The Rev. Cn. Richard Hogue Jr.
Welcome, everyone, to our second Comic-Con Sunday! It is a joyful thing seeing some dressed for the occasion. We folks in the altar party come in our costumes every Sunday. Each of the stories represented here draws on the human instinct to create new ways of looking at the world, revealing something that might not be simply stated as viscerally understood. Creativity is a loom upon which anything can be weaved. However, it does come with significant costs when we imagine, create, or reveal new things.
[Trigger warning: the quote below includes a reference to self harm and suicide, but this is not the main content of the sermon]
One of my favorite recent quotes about creativity comes from the highly irreverent Rick and Morty. While trying to convince the creator of an evil character to stop providing motivation for his evil character, Morty explains to the creatively moribund writer: “…creation doesn’t happen through gimmicks, technology, or distribution. It doesn’t even happen through work. Creativity is, frankly, adjacent to mental illness and overlaps with it substantially. A lot of talented people kill themselves, and all of them are miserable.” I don’t quote this to normalize self-harm or downplay its effects on those we love, and if anyone is considering it, we need to seek help. I say this quote because it’s simply true, creativity can be painful. If you’re not convinced, I encourage you to go watch Christopher Nolan’s newest film, Oppenheimer.
It’s certainly true from a Scriptural perspective: God creates everything, calls it good, but then misery takes hold as God watches humans abuse each other, then drowns all of it in the Flood story, starting again with the prophet Noah. Later, God enters this world in the person of Jesus, choosing to die on a cross at the hands of the state to show things can be different. If that’s not enough proof to show creating is difficult, we can look at nature itself and understand this truth on geological and cosmic levels. Mountains are formed through the slow but geologically violent clashes of tectonic plates. Stars and planets swirl and compress over the course of cosmically turbulent eons. Life evolved on this planet with fits and starts, and at least five mass extinction events preceded humanity’s rise, and countless creators of all types endure hardships in the pursuit of expressing things that can seem beyond expression.
The question inevitably arises: Why do it, why create when it takes so much? While creation can be scary and costly, it leads to more beauty, complexity, and wisdom. God, creating the universe with a big bang of breath, moved everything from not being to being because it was good! Jesus, by creating a new way of life as a model for us, gave up everything, showing us the way. Just because something is hard or difficult does not mean it is not worthwhile; things that are most difficult are often also the most rewarding.
St. Paul puts it so well for us today: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” Bringing new life or needed change into this world sometimes is an incredibly painful process, biologically and metaphorically speaking. Paul’s creative powers clearly cost him, and he felt it, worrying for his converts as he was beaten and jailed at times. But his creativity also gave rise to communities that loved each other and outcasts and brought good news to the poor.
Jesus used his creative powers to speak of God’s will and mission different ways, coming up with parables to paint pictures of truth that can be easier to digest than abstract concepts. Gene Roddenberry similarly challenged societal norms through Star Trek with help from Lucille Ball in the 1960s. He, and virtually all science fiction creators before and after him, found it easier to speak truth through otherworldly stories than through simply saying what is. Through the first interracial kiss on television between Kirk and Uhura, Star Trek broke boundaries of the Jim Crow era, helping people see a world beyond segregation. Having the Russian officer Chekov on the bridge of the Enterprise helped some people to imagine a world without the Soviet-NATO divide. This tradition in the Star Trek universe continues today, with shows like Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and our household favorite Lower Decks continuing to break social boundaries of all kinds, bringing diverse groups together, but all manner of diversity that would have been much celebrated at last week’s San Diego Pride festivities. It offers a brighter picture of the future, as well as a reprieve from myriad daily threats to human life.
Having these creative threads to hang onto can make life more bearable and ease the weariness of our minds via brief escape and new perspectives on age old problems. After a tough day of making hard decisions, it can be so affirming to hear Captain Pike tell someone on screen who had to make a difficult choice say, “You did what was necessary.” Even past decisions can be reframed in the light of such creativity. One of my all-time favorite episodes of The Next Generation is about Captain Picard regretting mistakes of his youth, and then the trickster being Q shows up, and allows Picard to simulate his life having corrected the supposed mistakes of his youth. What Picard discovers is that without taking the risks and making the perceived mistakes he did as a young person he never would have become the leader and wise captain he is. How cathartic is it to know that we are never merely the sum of our worst mistakes, that the good outweighs the bad even on our worst day?
We forget that God sees us this way, too, more than a mere collection of mistakes, worthy of life and love for the simple fact that we exist. This is reflected in our gospel this morning, where Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the weeds. The householder plants seeds, and overnight weeds are planted as well. As the wheat and the weeds grow and begin to put forth their fruit and seeds, it becomes clear that not everything in the field is good for sustenance. When the servants ask the householder if they should tear out the weeds, he responds: “Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” This is an expression of creativity, planting possibilities with some unpredictable results, knowing that we must live with the intended ones alongside the unintended, because the best things are so tender to start, ripping it all up can stop what may become good, even great.
In the fabulous Academy Award winning film Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, a mother and a daughter enter the question of “why does any of this matter?” through a multiversal tale of highs and lows from one possible outcome of life to another. The daughter, Joy, seeks nothingness, she feels that all the possibilities are pointless, seeing only the worst in things, and for a moment, she convinces her mom, Evelyn, of this too. But Evelyn comes to realize that while life is often haphazard and hectic, and there are always unfulfilled desires and perceived mistakes, the very fact that we are alive and connected is the thread we can hold everything together with, even if little else is satisfying. We all have wheat and weeds in our lives, but we live to embrace possibilities, trusting that the fruits outweigh everything else.
Creativity shows people not only that they are worth a new story, song, or perspective, but that they can write their own with their lives, too. Jesus lived to show that. Our infinite capacity to weave from the grey matter of our minds the most fantastic tales, music, images, clothing, whatever it is, that capacity proves that no matter how bleak, no matter how downward the spiral might feel, we can always live differently. We can break the mold, and even our pain can be turned into a source of life. May we be blessed for blazing our own trails and stories, spreading life and love even if it costs us something, because the results are innumerable opportunities for understanding and joy. Here’s to those who take the risk.
Amen.
