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Ritual
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Now unfortunately, we don't have a lot of stories of Jesus at play. We do however have some fan fiction. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week.
Speaker 1:Head to commons.church for more information. That's it. We are wrapping up our short series that we've called ritual today. And in this series, we have talked about work and rest, and today is play. And on note note, I wanna show you one quick image here.
Speaker 1:Yes. This is an image of some kids playing soccer, but this guy right here in the yellow, that is also the coach of the Icelandic World Cup men's soccer team. And this photo was taken this week, two days after Iceland was eliminated from the group stage in Russia. And so since we're talking about play today, it's nice to know that there are still some pros out there that just simply want to play the game with some kids. Now before we jump in, let's recap where we've been.
Speaker 1:Because we started two weeks ago with this thesis, that work is holy. And that somehow what you do for a living, whether that is literally carving for yourself a life out of the land as a farmer. Or whether you earn your di nero making YouTube videos online so that you can buy food and shelter and everything else you need to survive. There is something sacred about your work. Now that doesn't mean your job is perfect.
Speaker 1:When I say holy, I don't mean to say that you need to stay where you are or to be limited by where you are right now. What I mean is simply that there is somewhere in what you do an image of God's presence in the world, a parable perhaps to be uncovered. And sometimes that takes work to find. Sometimes it means that every time you switch jobs or careers or work locations, you need to work to find it all over again. But discovering that touch point between what you do and who you are and who you were meant to be, no matter how slight that overlap is.
Speaker 1:This is a really important part of settling into the kind of satisfaction that we see when God sits back to view God's work and says, this is all very good. Now in the story of creation, we see rest because God rests and God works. And so this for me is really important when it comes to the relationship between work and rest in our lives. That we not slip into imagining rest solely as what facilitates our return to work. God didn't rest because God was out of energy.
Speaker 1:Or running on reserves, God didn't take a break because God was about to burn out. God rested because rest is good. And this is one that I have trouble with at times. My wife, Rachel, will tell you that I can do vacation for maybe a week at the most before I need to find my vacation project to put my energy into. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Speaker 1:And in fact, that kind of play is a big part of what we're talking about today in some sense. But rest is about more than just shifting our focus. It's about more than just recharging so we can go back and do more work. Rest is about settling into an alternative imagination for ourselves. It's about knowing that we are loved for everything we contribute and that we are loved for everything we don't.
Speaker 1:Walter Brueggemann says that rest is a reminder that we are always on the receiving end of God's good gifts. And so to come to know ourselves as recipients, even as we understand ourselves as participants, this is a very different way of imagining our place in the universe. So rest is an alternative identity formed in the shape of gift. And this is why if your rest is still jam packed all the time with events and parties and obligations and checklists, even if those checklists are just simply filled with how many water slides are gonna go down this summer, you still risk finding yourself multitasked back into the status quo. Because Sabbath and rest are actually about learning to settle into moments of stillness and silence and gratitude and joy over everything that has already been gifted to you.
Speaker 1:Now today is all about play. I'm not necessarily talking about fun and games. In fact, I think play can be hard and very serious sometimes. But what we really need to talk about today is all of that space that sits between work and rest. So let's pray, and then we'll dive into play.
Speaker 1:God, who made every living being capable of play, We trust that there is fun and whimsy to be discovered in you. We know that we don't even try to explain the way the kittens play or the way that children say the most embarrassingly accurate things at the best possible moments. Because we feel in our bones that you have designed us to run giddy and breathless at times and to speak in ways that dissolve into uncontrollable laughter at a moment's notice. We know that you have built us for fascination and gifted us with an ability to skip instead of just walk. And so surely you had fun in mind when you created, that you were joyful and playful when you did.
Speaker 1:And so we pray, Lord, that you might begin to open our eyes so that we could see the moments in front of us, so that we could take part in the play that surrounds us, to enjoy this breath that you have placed within us, all so that we might deeply experience this life that you have gifted to us. In the strong name, the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. K. Before we get rolling today, I want you to take a look at this.
Speaker 1:So not too bad. A little over 10% there. Now here's the question. Honestly, walking down the street downtown, how many of you would have tried that out? You don't need to raise your hand.
Speaker 1:A few of you did. Alright. Good. Because here's the truth. Honestly, that probably depends on the day for me.
Speaker 1:Some days, I'm pretty playful. Other days, not so much. However, I am learning more and more about play with my son living in my house. It's a very strange thing to go from living your life married. In our case, Rachel and I had been married for twelve years before we adopted our son, Eaton.
Speaker 1:And so it was an incredibly big shock to this fairly well oiled machine, which is if not a romantic way to talk about your marriage, then I don't know what is. And if you don't think it is, then you don't know me very well. However, having this child introduced into our home and our marriage after that amount of time has been a shock to the system, but also this wonderful reintroduction of play for us. Now Rachel, my wife was probably always better at this than me. She works with children after all.
