My dear children, I am only to be with you a little longer. You will seek me; (but) "Where I am going you cannot come." A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you. (John 13:33-34)
Has it occurred to you that in those parts of the United States where it comes on at 11:30 p.m., "Saturday Night Live" is also Sunday Morning Live? It might be good if we could bring a little more of the humor of that show with us to church on Sunday mornings. The skits on Saturday Night Live aren't always the greatest, but Sunday morning in church isn't always as lively as it should be either, so let's not throw stones. (Besides, now that so many folk have video recorders, we can usually find a way to watch the "Church Lady" and her various cohorts at another time and not feel that Saturday night is competing with Sunday morning.) What a wonderful job Dana Carvey did of keeping us church folks from taking ourselves too seriously! Together with cartoonists like Doug Marlette who gave us the comic strip "Kudzu," and Carvey's "Church Lady," satirists from Mark Twain to Mark Russell help us to see ourselves from refreshing and often enlightening new perspectives.
Marlette sparked renewed appreciation for familiar biblical texts - and it reminds us that translation is as much an art as it is a science, when he gives us gems like this souped-up version of the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the bummed out, for they shall be mellowed ... Blessed are the wimpy, for they shall inherit the whole nine yards ... Blessed are they who are really into righteousness, for they shall pig out ... Blessed are the squeaky clean, heartwise, for they shall check out the chief mucky-muck." And while the Rev. Will B. Dunn groans that he has had it with these new translations, he is not above a little friendly irreverence of his own. About to baptize a squealing child, he asks the parents to repeat the baby's name. "Upton Charles!" Are you sure you want to name him that? Do you realize what his friends will call him when he's a teenager? What? "Upchuck." With the bowl of baptismal water dripping over his head, the preacher laments "We should have gone over all that in the pre-baptismal counseling."
Slightly irreverent, without a doubt, but certainly not sacreligious. The grace of God makes it possible for us to lighten up and develop a sense of humor. Some church calendars recognize this day as Cantate Sunday - a day to celebrate singing and music. Hence, it can also be a day to remind ourselves that the liturgy of the worship service is a kind of play or drama, and that, like the church organist, we can all "play the service," not taking it with the wrong kind of seriousness. Just as we have been learning not to take our physical and historical images of Jesus too seriously because Jesus is as much a symbolic figure as he is an historical person, so too we need to recognize that the liturgical drama of the church is a symbol. Jesus is a symbol for the themes of grace, hope, faith and love - and the liturgy is, therefore, a "symbol of a symbol." While the symbol may participate fully in that which it symbolizes, there is also a sense in which it is distinct from that which it represents. Jesus is the living embodiment of God's grace, but he is also distinct from God the Father. The Liturgy also embodies divine grace, but particular forms of worship are not to be equated with Jesus or God.
A few years ago one of the major denominational magazines featured on its cover an impressionistic portrayal of the suffering Jesus. Obviously thinking that the artist had produced something more like a betrayal of Jesus than a portrayal, one reader wrote to the editor: "What have you done to my dear, sweet Savior?" The Jesus portrayed in John 13:33 tells his disciples that they cannot and must not hold onto him too tightly. "I am only to be with you a little longer." Our desire to "have" Jesus just as we want him is a desire that must be resisted. John's theme is that Jesus is gone away and that we must learn to recognize and be open to ever new and changing forms of his presence with us.
As important and beautiful as an historically-accurate and artistic liturgy or mass may be, and although the Greek word from which we get "liturgy" refers to an act or work of religious ritual and service, we must resist the urge to take the "work" and forms of worship too seriously. Someone has dubbed folks who seem to be fanatics about liturgical practice "liturgiacs." The validity of a worship service (or worship "work") does not stand or fall with the way in which the presiding minister holds her hands during the eucharistic prayer! Of course, if one is using an historical liturgical form, one should not truncate or mangle that rite to the point where it is unrecognizable. If we want to be that free and creative, we should simply create a new form.
