Time To Play!

Mainline denominations are notorious for spending years of study on something before they make a decision or take an action. We don’t make a move without forming a committee, task force, or team, which has as its sole purpose looking at every angle, from every perspective, until we can come up with a recommendation that will not upset anyone. This usually ends up not pleasing anyone, of course, and often produces the least compelling option.

Likewise, when congregations are faced with figuring out “What’s next?” in their ministry, they think they have to spend an extended period of time studying in an effort to make sure they come up with exactly the "right" plan, without any flaws, that won’t ruffle any feathers.

I say let’s stop studying so much…and let’s start playing! And, specifically, let’s play JAZZ.

(I told you I was a musical junkie. Really I am a music junkie. I enjoy all kinds of music, but I especially like jazz and blues. While living in Minnesota for a few years, I found many places to go in the evening where I could hear live music with no cover and nice, smoke free environments, at a decent time. Now that I’m in the second half of my life, starting my night at 10PM is just not as fun as it used to be! Back living in Chicago, it has taken me some time to find that nice little joint to soak up the sounds, but a new place recently opened up in my neighborhood and I am again feeling pretty inspired.)

One of the things I love so much about jazz is that it’s all about improvisation. It’s about listening and playing. In the book, The Jazz of Preaching, Kirk Byron Jones takes a look at many of the jazz greats to see what their music has to teach us about proclaiming the Gospel message. What he found was amazing. While watching an installment of Ken Burns’ Jazz documentary he finds an interview with Duke Ellington. The interviewer asks Ellington where he gets his ideas from and Ellington responds that he “dreams” all the time. This confuses the interviewer because he thinks Ellington “plays” the piano. Ellington says he doesn’t play the piano he dreams. Then he leans in closer and closer to the piano, searching, listening for the next chord, which he eventually finds and says, “That’s dreaming.”

As I thought about this for a while I wondered how it was that Ellington confused dreaming with doing? I mean dreams are most often not reality right? Or, at the very best, they are something you may reach a long time from now, something you live into. They aren’t, as Ellington illustrates, a current reality, are they? Or are they, in fact, something that comes into being in our doing?

Jones goes on to describe Ellington’s listening. He watched as Ellington squints to hear the notes, saying:

“Perhaps the squinting hints at the mystery of creativity, the calling not to just play the sound that you hear, but to help make the sound itself. To be co-participant in the construction of a sound never heard before, a brand new sound.”

As I drifted off to sleep that night, after reading these passages in Kirk’s book, these words of Jesus’ came to me: “The kingdom of heaven has come near.”

I believe that, as Christians, this is the dream we are to realize today, the one we are to play in every moment of our lives. What does it look like, where you’re at, if you really lived like this? Listening for the notes God is playing. Leaning into the music. Doing the sound you hear. Living it into reality.

Jesus told us to pray for the kingdom to come “on earth as it is in heaven.” I can only imagine that he told us this because God does, in fact, intend the kingdom to be today, like Ellington’s dreaming, not in some far off dream (or after we are dead!). And, like with Ellington’s dreaming/playing, it is through us that others experience it, too. God’s mission comes to us and it comes through us to others. This is our responsibility as those who have been “blessed, to be a blessing.”

So what new sound are you going help dream/play/do into reality today?

The kingdom has come near!

It is/has/will come to you.

And it is/has/will come through you to the world!

- Tana Kjos

Comments

[brad]

I once spoke to a friend of mine at seminary about Jazz music and one of the things that he taught me was that this improvisation/play is founded on the bass line. We too have a grounding in a bass line we call God, and from there (I think) we can improvise and play. However, first, we need that bass line so we know where to come back to.

...just thinking out loud.