of the Spirit of God right here in our midst, leading us over and over again to places we never before imagined.

For this one who offers us change and possibility, we give thanks, as we wait with expectation for whatever it is we will find up around the bend.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.