A couple of weeks ago members of the Church Council (which is made up of the chairs of the different working committees of HMC – worship committee, adult ed, trustees, etc. and the Pastorate (the committee of the church that is tasked with the spiritual support and care of the community and the pastors) met for a leadership retreat. We do this every fall here at HMC so that leadership can spend time together reflecting on what has been happening in the life of the congregation and what we are being called to in the season ahead. As part of our gathering this time, we each brought a personal item and shared about it in a form of show and tell. It was a wonderful way to spend time with each other – it was an invitation to get to know each other better by listening deeply and holding space for the vulnerable reflections people shared.

When it came my time to share, I commented that, in my preparations, I wasn’t quite sure what to bring since I have shared a lot of personal stories and oddities with this community while preaching…even before I worked here I shared ridiculous details of my life – in my first sermon at HMC, which I preached in 2011, I told a story about having potatoes in my diapers! This statement was greeted with bewilderment – huh?! Apparently it has been long enough since that sermon that no one remembered it. Now, to be clear, I take no offence at a sermon being unmemorable…especially one preached 15 years ago!

Worship Committee has had a longstanding option of an ‘out of the vault’ sermon series on our list of ideas [like the days before Disney+ when you had to wait for beloved Disney films to be re-released on VHS or DVD to be once again available for viewing]. When no one seemed to remember the very first sermon I preached, I decided it might be time to pull it out of the vault and invite us to take it in again…with changes here and there…which you won’t even notice since you likely don’t remember hearing this before!

One of my family’s favorite stories to tell about me from when I was little is about the time my mother took me to a store with her and as she was walking around she began to come across small random objects from our home in a trail on the floor behind me – upon further investigation she found that I had stuffed my diaper full of whatever I could get my hands on at home – including building blocks, toy cars and trucks, and potatoes – yes I did say potatoes – these items were now finding their way out of my diaper and onto the floor of the store; humoring – and probably a little bit infuriating – my mother who now had to pick up the trail I had created. For my part, I just wanted to have pockets like the adults around me and I was making use of the closest thing I could find! This small action was so unexpected that the memory of it has become a permanent fixture in the collection of my life’s story.

A life’s story is made up of all sorts of experiences – some more entertaining and some more educational and formative than others – whatever they are, they all come together to make each of us who we are as we find our way along life’s path. My path has led me to an insatiable interest in the connection between theology and the arts. I sometimes find this to be a surprising situation as I was brought up entrenched in the Mennonite community – a community whose history of interaction with the arts span the gamut from a refusal to allow pianos into churches, to an almost reverence for the prints and stories found in the Martyrs Mirror, to fearful apprehension of the theatre, to a rich tradition of handmade quilts and four part harmony, to the wonderful integration of the worship arts here each Sunday at Hyattsville. I often find myself grateful for this hodge-podge history – because it’s non-committal to one form of art appreciation has opened me up to an adventure of theological exploration of any and every form of artistic expression. And in particular I suspect that the lack of a significant presence of literal imagery in the church I grew up in embedded within me an appreciation for the abstract and it is often from abstract works that I glean theological insights and find lively and unexpected expressions of meaning.

The work of artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude are abstract explorations that offer unique examples of the power of the unexpected. [Slide 2] Christo and Jeanne-Claude were a husband & wife collaborative partnership team that spent their career altering environments around the world with installations that opened up new ways of looking at those environments. The works seem to spring up from the landscape they are placed in and draw people’s attention back to what is already present in that environment while also creating an entirely new experience within the space. They generally achieve this effect through the use of fabrics which are wrapped around, suspended over, or constructed into the specifically selected environment for each project.

One project that you may be aware of was [Slide 3] The Gates in New York City in 2005. The Gates was a collection of 7,503 gate-type structures that were each 16 feet tall and suspended free-hanging Saffron (most of us would call them orange – but Jeanne-Claude insisted that they were specifically ‘Saffron’ colored) fabric panels which were spread at 12 foot intervals across 23 miles of walkway in New York’s Central Park. This installation, like all of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s works, was temporary in nature lasting 16 days after which the gates were removed and the materials recycled.