Speaker 1:But for me, returning to playing LEGO, which I love, and pulling my transformer collection out of storage, and, yes, I did have a transformers collection in storage from my twenties. I'm going out for bike rides that don't have destinations involved with them. All of this has been an incredibly good experience for me because it's helped me to remember this side of me that used to play much more freely. And it's reminded me of something about what it means to be human, that we are multivalent. There's actually an article I read this week that claimed that scientists at Columbia and Yale universities had found the neurobiological seat of spirituality.
Speaker 1:It's a new study was published in cerebral cortex quarterly, which sounds like a great read assuming that you're really into cerebral cortices. But what they found was that the experience of transcendence activated distinctive patterns in the parietal cortex. Now this is a part of our brain that is responsible for processing sensation, spatial orientation, language. It's also thought to influence our ability to focus our attention on something. But what's really interesting is that they found that the spiritual condition, which is what they compared against the neutral relaxed condition, reduced activity in the left inferior parietal lobule.
Speaker 1:And that is a specific part of the parietal cortex that contributes to perceptual processing and self other representations. Now what all that means is that spiritual experiences broke down or at least for a moment they seem to set aside in our brains. And I'll quote the article here, our experiences of the barrier between self and others. And it was this profound shift in perception that buffered our experience of stress and isolation. Another quote from the article here.
Speaker 1:Analytical thinking and spiritual empathic thinking rely on different neural pathways and processes. They don't happen simultaneously in the brain, but both modes are necessary just like breathing in and out. You can't do both at the same time, but you need both in order to stay healthy and well. Now where this connects with our conversation of play is that these experiences of transcendence in the study were triggered in all kinds of different ways. Everything from church services to being surrounded by nature in a forest to cheering with a stadium of fans at a sporting event, all the way down to being lost in play with a child.
Speaker 1:All of those experiences triggered the same reaction in the parietal cortex. Now we might like to think that we have a monopoly on transcendence and that it's religious services like this with compelling talks like mine that can make you see God. Maybe that's true. You can tell me after. But it is certainly not the only way to experience the divine.
Speaker 1:And whether we want to footnote that scripturally, for since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, God's eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made. That's Romans one twenty. Or whether we want to find it through an MRI hiding out in our parietal cortex. What this tells me is that like breathing in and out, we need to be searching out and cultivating all of these various avenues through which we become more fully human. And one of those ways is work.
Speaker 1:And one of those ways is rest, but one of those ways sits somewhere in between. You see work is about our participation in the ongoing creation of the world around us. Rest is about our intentional stepping away from productivity. To know ourselves as valued apart from our contribution. But play is often about investing ourselves in a completely different type of outcome.
Speaker 1:And sometimes, I think how much we value play comes down to how we imagine this world that God has created for us. I mean, God had purpose in mind when God set out to create a world. There was space needed to be shaped, or plants and animals that needed support. There was eventually humans that emerged from the story to give direction and drive to the narrative. But so much of this creation narrative seems almost entirely fanciful.
Speaker 1:In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and empty, and darkness hovered over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was over the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light and saw that the light was good and separated light from the dark and God called the light day and the dark night. I mean, when you read that and you step back from a moment, you almost get this sense that God is being surprised and caught off guard by what God makes. God said that there be light and there was light.
Speaker 1:And God was amazed by how cool light was and how neat it was going to be to have night. And so God just kept going. There's work and there's purpose, there's intention, but there's also this sense of playfulness and discovery, almost adventure that's buried in this creation story. A creativity that expresses itself without the weight of necessity. One of my favorite writers, Robert Farrar Capon, imagines the story of creation this way.
Speaker 1:He writes one afternoon before anything was made, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit sat around in the unity of their Godhead discussing one of the Father's fixations. You see from all eternity it seems, God had had this thing about being. And he would keep thinking up all kinds of unnecessary things, new ways of being, and new kinds of beings to be. And as they talked, God the son suddenly said, really, this is absolutely great stuff. Why don't I go down and whip us up a batch?
Speaker 1:And God the holy spirit said, terrific. I'll help. And so they all pitched in and after supper that night, the son and the spirit put on this tremendous show of being for the father. And it was full of water and light and frogs and pine cones kept dropping all over the place and crazy fish swam around in their wine glasses. And there was mushrooms and mastodons and grapes and geese and tornadoes and tigers and men and women everywhere to juggle them and join them and love them.
Speaker 1:And God the father looked at this whole wild party and said, wonderful. This is just what I had in mind. Tov, Tov, Tov. And all God the son and God the holy spirit could think to say was more of the same. Tov, Tov.
