A New Approach to the Game

Rev. Ellen Alston

So many games to play, so little time – especially in Kairos: God’s Time. I remember as a child spending time on the playground in games of, shall we say, “mild” competition. Who could stand on one foot the longest without losing their balance? In the swimming pool or lake it was who could hold their breath the longest underwater? Or a great one-on-one indoor version was who could stare into the other’s eyes the longest without blinking?

One of the quotable quotes from Gil Rendle at Tending Our Lives Together was this: “If you want to repair broken trust, choose to offer trust rather than wait for it.” Those words resonated with me as I have witnessed, and experienced, and lived myself at times in the waiting game of “I can hold out longer than you can, so I wait for you to make the first move.”

Well, the stakes in the game are higher now, as we live into God’s future for our lives and for our church. An urgency for the healing power of love cries out from a world scarred and torn by countless fears and acts of violence. Children of God, who are brothers and sisters in Jesus’ eyes, look at one another askance and withdraw from engaging in “holy conversation” that might actually challenge and transform their assumptions. Both regimes and revolutions can operate out of a paranoia that risks replicating or reinforcing precisely what they seek to suppress. And it doesn’t begin on the international stage; it grows out of the choices we make in the most intimate of relationships of home, family, neighbors, church, community, and beyond. From Cain and Abel to the position-jostling disciples, the need for a new approach to the game is clear. And perhaps that is what moved God to give Jesus as “pioneer and perfecter” of the new Way.

No longer is there any need to lose our balance, hold our breath, or not blink our eyes. The Jesus Creed points to the life we were created to live, with one another and with God, as natural and expected as breathing in and out. And as far as our fear of the unknown territory, the yet uncrossed bridges? No need to fear making the first move: Jesus is already there!