Creator at Play

Sunday morning I read this wonderful line from Psalm 104: "Yonder is the great and wide sea... and there is that Leviathan, which you [God] have made for the sport of it." The commentator in the quarterly Forward Day by Day wrote that it's "encouraging" to know that the "daunting" command to "be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect" can include "taking pleasure in creation, which, through the work of the Holy Spirit, pulses with life" (Brendan O'Sullivan-Hale).

A Day of PlayPlayfulness in creation set the tone for everything else Sunday. First, of course, there was my dog Brandy, who seconds ago interrupted my writing to get me to play with a ball. Once she caught it on the fly, she carried it away to chew in private, and now she's resting. She reminds me that Leviathan, some kind of giant sea-serpent, is said in Job 41 to be God's pet on a leash to play with.

Then, on my way to church, the classical station played Bach's Concerto for Three Keyboards, its first sixteen notes tossed around like Brandy's tennis ball for each player to do tricks with. Sure, Bach committed it to paper for musicians to learn, but it has the playful character of improvisors who try to keep the ball of melody up in the air while putting their own spin on it.

[PHOTO: A playful photo - birds on lines looking like musical notes.]

Fr. Roger Allen's sermon for Pentecost also seemed to be about the element of improvisation. In the 40 days since the crucifixion, the apostles have been huddled in fear, or scattered in their old home towns, "not ready" for mission, Fr. Roger said. God doesn't wait until they're ready for the Spirit, He just hits them with it, and off they go, improvising the church.

The sermon was accompanied by some recreational crying from eight small children there for baptism, one crier setting off another. From the choir, I saw smiles throughout the nave. We also enjoyed an unplanned drama when a toddler reached for the flame on the candle given his mother: there was a collective gasp and then a laugh when the quick-thinking mom blew the candle out just in time.

As a retired drama teacher, I know something about improvisors. They may have been given the goal to reach a happy ending in a scene, but they each have to "go" with what their partner(s) come up with. Any quirky "mistake" has to be made a part of the story.

Looking at the Bible from this angle, we see how God left himself vulnerable to our choices. It doesn't seem as though he'd planned for Adam and Eve to rebel, or for King Saul to go mad, or for David to rape Bathsheba.

But, like a comedian, he chooses to redeem our mistakes through unlikely agents -- Jacob, the mama's boy; Joseph, the arrogant young brother; the Hebrews, refugees from slavery; David, the youngest brother; Mary, a modest unmarried girl; Jesus, the carpenter's son; Peter, the uneducated fisherman; Paul, the baddest anti-Christian in Jerusalem.

And us. I don't want to lose the insight that, for all the challenges and pain involved, God enjoys the process of bending creation towards justice and reconciliation.

Other posts in this blog that relate playfulness to faith

• The Brick Bible: Theological Reflection (11/2020) records how our EfM seminar processed the Old and New Testaments illustrated with Legos: blasphemy? or enlightening playfulness?
• Teaching Playfulness, Reaching God (12/2012) curates other articles I've done on the subject, ending with an extensive quotation about God's improvisation from Tom Stoppard's wonderful play Arcadia: "If all the answers are in the back, what's the point?"