I am currently in a doctoral program, studying semiotics—cultural symbols—which requires a great deal of reading. Probably the greatest benefit of an education is the wise guide (teacher) who can give a curated tour of the best there is in any given subject, and such is the case with this program. Dr. Leonard Sweet has opened the door to an entire world of scholars and theologians who look beneath the surface of things and reveal mysteries. Now I would like to open that world to you.
Once again, this is a Leonard Sweet book that puts into words so many things I have felt and lived by but never quite articulated.
Play and Play
The Well-Played Life’s premise is a double-entendre. First, Sweet proposes that all work and no play makes a Christian dull. Fly Gospel. All play and no work makes a Christian glow from within. Fire Gospel (p. 52). But how do we break out of fly and become fire? We start by softening.
But second, Sweet also likens “play” to artistry, as in a master playing the violin. Both kinds of play bring incredible satisfaction in life—transcendent, transporting, joyful fulfillment. However, artistry comes at great cost, for one must practice daily to attain mastery.
The mindset of play is finding the enjoyment in whatever it is I am doing. Instead of washing dishes because they must be clean, I enjoy the feel of the suds on the dishes, and how they sparkle when rinsed off. Yes, it must be done. But also, this is sacred work, because my hands, filled with the Spirit, are doing it. Christ in me enjoys this beautiful world, and these dishes, and me, cleaning them. And, because it is sacred, I practice until I can clean them well, with artistry, for in this moment, this is my art.
Identity in Christ
Identity is a Big Deal these days, including not only our sexual orientation and gender, but also our generation and age, our race and culture, our political bent, our religious proclivities, our economic tier, our social status, and the list goes on. But what if all these identifiers are, in reality, no more important than the color of our hair? What if all these identifiers obfuscate who we really are?
There is a delightful fable tucked about midway in The Well-Play Life called “Iden T. Snatcher and the Story Catchers” (pp. 116–120 ). As you can guess from the title, it is a tale about learning our true identity in Christ and allowing what others think of us to fade in importance. I hope Sweet will expand this story into its own little book on day.
One of the discussion questions offered at the end of The Well-Played Life touches on how we might lean into this life-giving identity.
How can we create a climate in which vulnerability is allowed, rewarded, and even celebrated?
Leonard Sweet, The Well-Played Life: Why Pleasing God Doesn’t Have to Be Such Hard Work, 248
Vulnerability and Shame
As I sat with this question, Dan Allender’s book, The Wounded Heart, came to mind. Allender contends that people, including Christians, have three basic styles of relating that arise out of being shamed. Styles of relating, then, are strategies people use to try to stay in control of the relationship, to cover nakedness or shame, to take care of ourselves, to stop being vulnerable. It is really a Genesis 3 response.
Before anyone shamed us, spiritually and emotionally we were as open, transparent, and vulnerable as the first people in Genesis 2. But once shame and contempt entered the picture, humanity reached for whatever it could to cover up.
Like those first humans, we cover over our vulnerability, we hide from the people we have relationships with, and we hide from God, the one Person who can rescue us from shame and contempt. Instead of trusting God to get us through that awful experience, to strengthen us as a result, to make us wiser, and deeper, and stronger, and braver, we close up and close off, even from God.
Three Stages of Life
There are some eye-opening statistics on aging which point up how healthy humans have become over the course of the last few thousand years. Our paleolithic ancestors tended to be tall, healthy, and long-lived, but as soon as humans started settling down into the agrarian life, building walled cities and living cheek-to-jowl with each other, our life expectancy plummeted. Now, it seems, living for a century is becoming more common-place.
After walking through a variety models for tracking life spans, Sweet lands on three neatly categorized stages:
- First Age (1 – 30)
- Second Age (30 – 60)
- Third Age (60-90)
Since I am 64, it is this third stage that interests me most.
Sweet’s discourse on growing new and what that means for the third stage of life is refreshingly lifegiving and entirely counter-cultural (pp. 23–38).
