god: jazz conductor

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​Did anything happen this week you weren’t expecting?
 
Good things, hard things?
Costs up, market’s down,
Losses, gifts,
And you had to figure out what to do
Make choices,
Adjust.
Feel like you are not getting it right,
Because we are all doing this for the first time
We are all improvising.
 
And maybe, aside from all the wondrous order of the universe
Creation is full of improvisation,
Of responding to the choices every creature makes.
And bringing forth new possibilities. 
 
And what we sense, we creatures of both habit and impulse,
Is that God the eternal, is in the flow,
In the movement of our lives,
Its changing rhythms, unexpected turns,   
Working, as Marjorie Suchocki says,
with the world as it is to bring it to where it can be. 
Working with us, as we are, and bringing us to where we can be. 
 
Jazz is a form of music that we don’t typically hear in worship
Worship, at least in many traditions,
Feels reliably steady
Whereas Jazz can seem like it evolving as you hear it,
 
Jazz has unexpected notes, movements,  rhythms,
But somehow, with the right director
And musicians who know music in their souls.
It all comes together. 
 
A good metaphor, says my friend and teacher, Carolyn Bohler
For the nature of the Divine. 
A name for God
 
“Do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you”
Says Jesus in Matthew.
 
Maybe God is like a jazz conductor, say Carolyn,
Who helps us know what to do when the time comes. 
 
Like with the music we will hear now from our choir and instrumentalists:
Missa Jazzis
Ancient hymns to the life of God in Christ
put to new melodies, new rhythms,
We and the musicians, the singers will have to lean in,
trust one another, and their director, Greg,
go with the flow and not worry about mistakes
but keep flowing,  together. 
 
So, in the movement, the rhythm of your life,
You respond to what is new
Trusting that you are not alone. 
                                    earning to live in the flow.
Responding in way, that,
 with our loving Jazz Conductor
Brings forth something good. 
                                                                       
Patricia Wagner, Maple Grove UMC