08-24-24

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
August 24, 2024
This summer at Chatauqua, there has been a world premiere play by Kate Hamill. In a panel discussion yesterday, she was talking about what they had learned from these performances. So much is learned from the audience response, and though she said that they have not changed any of the dialogue in the play, the experience of these world premiere performances has left the DNA of Chatauqua upon this play forever. You think of art as something presented, from a painting to a dance to a piece of music, and it is sort of assumed by us non-artist folk that it is what it is. But audiences are forever leaving their fingerprints on the art (their DNA), though hopefully not literally unless it is a very interactive expression. It’s made me wonder how the audience—the congregation in my case—has left their DNA on the sermon. And even when I preach it two times, one immediately after the others, how the give and take of the experience, people’s facial expressions, when they laugh and when they do not, impacts how the sermon enters the universe. Not to put myself in the same realm of Jesus, but I wonder how often he was telling a parable and made a slight adjustment when he noticed his audience watching the birds of the air or counting the hairs on the head of the person in front of them. Maybe I’m wrong, but I imagine it carried the DNA of his audience. Maybe there is something for all of us to learn.

As you loved the world, Lord Jesus, and taught us to love one another, we pray this day for the capacity to be abundantly aware of those around us, their experiences and reactions. There is so much to learn about how we are perceived, and it is our desire to be understood and to appreciate others. Amen.