Sermon: In the Groove

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In the Groove

By Charles Rush

July 1, 2007 ¹

[ Audio (mp3, 4.6Mb) ]

r text has the profound words, “Jesus Christ was full of grace and truth and dwelt among us.” Usually this is a text that we only read on Christmas Eve and never preach on. I want to look at it today from another angle. Theologically, the affirmation that Jesus was full of grace and truth means that if you want to see what human life looks like when it is full of transcendent purpose, look at the life of Jesus. If you want to know that God intends for our fulfillment, it is not different from what we know in the Christ. Jesus was fully in the divine way.

Let's come at it from the other direction. If you think about it for a moment, you have a deep desire to get into that state when you are in the groove. It is a transcendent experience that stays with you for a long time. What is it to be in the groove?

Let me move from the banal to the sublime. Hack golfers, and I would certainly qualify for that fraternity, have an experience from time to time, where they show up to play, and for some reason their normal cruddy game stays in the car. The next thing you know they are hitting beautiful shot after beautiful shot. Even when they hit an errant ball, somehow it takes a strange bounce right towards the pin, and they score well. This goes on for about 9 or 11 holes and then the wheels fall off and they come totally apart. If you ask them what happened, they will almost invariably say something like “I woke up”. By the way, if you want to know what keeps these sad sacks coming back to course, laying out huge money to play, it is the possibility of getting back into that groove. Today might be the day.

For all of us boys and increasingly for our girls too, it is an experience that we have had or been near when we were young and in our athletic prime. If you ask our girls lacrosse team from last spring, the team that was #1 in the state of New Jersey, they can tell you about being in the groove. One of them was describing a play, one they had worked on conceptually a few times. As it was unfolding, she was cutting toward the wing in a great circle. Without any speech, she just knew that the center forward that was cradling the ball, saw her. She cut around a couple of defenders, but she knew the pass was coming. She kept her eyes focused on the defenders in front of the goal, looking for an opening. At the last minute looking up, the lane cleared and she could see her teammate just barely, passing the ball to her. Just as she caught it, she let it go down an opening between the defenders she had spotted. It went right between two defenders, just over the shoulder of the goalie. The grandstand went wild. That is being in the groove.

Being in the groove in the clutch is one of the main things that make Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan. It is true that he is remarkably disciplined and that he trains relentlessly, and he practices until it is just right. But something happens to him when the game is on the line. When all the fans are tightening up with anxiety, Michael gets in the zone. He seems to stop thinking about himself and he just merges with the game. New moves come out of the bag. He passes the ball where no one is and someone appears. Shots go down more often. The whole team comes together around him. He is the “go to” man. You want the ball in his hands, not just because he can score, but because you know something is going to happen.

I think it was Joe Namath who said that sometimes in situations where it was 4th and long, where there was a lot on the line, he said he would look down the line at Don Maynard, start the play, and he could see down the field the whole play unfold before it unfolded and he just knew that they were going to complete a clutch throw for big yardage. You live for that. That is a day you don't forget. You will spend a great deal of time, trying to get back to that place, being in the groove. It is a strange thing, but it is a transcendent experience. It's you but you've locked into something that is bigger than you, a part of yourself that doesn't operate in the daily work-a-day world really, something that can't be dissected into parts. It is like you have tapped into the power of the whole that pulls the parts together. For just a moment, it all comes together.

It's a relational experience. It is personal but not just individual. You are part of some bigger relationship. Change gears. Sometimes it can happen in nature. Sometimes in nature you can get into the groove, when you feel yourself part of the cosmos, anchored, connected in a way that flows through you in a relationship bigger than yourself. I assume that is what drives people to want to climb Mt. Everest. It is a physical challenge that requires your maximum effort, great planning and good fortune. And when it all comes together, the team is standing on top of a magnificent peak, looking down on the clouds, an ethereal horizon, exhausted, victorious. You've seen the pictures, I've seen the pictures, but I'm sure they don't do it justice. You have to be there and feel how connected you feel at that moment, not only with the rest of your team that have made it happen but with, the mountain, the sky, Mother Earth, the Cosmos. You can see it in these people's faces. They radiate. They beam. They have tapped into the Mysterium Tremendum as Rudolph Otto used to say, the sense of anchor in which your personal identity makes a deep contact with the awesome wonder of the Earth, the Cosmos. It is a transcendent moment, personal but relational. It is bigger than us.