Third Agers tell the stories of Jesus in ways that synthesize all and resonate with all, give voice to the oppressed, ventriloquize those who are suffering, and build for the future.
Leonard Sweet, The Well-Played Life: Why Pleasing God Doesn’t Have to Be Such Hard Work, 215
Sweet pairs the experiential wisdom of the First Agers with the risk-taking adventurousness of the Third Agers, exploring the adjacent possible in a vujà dé look through the gospel at the scriptures and at life itself.
I have some favorite Third Agers from the Bible, but one of my most favorite is Anna, a woman I deeply admire, and who is the icon of the often untapped resource in postmenopausal women in the church.
Anna, a Third Ager
If we trust the story, and immerse ourselves inside it, then we imagine a woman who has ministered for about sixty years to the many families who came to the temple.
Mother of Israel
In Herod’s expanded complex, the Court of the Gentiles was designed to hold up to 10,000 people. Imagine all of the diaspora Jewish families coming through Jerusalem for the three annual festivals to be celebrated on God’s holy mountain. There, Anna, who had no husband or child offered prayers and words of wisdom and prophecy to all the wives and mothers she met. Perhaps, like Deborah, Anna came to be known as a mother of Israel (Judges 5:7).
Learned Prophet
Imagine how well Anna knew the scriptures as she walked through Solomon’s Colonnade, listening to all the rabbis teach. She surely had heard the famed Gamaliel and knew well the scholars that Jesus would later spend time with as a boy. These were the stories and truths she would prophetically speak into the lives of all those she ministered to. It is probable Anna and Simeon knew each other and were both actively seeking signs for the Lord’s Messiah to come.
Aged Sage
Luke says Anna was very old, so a little bit of math notes she was 84 years old and that Herod died in 4 BCE, so Jesus most likely was born in 6 or 5 BCE. If Anna was 15 when she married, and 22 when she was widowed, then we can imagine she moved to the temple somewhere around 70 BCE, when the Hasmoneans ruled over more and more of Palestine, including Judea. In 63 BCE, Rome annexed Palestine, and then began a series of revolts and uprisings that culminated in Herod being proclaimed “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate in 37 BCE, and sent back to Judea to reclaim it from Hasmonean interlopers.
Anna lived through all that, lived through Herod’s intrigues and building projects, lived through Hasmonean, then Roman, then Herodian regimes. When Jesus was born thirty years later, Herod had much expanded the temple mount, a Roman garrison had been built right next to the temple, and other modifications had greatly changed the temple Anna knew from her girlhood.
First to Proclaim Messiah
Yet for all the upheaval around her, Anna continued to pray and minister to the families who came to the temple. She watched as young brides became grandmothers, and their grandchildren become parents, and perhaps also priests, and scholars, rabbis, vendors, and those who came in need, hat in hand, like herself.
It is ironic that Simeon spoke prophetically over Jesus, but it is Anna the prophet who turned to the milling crowd, “gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38 NRSVUE).
It is not John the Baptist who first proclaimed Messiah.
It is Anna.
Gray Hair Is a Crown of Splendor
And before Anna, it was Elizabeth, another postmenopausal woman so attuned to the Spirit she knew immediately what God was doing in Mary. These are women who knew how to play with such grace and ease we almost miss the significance and impact they had,
Luke, who took special interest in widows, notes them often throughout his two-volume work. Luke tells us about Anna, about the widow who took care of Elijah, about the widow of Nain whose son Jesus raised from the dead, of the persistent widow whose example Jesus used for praying, of the widows’ homes which were devoured by pious frauds, and of the widow who gave her two pennies. Luke positions Jesus often in the Court of Women, people watching and teaching.
Being a Third Ager, it seems, is a time-honored, scripture-honored place in life, and I intend to live it to the hilt.
Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness
Proverbs 16:38 NRSVUE