In some instances, our attitudes toward the "real presence" of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar degenerate into an attempt to hold onto Jesus too tightly. Some of us hold the view that the bread and wine truly become the real presence of Christ to us only when we in fact partake of the physical elements. (Leftover or spilled wine, for instance, is simply wine. We should save or dispose of it with an appropriate sense of decorum, but not venerate it as if it were some kind of relic.) Ecumenical dialogue should proceed along the lines of placing the various doctrines about Christ's presence in the Eucharist on a continuum, with a strong doctrine of "transsubstantiation" at one extreme end, and an equally radical insistence that the bread and wine are merely symbols at the other end. When we do this I think it becomes apparent that we all really agree that the Sacraments involve a unique combination of realism and symbolism! It is not that Roman Catholic ideas of transsubstantiation are too "magical" or superstitious when they affirm the "real presence" of Christ in the Sacrament, or that Reformed ideas of the bread and wine as simply representing the presence of Christ are too vague and indefinite. The two views simply complement one another as we all struggle with the tension between our desire to "have" Jesus still with us and our realization that the New Testament reminds us not to hold onto Jesus too tightly.
The fact that Eastern Orthodox churches and the Western churches have long argued over when to celebrate some of the major festivals related to the life of Jesus, and the fact that we have a movable date for Easter, are further reminders to us that while Christians take history seriously, Christians also do not confine truth to historical facts. The movable date for Easter is a qualification of the "pure historicity" of Jesus and the Resurrection. The real Jesus Christ may be historical, but he is always for Christians something much more than merely historical! He is a Living Symbol for the grace and victory of God.
Neither life nor death shall ever from the Lord his children sever; Unto them his grace he showeth, And their sorrows all he knoweth." (Caroline V. Sandell Berg)
In the story we have read today, from John, Jesus addresses the disciples as "Little children" or "Dear children." You may remember that he also calls them children in our text from two weeks ago. (John 21:5) And, of course, we all remember Luke's account of Jesus blessing the children and saying "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child shall not enter it." (Luke 18:17) One of our loveliest hymns is the Swedish favorite, "Children of the heavenly Father." A major characteristic of children is their playfulness. We need to preserve a childlike, playful attitude toward the divine liturgy. Just as work and leisure go hand in hand to make us well-rounded human beings, and just as creating the world is both God's work and God's play, so too the divine liturgy (or work) can also be divine play.
The theater emerged in the Western church when highly-stylized plays or dramas based on biblical stories were created, often using free-wheeling imagination to fill in little details. For example, one of the earliest such plays focuses on the women going to the merchant and buying the spices and ointments they need to embalm the body of Jesus. In more ways than one, therefore, the divine liturgy is a form of divine play. The liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox churches tend to be quite long because they are essentially an acting out of the life of Jesus.
Most liturgies play around quite a bit with names, images and symbols for God. More often than not we begin "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." It is fair to say that we are playing with the imagery of parent and child when we use this way of naming, of describing God. Surely we realize that these ways of describing God are inadequate symbols and that we should not take them too seriously. God may be like a Father or a Mother. Jesus may be like a Son, and we may be like children of God, but God is not bound by our human categories. We can play with anthropomorphic images but we must avoid the arrogance of creating God totally in our image. (Perhaps you have heard the joke that says "God created man in his image ... and man returned the compliment!")
The great philosopher Plato, however, went to the opposite extreme of not valuing our human symbols and forms enough. He thought of everything in this world as nothing but a poor copy of the ideal thing (a chair, for example) in the mind of God. Since an actual chair is just a poor imitation of the "idea of chairness," it is not particularly valuable or important. For Plato, a painting of a chair was particularly useless and valueless because it was nothing but "an imitation of an imitation!" Plato had a very low opinion of art and artists because he felt that art was just too far removed from Reality. Plato would not have appreciated John's words about the glorification of Jesus as representing and symbolizing the glorification of God.
The Bible, on the other hand, greatly values symbols and artistic images because they remind us how much God cares about the material world and because they help to give us a broad-ranging perspective on truth. Playing around with various perspectives on life is a major part of what life is all about! This is what humor does also. One of the things that humor does for us is to give us a sense of distance from reality, making it easier for us to cope with painful and harsh realities at those times when we are in fact right up against them. In Latino cultures, people put death at arm's length by making fun of it with skeleton symbolism. We can laugh at the joke about the mausoleum being "a place for people who make ashes of themselves" (or other funeral and cemetery jokes) when death is not right at our doorstep, and then, when we are up against death for real, we have a balanced perspective which helps us cope better in the long run. We do the same thing when we sing "Neither life nor death shall ever from the Lord his children sever; unto them his grace he showeth, and their sorrows all he knoweth." Being aware of the grace of God, we can put sorrow, life, and death, in perspective - and cope with it much better in the long run. This is why we listen to sermons as well. We contemplate and examine all aspects of life even when they may not be of immediate concern, so that when we are faced with the inevitable problems, joys and sorrows of life we will be better prepared to deal with them.
