The medievalist historian, Johann Huizinga, wrote
a book about this called HOMO LUDENS. Humans are mammals who love to play act. In play, we leave "ordinary life" behind and
"are bound by ties other than those of logic and causality." But this play is a very serious business. We are using things
like "dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter" to imagine new worlds. We leave literal reality behind in order to engage reality
at a deeper level. Religion, like art or poetry, is a touching of the emotional need for a world that works. It tells us stories
about our heroes and our personal human demons. It confronts spiritual truths located beneath the banalities of literal truth.
Here we meet saviors, deaths that can redeem the suffering, the eternal possibility of death to an old life and resurrection
to a new one.
In sermons and classes we then reflect on all this
religious activity and try to understand somewhat what it says to us about the meaning of our lives, but a lot will remain
indecipherable. We are mysteries even to ourselves. We Christians are content to say that all this ritual play has to do with
our faith that God is love. Human life can be redeemed only by love. Law is necessary too, but only as the procedural of love.
Ritual is acting love out—if it degenerates into a sterile ritualism (i.e. ritual with the play-function subtracted),
then we get lost. We need reformation.
So I wish you a playful Holy Week and Easter. Jesus
urges us to come to church like little children ("unless you become as a child you cannot enter the Kingdom of God")
and enter into the glorious hope of a world made new by redemptive love. Have a most blessed Holy Week and a truly joyful
Easter.
Yours in Christ,
—Pastor Bastien
