“Summer Blessings: Play”
Luke 18:15-17
John 15:5, 9-11
“Humpbacks,” by Mary Oliver
“Percy (Nine),” by Mary Oliver
With the world on fire, and with the president of the United States fanning the flames of authoritarianism, cruelty, and dehumanization, you might be wondering how we could possibly be spending any time—much less a Sunday morning worship service—talking about play.
I hear you.
With children in Gaza starving to death, law-abiding immigrants ripped from their families and jobs and confined in inhumane conditions, with unhoused people ripped from the military-patrolled streets of our nation’s capital, you might question my judgment in choosing to focus on poetry and play.
And I understand that.
In fact, these are just some of the reasons I agonized for weeks over what, if anything, to do with the beautiful Mary Oliver-themed devotional produced by the SALT Project. Would you think a summer sermon series focused on holy attention and beauty was too disconnected from the pain of the world? Would some of you think I should have stuck with scripture readings from the Revised Common Lectionary? Would those of you who don’t read poetry find it boring and irrelevant?
As for the first Sunday’s theme—rest—I could point to the Ten Commandments. With last week’s theme—trust—I could point to any number of Jesus teachings. But play? While so many people are suffering? Really?
Maybe that’s what the disciples were thinking when they berated the parents who were bringing their children to Jesus for his blessing.
“Don’t you realize that the Teacher’s ministry is about serious business: the kingdom of God, and all that?” they might have said. “Have you forgotten that we live in troubling times? Can’t you see that Jesus has more important things to do? He’s too busy to bother with children!”
Thank God that Jesus overheard this nonsense, set his disciples straight, and welcomed the little children!
Thank God the gospel writers considered this moment important enough to share with us. Thank God for all the ways the words of Jesus and other passages in our scriptures remind us of God’s love for all people and God’s desire that we understand the importance of joy and child-like openheartedness, even when—especially when—life is hard and painful and forever breaking our hearts, sapping our strength, dimming our hope, and challenging our faith.
To receive the realm of God as little children is to receive it with gratitude, joy, delight, imagination, openness, and at least some degree of innocence, fearlessness, and abandon.
At no time is it more important to remember this than when so much that is happening in the world angers us, frightens us, isolates us, and tempts us to despair.
While we tend to think that we play when we feel joyful, it’s at least as important to play so that we will feel joyful, so that our hearts will open, so that our hope will be renewed and restored, so that we will be encouraged to keep loving and giving and living for another day.
The Rev. Gini Gerbasi, an Episcopal priest in Washington, D.C., and a seminary classmate of mine, put it well the other day:
Fear and anger are primal emotions that tell us that something we deeply care about is in danger, she said. They hit us intensely and suddenly, and before we know it, we ’ve been swept away in a sea of panic and apocalyptic thinking. This is an absolutely natural response to what is happening right now. But the problem is that when we ’ve been swept away by fear and anger, we can ’t think rationally or wisely, and we lose connection with others and ourselves. Raging against the chaos waters is not only exhausting and unsustainable, it doesn ’t get us anywhere. …
When I think about justice work, Gini says, I see two paths that set off in the same direction but lead to very different places. The path of righteous indignation is easy and seductive, but it is poison for your soul. It affirms a false dichotomy of good and bad, and leads—not to justice or peace—but to retribution, violence, or oppression. It fosters division and contempt for the other.
The path of love—the only one that leads to true justice—is difficult, and none of us comes to it easily. It requires us to build our capacity for pain and discomfort. It requires us to feel rage and not be corrupted by it, to be afraid and not withdraw, and to return kindness for contempt. Part of what is so difficult about the path of loving is how easy it is to lose the way and find yourself on another path. We need each other to reach out and bring us back when we have been swept away by the chaos waters, or when we have wandered onto the path of self-righteousness that ultimately leads nowhere good.
To stay on the Jesus path of love and keep moving, while we are surrounded by cruelty, injustice, division, and deception, we need each other. And, I would add, we need to play—whatever that looks like for us. We need to replenish our wellsprings of joy. Play lightens our spirits and joy feeds our capacities to forgive, to connect with the Holy and one another, and to love.
It is so easy to be led away from the path of love by our earnest and justified anger. It is only natural, given the chaos, duplicity, and backwardness of our national moment, to grow ever more serious about our lives and what we’re doing with them.
Indeed, one of the stereotypes of progressive Christians and those on the so-called “woke” left is that we have a knack for taking the joy out of anything and everything. We can turn a festive potluck into a save-the-plastic drive. We can turn a beautiful Christmas carol into a lesson on inclusive language or proper theology. We can get so serious about using preferred pronouns that we forget to celebrate the people who use them. We can get so angry about white racism that we forget to celebrate Juneteenth, so offended by Columbus Day that we miss the opportunity to honor our immigrant forbears and celebrate immigrant cultures. We can become so apoplectic over those who continue to support a convicted felon and his incredibly destructive agenda that we forget that they are children of God. We can even become so focused on raising open-hearted, progressive children that we forget to let them just play.
And perhaps that is because we, ourselves, have forgotten how to play.
How would it be, Mary Oliver wonders, to live like a playful humpback whale or a happy dog—not thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward, just laughing, just enjoying the world we’ve been given and the people, creatures, and places we love?
Think about it.
Certainly we can’t live that way all the time. We have responsibilities and obligations, people and organizations who need us, and hearts and bodies that require caring attention. We live in a broken world that needs our loving engagement and care.
But what if gratitude, love, trust, rest, and the kind of playful lightheartedness that gives rise to joy were the wellspring of our lives from which everything else flowed?
Which is to say: What if we, the branches, abided in the vine, which is love and mercy, ease and nurture, and more than enough? What if we, God’s hands and feet, abided in the Heart of the Holy, which is love? What if we, the children of God, could not wait to run into our beloved Parent’s lap and rest there, soaking in the love?
What if we, like a happy dog, responded to the name of Jesus or a discussion of God not with a sense of obligation, not with all the reasons we don’t believe in x, y, or z, but with joyful abandon and praise? With playful surrender? With laughter and ease?
What if we, like a whale thrilling in the abundance of its ocean home, could more freely and joyfully see creation as a holy playground, so sacred and cherished that our enjoyment of it becomes both calling and fun?
What if, in addition to doing all the important things, we also made time for the things that make us feel good and remind us of who we are? What if we watched or listened to some things simply because they make us laugh?
Can we focus on playing without making it a project? Can we play without guilt or self-consciousness?
Let’s try, beloveds. Let’s try.
Truly I tell you, Jesus said, whoever does not receive the realm of God as a little child will never experience it.