Christian theology is not afraid to say that in a sense both Jesus and the Divine Liturgy present themselves to us as works of art. During the observation of the 25th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe, a commentator described how Marilyn went from being the historical Norma Jean to being a legend and ultimately a myth. To say that a person's life has taken on "mythic proportions" is to say that one's life has taken on levels of meaning far beyond the ordinary! The real Jesus Christ is a mythic being in this sense. The simple "Jesus of history" always stands in a healthy, dynamic and creative tension with the symbolic "Christ of faith."
The life of Jesus and the Divine Litury of the church give us many levels of meaning to play with. When John's Jesus says to the disciples, "Where I am going you cannot come," he is referring both to his going to death on the Cross and to his going into another dimension with God where there are "many mansions." It took time for these levels of meaning to sink in (especially, it seems, in the case of Peter, who, ironically, was to become the main leader of the church).
The liturgy of the Eucharist serves to remind us that "thanksgiving" in particular has many levels of meaning. Above all we are thankful for God's grace in Jesus, the Christ. We are grateful that our salvation depends on God and not on us. In all languages based on Latin, the word grace and the word gratitude are virtually synonymous. (In many languages the word for "thanks" sounds like the english word for grace - gratia, gracias, etc.) To be gracious is to show favor and unconditional love, and the only appropriate response to such grace is a spontaneous gratitude that spills over and becomes a channel of that grace to others. We love one another just as Jesus loves us.
Sadly, however, when many people say "thank you," they actually demonstrate their inability to receive a gift graciously. They feel that every favor must be returned. A "thank you" becomes a way of evening the score, of making sure that you haven't given me more than I have given you. There is nothing wrong with sharing favors and gifts in a spirit of mutual give and take, but we must also cultivate the ability to receive graciously when there is no way we can repay our benefactor. It may be more blessed to give than to receive, but we often find it most difficult to receive a gift graciously when we have no hope of returning the favor. Just as a performer must learn to accept a compliment graciously with a simple "thank you," unemcumbered by a heavy dose of false modesty, so too we can only accept God's grace like a gleeful child and go on our way rejoicing. (Incidentally, one ramification of what we are saying here about the various aspects of Christian thanksgiving is that it is not necessary to say "thank you" to the person who gives us the bread or wine during communion. The gift is from God, and the only gratitude God desires is a life in which we demonstrate the same kind of grace and loving service to others that we have seen demonstrated in the life of Jesus.)
One of ancient Israel's psalms of thanksgiving shows us what a short step it is from divine playfulness and graciousness to divine laughter and divine comedy. An appealing translation of Psalm 65:13 goes like this: "The valleys stand so thick with corn that they laugh and sing." Divine grace makes it possible for us to laugh and sing our way through life in spite of the fact that, as the joke goes, none of us will get out of here alive - in spite of the fact that everything we laugh about is also something we will probably cry about at one time or another. God's grace gives us a perspective like the perspective of a great comedian. The gift of faith is virtually identical with the gift of a sense of humor. Both give us that miraculous ability to maintain a positive attitude toward life no matter what happens. Both have to do with salvation - with healing. Both contribute to our physical and spiritual health.
Victor Borge's lampooning of classical music and musicians has brought great joy to many people over the years. A review of his 1987 San Francisco Pops performance concluded with these words:"A world without the gentle wit of Victor Borge would be a world diminished by the loss of graceful laughter." Since a sense of God's grace is the ultimate foundation for a sense of humor, maybe the title for this sermon should have been "Graceful Laughter." It's a great phrase so long as we don't equate "graceful" with "fainthearted." So if "Divine Liturgy, Divine Play, Divine Comedy" is too heavy for you - just remember to fill your life with graceful laughter.