What if…?

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 25 October 2023 by Jolley Gosnold.

“Behave truthfully within imaginary circumstances.”

These were the words of my acting teacher in my first week at drama school.

For years I had been taught the myth, that to act is to pretend. It’s lying professionally. Performing as somebody else.

And then, I was confronted with this new understanding.

Don’t pretend. Don’t perform. But behave. Act. Do.

Acting is doing.

Do what the character does, say what the character says and want what the character wants. Do it honestly, faithfully, and authentically – no matter how fantastical, unbelievable, or absurd the circumstances are.

OK, I can get on board with that – I thought. It makes sense. But there was a problem. As a nineteen-year-old at the time, who had grown up in rural North Yorkshire, how could I possibly relate to the lived experiences of the diversity of characters that I was faced with in the breadth of drama available to us. I’m not a father, or a prince, or a 19^th Century Russian. I haven’t experienced the deep grief of the loss of a child, nor the ecstasy of falling in love, nor the pain of losing it. I didn’t know what it’s like to be a millionaire. I didn’t know what it’s like to live in the cold and rain on our city streets. Sure, I could say what the character says, and maybe even try my best to do what the characters does, but how could I possibly want what the character wants? How could I ever understand how they’re feeling? What their experience of this world is? How could I empathise with them? How could I behave truthfully? How could I act authentically?

“What if…?”

That was the response. The two words that could unlock these seemingly unreachable experiences.

The question is always “What if…?”

What if I was a father? A prince? What if I had experienced grief, joy, love, and loss?

As is often the case, I believe Jesus sets the example for this for us. He chooses to teach us, not through dictation or commands, but through story, questions, and wonder. He invites us to look at our lives and ask that same question. “What if…?”. What if I were to find a man bloodied and bruised at the side of the road? What if that man was my enemy or from a different tribe or political persuasion? What if I squandered my inheritance and abandoned my family, but then came back home? What if I was a sheep, one of a hundred and went missing? Would anyone come to look for me?

In our contemporary world, I wonder if we have become so attracted to and hungry for certainties and answers, we have become detached from the imaginative leaps required to live in the fullness of a life of faith. A life that relies on living in and from that which seems invisible, inaudible, and untouchable. And still believing, still choosing the way and the truth and the life of Jesus.

Our scripture is filled and woven with stories, parables, acts of imagination that resonate with the deep truths of our lives. As someone once said to me, “All the Bible is true – Some of it even happened.”, when we engage with scripture, when we engage with God, we are invited to take a leap of imagination into the unknown. Not the unknowable, but that which we might not know yet, that which is endlessly knowable. And revealed through stories told symbolically and creatively to stimulate our imaginations and to transform our realities.

Matthew 13:34-35 says: “Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.’

The stories we are invited into, are not new, Jesus was not simply some teacher with exciting new ways of understanding our world. These are stories that reveal the nature of God, his Kingdom, and our world, as it was in the beginning, is now and shall be forever. Stories that invite us to look at our world, see its pain and ugliness, and challenge us to transform it. Stories that reveal the love and beauty in the world, and call us to cherish and protect it. These are stories of Wonder, and they invite us to step into the wonder-ful life of God.

When approaching a character as an actor, you have what we call “Given Circumstances”. These are the fundamental truths that underpin the life and world of a play or film, created by the writer, that frame everything that happens within the story. These are the “Who? Where? When?” questions. It is the context of the lives of the characters.

God, as our author and creator, offers us the same given circumstances, about who God is, and who we are in relation to him. Not imaginary circumstances, but wonderful circumstances of God present since the beginning of time.

Here are, what I believe are, some of the wonderful circumstances of God:

Who is God? God is love – revealed in flesh in Jesus Christ, and alive in us through the Holy Spirit.

Where is God? God is with us, and in all things.

When does God exist? God is eternal, present in all time.

What is he doing? Loving us, and reconciling all things to him.

And our own wonderful circumstances:

Who are we? Children of God, loved and interconnected through the Holy Spirit as the body of Christ.

Where are we? On earth, in the loving gaze and presence of God.

When do we exist? Now, and forever.

What are we doing? Trying to live in love and service and praise of God, and to love our neighbour.

And if these are something like the wonderful circumstances of God, present since the creation of the world, how then can we begin to engage with this wonder?

Our imagination. As humans made in the image of the creator God, we are invited not just to be made and live, but to make. To dream, to imagine and then to do.

One of the greatest gifts of our nature.  Our imagination. And not something that is exclusive to artists, although it’s a muscle they may exercise more regularly.

So how can we exercise this gift? How do we strengthen this muscle? A muscle that can open us up to the experiences of others, and deepen our understanding and empathy?

Well, this is where I believe the spiritual and creative life can intersect so perfectly. As we ask that “What if…?” question, we can use our senses, memories, emotional life, attention, and contemplation. Taking the attention off ourselves and opening ourselves up vulnerably before God.

What if God is love, revealed in flesh in Jesus Christ? As we enter stillness and contemplation, and form the image of Jesus, we find that place according to the truths we’re given in scripture, our experience, art, and our tradition. We can sit with the intangible, see the invisible, hear the inaudible, and touch the untouchable. We can remember times when we knew we were loved, and seen, and protected, and we can know that that is the wonderful life of God.

It takes a spirit of curiosity, an act of imagination, a posture of wonder and a leap of faith.

We ask “What if…?” and from that “What if…?”, we then act. We do. We do something from that truth, that truth revealed to us. After the wonder, comes a response.

St Paul, in Romans 8, asks how we should respond to a “What if…?”. He writes, “If God is for us, who is against us?”.

What if God is for us? What if the creator of the universe, the deepest forces of love, who is with us and present in all things, who sent his son and died for us, who is eternal, who IS love – what if God is on our side, and wants what’s best for us?

And not just you, for all of us, the person you don’t like very much, the person who persecutes you, the person who broke the law, the person on the edge, the forgotten and oppressed, the oppressor and the bully. What if God, is for us. For all of us.

How would you respond?

Paul continues, and challenges us more and more throughout the scripture.

What if God graciously gives us all things?

What if no one condemns?

What if Jesus is at the right hand of the father interceding for us?

What if we are more than conquerors?

What if nothing, neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Our imagination can unlock our relationship with God, but it can also block it. What we perceive God to be can get in the way, what we perceive the world to be can get in the way. What if we used our imaginations to think big, and boldly about who God is and who we are?

Could we imagine that God loves us, and his love pursues us, and no matter what we may think disqualifies us from God’s love, no matter what others tell us will disqualify us from God’s love, his love endures.

What if we believed that nothing can separate us from the love of God?

What then?

What does that change for us? How would we live our lives differently? What would we wake up in the morning and do?

How would we treat our neighbours? Our enemies? Ourselves?

What difference could we make in our world? How then could we help to usher in God’s Kingdom.

Sometimes I like to imagine that I could travel in time, but I worry that I might radically change our present because of one small action decades or hundreds of years ago. And yet, what if we believed that we could radically change our future by doing something small today?

What if we imagined the life God offers us?

What if we lived the life God imagines for us?

What if we believed God is who he says he is?

What if we believed we are who God says we are?

What if God coming to earth, born among us, and dying for us at our hands, in the ultimate act of surrender and sacrifice revealed the intensity and fullness of God’s love for us?

What if we believed we are loved?

What if we truly loved God in return?

What if we remembered to ask, “What if…?”, and then lived in those questions and from them, authentically, honestly, and faithfully.

Perhaps, we wouldn’t as actors do, behave truthfully within imaginary circumstances – but as humans, live authentically within wonderful circumstances.