Speaker 1:And so they all shouted together, Tov Meod, very good. They laughed for ages and ages saying things like how great it was for beings to be and how clever of the father to think of the idea. How kind of the son to go to all the trouble of putting it together. How considerate of the spirit to spend so much time directing and choreographing it all. And forever and ever they told old jokes.
Speaker 1:And the father and the son drank their wine in unitat spiritus sancti in the unity of the spirit, and they threw old ripe olives and pickled mushrooms at each other for centuries and centuries. Amen. See, there is something in creation that speaks to us about work and rest. Sure. But it is only the most unobservant among us who would ever look around this world and not see the playfulness of the divine.
Speaker 1:I mean, you ever seen a flamingo? Those things are ridiculous. Now unfortunately, we don't have a lot of stories of Jesus at play. At least not what we might identify immediately as play. We do however have some fan fiction.
Speaker 1:There's an ancient text that dates to the late second century called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. And Hippolytus calls it a fake. Origin dismisses it in a homily that he writes and Eusebius even refers to it as fiction in the church histories. But nevertheless, it's really interesting to me that we wanted to imagine Jesus at play. Now, in this text, Jesus is as irascible as any child.
Speaker 1:At one point, another kid bumps into him and Jesus kills the child with a stern look. And when the neighbors come over to complain to Mary and Joseph, Jesus strikes them blind and so his parents have to teach him to use his powers a little more wisely. Thankfully, he resurrects the child and heals the parents. But you can see why this text was not taken all that seriously even in the early days. There are however some more heartwarming moments as well.
Speaker 1:There's the time where Jesus makes a pigeon out of clay and then breathes life into it and it flies away. There's a time where he extends a board that was cut a little too short when his father was trying to make a bed. Is the time he takes a single grain of wheat and somehow creates an entire feast for his friends one day. And all of it's kind of silly. It really has no basis in anything but someone's imagination.
Speaker 1:But I think the fact that we've always wanted to imagine what Jesus was like at play is maybe meaningful in its own right. That we know that play is important to us. And so instinctively know that it was important to Jesus. Even if our storytelling is a little suspect. And so what I want to do today is turn to a story that might not seem at first all that playful.
Speaker 1:But I think it can actually help us to expand our imagination beyond the categories of work and rest. It's found in Matthew six where Jesus says, do not store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and vermin destroy and thieves break in and steal. Instead, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For moths and vermin do not destroy where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.
Speaker 1:The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, then your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is dark, how great is that darkness? Now, the question here is, what does any of this have to do with play?
Speaker 1:And for that, let's go back to the start. Jesus says, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Instead, store for yourself treasure in heaven where none of this fading and falling apart seems to happen. And there's basically a couple ways we can take this. One is to imagine that heaven is essentially like life.
Speaker 1:You can earn your experience there and you can stack up your rewards. You can be better off based on how hard you work in this life. And there are certainly people who treat this passage that way except that for me that seems to undermine some of the other parables that Jesus tells. For example, there's a story where Jesus says that God is like an employer who puts out a call for workers. And some people show up at the start of the day at 9AM and they get put straight to work.
Speaker 1:And then a few more show up at noon and they get put to work. In the afternoon, few more come along and they get given a job and then right at the end of the day, a few more stragglers turn up and they get sent out into the field to work as well. But then a few minutes later, the boss comes out, tells everyone the day's over and pays everyone for a full day's wage. And some people think this is unfair. And the boss just says to them, listen we made a deal and you got paid a fair day's wage.
Speaker 1:What's it to you if I'm exceedingly generous to someone else? And so whatever heaven is, it doesn't seem to be built on any kind of merit system. I don't think this is a story about being a baller in heaven. Another way to take it is this, is to imagine that Jesus is saying that all earthly treasure is a bad thing. So just don't waste your time with any of it.
Speaker 1:And there's some appeal to that. Jesus was certainly not a wealthy man. In fact, he seemed to have very little interest in wealth at all. Contrary to popular opinion, he did not own a private jet and yet he also did tell lots of parables about working hard and being really successful. Jesus often uses the image of wealthy successful business people as proxies for God like in the parable that we just talked about.
Speaker 1:So I don't think you can necessarily read a disdain for wealth into Jesus' words either. It's certainly not a priority for him. It just sort of is. I think what you have here is this category in Jesus' mind that values wealth for the good it can accomplish in the world and probably not much more. But if this teaching isn't about turning heaven into some capitalist paradise, and it's not necessarily about villainizing wealth either, then what is it Jesus is trying to get at?
Speaker 1:And the key here is really in the section about our eyes. Jesus says, if your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. If your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. And this actually has nothing to do with what you look at. It's actually a very well known Hebrew metaphor about generosity.