Prior to the Gates, the Artists’ installations included such projects as:

Valley Curtain [Slide 4] – a 1,250 foot wide orange curtain that spanned Rifle Gap in Colorado

Running Fence [Slide 5] – a white fabric fence that ran 24 ½ miles from the pacific coast inland through Sonoma and Marin counties in California

Along with these were many other projects consisting of the wrapping of various landscapes and objects including the coast of Little Bay Australia [Slide 6] (yes, they physically wrapped the coast line rocks, sand and all), [Slide 7] 11 islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay, [Slide 8] The Pont Neuf Bridge in Paris, [Slide 9] The Reichstag in Berlin, and [Slide 10] a grouping of 178 trees in a park in Switzerland.

When I first preached about Christo & Jeanne-Claude in 2011 I hadn’t yet seen one of their installations in person, however, in 2018 our family traveled to England and our trip overlapped with the temporary installation of a piece entitled: The Mastaba in London’s Hyde Park. [Slide 11] A towering structure made of over 7,000 oil barrels afloat on the Serpentine Lake.

I think you can get a sense from this brief overview of the enormity of the work of these artists – they actually take over the environment in which their works are located. [Slide 12]  The Frequently Asked Questions section about their work on the artists website ChristoJeanneClaude.net describes that the works don’t just alter the environment they are in, the works are themselves

“entire environments, whether they are urban or rural. The artists temporarily use one part of the environment. In doing so, we see and perceive the whole environment with new eyes and a new consciousness. The effect is astounding. To be in the presence of one of these artworks is to have your reality rocked. You see things you have never seen before. You also get to see the fabric manifest things that cannot usually be seen, like the wind blowing, or the sun reflecting in ways it had not before. The effect lasts longer than the actual work of art. Years after every physical trace has been removed and the materials recycled, original visitors can still see and feel them in their minds when they return to the sites of the artworks.”

These unexpected manifestations leave an indelible imprint – on the memory of the landscape that they are a part of and in the lives of those who have witnessed the work of art – directly for those who are fortunate enough to get a chance to view one of these installations live and in person – and indirectly as the works continue to awaken the interest of those who encounter the art after the fact through the images and impressions of the experience recorded and shared by first hand witnesses of the works. These recordings allow the rest of us to engage in envisioning for ourselves what it would have been like to stand in the presence of such a creation.

These are the kinds of imprints that come from an encounter with the unexpected – they are rich and multi-layered – and the impact of the encounter continues to ripple outward as stories and memories of the original encounter are shared and invite us to take it in again and again. Scripture itself is full of stories of unexpected encounters. It is an ancient text and yet it continues to resonate across time and space, inviting us to take it in again and again and offering us different experiences and understandings of it as we encounter it through the lenses of context – the context of its own time, the context of our own time, and as we celebrate World Communion Sunday today, the context of place in those times. Our encounter with a text here in the United States may bring up very different meanings and implications than the encounter of that same text with someone living in South America, or on the African continent…context matters. When HMC Leadership gathered the other week to share our personal artifacts with each other we each told a bit of a story, to give background and context for the items we brought so that meaning could also be shared and appreciated.  The work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude highlights the significance of place and time by being intentional about the context in which it is brought to life.

When we dig into scripture with curiosity, bringing awareness of the layers of context surrounding the story itself, and being aware of ourselves and what we bring to it, it can take on life by opening connections of relevance and meaning in significant and unexpected ways. Scripture isn’t a stagnant tool for us to read and understand – though it has been taught and used that way for a long time! Scripture offers a dynamic invitation to encounter it again and again and experience something new, in the stories it tells, and within ourselves.

