Holy Play--June 8, 2021

Holy Play--June 8, 2021

"Therefore let us go on toward maturity, leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ, and not laying again the foundation..." [Hebrews 6:1a]

My son is a whiz at Lego creations.  A lot of nine-year-old boys are, frankly.  One thing I have noticed, as I have watched him growing up from a toddler just learning how those oversized Duplo block interconnect to being able to create intricate spaceships and battle scenes and vehicles and houses, is that while the basic principle of Lego creations is the same, the more advanced he gets, the more specialized the building and creating gets, too.  

Every Lego set is still basically the same physical action: pushing little plastic pieces together until they click together and hold. But when he was very young, those pieces were pretty basic in shape and color--they were pretty much all easily graspable rectangles in all the primary colors.  Now he's got sets with tiny little pieces, some smaller than an insect, and they interact and go together in all sorts of new ways.  His most recent sets can transform from airplanes to robots, or fire actual projectiles, or have secret compartments and lights that really light-up.  

Same basic concept of interlocking pieces?  Sure.  But is his Iron Man-themed Tony Stark workshop set with its many little figurines and spinning components the same as the old red and yellow block shapes from when he was four?  Not a chance.  

Now, if I ask my son if he would like to build Lego creations with me on a free afternoon sometime, he still gets excited about what we can make, and he's always challenging himself to make something new that he's never done before.  But if I tell him, "No, wait--let's just build these clunky rectangles into an even larger, clunkier rectangles," he'll be upset that I'm holding him back.  Even though advanced Lego sets are still a matter of putting pieces together, he's ready for more than the basics.

The writer of Hebrews wants us to be in the same state of mind.  There's never a point where we leave the essentials of Jesus' love behind as our faith deepens, just like there's never a point with Lego-construction where you aren't putting blocks together.  But as you grow in your ability, the ways the pieces come together can become a great deal more involved.  The same inner logic remains the same, but what it looks like takes on a million new intricate variations.  In a similar way, the way of Jesus continues to be the constant of our faith, but as we grow and deepen in that faith, we can come to see all sorts of new expressions of what our faith in Jesus looks like, and what it means.  We're still building--same as at the beginning--but what we can put together takes on greater depth and beauty the more we explore the way the pieces fit together.

I want to suggest that something like this is how our faith really works.  There is a certain amount of "play" to it--of faithful imagination, taking pieces and parts of the story, taking big ideas from the Scriptures, powerful prayers of the past, breathtaking visions of the prophets, and deep realizations from our own lives and the world in which we live, and putting them together with creativity and wonder.  The essence of it is the same and runs through all of our constructing like a constant--the God we have met in Jesus remains the same, just like putting bricks together is the constant feature of Lego construction--but there are lots of ways to explore and express what that looks like.  

And while it is perfectly appropriate for a preschooler to just work on the gross motor skills of putting one big clunky rectangle on top of another, it would somehow seem like a missed opportunity if you never let them grow into the more intricate and details sets of castles, spaceships, monorails, and cities.  The writer of Hebrews doesn't want to deprive us of the possibility of getting to that kind of wonder, as well.  He wants us to be able to see how the basic notions and understandings we come to early on in our faith lives connects to every area of our lives.  And it's true--taking the love of Jesus seriously is going to make ripple effects in every part of our lives.  Our faith in the God Jesus reveals will change how we think about our relationships to our possessions and to our neighbors, what we hope for in the future, and what gifts of God are given to us in the present moment as well.  Once we have the hang of the basic idea, we'll start making connections to everything in our lives, and indeed, everything in the world!

It's been said that ancient Hebrew doesn't have a word for "spiritual" (even though it has a word for "spirit"), because in the Hebrew mindset, there is nothing that isn't spiritual--that is to say, there is nothing that doesn't matter to God or have a component that connects with the divine.  Growing crops is a spiritual matter as well as physical labor, and so is raising children.  Singing a song of praise is a spiritual reality, and so is whispering to your beloved.  Each of them is a unique and new combination of the same core connection--love--that binds all the other pieces together:  God's love holding each of us in relationship with God, with each other, and with the universe.  And in that infinite variety of combinations we get a glimpse of God's own utter genius and artistry and love and goodness.  What a shame it would be if all we ever had was clunky rectangles in blue and green that could only become bigger rectangles.

So, let's allow the writer of Hebrews to take us into some of those other places he wants to show us.  Let's watch as he makes connections, perhaps in ways we had never thought of, to see how different parts of our lives and God's goodness combine and fit.  The usual phrase we have for all of that is "doing theology." But maybe it's just as true to call it holy play.

Lord God, stretch our faithful imaginations to see new combinations and connections of who you are and how we live in this day and beyond.