In the movie, The Deer Hunter, Robert De Niro plays the part of a steel worker in Pennsylvania, an ordinary guy. Every year, a bunch of these steel working guys go to the mountains to hunt deer. That is just what guys do in Pennsylvania. Most of the guys just get drunk and fool around like guys do. Because of a whole lot of reasons, personal and more, De Niro is focused. On the day of the hunt, he spots a huge buck. It is the kind of deer that hunters live for, to be able to bag once in their life. It is one thing to see a 15 point buck in a photo, quite a sacred moment in the wild. The deer is majestic in beauty. And he is wily too. He stays just far enough of the hunter that the hunter can't get a bead on him. De Niro is relentless in the chase and focused. He is in great shape, up over the rocks, running down the rugged mountainside. He won't let the deer go. Suddenly, the buck is below him. He has a clear shot. The gun is up. The deer is in his sights. The snow is falling. He's exhausted. Through the scope, he sees the buck turn in all his majesty, and look straight at him. In that moment, he makes a connection; he makes an unspoken contact with the animal. He pulls back for a second and looks through the scope again. The buck is still staring at him. He turns the gun aside and fires the shot off in the distance. He stands up and looks down at the buck. The buck is still staring back. The buck turns slowly and walks away, doesn't run. He walks. It is a sacred moment, a transcendent moment. He made a connection and for just a second he was in the groove I'm talking about. He can't even talk about it to the knuckleheads that are drinking beer back at the cabin. They most certainly wouldn't understand what he was talking about. But in the midst of nature, he made a deep contact. It is a moment that you come back to time and again in your life.

We want to make that kind of contact. When it happens, it is like we are being lifted out of ourselves. Correct that. We are still in our selves, very deeply in ourselves but it is more than us. We have tapped into the whole that pulls together the parts.

We get connected. Do you remember looking into the face of your first child, really looking into that face? For us Dads, it is usually not quite as blissful a moment as it is for Moms. Usually, when it happens to us, baby has been crying bloody murder for what seems like hours, we've gotten the hand off. It is the middle of the night. Suddenly, inexplicably the baby stops crying and stares into your eyes.

For Mom, it is a particularly sacred and grounded time. She has just finished nursing. Baby is happy, euphoric and you can see it in their little expression. They are just looking up, eyes wide open in wonder, trying to focus, as if to say ‘who is this wonderful woman that gives this nectar milk?' And you look and they seem to be trying to focus, to really see you. And you are looking back and suddenly you realize that you are really looking back, that you are seeing in a way that you don't usually see, that you are really making a contact. And you realize that most of your life, you are touching other people but you are not making contact like this. It is important to make a good contact; in fact it is the the most important thing you could do. It is a gift really, a fundamental gift to be in this moment. It is a blessing, such a blessing that all sorts of failures, frustrations, and disappointments from the past have just been trumped. You are blessed to be part of this wonderful mystery of living. And in a moment like that you realize that what is really important, what is fundamental, are relationships. It's making contact; it's being in the groove.

Forget the stupid car that broke down that afternoon that made you go apoplectic and scream at everyone because you got behind. That is not important! Forget the goofed up airline schedules and the traffic that turned your 5-hour flight into a 9-hour ordeal. That is not important. It is not important that you have to drive a Subaru and your friends all drive Saabs. Or let's put it in Summit terms, if you drive a Beamer and all your friends drive a Land Rover. That is especially not important. What is really real, is relationships. Contact. That is what is important. What is important is making a connection, a deep connection with someone else. That is a gift.

