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See if you can remember when and where you first
heard these phrases:
“Ready or not, here I come.”
“You’re it!”
“Red Rover, Red Rover, send Boudreaux right
over.”
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Many of us first heard these phrases as children.
We were playing outside.
Kick the can, tag, Red Rover, and hide and seek. At
the end of long summer days our parents would call us back into the house as the
sun was slipping below the horizon.
Sometimes that call sounded something like, “Jacob
Wayne, don’t make me call you in here one more time!” We were having too much
fun to stop. That’s what it’s like to play.
God created us in his image. And we most closely
resemble God when we’re at play. That’s because God is playful.
That may sound odd. Play just doesn’t sound serious
enough for God. It’s so, well, unproductive. It seems almost frivolous. And
yet, our God is exactly that. Playful to his very core.
And here’s the kicker for the Church, that is, for
you and for me and for our congregations. God bends down to touch the earth
through his Church. God intends for his Church to be the means by which heaven
infiltrates our very ordinary lives.
So if we are going to be the conduit through which
God makes his presence felt and known, then we will do well to get our head
around God’s playfulness. Because only a playful Church can make the playful
God known.
Let me explain what I mean by addressing a couple of
questions:
How is God playful?
What does having a playful God mean for us as the
Church?
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Playful God, Playful Church
This is Bishop Jake's sermon from the convention Eucharist. Enjoy!
