February 22—April 1

Promises, Promises

Lent begins Ash Wednesday, February 22, with two services and Imposition of Ashes at noon and 6:30 p.m. in the Sanctuary. Throughout the season of Lent our focus will be an exploration of the idea of covenant. What promises do we make to God? What promises does God make to us? As we consider spiritual disciplines and reflections of Lent, we will explore God’s promises in the Hebrew lectionary texts. Join us as we  discover the promises we make with God in our lives.

Sermon Audio

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: 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.

John: I heard about Calvary long before I walked through the door. Salima and I met volunteering in southern Africa in 2008. She spoke often about her church friends, the welcoming atmosphere of her church and the community she missed so much. In the end, I was as nervous and excited about meeting folks at Calvary as I was about meeting her mother! Turns out there was no cause for nervousness (in either case).
Calvary is a warm and welcoming community filled with generous, kind-hearted people of all walks of life. I treasure our commitment to social justice and to welcoming and serving a truly diverse congregation; above all I love that at Calvary, we are all encouraged and challenged to use our intellectual as well as spiritual gifts to grow in faith of God.

Pastor Amy will be officiating our wedding in September–one day we hope to grow Calvary’s family with some new family members of our own!

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.

Sermon Audio

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.

The Old Poets of China

Mary Oliver

Mondays 11am-12:30pm, Andrea Duarte teaching
Tuesdays  9:30am-11:30am, Edna Burneston teaching
Wednesdays 9:30am-11am, Myra Houser teaching
Fridays 2pm-3pm, James Rust teaching beginners and Carlos Garcia teaching intermediate/advanced

This isn’t your average children’s and youth ministry conference!

Something is happening in the church. A new kind of Christianity is taking root and growing across the globe. New forms of ministry, worship, and community are emerging. Questions are being asked. And change is happening.

But amidst these changes and shifts, children and youth are being left behind. Innovative approaches to ministry with adults are emerging around the world, but little critical reflection and attention has been given to how to nurture young people within a new kind of Christianity.

In May of 2012, leaders, ministers, volunteers, parents, and students will gather in Washington, DC, USA to spark conversations about youth and children within a new kind of Christianity. They will talk about innovative practices, critical issues, and controversial topics like violence, racism, interfaith dialogue, and sexuality. They will embark on a journey together to engage in life-giving ministry with young people. And they will blaze a new trail for the 21st-century church.