Rehearsing

When I was younger than I am today I was in a play with a guy who gave one of the best auditions ever. It was great. I had the lead role and was thrilled at the thought of working with this man. At the same time there was a woman that I read with who gave an amazingly bad audition. Really, I was embarrassed for her. But the director knew her and she ended up with the part. Go figure.
My favorite part of the entire process of putting on a play is the rehearsal period. Rehearsal is where you try different ideas out, act silly, overblown, take big chances, and act like a fool in the hope that you will - in this rehearsal process – find the place that your character needs to be. When your character is in the right place then the audience will be moved and you will have done your job. If you are working with good actors than you have faith that your fellow cast members will not judge you and will allow you to experiment to your hearts content. By the end of the rehearsal process you have (hopefully) winnowed down to the essence of who you want your character to be.
You can probably see where this is going. The woman I was so sure would be awful was wonderful. She tried something new everyday in rehearsal. She was way too big, and then had days when you could hardly hear her, but she was constantly working. She was an absolute joy to work with. When we finally opened the production she gave a beautifully nuanced performance that challenged the entire cast to be better every time they were on stage with her.
The guy, on the other hand, drove me absolutely insane. His performance on the last day of that show was the exact same as the day of his audition. He wasn’t interested in experimenting. He had his own ideas about who his character was and it wasn’t going to be changed by anything that any of the rest of us did. He had not grown one bit.
Isn’t this what life in the church is like?
Sometimes we are stuck in a rut and not ready for change. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what beautiful music we have heard during a service or the people we have spent time with during worship, we came into church with a hard heart and we are going to stay that way.
Other times we may not be at our personal best, but we come with an open heart and we hear the message that we needed to hear and we leave changed for the better.
Perhaps this church is our rehearsal process together.
We come to hear a message and hope to carry that message with us throughout our week. Sometimes we get it and sometimes we don’t. Either way we keep coming to this safe place where we are accepted even on our bad acting days. I am thankful to be in this rehearsal process with you.