Jesus taught this dynamic nature of scripture. He played with scripture in his teachings, offering life giving and unexpected insights that invited changes in perspectives and action. Take for example the unexpected actions suggested in Matthew 5 – turning the other cheek, walking a second mile, willingly handing over more than your settlement amount in a lawsuit – not to mention loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute. These are invitations to expansive love and generosity and…they are also counter cultural actions that turn the tables on perceived notions of power. Roman rule allowed soldiers to press civilians into service to carry their pack one mile – for the person pressed into service to choose to carry it a second mile shifted the perceived power dynamic by exposing the vulnerability of the system itself. And these countercultural ideas that Jesus teaches in Matthew 5 are rooted in even older stories – the heart of the matter is present in Leviticus 19 – a foundational scripture for Jesus’ community where God instructs the people of Israel to not reap to the very edge of their lands and to not strip their vineyards bare – to instead leave remnants for the poor and the alien, and to be a community that honors truth, justice, and love. The impact of actually choosing to live out such responses in the world is unexpected and powerful. When we choose to be counter cultural and take the unexpected action we leave an imprint on those around us who are impacted by and witnesses to such actions; and, like the landscapes of a Christo and Jeanne-Claude work of art, we too are changed from within each time we chose to walk in God’s way in the world.

Take for example the impact of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates in New York City in 2005. At a memorial service honoring the late Jeanne-Claude in 2010, then Mayor Michael Bloomberg reflected on the impact of renewal brought about by the installation. [Slide 13] When the Gates unfurled in NYC in Feb of 2005 – Bloomberg said: “the following day the Gates was on the front page of virtually every newspaper in the world and that was important to us because for one of the first times since 9/11 all eyes were on NYC not because of something violent or terrible but because we were holding a massive celebration of life, color, and the creative spirit.” The simple presence of the art was able to take a space, breathe life into it, and reclaim it in an unexpected way.

Unexpected – like God’s wisdom in our world – a wisdom that at times seems upside down and confusing to our human understandings – it is a wisdom that, as it says in verse 45 of Matthew 5, makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. God interacts with and care-takes for us all with unexpected justice and a holiness that we are called to emulate and embody – In Leviticus God says through Moses – ‘Be Holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy’ – a sentiment echoed by Jesus in Matthew – ‘Be Perfect, just as God in Heaven is Perfect’.

To explore, embrace, and emulate God’s holiness – which may be less daunting to think of as whole-ness – is the ongoing practice we are invited to as our life stories unfold. And we are not alone on the journey. We have companions on the path in our current context and we have the wisdom gleaned by others across time and space available to us. Our understanding of God’s holiness grows through a choice to actively engage in learning and living out God’s unexpected wisdom as we build our lives.

And just as a life story is built up over years of encounters and experiences – learning to live out God’s ways in the world is a recurring choice; it takes time and is a constant ebb and flow. In some seasons we journey closely with a sense of the holy – and there are also times when it seems we can not envision God’s presence in our world at all. Inspiration to carry on can be found in the artistic process of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s works – The project for the Gates was started in 1979 and was not brought to completion until 2005. At the time when I preached about this in 2011 the then active project, which Christo was continuing to pursue even after the loss of his partner in work and life, [Slide 14] was entitled Over the River (a project for the Arkansas River in Colorado) had begun in 1992 with decision for public permits still forthcoming in 2011. It was a project that succumbed to controversy and was never realized. Though further projects were brought to life – some, like the wrapping of [Slide 15] L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris, after the death of Christo himself in 2020; and there remains a group still working on bringing Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s final monumental project to life [Slide 16] a Mastaba in Abu Dhabi that has been in the works since 1977. Each of their projects involves the intricacies of planning and the complexities of politics and yet, in spite of the years of work and preparation, when it finally comes to fruition – the effect, like a life lived in search of God, is astounding, unexpected, and ripples beyond itself.

May we be curious and open to transformative encounters with God, ourselves, and each other as we join in the on-going story of God’s love in the world!