Speaker 1:See in Hebrew, saying someone had good eyes was a way of saying that they were very generous. Saying someone had bad eyes was a way of saying that they were stingy or greedy. And you can see this if you turn to the Proverbs. There you'll read, the stingy are eager to get rich but they are unaware of the poverty that awaits them. That's Proverbs twenty eight twenty two.
Speaker 1:But literally, in Hebrew what it says is, those with bad eyes are eager to get wealthy, but they don't see the poverty ahead of them. Now the trick here is that Greek doesn't really have this metaphor and meaning. And since Jesus is likely speaking in Hebrew or Aramaic, which then gets translated into Greek, which then gets translated into English, we kinda miss the point and we translate it literally. But what we really have here is Jesus saying something like, don't trade your life for things that will fade away. Put your energy instead into something lasting.
Speaker 1:Because when you are generous, it will fill you with light and that light and that generosity will become a lamp inside you that shines out of you and guides your path in the world as you go. Now, that's great. But again, what does any of that have to do with play? Well, for me, there is a category we call work. And this is where I invest my time and my energy.
Speaker 1:I carve out a space and a life for myself and my family in the world. And it's temporary, but it's good, And it's holy. And it teaches me something about God. And then there is this space called rest. Where I step back and I gather myself and instead of creating I take in.
Speaker 1:And I enjoy and I come to know myself as loved apart from anything that I have to contribute and it's good and it's holy and I learn something about God as I rest in stillness and silence. But then there is all of this space in the middle. Space where I give myself to what energizes me. And space where I invest myself in things outside of me. Space where I create and I contribute and I participate like work and yet somehow I come away with more not less energy, mind of kind of like rest.
Speaker 1:And so for me, when I play really hard with my son, and I know that I am shaping his story for somewhere else down the road. Or when I volunteer, maybe that's here at Commons because, yes, I do volunteer my time as well as give my work, but maybe it's somewhere else, the work that I do with hands at work or a local sports team, and I give myself to something that is for someone else. When I pick up my guitar, which to be honest is less than I would like, but I invest myself in building a skill that will never pay me back in anything but joy. And if you're just learning to play guitar, it will pay you back in as much frustration as joy, but that's another thing. But all of these things are play because all of this fits in that space between my work and my rest.
Speaker 1:It's not stillness. It's not silence, but it's not work either. And for me, all of this is part of that alternative investment that Jesus is reminding me to value as well. Because I need work and I need rest. But I also need ideas and experiments, adventures, objectives that had nothing but generosity and joy attached to them.
Speaker 1:Now you can call it a hobby or a passion project. You can call it service or volunteering. You can call it intentional protracted passionate silliness. But if your work is about the life that you create for yourself, and your rest is about the gifts that you receive, then your play is about where you learn to invest in something with a fundamentally different measure of success. Something that is generous and joyful and doesn't fade.
Speaker 1:And if you can succeed at that kind of play, not just when you retire, not when you have more time on your hands, not just when you have enough money to ignore your need for work and rest, But if you can succeed at playing, right now in the midst of your obligations and anxieties, then those things that fade will never become the idol that they so desperately want to be in your life. Because here's the thing, the antidote to greed isn't discipline. It's the generosity of learning to give yourself away to projects that will never pay you back. So here's my prayer for you today. That you might work hard, and you might rest well, but that you might also discover the energy and passion within you.
Speaker 1:The vitality to begin to pour yourself into the kind of playful generosity and joy from which this world was made. Because one night after supper, God pitched in and put on this tremendous show of being. And it was full of water and light and frogs and pine cones kept dropping all over the place and crazy fish swam around in our wine glasses. And when God the father looked at the whole wild party, he said, wonderful. This is exactly what I had in mind.
Speaker 1:And all God the son and God the holy spirit could think to say was more of the same. And they shouted together, Tov Meod, this is very, very good. Might you work and rest and play extraordinarily well this week? And might you know that it is all very good. Let's pray.
Speaker 1:God, as we close this short series on ritual, As we come to take these ideas of work and rest and play and figure out where they fit in our lives, in our patterns, in our habits. Might you remind us today that play is sacred. That sometimes that is a moment of uncontrollable laughter and joy. Sometimes that is the generosity of pouring ourself into someone else. But when we find that space between the life we make for ourselves and the stillness and rest we receive, we give ourselves away in joy and generosity.
Speaker 1:At that play can become a sacred part of our ritual in the world. That through it, your spirit could be in and near to us, reminding us of its beauty. God, when we play, even just for a moment this week, would you be present by your spirit reminding us of the sacredness of that moment? And as we become aware and we see the beauty, might we put more importance and energy into it so that our rituals draw us into the full experience of what it means to be human, noticing your sacredness in all things. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.