You want to get back to that place. You want to get back to that feeling of being connected. It doesn't happen all that often in groups but when it does, it is really special. I think that is one of the strange things about crisis. You certainly don't want tragedy to come your way, but in a really strange way people are never so alive as they are in crisis. Crisis seems to allow people to drop the normal distancing games that they play, and get involved in a connected relationship with others in a way that is special. That has been one of the moving things about the terrible earthquakes that we have seen on television in the past several months. In the midst of that huge and devastating crisis, whole towns rallied together, and pitched in a hand, working through the night pulling out piles of debris, calling down below to check for survivors. Incredible adrenaline, profound stamina in hope, and solidarity -- everybody working together, pulling their weight, doing their part. Occasionally, they would find some kid that had been trapped for 48 hours and all of them would pull the kid out together and what a moment of celebration they shared. What a great thing. They were together as one, working for a purpose that was bigger than themselves. That doesn't happen often. We want to get back to that place. Because it is all about relationships.

And we know that this is true in our vocations. I was reading an article in the New York Times Magazine from last week (Sunday, October 10, 1999) about a computer programmer named Joe Clark. Many of you know that name well. Clark developed the internet company Netscape and then went on to found the internet health care company Healtheon that brings Doctors, HMOs, and pharmacies together on-line. At 45 Clark was just a professor. 15 years later he is worth something like 345 million dollars.

His career was very exciting to read about. It wasn't the ideas for his companies. He just took a look at what was needed in the marketplace and put it to work. And it isn't the fantastic money, although he does have his own jet now, and I don't think he is giving any of that money back. But he doesn't seem to be fixated on money. And it wasn't the power. Clark doesn't even stay around to run his companies for all that long because he realizes that he is not very gifted as a CEO.

I have a strong suspicion that if Clark was able to tell you what it is that energizes him and gets him going, it is putting together an A-1 team of software developers. Once he became identified as something of a sure bet innovator, everyone wanted to work with him. I don't care what your vocation is, who wouldn't want to work on a shared project with the top 100 people in your field. If you can put together a team of excellent people, if you can design a way that they can begin to work cooperatively and competitively. If you can bring out the group synergy in the midst of a excellent talent, then it all just starts to come together. And years later you look back and say that was the championship season.

It doesn't hurt to have the perqs of success: recognition, security, material wealth. But those all fade with time. And when we are wistful and looking back years later, what you want to get back to is the camaraderie, the people, the connectedness that all came together, and you were part of something vital and important. And it may not have been successful at all, you may have just shared misery together… but the thing is, you were together.

Jesus brought our focus back to this point in so many different ways. He was full of grace and truth. It is about nurturing and developing relationships, contact, a deep sharing. Jesus was a person that was in right relationship: with God, with other people, with the wider world in which we live. He modeled for us what balance really looks like.

People came to him and asked him the same questions that we would ask about in managing their practical lives. What do I do with my money? What do I handle power? What is the proper scope of my authority? How much should I defer to the established order? How do I forgive people when they hurt or disappoint me?

Jesus never gave direct, formulaic answers because the way that he approached the whole issue was not half a teaspoon, mix and stir- it was about finding the groove and staying in it. He kept turning our focus to what is real, to the relationship. He turned these questions back to us and asked us “With your money, your power, your authority, your judgment and forgiveness, what does it mean for you to serve others? How do you nurture other people? How does the Spirit of God flow through you? How do you get in the groove and stay in the groove?

Ultimately, the question of giving is the question of living. I leave you with one question to ponder this week: When have you felt the most alive? When have you felt the most alive? This week, sometime when you have a few quiet moments, I want to you to go back to that space. Amen.

¹ A version of this sermon was preached by Dr. Rush on Oct 17, 1999