I got to give the sermon at our 8:30am service this past Sunday. I spoke on 2 Corinthians 2:17 and Mark 12:28-30. Here is what I said:
Almost everyday at dusk, the high school neighbor boy heads behind our house to the hybrid tennis/basketball court to shoot baskets. When I first noticed him, I assumed he was practicing his craft for tryouts so as to earn a spot on the high school team. Then, because my neighborhood is placed in the valley of the shadow of the Big M, my mind went to scholarships, March Madness, and it didn’t take long for me to construct a narrative that I was watching the next Michael Jordan in his humble beginnings.
But basketball season came, and while my oldest daughter, Hadley, who never misses any social event no matter what in Jesus’ Name Amen, left the house to watch all the games, the neighbor boy headed to the court behind our house and shot hoops, the thunk of the ball became a welcoming chime ushering in the end of the day.
I know nothing else about this boy except that I’ve seen him at the pool, messing around with his friends, and that the summer when Hadley had her license and he didn’t, he nonstop texted her trying to convince her to drive him to McDonalds for French fries. It worked once. Other than that, it is this dusk devotion that I know him by.
I don’t know all that much about sports. How to play them, or what’s going on when I watch them are equally baffling to me. However, I understand what it means to push and stretch myself, to give all that I have to a thing that makes me feel fully myself in all my complexities and contradictions. It is a high, an addiction perhaps.
Nevertheless, to do the thing you love is the verse, “I am wonderfully and fearfully made,” made manifest. I feel this when I dance, when I run, and when I write. It is in doing these things that I believe in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!”
My faith works itself out through movement, and mostly through writing, though it wasn’t always the case. For a long time, I believed my desire to write was a sin. After all, I was a mother now. I needed to pay attention to Hadley and Harper. I should’ve figured this out prior to having children. So plagued by this siren call was I that I paid a visit to an old Professor to confess.
Over coffee, and lots of crying (on my part), I told him what I believed to be true, figuring that he’d nod, thank me for being so bold in confessing, and suggest a book or two that might help me redeem myself. Instead, he said, “What if it’s a sin if you don’t write?”
It was a launching point for me. He opened the door to a new world where following a calling meant I do it with trepidatious joy and faithful doubt. And I went through the door and have been living in that world ever since. It is a world of constant beginnings, of mysterious middles, and haunting endings. It is a world where grace and redemption are mischievous angels that I’m not always sure I want hanging around. It is a world of eternal wanderlust and quests. It is a world for the strong.
Because the old creation might’ve passed away, but I believe we still remember, we still feel it, we still hear its harsh whisper: It is a sin to dribble a basketball, to pick up a pen, to lace up your shoes, to dip a paintbrush in paint; to try. There’s laundry to do. Homework, too. We could fail. We could get hurt. Our efforts could come to nothing.
If it is true that we are made in God’s image, and God is a Creator, then our inheritance - what is woven into our wonderfully and fearfully made selves - is the call and the ability to create.
In 2 Corinthians 5:17, we are called to see this new creation. To see is active. God is calling us to look, to attend, to witness. I believe being willing to see - to pay attention - is a part of loving the Lord with all our strength.
For nine months now, I’ve been mentoring a group of writers through the twists and turns of book writing. One writer, after a particularly grueling morning with her daughter, tells the story of stepping outside and taking a beat. A flock of birds flies by, and she writes a flashback of a time when she and her daughter went bird-watching instead of going to school that day. She decides, why not watch the birds again? Attending to the memory prompts her to bring a new thing forward - a creation waiting to be seen, but already flying. In a recent conversation with her, she was feeling overwhelmed with the lack of direction she believes her writing has. “What am I searching for?” she asked out loud, and I thought of her memory of the birds - how vivid and significant it was. I responded to her question with a question, “What is it that you see?”
Before I had Hadley, I’d had a miscarriage. When I found out I was pregnant again, I was terrified, and I called my mom to say as much. “I don’t want to go through that again,” I cried. I was still living in a world of, “If this, then this,” where plotlines are so very straight and narrow.
“So you don’t even want to try?” my mom said next, and like the Professor, she opened the door to a world filled with mystery and wonder. I stepped through it just as I’d stepped into the writing world, and for almost 18 years now, I have been attending to the new creation that has come and that is coming; that I helped bring forth.
My other daughter, Harper, plays the French Horn. She learned to play during the pandemic. “Learned to play,” is probably not the most accurate phrase for what went on during that 18 month period of isolation. Harper locked herself in her room, hopeful that today would be the day a squeak, a blast, a honk would become a melody, but time would go by and all musical efforts turned to crying and screaming and throwing things. I half expected to see the horn drop from her bedroom window.
When it came time to return to the glory and the privilege that is in-person learning, Jesse and I were willing to give Harper an out. We told her if she didn’t want to be in band, we understood. We didn’t want her to be miserable. “I haven’t had the experience yet,” she told us. Harper hadn't seen the new thing yet, but believed in it, and she was willing to work for it.
The neighbor boy hasn’t been to the court recently. He is currently playing one of the Spring sports at our high school. The nightly bounce and swish of a basketball has been replaced by the thunk of a soccer ball. These days, I am spending a couple of nights a week watching Hadley play soccer with her teammates.
I’m glad my neighbor has a chance to experience being on a team. There isn’t anything like joining together to do something you love. But his nightly ritual also reminds me of The Song of St Francis. The story goes, he wants to sing because he’s filled with God’s love, but he is all alone, and he doesn’t think anyone will hear him. “Sing anyway,” Francis is told, “for the loving God hears you.”
Hadley’s team recently played against Saline. It is a humbling experience to play alongside and against future D1 soccer players, and Jesse and I are doing our best to mentor Hadley through this. Parents can (and should) only do so much, and at a certain point, all we can do - all we have the honor of doing - is sitting in the stands and watching.
But she was nervous. She told us though, that while she was standing on the sidelines waiting for the call to go in, her coach, who was standing beside her, leaned over and said, “I trust you.” That’s all Hadley needed to step onto the field, and I believe this is a continuation of what St Francis experienced: I trust you. I hear you. I see you. I adore you.
Play. Sing. Write. Dance. Try. There are an infinite amount of ways to attend to this new creation, and loving the Lord with all your strength takes on an equally amount of infinite shapes and forms and offerings. I believe God sees - and loves - them all.
You are so right that it is only a few steps between "I trust you" and "I adore you."
“What if it’s a sin not to?” I love this, Callie. I remember the days when I viewed creativity as a distraction from what “really” mattered to God. When I changed that view to a calling, it completely changed my relationship. I needed this reminder today.