The Creativity of the Christian Life (Feb 1)

Readings, Psalm 15, Micah 6:1-8, and Matthew 5:1-12
Image, William DeMorgan, The Good Samaritan (1860s)
 
Here’s the sermon in brief: the Christian life, is a life of creativity.
 
For when we come to respond to the graciousness of God, what are we to do:
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
   with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
   the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’
That is to ask: is there a patterned response, a predictable, repeatable response to the goodness of God which can be tallied and measured with simple, empirical methods? Copied and pasted from one Christian to the next, to the next, to the next?
God has told you, O mortal, what is good;
   and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
   and to walk humbly with your God?
Which is to say, no, no such patterned, predictable, and repeatable response ready to be tallied. The life we must live in response to the gospel is one that takes creativity, change, interpretation, improvisation, reflection, and growth. For to do justice here and now, is different than there and then. Loving kindness and walking humbly, these are, like any act of love and humility acts which need to be distinct and personal if they are to be authentic.  
​

 Likewise, when we bring to mind the psalm, and consider its opening pondering:
O Lord, who may abide in your tent?
   Who may dwell on your holy hill?
The walk of one who is blameless is not walked in lock step. It must be discerned and explored to fit our own particular gait, and the paths which lie before us. To do what is right, in our own time, is not something that can be reduced to a tick box list of dos and don’ts. The psalm, yes, gives us an outline: those who do not slander, who do no evil to their friends, those who stand by their oath even to their hurt. But again, how this looks in our life is a creative, generative, contextual endeavour of discovery, of trial and error, of faith, hope, and love. Even those last two regulations: do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent have an explicit meaning, but also need to be expanded and adapted into other aspects of our economic lives within our community.
 
So too the red words of Jesus defy a kind of cut and paste approach. These words also call for creative interpretation and improvisation. For we need to learn in our own time how to be peacemakers, what it looks like to hunger and thirst for righteousness. What it means to be salt and light, as the lesson goes on to commend, is hardly self-evident or an easily replicable phenomenon. Rather it is a path of discovery laid before the Church.
 
This is why Christianity was so quickly likened to the image of the way. It is a way of life, one might say a style of living, a manner of moving through the world. We have the scriptures to guide us, the Spirit to lead us, Christ to sustain us, the church to uphold us, but we do not have a simple equation to solve definitively and in detail the question: what does the Lord require. This is why we come week after week to church, why we have (as we explored some weeks ago) been given to each other. It is part of why we join voice in prayer and praise, why we open and proclaim the scriptures, and why we gather at the Lord’s table. These are sites of reorientation and rejuvenation in our faithful improvisation of the way. All sites which form a Christian imagination to resource us as we wonder what does it look like for me, for us, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly, to do no evil, stand by our oaths, to not profit by interest, to hunger and thirst for righteousness and remain salty and light-filled.
 
But as much as this reorienting, rejuvenating, and learning happens in church, it occurs just as much in our discipleship beyond these walls. That is to say, we learn to answer the question what does the Lord require, what is good or who may dwell on God’s holy hill out there. We find it sent in love to serve the world. We become better improvisers and interpreters of the way in our attempts to do justice out in the world, our attempts to love mercy in our city, our desire to walk humbly with our God in our neighbourhoods, our determination not to slander at the café, to do no evil in our friendships, to take no bribe in our workplace, to hunger and thirst for righteousness in perpetuity.
 
The Christian life, is a life of creativity. We are not given the cheat sheet, we are not told ‘here, paint by numbers.’ We aren’t exactly given a blank canvas and told, ‘paint!’ But we are – through scripture, tradition, and the community – shown a way. Many have walked this way before us and alongside us and more will come and walk it in years to come until the age to come, but it is nonetheless a way which we must discern, interpret, and improvise our own way along. Vitally, we do this walk not to earn anything – but walk along the way to a promised end. That is to say, we walk under the umbrella of grace so that we cannot lose our way. For this reason, the creativity of the Christian life is a gift, it is the freedom of blessedness to discover what the Lord requires of me, now, because God has seen fit to choose to walk with us, choose to require something of us. This, we pursue in worship, this, we pursue as the church, and this we pursue in love and service of the world. Every moment a site to offer up in our life a creative response to the question: what does the Lord require.